16 replies to this topic

[Aku]

I plan on buying my computer and making it on Cyberpowerpc as I am a bit afraid of building my own as I've had some problems before. Listed below are the parts I plan on putting in my rig and yes I know they will be overpriced as I am not technically building it myself, but if you guys know of any better sites that please let me know, but until then here are the specs of what I'm looking for.

CPU: Intel i7-2600K 3.40 GHz
CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo Gaming Cooling Fan
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 Intel Z68 ATX Mainboard
Memory: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1333MHz Dual Channel Memory Corsair or Major Brand
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1.2GB 16X PCIe Video Card
OR
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 2.5GB 16X PCIe Video Card
Not exactly sure whether the 1.3GB extra of VRAM is worth the extra $91.
Optical Drive: Sony 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive
Case: Azza Hurrican 2000 Full Tower
Power Supply: 800 Watts - CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 80 Plus Power Supply
Hard Drive 1: 60 GB OCZ Agility 3 SATA III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 525MB/s Read & 475MB/s Write
Hard Drive 2: 2TB (2TBx1) SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

Total Price: $1829, this price includes windows 7 home edition.

[Meriakh]

Got a few things to say about your rig. The 60 Gb ssd is not worth it. The larger the ssd, the greater the increase in performance. The difference in performance from a 60 Gb ssd to a 120/128 Gb ssd is huge. The 240Gb and higher ssds do not get as large a boost to performance as the boost from 60 to 120 Gb. So I would recommend you pick up the bigger and better performance 120 Gb ssd.

Also noting you have a Z68 gen3 motherboard. Unless you plan to upgrade your GPUs sometime in the future (which based upon the GPU you have it will be a bit), you don't really need gen3. The mobo you are picking is extremely expensive. There are many mobo in the mid 100 dollar range that would serve you nearly as well.

The i7-2600k is barely better than the i5-2500k. I would strongly recommend going w/ the i5-2500k if you are looking the best performance/cost scenario. Though the i7 is slightly better than the i5 in many scenarios, it is not at all clear cut and the i5 performs nearly as good if not better than the i7 in nearly all benchmarks.

Also, if you get the 120 Gb ssd you could hold off on the hdd for a while. At this moment hdd are really expensive because of the flooding in thailand. So waiting half a year to buy the high capacity hdd could save you 100 bucks on it. Just throwing that out there.

[Aku]

Alright I was just thinking of getting a SSD, but I really don't have a need for it as I'm fine with the regular HDD. I wasn't exactly sure about the Mobo so I just got one I thought would be pretty good in the sense of the PCIe numbers. I will check out the difference in price between the i5 and the i7, if it isn't much ill just grab the i7, but if you say the i5 is almost as good, I may save my money and pick that up.

[unff]

Got a few things to say about your rig. The 60 Gb ssd is not worth it. The larger the ssd, the greater the increase in performance. The difference in performance from a 60 Gb ssd to a 120/128 Gb ssd is huge. The 240Gb and higher ssds do not get as large a boost to performance as the boost from 60 to 120 Gb. So I would recommend you pick up the bigger and better performance 120 Gb ssd.

Gonna have to ask you to find me a credible source on this. I can't say I've ever heard this particular theory.

[Meriakh]

This is not a theory. I read about it on Tom's hardware, and it is backed up with all the tests they have done. It has to do with how the ssd accesses it's memory, and essentially has to do with channels being populated. Some ssd will have only half their channels populated (the smaller 32/64 gb models for instance). But it isn't just channels. As SSDs get large, they have increased memory packages, memory packages per channel, die density, and dies per package. The greater the number of these things, the greater the performance of the ssd. This is why high capacity ssd perform better than low capacity ssd. A link w/ all of this info is right below.

http://www.tomshardw...rison,2957.html

Also, the i5 is about 100 dollars cheaper than the i7, and performs something like 10% worse in many cases. Obviously that is situational though, depending on the benchmark, type of computer, ect.

[unff]

I hadn't run across this particular piece of information. Thanks. I wonder if it's a controller limitation, since I can't see this being a limitation of flash memory.

[Meriakh]

The controller will most definitely impact the speed of the SSD. That being said, from what I understood from that article I linked, it also has to do with physical limitations. If the sdd is smaller, it will have reduced die density, memory packages, ect. These physical differences in the smaller ssd cause reduced speeds most likely because controller optimization can only go so far.

Also, i think it additionally has to do with how the memory works. Say an ssd has 10 channels, but only 5 are active (because it is a 64 gb ssd). This means that only 5 simultaneous operations can be performed on the ssd at one time. On the other hand, if you have a 128 gb ssd and all 10 channels are being used, then that means 10 simultaneous operations can be performed at the same time. So no matter what, you are getting close to twice the speed for the larger ssd in this scenario (this is not necessarily the case from 64 to 128 gb, but it does happen).

This is also why 2 SSDs in RAID 0 operate twice as fast. Instead of having a read speed of 500 Mb/s, 2 SSDs in RAID 0 will have a read speed of 2x500 Mb/s. The reason for this is because you can have 2 SSDs operating simultaneously to read/write files. So I think this is essentially the same thing that happens when you double the channels an ssd is using (from 5 to 10).

Beyond that, I think there are controller limitations (because you can only optimize the software so much based upon the reduced die density, ect).

[unff]

Excellent points all around. I hadn't thought about the physical availability of chips on the board itself.

Also, belated welcome to the Team Legacy forums.

[Aku]

Well I guess with all this SDD talk going on, I was thinking of dropping the price of my rig a bit and forgoing the SDD for now, as I might be able to use that money towards either a better GPU or CPU. What do you guys think of my choices thus far?

[Meriakh]

The one thing I would not do is drop the SSD (but I would make it a 120 Gb one and not 60 Gb for the reasons stated earlier). The SSD is 20x faster or more than the HDD in many key parameters. Make sure the SSD you get is SATA 3, or else you will lose quite a bit of the performance you can gain. If anything I would drop the gtx 570 and pick up the gtx 560 ti, and then drop the i7-2600k to the i5-2500k. That will save you something like 250 dollars. Also, depending on how much hard drive space you plan to use, you could drop the hdd and keep a 120 gb ssd until hdd go down in price. I would also drop the mobo you have to a more cost effective mid to high 100 dollar mobo. You could get a cheaper case, but I have no real suggestions.

With these thoughts you would save something like 450 bucks (if you did drop the hdd). Just remember you can always get an HDD later or use an external hard drive to store files songs, movies, ect. Also, the price of HDD will go down within the next 6 months. Now is a real bad time to buy HDD so I wouldn't do it if you can avoid it.

[Aku]

I checked out Tom's hardware, and the 570 performed about 5-8 frames better than the 560 TI 448 and on cyberpower the cost to upgrade to the 570 is only $1 haha. But Would dropping down to a i5 be worth it? And as you can tell, I know nothing about mobos, so I guess I'll post a few that are cheaper than the one I picked out and see what you guys think of them.

Also, another thing, would 8 gigs be fine or should I upgrade for about $100 more for 16 gigs? While talking with Greight, he told me that I would probably never use all of that RAM....ever. He said that running the most intensive game he has (Shogun 2), he barely reaches 75% of the ram usage with 4 gigs in his laptop. Any suggestions?

[Aku]

Here is a new mobo I found that is $67 cheaper on cyberpower and allows everything I want,

Motherboard: ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 ATX Mainboard
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813157264

Memory: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory

Video Card: There is a $91 cost difference between the 1.2GB 570 vs. 2.5GB 570

Hard Drive 1: 120 GB OCZ Vertex 3 SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 550MB/s Read & 500MB/s Write

Hard Drive 2: 2TB (2TBx1) SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache Power Saving 5900 RPM HDD

Is there a big difference between the i7K 2600 and the i5K 2500?

With all of the changes, it came out to be $1847 with a total of $70 mail in rebate, coming to a grand total of $1777.

[unff]

Here's a 23 page review of both processors. The skinny is that the only reason I can see for a gamer to go with the i7 2600K is for bragging rights. The i5 2500K will see you through until the next time you are looking at a new system.

[Aku]

Damnit Unff, I've got studying to do and you've got me reading a 23 page review on processors....sounds like a good break from linguistics haha

[AetherLemmie]

You do need to take care with ASRock though. From what I have heard, their customer support is non-existent, so if your retailer doesn't give on-site warranty, I would suggest against that route. At least from newegg reviews, that was what I could garner and made me buy the more expensive Asus mobo.

Just a suggestion.

And wow, that must mean RAM is dirt cheap here in Australia. If they took $100 off my ram to drop it from 16gb to 8gb, I would have been left with $10 for 8GB of ddr3 1600mhz ram...

[Aku]

You do need to take care with ASRock though. From what I have heard, their customer support is non-existent, so if your retailer doesn't give on-site warranty, I would suggest against that route. At least from newegg reviews, that was what I could garner and made me buy the more expensive Asus mobo.

Just a suggestion.

And wow, that must mean RAM is dirt cheap here in Australia. If they took $100 off my ram to drop it from 16gb to 8gb, I would have been left with $10 for 8GB of ddr3 1600mhz ram...

Yeah going through cyberpower I will getting a 3 year warranty on all the parts in the rig, but if that's the case I may look into it myself. Amd as for the memory, I am already paying about $70 for the 8 gigs of RAM, just cutting back on the 16 as it seems a bit overkill

[Bridger]

If you want to save some money, you can order the parts off of newegg and take a trip up to South Windsor. I can help you put it together.