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Computer upgrade advice needed
I wanted to get a bit of advice on an upgrade I plan on doing next week or so.
what i have ( hardware to be reused if possible ).
-PSU- Corsair TX 850w
-Case- NZXT Full Tower. Model is discontinued now and I cant find a link. Has 9 fans - 4 side panel, 1 top, 2 rear, 1 bottom and 1 front. Airflow should be adequate.
-Sony DVD/CD Drive
-HD- 1TB WD 7200 ( caviar black ) . & 1.5TB seagate barracuda 7200 rpm drive ( media, backup, ect )
-Lisenced copy of Win 7 pro 64 bit
- Keyboard, mouse, monitor, headphones, ( will reuse )
What I want to buy.
These are a few things I found on newegg that looked decent.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155
-http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072
Intel Core i5- 2500k
-http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227726
OCZ agility 3 120g SSD
-http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231314
G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB DDR3 1600
-http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181015
Corsair H60 Hydro Series Liquid CPU Cooler.
I think thats everything. Its early and I am only halfway finished with my 1st cup of java. Any advice would be appreciated. 
Comments
My only feedback would be to spend the extra bucks, not much, and get the H100 water cooler. You get twice the cooling surface on the radiator plus two fans. Preferably, you would add another two fans for a push / pull configuration or place it where you already have case fans pulling air out of the case (usually top of case) and the radiator fans pushing. Not only will it be cooler, but the fans can be set at a much slower rate and therefore end up being much more quiet.
I would also add that if you can stretch your budget, try for a 240GB SSD and if you want greater stability and compatibility, get an Intel 520 series SSD. I assume you're going to use the SSD for gaming software. Believe me, you'll get tired of having to install / uninstall games due to lack of space on a measly 120GB with the size of today's games, let alone next years'.
I know the Core i7 might seem like over-kill right now, but it's much more future proof than the i5 and the price difference isn't that big.
I've heard good things about ASRock motherboards, so, no comments there.
^^
what he said on the H100. i have it on the silent mode most of the time, and i am sitting in 35 idle with decent OC profile.
also at full load, with the 3rd level, i never pass 55 c.
also very silent, very easy to install/remove (removing a cpu cooler is very important, i upgraded from an lga 775 that had a scythe air cooler tower, and even though the thing was a beast in terms of cooling, removing it from the cpu was so brutal, basicly every time i wanted to removed it. i had to disassemble the mobo from the case.)
as also stated you can have push/pull with 4 fans, and corsair was samrt enough to give you 4 fan headers on this beast.
all and all i am very very pleased with this thing.
as for the ssd, i would go for the vertex 3 instead of the agility 3, but that depend on your budget and what use do you intend to do with him.
edit: if you will go for the h100 you need to make sure you can fit it, thats a 240 mm radiator.
I 3930k -- Rampage IV Extreme -- G.skill RipjawsZ 32 GB -- Corsair Force Series 3 120gb -- G.skill Phoenix Pro 60gb -- WD 1 TB Black -- Corsair H 100 -- Thermaltake Level 10 Gt Snow Edition -- Corsair AX1200 -- Asus 560 Ti Sli -- Microsoft Sidewinder X4 -- Logitech G5 -- DELL UltraSharp 2007FP -- Samsung Syncmaster Sa700 -- Logitech Z2300 -- Logitech G35 -- Logitech G600 White -- coming soon : Dell U2711.
I will go with the H100 for sure then.
I will look around at the SSDs you guys have recommended. I am still not sold on them as a whole as I have heard they have high failure rates and more problems in general than other drives. I was going to go with a 120g at 1st to see how I liked it. If it fails in 3-6 months not a huge loss, where a 240g is costly and would hurt a bit more if it went balls up in a few months.
I plan on putting OS on it and a couple of my most played games that I will leave installed. Like Skyrim, GW2, TSW, D3 ( when Released) and what have you. Games I would not be uninstalling once they were on there. The other SP games on the 7200 RPM drive.
What are thoughts on a 10k RPM WD raptor drive? seem to be a bit cheaper last time I looked.
An i7 is not out of the question, I have heard that for gaming it is a bit overkill as the i5 seems to be the most popular intel processor for gamers. My machine is mainly used for Gaming and as a media player. Music, games and movies mostly.
just be sure your top fan mount can fit 2 120 mm fans.
ssd is a bit problematic i agree.we have saying that in English would translate to "one day is good, one day is onion".
meaning ssd can be luck/dis-luck matter.
atm i have an 60 gb g.skill phoenix pro , that from day one had issues with the famous cold bios issue. note this is related to SandForce controller rather to the ssd brand.
on the other hand, when it did work, it worked flawless, and with great speeds, im talking 15 sec to load win7 from bios to past login....
smae with games, once you put an sdd in, you relaize that most of the hdd work being done is by the os, and with that being on the sdd, you will ralize that your other storage drive is barely doing any work most of the time, you know those hard calculations sound when you start up or load any heavy program.
its a dream. and even with my own being ram at this time (sending him back to g.skill)
my next buy will still be an ssd.
a vertex 3 120.
60 gb is not enough in these fays even just for basic OS + some utility's you want on it, so yeah go with 120-240. i am also at the same range. not to much, to to little.
i am also using a 7200 rpm for storage (wd black),AFI most people just put os+ most used app/games on the ssd and rest on the hdd.
as for the raptor, never had a chance to use one.
I 3930k -- Rampage IV Extreme -- G.skill RipjawsZ 32 GB -- Corsair Force Series 3 120gb -- G.skill Phoenix Pro 60gb -- WD 1 TB Black -- Corsair H 100 -- Thermaltake Level 10 Gt Snow Edition -- Corsair AX1200 -- Asus 560 Ti Sli -- Microsoft Sidewinder X4 -- Logitech G5 -- DELL UltraSharp 2007FP -- Samsung Syncmaster Sa700 -- Logitech Z2300 -- Logitech G35 -- Logitech G600 White -- coming soon : Dell U2711.
As I recall, you had a Phenom II X4 in your current rig, right? Unless you've run into some problem where it isn't good enough, you might want to wait for Ivy Bridge.
A Corsair H100 is nice, sure. But $115 for a CPU cooler is ridiculous unless you're going for a maximum overclock. If you do get it, then make sure that your existing case has a suitable place to mount it.
The main difference between a Core i5 and a Core i7 is hyperthreading, and that doesn't matter a bit unless you're running something that scales well to more than four cores. There are purposes where it's a big deal, but gaming isn't one of them.
If your big concern with an SSD is reliability, then try a Crucial M4 or a Samsung 830. Those will probably be more reliable than a hard drive, even, though we don't have data on how likely SSDs are to fail four or five years down the road. Having a fixed bill of materials (because they manufacture their own NAND flash) and focusing entirely on just one product means better reliability. OCZ bounces between whichever NAND vendor is cheapest that day and meets their specs. That saves them money, and they do pass on the savings to you, but it also hurts reliability.
Intel has their own NAND flash, too, and a pretty good reliability record. But the Intel SSD 520 is very new, and there's no substitute for an SSD having been out on the market in the hands of hundreds of thousands of consumers who find (and complain to tech support about!) whatever problems it had at launch.
What these guys say all sounds good. You will also have to buy a new Win 7 disc, so you might want to wait for Win 8.
Quizzical
I have thought about waiting for Ivy Bridge and building a system around that, If nothing else for something that will last the next 3-5 years. I am not having any problems with the Phenom II x4 and can wait for sure. I just have been doing some weekend work and wanted ( not needed) to build a system while I had some extra cash.
Any ideas when they are coming out ( ivy Bridge)? I have read up a bit on them some ( a month or so ago ) and didnt see a date where they would be available for purchase.
Would it be worth it to get a PCI-E 3.0 Mobo with the Ivy Bridge?
I will take a look at the SSDs you have mentioned. As I honestly have never used one and dont know just a whole lot about them. A little research seems to be in order for that.
The more expensive liquid CPU cooler i can go either way on. As 30-40$ wont really make a difference in my budget, i have alot of wiggle room. Just wanted something good overall. Will have to make sure it will fit my case is all.
I can spring for more expensive components easily. i have around $1800 max to spend. Does not mean I want to go overboard and spend $ on something I dont need tho or is way overkill for what I use a comp for. Thats the reason I thought i5 would suite my needs above an i7.
Overall just looking for a build that has good solid components and will last at least 3 years or more. I figured better off to go spring for solid hardware now.
Thanks for the help
As far as SSD reliability goes:
I have ... 4 SSDs in my personal machines, and close to 25 others installed on servers at work. I haven't (knock on wood) had any fail yet, or had any problems.
That is a relatively small sample set - I admit.
Compared to the probably 100+ regular hard drives I've used over the years, aside from IBM Deskstar and WD Raptor (1st gen), I've had pretty good luck with hard drives in general. I typically see about 5 years worth of life out of desktop drives, and 3-4 years out of laptop drives.
My oldest SSD now is going on 4 years, and still strong. It's an older drive (original Samsung) and still hanging in there. The bulk of them are Crucials, either C300's or newer M4's. I have a couple of OCZ's in there as well.
So, I won't say that SSDs are more reliable than regular HD's - but in my experience, they aren't any less reliable, and I don't really see any cases where I would say that they, at any time, perform like onions. The older non-TRIM drives, after a year or two, did need to be wiped and reinstalled to refresh the performance, but a year or two is usually in line with a wipe and reinstall anyway - and all the newer drives have TRIM and even that's unnessecary.
Compared to all the benefits that an SSD brings over a traditional HD, I really find it hard that anyone could talk themselves out of one if it can possibly fit inside their budget.
Thats good to hear.
I am going to budget one in for sure. Just want to try and get the best one I can. I dont mind spending the money if they are reliable more or less. I am sure some failure rate is to be expected.
I may be wrong but from what I have read and understand the failure rate is higher if you do alot of installing & uninstalling on them?
I plan on only putting on the SSD stuff that will be there awhile. Maybe this will help keep it kicking.
Thanks again for all the input.
I second the opinions about the Intel SSD and the i7 CPU; I'm using a 530 SATA 3 250 GB, and I agree, it was easy to fill half of it up with some of my games, so go for more space. I'd tend to agree that you;d be better off future proofing your CPU as well by going for the i7. If it;s still available, you should be able to get the Intel 970 i7 6-core for around $550 or so.
EDIT:
I read through some of the other responders' comments, and I have also read that SSD's were problematic, I went with an Intel because it had the best ratings out of the ones on the market when I built my last PC, and with the exception of an old Marvell driver which I replaced with Intel drivers from their website, I haven't had any issues.
Intel's website does wonders for upgrading firmware and drivers for its products, and there's a SSD Optimizer tool you can download from Intel that boosts performance as well.
I don't know that uninstalling and installing a lot of stuff will necessarily drive the failure rate any higher.
It's true that SSD's have a limited number of writes that they can perform before they wear out. SLC and MLC drives wear differently (SLC being about 10 times higher, and usually labeled as "Enterprise" drives). Even MLC drives you can do "normal" use for a consumer desktop - including installing and uninstalling, and expect to see around 4-5 years of life before you see the SSD start to lose capacity or fail.
SSDs have a number of automatic features they use in order to combat this limited number of writes problem:
Wear leveling (which is part of the reason why defrag is pointless) and Excess reserve capacity (which is why your 120G HD may only have 111G of useable space) are the big two.
Unless you are running something like a high speed transactional database, or streaming raw video constantly, then it probably won't be an issue. Installing and uninstalling programs, unless you are doing it as fast as you can do it (most installations take between 2 minutes to 10 minutes, depending on the size of the program), 24/7, you probably won't notice any appreciable decrease in drive life.
There are other reasons why you may stop using the drive: It could fail for some other reason (firmware failure, hardware failure, etc) - these are certainly possible, but from my experience using name-brand SSDs, I've never seen it, Odds are you will still be using it when you decide to upgrade it to something bigger, and just flat out obsolescence drives it's replacement. Like I said, I still have a first generation Samsung that's 4 years old, and a very old OCZ Apex that's over 3 years old, neither are having any problems or reduced capacity, and both see daily "normal" use, and have the entire time I have had them.
First, your SSD doesn't exist.
Next, you're recommending a processor that is very obsolete and never was a good gaming processor.
While one Intel SSD does use a Marvell controller, and Marvell has written their own firmware for it, Intel never shipped the SSD with Marvell firmware. Intel wrote their own firmware right from the start (as did Crucial).
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While you can wear out an SSD by writing excessively, consumer use isn't going to do it. If you fill up the SSD once and then wipe it all every single day, then you might be looking at 8-15 years before it wears out.
The reason why I mentioned the Intel SSDs is due to them having the fewest occurances of blue screens and firmware issues. The 520 series went through some very, very rigourous testing in house at Intel, it's the main reason why they released it so late in the game. It gets really good reviews from both hardware techie sites and users both. I'm about to have my new system delivered to me next week and I'm getting two 240GB 520's installed, one for the OS and regular apps and the second for games only, plus adding my current WD 600GB 10K RPM Velociraptor in as data backup.
The Core i7 2600K is a pretty good deal right now and it will give you at least several years of good service before it becomes obsolete, unlike an i5 which will probably underperform in the next couple of years if not sooner. I have nothing against them personally, I just rather invest in something a little more future proof, especially for the low price point difference.
if you buy an intel proc try to stick to intel component as much as you can ,mobo,cpu,ssd,network card etc!
same for amd
same if you select nvidia!
i would chose intel!
Please do not take any note of this post, it's as silly as saying if you have niké sneakers you won't run as fast unless you wear the same brand socks, shorts and t-shirt with them.
dont take my word for it look into it lol!web is there for it!if you look carefully you ll see in the long run the way i say is better!wichever brand you chose!be it if you chose asus or bengladesh imiticapa!
I agree with this. Intel motherboards, for instance, are pretty lackluster when it comes to gaming rigs. They make very good network cards, true, but they are geared more towards enterprise customers. All in all, you'd be paying a lot of money for Intel brand name stuff, when you could get better equipment (at least better in the context of gaming) for less money. You certainly don't want to be running Intel video/GPU, and that is implied here as well.
I don't think there is any special mojo to be had from running an AMD CPU with an AMD GPU, or nVidia GPU with an nVidia motherboard, or any other random combination of vendors.
You need the basic components, they need to be compatible. Past that, you don't need to worry too much about brand names. Worry more about performance, cost, longevity, and support.
For debugging SSDs, there is no substitute for having the drives out in the hands of hundreds of thousands of consumers who will complain if things go wrong. There just isn't. No amount of in-house testing can replace that, whether performed by Intel or anyone else.
I don't doubt that an Intel SSD 520 on launch day was more reliable than an OCZ Vertex 3 was on its launch day. But you know what else is more reliable than an OCZ Vertex 3 was then? An OCZ Vertex 3 today. Or a lot of other SSDs that have been on the market for a while.
Intel does have a fairly good track record as SSD vendors go. But it's not like Intel's track record is pristine. Remember how changing a BIOS password would kill a second generation X25-M? Remember how a bunch of SSD 320s were claiming to only have 8 MB of capacity? Sure, Intel fixed those bugs eventually. But they were present at launch day, and you run into a serious risk of something comparably severe if you buy an SSD at launch day, whether from Intel or anyone else. If you put an extremely high premium on reliability, that's an argument against buying an Intel SSD 520 today.
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There won't be games where the difference between a Core i7 2600K and Core i5 2500K overclocked to the same speed matters until there are games that scale well to more than four cores, and for which four fast cores aren't good enough. That's not coming in the next few years. It's highly probable that a random user will pick up a game where a 2600K doesn't perform well (because the game is badly coded so that nothing performs well) before he picks up a game where a 2600K performs well but a 2500K does not.