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New Build ~critique~
I'm Looking at grabbing this build up. The budget isn't really a big issue, I just want to try an avoid wasting too much money. I will be using 1-2 monitors 23'' + I also realize this is a mid-tower case, but a great one at that, with plenty room. I'm not a fan of the massive cases.
•Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D Mid-tower
•MB: Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 Intel Z68 Chipset ATX Mainboard
•GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7970
•CPU: Core™ i5-2500K
•RAM: 8GB (4GBx2) Kingston Hyper-X
•SSD: 240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III
•PSU: 850 Watts Corsair Professional Series CMPSU-AX850 80 Plus Gold Power Supply
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
Comments
overkill on PSU amount, and get a Crucial SSD instead.
Nice build... i7 2600k is a eighty to a hundred dollar difference though... why not save up if its your end all be all computer.. worth the spending.. and ivy bridge is coming up we might get a few price drops here and there but by not much...
And overkill is underrated though
Awesome, eighty to a hundered dollars extra for the same or worse performance.
I'm looking at grabbing the 2700k just to future proof it a little bit better. I won't be looking at upgrading the CPU/PSU and MB for several years... I may CF another 7970 in a year or two if I can get it all fitted and cooled well.
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
Not just strictly 'gaming' and the 2600k/2700k do hold a small gain over the 2500k.. the downside is the huge $$ increase for the fractional performance increase
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
Must've missed the part about you doing editing. As far as gaming is concerned, it holds no gains. Also, if this PC is for work and gaming, make sure to get 16gig of ram as well as 2600k.
You know what that 2700k flew under my radar! Hahahaha! Thanks dude! It is just a .1 difference though..
And if you oc any of this with your mobo.. you can roughly reach 4+... Good luck with your pc though!
for sure, I'm adding in the RAM 16gb kingston hyperX (4gbx4)
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
The difference between the Core i7 2600K and 2700K is the stock clock speed. That's it. They're the same chips coming off of the same lines. Intel probably doesn't even cherry-pick the very best dies for 2700K, as there are several other bins that they charge a lot more for (Xeon E3-1280, Xeon E3-1290, Core i7-2960XM, Core i7-2860QM). Unless the 2600K gets discontinued (which it might), the 2700K is basically a way to give more money to Intel without getting anything in return.
When comparing a Core i5 2500K to a Core i7 2600K/2700K, you can also point to hyperthreading and L3 cache as advantages of the latter. But that's not the case when comparing the 2600K to the 2700K. They're both fully functional dies with everything enabled that Intel will allow in desktop processors.
Why Kingston Hyper-X memory? Kingston tends to overcharge for their memory, and overvolt it. If you found a better deal from Kingston than other companies with the same specs, that's fine, but I'm guessing you haven't.
You seem like the sort of guy who wants to go extreme overkill on the power supply. So here, this is better:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151111
For most people, I'd recommend going lighter on wattage and spending around $100 on a power supply for a high end desktop.
I'm not a fan of that motherboard. Its reason for existence is to allow SLI/CrossFire in a small case. But you're not getting a small case. You're getting something big enough to accommodate full size ATX motherboards. So if you want to go CrossFire or SLI, it's better to have a bigger motherboard that will put the video card three slots apart rather than two.
get the i7 2600k it has ht ,also once done disable core parking yes it mather cause ht and coreparking doesnt play nice together!aside from that you look perfect!
Some people just right off buy the gene-z because it's by rog and its colored red... It's also the cheapest of the rog boards and beyond all its goodies... that's it!
And you're doing editing so what's your monitor setup? Quiz has a point when it comes for a dual video card setup, the gene z has 3 slots for that but it might get crampy a bit if it went unchecked...
Can you explain this better please.
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
I'm currently looking at 2x 1080p 23-27'' monitors. Primarily I will be utilizing only one.
I chose the Hyper-X over the Vengence and Dominator, because of the fitting issue with the heat sink that would onflict tightly in the case, also the quality and reviews it had. The small $$ difference is fine.
As for the Gen-Z MB; the case I chose is a mid-tower, not quite as large as some other mid-towers, and I read up all the reviews for it, never had a problem Crossfiring at all and scored quite well. I don't plan on Crossfiring for now, I think the 7970 should hold me over for a year or so just fine, I may throw in another one down the line, and even then it should be just dandy.
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
I like HyperX RAM personally - I don't use it in many builds other than my own personal ones because it tends to be a bit more pricey. You do have to watch out for the overvolting though. Most people just get G.Skill because it's so much cheaper for same specs with similar warranty, and I can't really fault them for it.
I agree with some other comments - power supply probably shouldn't be 850. That would ~probably~ do CF 7970's, but it may be a bit tight, especially if you are overclocking anything. For a single 7970 it's massive overkill. Given how well the 7970's are supposedly overclocking, and how well the i5'i7's overclock, I'd plan for doing so when sizing the power supply. 7970 is only a 210W TDP card, but that's at stock clocks - overclocks can do as much as double if you are pushing it hard and overvolting. If it were me, I would probably drop to the AX650 for the single card, then if/when I went SLI, upgrade the power supply to a 1k unit (say, the HX1050 or something) at that point.
For the SSD - I'm partial to the Crucial M4 myself (I don't own one, I have an older C300 right now). The Corsair Sandforce looks to be just as good though, and the price is the same, so I can't really fault that, other than comment with my own personal preference.
I have to echo what Quiz is saying though - why the micro ATX motherboard when your case will accommodate a regular ATX motherboard with no issue? Your going to end up with a lot of empty and unusable space in there like that. All of the Asus Z68 Gen 3 (PCI 3.0) motherboards look to be x8/x8 when Crossfired, so really the only difference is that your getting a red one that will leave about 3 inches of unusable space at the bottom of your case - and what peripheral functions you get built into the motherboard. It does happen to be a less expensive model, but I think I'd go for a full ATX, if for no other reason than to have a bit more room between your components (especially if you are planning on watercooling - that extra room helps for making tubing bends without having to resort to 90' connections).
I don't know why anyone would consider the 2700k. $50 is a lot to pay for 100Mhz, when you can easily get that for free since the 2600k is unlocked. It doesn't provide any measure of future proofing at all over the 2600, and only marginally over the 2500. That being said, I can totally see going from the i5 to the i7 if you aren't budget restrained, especially if you do anything that can split across cores (like Handbrake or SETI@home or something).
Core parking is a power management feature in Windows 7. When Windows detects that nothing is running that can really utilize all the cores in a system, it will try to consolidate all the runnings threads onto just a few cores and "park" the remaining cores: no threads will be assigned to them, and that potentially will allow the chip to power down those cores and go into/further TurboBoost on the remaining cores. It also allows the CPU caches to be used more efficiently.
Windows 7 is supposed to know the difference between a real and a hyperthreaded core, but occasionally it will get confused, and try to park a real core while still trying to use the virtualized hyperthreaded core associated with that unit (or vice-versa). Other times it will sit right on the load number between parking and unparking a core, and it can cause FPS spikes as a core gets kicked on and off (and TurboBoost gets adjusted, and worst case your game gets shifted from one core to another).
99% of the time, core parking is a good thing, as it lets your CPU use it's built-in TurboBoost and cache more effectively.
1% of the time, you'll see something strange going on. It requires a relatively simply registry edit and reboot to turn core parking off (or back on).
As far as Core Parking and HT not working well together - I don't really know about that. I have only seen the problem with one particular program on my Core i7 920, and I got around that by forcing CPU affinity rather than disabling Core Parking. Most of the time, HT works pretty well - you get free cores for threads for those rare times you actually fire something up that can use more cores (although they only have about 40% of the performance of a real core). I have heard you can get better overclocks by disabling it (and thus get better gaming performance because of the higher per-core performance), but I haven't bothered - my 920 at stock clocks is still plenty fast enough for the games I play: no sense in paying for extra power and heat just to go from 102 FPS to 143 FPS.
Here's an article where they find a problem with WinRAR and core parking on only HT-enabled systems. However, they only noticed the problem with that one particular program:
http://www.xtremehardware.it/eng-reviews/eng-reviews/core-parking-on-windows-seven-winrar-performance-with-sandy-bridge--201111226092/
Mother board swapped to the Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
CPU is staying as the 2500k (I will wait and look into Ivy soon down the road if I decide to upgrade)
I will be over-clocking decently, and will hang on to the current PSU, I may end up with a higher end kepler when it releases and sell off the 7970.
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
Looks good, other than no need for such a large & costly SSD.
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
The life time warranty they have is the one reason I can think off unless you get a good price. They are expensive but not bad so why they aren't my top choice it still ain't a bad one.
Yup. Other companies offer lifetime warranties as well (OCZ, Crucial, G.Skill off the top of my head) - but Kingston is pretty well established, and pretty likely to be around in a few years if you happen to need to cash in on that lifetime warranty (I still have BFG video cards with "lifetime" warranties...). Plus the heatsinks look nice, and the price isn't too over the top all things considered
Just peeking on Newegg for something fairly typical
DDR3 PC1600 CAS 9 1.5V 8G kit (2x4G)
Kingston HyperX $69.99
Mushkin Silverline $59.99 (2 year warranty)
Crucial Ballistix Sport $49.99 (lower end heatsink)
Patriot Signature $34.99 (no heatsink at all, but does have lifetime limited warranty)
Corsair Vengeance $49.99
G.Skill Ripjaws $46.99
Yeah, HyperX is the upper priced product, but it's not out of the ballpark. There is definitely a premium your paying just for the Kingston name, but it's not outrageous. I wouldn't criticize anyone for using Kingston, much like I don't criticize anyone for using Corsair power supplies: you pay a premium, but you get a good measure of assurance with that as well - the product will work well, it has a good warranty and reputation, and the company is stable and will be around for a while to service the product
For that kind of price tag, you could just buy three sticks of a competitor's, and if one fails, have the replacement right on hand without needing to wait for warranty support. I don't see that much value in warranty service for a product that only costs $20 to replace, unless at minimum, they cross ship the replacement product for you.
"I still have BFG video cards with "lifetime" warranties."
The lifetime warranty lasted for the lifetime of the company offering it. At least that beat's Sparkle's "lifetime" warranty that only lasts for the lifetime of the SKU.
For what it's worth, OCZ has pulled out of memory, in favor of a focus on SSDs.