NO LONGER VALID: New PC, Old tower and PSU question!

Comments

• simonwest80 Member Posts: 173

  September 2012

  For now the and the foreseeable future i7s are a waste of money for gaming.  I believe the best bang for buck mid to high gaming wise atm is a 3570 and 670/7870

  You case is fine to reuse and how old is the PSU?  I would be tempted to reuse if under 2 years old but if you have some cash still laying about it wouldnt hurt to update.
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483

  September 2012

  Your old case will lack modern amenities such as front USB 3.0 ports and an SSD mounting slot, as those weren't on the radar when the case launched way back in 2007.  But as long as you don't go overboard with a system that really puts out a ton of heat (say, heavy overclocking, or an SLI/CrossFire rig), it should be fine.

  I'd recommend replacing the power supply.

  http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story2&reid=24

  That's the 700 W version rather than the 850 W, but the ripple runs way out of spec at full load.  And that's when brand new; performance tends to get worse as time passes.  The writer isn't really that hard on it, but the standards of six years ago were much lower than today, and the hardware of that era couldn't draw nearly as much power as today's can.

  I could understand reusing the power supply on a tight budget.  But if you're even thinking about a Core i7 anything or a GeForce GTX 670 or 680, then you've got the large budget to not need to mess with a mediocre power supply and hope that nothing goes awry.

  Don't get too caught up in the nominal wattage when looking at power supplies.  You need quality, not wattage.  Few gaming rigs have any plausible use for a power supply over 650 W.  An extra high nominal wattage can't compensate for poor voltage regulation, ripple suppression, build quality, or energy efficiency.

  -----

  On your budget, for a gaming rig, you should get a Core i5-3570K.  All that the 3770K really adds is hyperthreading, which doesn't matter for gaming.  When games struggle because the processor is too slow, it's invariably because the game isn't able to take advantage of all of the processor cores available, and not because it genuinely needs more than four cores.  I'd expect that to remain the case for the useful lifetime of the computer.

  The only Nvidia cards worth considering are a GeForce GTX 660 (not Ti) and a GeForce GTX 670.  Everything else is priced way out of line with its performance as compared to AMD's lineup.  Above a Radeon HD 7870 (a bit faster than a GTX 660), performance per dollar drops substantially from both vendors, and it's basically a case of, if you really want the high end performance, you have to pay a lot for it.  But a Radeon HD 7870 and GeForce GTX 660 are both respectable cards.

  One word of caution about the GTX 660:  the mismatched memory channels mean that you should think of it is a 1.5 GB video card with the last 0.5 GB tacked on for reasons of marketing rather than engineering.  If you're playing games at a resolution of 1920x1200 or lower, that's not a problem for you.  But if you're thinking about going for ultra-high monitor resolutions, you might want to spring for a Radeon HD 7950 instead.
• Draccan Member Posts: 1,050

  September 2012

  Originally posted by Quizzical

  Your old case will lack modern amenities such as front USB 3.0 ports and an SSD mounting slot, as those weren't on the radar when the case launched way back in 2007.  But as long as you don't go overboard with a system that really puts out a ton of heat (say, heavy overclocking, or an SLI/CrossFire rig), it should be fine.

  I'd recommend replacing the power supply.

  http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story2&reid=24

  That's the 700 W version rather than the 850 W, but the ripple runs way out of spec at full load.  And that's when brand new; performance tends to get worse as time passes.  The writer isn't really that hard on it, but the standards of six years ago were much lower than today, and the hardware of that era couldn't draw nearly as much power as today's can.

  I could understand reusing the power supply on a tight budget.  But if you're even thinking about a Core i7 anything or a GeForce GTX 670 or 680, then you've got the large budget to not need to mess with a mediocre power supply and hope that nothing goes awry.

  Don't get too caught up in the nominal wattage when looking at power supplies.  You need quality, not wattage.  Few gaming rigs have any plausible use for a power supply over 650 W.  An extra high nominal wattage can't compensate for poor voltage regulation, ripple suppression, build quality, or energy efficiency.

  -----

  On your budget, for a gaming rig, you should get a Core i5-3570K.  All that the 3770K really adds is hyperthreading, which doesn't matter for gaming.  When games struggle because the processor is too slow, it's invariably because the game isn't able to take advantage of all of the processor cores available, and not because it genuinely needs more than four cores.  I'd expect that to remain the case for the useful lifetime of the computer.

  The only Nvidia cards worth considering are a GeForce GTX 660 (not Ti) and a GeForce GTX 670.  Everything else is priced way out of line with its performance as compared to AMD's lineup.  Above a Radeon HD 7870 (a bit faster than a GTX 660), performance per dollar drops substantially from both vendors, and it's basically a case of, if you really want the high end performance, you have to pay a lot for it.  But a Radeon HD 7870 and GeForce GTX 660 are both respectable cards.

  One word of caution about the GTX 660:  the mismatched memory channels mean that you should think of it is a 1.5 GB video card with the last 0.5 GB tacked on for reasons of marketing rather than engineering.  If you're playing games at a resolution of 1920x1200 or lower, that's not a problem for you.  But if you're thinking about going for ultra-high monitor resolutions, you might want to spring for a Radeon HD 7950 instead.

   

  Just got a new PC. The thread is here:

  http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5330069/thread/366228#5330069

  I started this new thread. Feel free to pop in if you time

  cheers mate

  EDIT: No problem to report in the new thread at the moment though!

   

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