Help me spec an upgrade

[n30_mkii]

As per the title I'm currently running a Q6600 775 setup with 8GB of memory. It's pretty good for my needs but I use my box for lots of VM work and could do with a little more grunt, especially in the memory department.

Ideally I would like to look at something which would support triple channel memory meaning I could ideally look at running with 24GB. I'm guessing that will however impede any overclocking that I would benefit from.

I ideally want to be spending around £400 and recoup a little of that by selling my current components.

I have a decent 650w PSU and a 4850 GPU, I don't do any gaming on this and could always upgrade GPU later if required. I'm basically looking for a good solid CPU / Mobo / RAM combo which will do what I need. A quad core processor with HT would be beneficial for VM purposes.

I'm not going to be buying new but rather hitting the members market to source items as required. What would be a realistic setup? Perhaps an older I7 920/930?

I don't mind not getting the full 24gb straight away as long as I can add to it afterwards

Many thanks for any advice

 

[djabs786]

You could wait for the i7 3820 to come out (february 13th apparently) which is on the X79 Chipset so supports quad-channel memory. It'll be around £250. Motherboard X79 will be £150-200 and 24GB Ram will be about £85. Total around £450, and if you sell some of your current components it should bring it down to £400. Will perform quite abit better then a 920/930 build.

 

[cmndr_andi]

You could wait for the i7 3820 to come out (february 13th apparently) which is on the X79 Chipset so supports quad-channel memory. It'll be around £250. Motherboard X79 will be £150-200 and 24GB Ram will be about £85.

+1

If you can afford it then this is a great way to construct a system with a huge amount of very fast memory as well as a very quick quad core sandy bridge CPU. X79 boards like this ASUS P9X79 has eight RAM slots and supports up to 64GB RAM (8x8GB) - if using cheaper per GB 4GB RAM sticks then this board would hold 32GB of RAM.

If this is too expensive then the plan to go for a X58 board is a good one - the CPU is still very formidable and allows you to fill it up with a great deal of RAM - all running in triple channel mode.

 

[n30_mkii]

Sounds like good advice for the future but I'm thinking second hand market might be best place this time around. What I7 processor and motherboard would be best combo right now to pickup at a reasonable price?

24GB should be fine for now and at least I know that more is possible with the newer boards etc.

 

[cmndr_andi]

For Bloomfield i7 the CPUs to look out for are the i7 920 (D0 stepping), i7 930 and i7 950.

As for motherboards, pretty much any full-ATX X58 boards from ASUS or Gigabyte are solid.