i7 2600k cpu ,mobo help please, cant decide!

Titchy · 2 Oct 2011 at 08:40

Hi guys , im a bit out of the loop since my last build which was a Q9650.
I've now decided i want to build myself an i7 2600k , but as i say im out the loop a bit on the latest tech.

The main things im looking for:

The ability to run 2 x 580 gfx cards to the best of their ability
To be able to fit fast memory and ideally 16gb
Good overclocking ability
To be able to use the fastest SSDs well ( i think i read somewhere that the newest mobos are able to use them faster , could be mistaken though )

I really am out of touch so all help and recommendations appreciated ,
i notice there is difference chipsets and im unsure of the differences ( P67,H67,Z68 etc )

Thanks in advance everyone.

Btw , the pc is mostly for Gaming and video editing ( i know the i5 is a good gamer but with other uses im wanting to go for the i7 )

Orcvader · 2 Oct 2011 at 11:34

What's your budget? Can't spec something without a budget

.

H67 allows you to use the onboard graphics on the CPU, but no CPU overclocking.
P67 allows you to overclock the CPU, but no onboard graphics.
Z68 allows the use of both the onboard graphics and CPU overclocking, as well as Intel SRT. This basically allows you to use an SSD as a cache drive for a normal mechanical harddrive and greatly speeds up it's read times to near SSD speeds.

Titchy · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:09

thanks for the explanation Orcvader !

Budget wise i was hoping 200 max but if i need to spend more for the "right" mobo then i am willing to do so.

I would like to run both cards together x16 x16 if possible rather than 8/8 .

I guess with your comment about the ssd i should be looking at only the Z68 chipset then eh ?

Thanks again.

Rooster212 · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:17

Only if you want to use the SSD as a cache for your mechanical disk where you store your OS! I haven't tried it yet but am planning to get to it when my SSD is fixed/RMA'ed, but apparently it can be quite good, not as good as installing the OS to the SSD but of course mechanical disk space is a lot cheaper than SSD space so its a balance of speed/price really.

Running cards at 16x/16x will make VERY little difference to 8x/8x, like 1-2% difference is what i have heard!

Have you said that your budget is £200? because i don't even think you can get an i7 for less than that...

I will get you a spec for £2000 as i assume that is what you mean as 2x 580's won't come in at under £200 last i checked

Titchy · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:24

I meant 200 for the mobo sorry

Yeah pc cost wise , around 2k, thanks .

Dont need a monitor , its going to be running 2 x 27" monitors that i already have.
Thanks muchly if you wanna do that matey

Titchy · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:26

Sorry for double post one after the other, just an afterthought, if 16/16 makes so little difference is there any reason for me to get that ? Like is the near-future tech (1yr-2yrs max) going to do anything that would take more advantage of 16/16 ? If it isn't then i would be happy with 8/8 , thanks again for your help chaps , its mucho appreciated.

Azer · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:27

If you're a vid editor then definitely go with a Z68.
You can enable the onboard graphics which is actually a shedload quicker than dedicated graphics cards for a lot of vid encoding etc tasks.
This feature is included in the Lucid Virtu chip and software.

I do a lot of transcodes between Avid/EVS/Quantel etc codecs and containers, and this feature is v neat.

Rooster212 · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:30

Ok got you a quick one:

YOUR BASKET
2 x MSI GeForce GTX 580 Lightning 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £439.99 (£879.98)
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £233.99
1 x Asrock Fatal1ty Z68 Pro Gen 3 intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £212.98
1 x OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (VTX3-25SAT3-120G) £174.98
1 x OCZ ZX Series 1000W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £149.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 600TM Midi Tower Mesh Windowed Case - Black £129.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9) £95.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3) £82.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £47.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £47.99
1 x Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card with built in Headphone Amp - OEM £20.99
1 x Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24B3ST - Retail (Black) £19.99
Total : £2,186.46 (includes shipping : £16.85).

Thats 2TB of hard drive space, a 120GB ssd, 2x 580's (the MSI cards I think are great, my Radeon 6950 MSI is cold

) 16GB of RAM, fantastic sound card for the price (£21, I have it and it is great)...

If you want to drop it down a bit I'd say get a smaller SSD and use it as a cache, so you can use a 1TB disk for your OS then you can use the other as a backup in RAID!

Changes I might say:

Just get a 590, forget 1 hard drive, don't bother with 16GB just get 8GB unless you specifically need it!

Rooster212 · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:34

Titchy said:
Sorry for double post one after the other, just an afterthought, if 16/16 makes so little difference is there any reason for me to get that ? Like is the near-future tech (1yr-2yrs max) going to do anything that would take more advantage of 16/16 ? If it isn't then i would be happy with 8/8 , thanks again for your help chaps , its mucho appreciated.

The board I picked would give you PCIe 3.0 which will make more difference in the future, it is just a bonus that it has 16x/16x, my friend has one and he got to 5ghz without a jitter and its a great board!

If i was to build this this would be more what i would get:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Gaming Mouse **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £649.98
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £233.99
1 x Asrock Fatal1ty Z68 Pro Gen 3 intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £212.98
1 x OCZ ZX Series 1000W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £149.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 600TM Midi Tower Mesh Windowed Case - Black £129.98
1 x Corsair Hydro H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3) £82.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £77.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C9 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9) £71.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £47.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £47.99
1 x Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card with built in Headphone Amp - OEM £20.99
1 x Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24B3ST - Retail (Black) £19.99
Total : £1,832.94 (includes shipping : £14.75).

Titchy · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:46

Thanks rooster, you have certainly given me some starting ground to work from ,
i was looking at Anandtech website on the benchmark comparison but i dont seem to be able to compare a single 590 to 580sli . That might be a good idea assuming she runs well, shaves a decent sum from the overall cost as well !

Im reading a review on that mobo right now and it seems to get the thumbs up!

Surveyor · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:50

Rooster212 said:
The board I picked would give you PCIe 3.0 which will make more difference in the future, it is just a bonus that it has 16x/16x, my friend has one and he got to 5ghz without a jitter and its a great board!

PCI-E 3.0 is only with an Ivy Bridge processor installed.

With 2 graphics cards the board runs at x8/x8.

2. In CrossFireX mode or SLI mode, please install PCI Express x16 graphics cards on PCIE2 and PCIE4 slots. Therefore, both these two slots will work at x8 bandwidth.

Rooster212 · 2 Oct 2011 at 12:58

Sorry should have clarified that... Still feel asleep

Rooster212 · 2 Oct 2011 at 13:02

And yes the 590 v 2x580s, the performance will be greater (by a little) with 2 580's but the 590 is more economical in power and noise and the temps will be lower as it takes up less space in the case and obviously, 1 card vs 2 cards, 1 card is going to be cooler!

Yeah having overclocked on it I am jealous of my mate who has the mobo, its amazingly stable for overclocking compared to my Gigabyte

Rooster212 · 2 Oct 2011 at 13:33

Good comparison of 590 v 2x580 here

Surveyor · 2 Oct 2011 at 13:35

Rooster212 said:
And yes the 590 v 2x580s, the performance will be greater (by a little) with 2 580's but the 590 is more economical in power and noise and the temps will be lower as it takes up less space in the case and obviously, 1 card vs 2 cards, 1 card is going to be cooler!

Sorry to correct you again but the performance of SLI'd GTX 580's is quite a lot more than a GTX 590. In the region of 15% better doing a quick search.

I'm not sure a GTX 590 is that cool or quiet either. Weren't there problems with them cooking themselves?

Rooster212 · 2 Oct 2011 at 13:43

Well from what i've heard its 10-15%, now whether that is worth it to the OP is up to him yes, but again is it worth the extra noise and everything? the 590 is meant to run quite cool, compared to 2 cards it will almost certainly run quieter! I wouldn't know about any issues i don't keep up to date much when it comes to Nvidia cards... i prefer AMD/ATI cards cause i like my bank of monitors (one day)...

fowler002 · 2 Oct 2011 at 16:40

if you're spending £200+ on a mb have a look at the asrock extreme7 gen 3 as it has the x16/x16 tho is £230(well looking at it seems to be down to £220 at the moment tho not sure how long it'll last before going back up)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-056-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

Titchy · 2 Oct 2011 at 22:04

Thanks guys , i am noticing that 590s seem very rare, that is a bit worrying , maybe there is indeed a problem with them ?

Would save some money but its a risky one, that gigabyte one that ocuk has seems to be about the only ones available anywhere !

Titchy · 4 Oct 2011 at 19:48

Thanks for all the help everyone , i opted for this mobo in the end !

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-056-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

I will post the whole pc spec in a while when i get a chance for those that were kind enough to come with complete suggestions !

Titchy · 6 Oct 2011 at 08:31