Building new top end PC....

Mach234 (or similar).

Mach234 (or similar).

Mach234 (or similar).

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Joined
6 Apr 2009
Posts
64
Location
Exeter, Uk
Hiya,

Its my first post, but know a bit about PCs, and am looking at building my first PC - a tower ATX. I have budgeted about £1k! But if I can make a top quality one for less would be good! And I'm looking to get it up and running fairly quickly as my old one has blown up.

After a quick read up and look about (2 days), a pretty good combo seems to be a GA-EX58-UD5 "Gigabyte S1366 Intel X58 DDR3 ATX Audio 2GbE Lan 3 Channel" motherboard with an "Intel Nehalem i7 920 S1366 2.66GHz", although this is getting on the pricey side, and I haven't checked all specification compatibilities yet (other than socket), so thought I'd post this to try and get some feedback asap...

Does anyone know if these are a good match, and bus speeds match up etc?
Is it a good idea to go for a 1366 socket?
Is 3 channel RAM worth it (over dual-channel)?
Is DDR3 worth it? Does it have the same latency issues as early DDR2s?
Currently have PNY NVidia 7600 GS graphics card would this be up to the new system, or would I have to upgrade?

Can anyone recommend some good RAM to go with it (~4GB, DDR3 - is unbuffered Non-ECC the way to go?).

The PC will hopefully be for all sorts of applications: high end gaming, fast compilation, video editing etc...

On an aside, are wide screen/two monitor setups worth it? How many apps take advantage of it?

Many thanks..

(p.s. Already have 200GB IDE HDD, PNY NVidia 7600 GS, and good monitor if need to save cash).
 
Depends on intended use. 775 or am3 will be cheaper and very nearly as fast.

DDR3 is fine, makes no difference which you use for 775 or am3 and very little for 1366. It's not much more expensive than ddr2 now though, so it doesn't matter much.

Add 'D0' to the processor name and you're on a winner. That combination seems to hit 4ghz regularly, and that'll do you for years. It's what I'd like to change to.

7600 isnt going to do high end gaming, as I'm sure you've guessed. It'll work fine for anything else though.

Two monitors is easily twice as good as one for multitasking. Firefox, vlc, pidgin, xchat on one and whatever I'm working on/playing on the other. Amazing, I'll get a third when I can afford it.

Hope thats a start :)
 
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Hi Doc, welcome to the forums :D

To answer your questions:

The gigabyte UD5 is one of the best x58 motherboards, well worth it. The i7 920 D0 is the best CPU out there now, great price and it should overclock all the way up to 4GHz with some good cooling.

In my opinion socket 1366 is a good idea, its out now, new chips are planned to be release for it. You could wait for the i5 on its socket 1156, but they are not supposed to be any faster than i7 and they are not out yet. The only other option is AM3 Phenom 2 chips. These AMD chips are good performers, but are not at the level of the i7 in CPU heavy tasks. Conclusion, if you want the best get an i7 920 and overclock the heck out of it.

Triple channel memory is standard for i7/X58 so you would be mad to use dual channel with it, this stuff is good. This gives X58 ridiculous memory bandwidth, which is nice.

DDR3 is worth It as it is not much more expensive than DDR2 per gigabyte, quite a bit faster and X58 only supports DDR3. Latency of DDR3 is not a problem from all I have heard and experienced.

The 7600gs graphics card will work with the new system, and will adequately display your desktop. However, if you plan on doing any modern gaming then replace it with at least a 4890 or the cpu will be completely underused as you will be completely graphics bottlenecked.

Wide screen monitors are pretty much standard now - so any new monitor you buy will likely be either 16:10 or 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. Great for gaming and watching movies, less great for reading websites/documents. However, screens are much bigger now so they will be just as tall as old ones - so no worries.

Dual monitor setups are useful for many reasons; multitasking in windows, games or applications utilising the extra screen or watching a movie while you do your work :) However, for the same money you could get a single bigger/higher quality monitor instead of two smaller ones. If you like serious gaming or movie/TV watching - then one nice screen would suit you better.

You could always get a nice big monitor and then add an old one you already own as the second monitor, what is the model name of your current one?
 
cmndr_andi said:
In my opinion socket 1366 is a good idea, its out now, new chips are planned to be release for it. You could wait for the i5 on its socket 1156, but they are not supposed to be any faster than i7 and they are not out yet. The only other option is AM3 Phenom 2 chips. These AMD chips are good performers, but are not at the level of the i7 in CPU heavy tasks. Conclusion, if you want the best get an i7 920 and overclock the heck out of it.
Click to expand...

I agree with this fellow. Look at OCUK's overclocked i7 bundle. It's really worth it.
 
Hi guys, thanks for all the info, absolutely brilliant, has got me a long way to final spec!

Was thinking of going along the lines of icey_haj's setup (cheers dude) at the mo, but if I could just ask a couple more questions?:

1) What difference does D0 Stepping make? And will overclocking at 3.8GHz noticeably overstress/reduce life of chip/mobo? Does anyone know what durability is like, how long does this kind of kit last before blowing up? Do components come with waranty (i know some do..)?
2) I was ideally trying to build a quiet running pc with good ventilation. Any suggestions on compatable low noise PSU/cooling systems (fans/heat sinks/cases? - although icey_haj's suggeted PSU fan, DVD, HDD sound from specs pretty quiet running...?), with maybe a bit of extra spec if want to OC in future..?
3) Also, I was looking for a diagnostic panel on the front showing processor temperature, and any other useful/funky info, does anyone know if there are any front panels out there that do this?
4) I've usually gone for NVidia in the past (although the ATI 4890 does look pretty hot), how do they compare to ATIs? Does anyone know if NVidia SLI/ATI Crioss-fire is worth it?
5) Whats Vista like? Is it worth the extra RAM usage/upgrade? Quite happy to go Vista if stable and no performance degrade over XP (on current XP setup sometimes have to wait about 5 secs for menu window to open!)
6) Re: 2 monitors/widescreen/ATI 4890, currently have a Philips 170B 1280x1024 60Hz, do you think this is up to scratch, or would it be worth updating when I can save up a bit more? Any suggestions?
7) Just a quickie on the case: Is there really much difference in cases? (the Antec 302 was thinking marginaly ott, 900 a bit sombre, was thinking something stylish but funky, maybe with side panel so can see all the lush internals!).

Thanks for all your help..
 
1) D0 run faster at lower volts, but pull more current and run hotter for a given voltage. They are widely considered superior to the other stepping. 3.8 will be easy with a decent cooler and board, and will do nothing to its lifespan. Overclocked parts don't appear to suffer a higher mortality rate than any others. All have warranty, retail chips 3 year oem 1 year.

2) i7 is not the answer for quiet running, they get very hot and need powerful fans. The antec 183 is popular for noise, but isn't as good as some others for cooling. You basically need to decide between speed and noise, unless you're prepared to pour a couple of hundred £ into cooling

3) many panels do this. they tend to come with thermal diodes you tape onto things, running a wire between diode and panel. i'd chose a fan controller which reports temperature myself

4) Nvidia have the top end covered, ati have bang for buck covered. There isn't that much in it in the mid range. Dual cards is worth it if frames per second mean the world to you and youre on a massive resolution, or if you later buy a second matching card to keep the system on its feet. Needs a big psu.

5) Vista is nasty. Regardless of whether the service packs improved it, it's still nasty. It runs slower than XP. Windows 7 is most popular, it's free at the moment too. The rc currently out is widely considered faster and more stable than vista. I shall stick with linux, which is as fast as I could possibly want.

6) That'll be lovely for a second screen with firefox/email/vlc on. I use a 20" with a 14" next to it, I'll change to two 20" when I can fund it, but I'll still use the 14" as a third screen.

7) I have no idea what a stylish, funky case is in your eyes. I use the akasa omega, which you can get a side window for if you like. I love the case to pieces, but everyone has a different notion of style.

Hope some of that helps :)
 
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