Hmmm, which components go with which?

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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Hi guys

I'm looking into upgrading some components to Ivy Bridge for a system mainly for Photoshop work and video encoding, including HD video encoding.

Can you tell me which motherboards and RAM I would need to be looking at?

I'm a bit out of it these days, I know my old i7 920 has to have triple channel RAM but I've no clue on the new stuff!

The new motherboards seem to have a variety of socket types and I'm completely lost with that!


Thanks!
 
Ivybridge use socket1155, so you want a Z77 board.

Did you want the option of SLI/Crossfire? or is a single GFX card fine?

Which OS do you have?
 
Thanks for the quick responses! :D

Ah Z77 that narrows it down a bit!

Cheers also for letting me know about the RAM!
How do you know whether it's dual/triple/quad channel RAM?

No SLI isn't needed, I'm quite happy with my GTX 570. :)

I'm got all the HDDs etc., I already need and I wanted to move the existing install of W7 64 on the SSD into the new system...it's a fully configured work and home machine so having to do a reinstall would be an enormous hassle, if I can avoid that it would be good!
 
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If you are going for 16GB then this kit looks like a pretty sweet deal.

Considering your uses I think you will make good use of such a large chunk of RAM.

Edit: +1 for stulids £80 motherboard choice, if you don't want the option of SLI/CF in the future then it will save you £20 over the board initially suggested (which is also a very nice one). That said, I wouldn't go with that kingston 4x2GB (8GB) kingston RAM kit, as it is quite expensive for the capacity and uses lower density modules so you can't easily upgrade to more RAM without swapping modules.
 
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stulid said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £80.40
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K4/8GX) £49.99
Total : £140.89 (includes shipping : £8.75).




• 16Gb RAM

A Sandybridge and Ivybridge are both dual channel, so the above is two RAM DIMMS per channel.

You will want/have to do a re-install.
Click to expand...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-112-KS think u meant to put in this ram
 
Cheers guys, good price on the motherboard...might be a stretch with the SATA connectors though...I currently have seven internatl SATA devices plugged in (six HDDs and a blu-ray writer).

I was thinking about 32GB RAM...I currently have 12GB and can max that out just with Photoshop, Premiere and Encore can grind the current machine to a halt!
 
If you need more SATA ports, then I would go with the Z77X-D3H board originally suggested by beejjacobs. That board is £102 and comes with two more internal SATA3 ports (using a marvell controller) - so ideal for plugging in extra HDDs into.

As for the RAM, you can get 8GB DDR3 modules, so 32GB is an option.
 
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Cheers again guys, I really appreciate your help, I'm so out of it I have no idea what's available, I was shocked to see DVI and D-SUB ports coming from the motherboard! :D

The Gigabyte Z77X-D3H motherboard sounds absolutely perfect for my needs, two eSATA connectors will be really useful for me as well! :D


Just a quick question about the RAM...what would the difference between the OCUK Value RAM and the Corsair Dominator RAM that's £10 more? (well...£40 as I would be looking at 4 sticks).


Going back to the motherboard graphics adaptors...would I be able to connect a monitor up to one of those as well as the two monitors my GTX 570 supports, or would a 3 monitor setup not be supported?


Also...what would happen if I *didn't* do a reinstall and just connected the Windows drive I have up to the new build...will that knacker up Windows?
 
TheBigCheese said:
Just a quick question about the RAM...what would the difference between the OCUK Value RAM and the Corsair Dominator RAM that's £10 more? (well...£40 as I would be looking at 4 sticks).
Click to expand...

Oh, the vengeance RAM - as you can probably guess the main difference is that the Corsair RAM is rated to a higher level (1600MHz CL10) and includes a large heatsink. However, I personally wouldn't go with this RAM since these heatsinks are massive and restrict your choices for CPU coolers.

TheBigCheese said:
Going back to the motherboard graphics adaptors...would I be able to connect a monitor up to one of those as well as the two monitors my GTX 570 supports, or would a 3 monitor setup not be supported?
Click to expand...

Yes, I believe you can - using lucid virtu.

TheBigCheese said:
Also...what would happen if I *didn't* do a reinstall and just connected the Windows drive I have up to the new build...will that knacker up Windows?
Click to expand...

I should work - so long as you clear all your drivers. However, it is often less hassle (especially if you have a small SSD) to backup the entire contents of the drive, reinstall and copy back over what you need.
 
Thanks for the reply.

Hmmm, I see your point with the size of the RAM...I wouldn't be overclocking really (never done it before and stability is a must for what I'm using the machine for), but would a 'branded' RAM have any speed advantage over the OCUK RAM? If I'm going to fork out for this it's got to last a while so I don't want to skimp on one component if spending a bit more would yield better results.
 
The only speed advantage branded RAM could have is if it had better specs. That Vengeance RAM for example has a higher rated clockspeed, though slightly worse timings.

As for how the actual perfomance differs, it really depends on the tasks you are carrying out and how ivy bridge's memory controller performs (hopefully we will see some nice "Ivy Bridge Memory Performance" articles in the next few days). If it is like Sandy Bridge then the performance difference going from 1333MHz to 1600MHz is pretty small - but if you are doing a lot of memory heavy tasks then it may be worth it.
 
Right...well as far as I'm aware it's not going to be loading lots into and out of RAM, more just dumping more and more in there...as I say editing HD video or even a large Photoshop file can take up the whole 12GB of RAM I have now...whether you could call that memory intensive or just hogging I don't know!
 
Your 'old' i7 920 is still a damn fine CPU and not a million miles behind the 'all singing and dancing' Ivy Bridge. Ivy Bridge is nothing more than a die shrunk Sandy Bridge which itself was only around 15% faster than your 920. Keep it and wait for Haswell, don't waste your cash.

If you need some more performance now, get a better cooler and overclock the hell out of it.
 
Ah don't misunderstand me, the i7 certainly isn't going to be going to waste or sold, it's going in my missus machine. She does the majority of the Photoshop work and her machine (C2D 6600 (I think) 4GB), really can't cope and she needs something now.

That's why she's having the i7 with 12GB and I'm upgrading as I do the video work.

If it wasn't for her needing that I wouldn't be spending a bean...I know there's always going to be something better coming along, that's the way of things but it's got to a point now where her productivity is suffering because she has to stop working while she waits for her PC to catch up...not good!
 
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