I've been trying to decide for what seems like months now on a new SFF build, and it's driving me insane, so I'm posting up my thoughts here for advice! 
I've not set myself a strict limit in terms of cost, but was aiming around £700 roughly.
I had a Q6600 which was great but gave that to a family member. My spare desktop (Opteron 146) no longer turns on now for some reason, and I can't really be bothered to get to the root of it as I was just using it til I decided on a new SFF build.
I was very happy with the Q6600, but am relucant to rebuild another system using it as it's a couple of years old now and has gone *up* in price since I built mine, so if I'm paying more anyway, I might as well up the cpu speed/spec.
I'm staying away from AMD mainly because there doesn't seem to be much difference between the PII 940 and higher end Q9xxx cpus (plus I don't want to add even more options to my list as I'm trying to narrow them down!). If I've got my info wrong and the PIIs do offer improvements over the Q9xxx series I'll be willing to amend this though.
Anyway, here's what I've narrowed it down to:
i7 920 build:
mobo £213
cpu £230
ram £76 (6gb)
total £519
c2q build:
mobo £137
cpu q9550 £230
q9400 £192
q6600 £167
ram £60 (4gb)
total £427 - q9550 £92 diff cf. i7
£389 - q9400 £130 diff cf. i7
£364 - q6600 £155 diff cf. i7
I'm ignoring all other costs like hard drive, case etc as they'll make no difference to build cost if I go down one route or the other.
So, here's where I need the help:
There's £40 diff between the Q9400 and Q9550, so I'd prob go down the Q9550 route of those two for the extra performance.
That means there's £92 diff between the Q9550 and i7 build (altho the i7 has 2gb extra ram).
The other thing I want to take into consideration is the heat given off by the processor. I want this build to be as silent as possible (my Q6600 used the psu fan to cool the cpu using an NT06, so was pretty quiet).
I'd love to have gone for the "s" version of the Q9xxx processors, as 65W TDP sounds pretty good and would solve all my problems, but it's an extra £100 roughly for the privilege with no speed improvement!
Things to note: I won't be overclocking unless it doesn't add much heat output. The PC will be used for everything as will be my only desktop, so TV, video, blu-ray, basically all stuff media related, occasional photo editing, occasional game. Possibility of running media centre on one screen, and normal computing stuff on another.
Well sorry this has been a longer post than I hoped, any input is very welcome, thanks!
I've not set myself a strict limit in terms of cost, but was aiming around £700 roughly.
I had a Q6600 which was great but gave that to a family member. My spare desktop (Opteron 146) no longer turns on now for some reason, and I can't really be bothered to get to the root of it as I was just using it til I decided on a new SFF build.
I was very happy with the Q6600, but am relucant to rebuild another system using it as it's a couple of years old now and has gone *up* in price since I built mine, so if I'm paying more anyway, I might as well up the cpu speed/spec.
I'm staying away from AMD mainly because there doesn't seem to be much difference between the PII 940 and higher end Q9xxx cpus (plus I don't want to add even more options to my list as I'm trying to narrow them down!). If I've got my info wrong and the PIIs do offer improvements over the Q9xxx series I'll be willing to amend this though.
Anyway, here's what I've narrowed it down to:
i7 920 build:
mobo £213
cpu £230
ram £76 (6gb)
total £519
c2q build:
mobo £137
cpu q9550 £230
q9400 £192
q6600 £167
ram £60 (4gb)
total £427 - q9550 £92 diff cf. i7
£389 - q9400 £130 diff cf. i7
£364 - q6600 £155 diff cf. i7
I'm ignoring all other costs like hard drive, case etc as they'll make no difference to build cost if I go down one route or the other.
So, here's where I need the help:
There's £40 diff between the Q9400 and Q9550, so I'd prob go down the Q9550 route of those two for the extra performance.
That means there's £92 diff between the Q9550 and i7 build (altho the i7 has 2gb extra ram).
- Is it worth the extra?
- Also, due to the improvements in efficiency with the i7 cpu, unless I'm maxing out the cpu at all times, would there be much difference in heat output between the two?
The other thing I want to take into consideration is the heat given off by the processor. I want this build to be as silent as possible (my Q6600 used the psu fan to cool the cpu using an NT06, so was pretty quiet).
I'd love to have gone for the "s" version of the Q9xxx processors, as 65W TDP sounds pretty good and would solve all my problems, but it's an extra £100 roughly for the privilege with no speed improvement!
Things to note: I won't be overclocking unless it doesn't add much heat output. The PC will be used for everything as will be my only desktop, so TV, video, blu-ray, basically all stuff media related, occasional photo editing, occasional game. Possibility of running media centre on one screen, and normal computing stuff on another.
Well sorry this has been a longer post than I hoped, any input is very welcome, thanks!