System upgrade, for gaming/music - CPU/mobo/RAM, SSD

[fross]

Hi all,

I've decided it's time to upgrade my PC now or soon, so i wanted to get a view on what was out there, what would be suitable and what not. My primary uses of the PC are gaming (varies, but mostly MMOs and FPSes), and writing music with ableton and cubase, and lots of VSTs, which take CPU.

Here is my current system:

Q6600 at stock
Gigabyte motherboard (something something UD3P)
4GB RAM
5870 1GB
1TB + 300GB SATA HDs
1000W PSU
Coolermaster Stacker 820 case
Windows Vista

Midisport 2x2 anniversary edition
RME Multiface

I also have a Synology NAS with 1.5TB storage, which I will probably be upgrading in due course too.

I want to have a snappier experience overall, and futureproof it for a few more years. I think the Q6600 may be near the end of its useful life, you can always use more RAM, and an SSD for the OS/Sequencer may help. So I'm thinking of some requirements like:

Faster processor
More RAM
Support for SATA 6Gbps, USB3
SSD for boot/Sequencer drive (possibly using 6Gbps?)
More HD for music data storage (add to or replace 1TB drive above)

The PSU, case and 5870 I intend to keep from the old system (plus the music hardware of course). Money to invest is flexible, but I'm expecting something around £800. Far over £1000 may be too much.

I'm not averse to using AMD, but I hear Intel is still ahead. What I'm after is some recommendations of which parts/models would be good for the above, which are worth waiting for for a few months.

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[King Damager]

If you're going to pick up a SSD, I'd recommended switching over to Windows 7 whilst you're there. On the whole 7 is a faster experience than Vista, and a lot of the SSD's Trim supports need Windows 7.

I'd probably advise something like this:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £263.99
(£219.99) £263.99
(£219.99)
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (VTX3-25SAT3-120G) £219.98
(£183.32) £219.98
(£183.32)
Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £149.99
(£124.99) £149.99
(£124.99)
GeIL 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Dual Channel (GVP38GB1600C9DC) £83.99
(£69.99) £83.99
(£69.99)
Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (ST2000DL003) £63.98
(£53.32) £63.98
(£53.32)
Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM3) £36.98
(£30.82) £36.98
(£30.82)
Sub Total : £682.43
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £138.39
Total : £830.32

The CPU and Motherboard you can actually get as a bundle, but it's not in stock at the moment, so I've gone for the non-bundle components. Also not too sure if the bundle version has B3 revision motherboard in it, where as this way you're guaranteed B3
For your needs I'd definitely say the 2600k was worth it over a 2500k, and teamed up with 8GB of RAM it should be fine for all your music stuff.

Given you a nice big 2GB HD as well

The SSD I've gotten you is INSANELY fast, but you do pay for that :S, but it's still only just over the £800 budget. It should also be big enough to allow you to install both windows 7 and core programs onto (depends how many programs you use) Probably won't fit all your games on it, but again the music stuff will probably fit onto it nicely The only issue is that it's not quite out yet, so only on Pre-Order, but it is next-generation SSD, hence the truly RAPID speeds it gives...

kd

 

[fross]

Thanks for that, that already includes a bunch of stuff I didn't know! That SSD looks remarkably fast, I see Intel have SATA 3 ones coming as well, so looks like these should be kicking off soon, that'll be great and I'll keep an eye out for benchmarks compared to regular SSDs. Ideally the SSD would be used for the OS, main program files, scratch disk for music and the odd game I swap in and out (think I found a way of splitting Steam games across 2 drives!). I'm not sure 120G will be enough but the 240G looks terrifyingly expensive.

I wasn't sure if it was worth going for the i7-2600K, but glad to see it's affordable.

One question I'd have is around overclocking - I'm not sure how it works these days, does the CPU / memory overclock without affecting the PCI speed? I don't want to destroy my midi/audio timings, but am not averse to speeding up the CPU if it can take it.