Too much to choose from...new build help required

Zalman · 31 Oct 2010 at 00:13

Greetings,

Currently spoilt for choice or in other words not really sure what to choose.

Looking to put together a new system primarily for working (heavy graphics work) but would like run games also, namely Street Fighter 4, CODMW2 and Black Ops when it’s out. My main applications are Photoshop CS2 and Corel Painter 10 but will be upgrading both when I can afford to.

I’m using dual 19 inch Zalman TRImon monitors (hard screen, High gloss) at the moment which I really like but fancy a change, need something a little bigger and must have a low response time.

My current OS is Windows XP not sure if I should upgrade to Win 7 or go with 64bit version of XP? As I play a fair bit with emulators and made the change to Vista but found that really laggy with online emulators so went back to XP. Especially when it comes to street fighter, those frames of input really matter and have not had the chance to use Win 7 yet. Would 64bit XP allow more than 3 gigs of RAM?

I’ve already purchased HIS ATI Radeon HD 6870 from OCs - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-021-HS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1866

I don’t have any experience with overclocking but wouldn’t mind giving it ago. Wanting to go with a intel based processor and considering the –

i7 930 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-320-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1272

or

i7 950 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-344-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1272

As for motherboards, not sure which would be most suitable. Current line up -

1. Asus P6X58D - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-379-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1692

2. Asus P6X58D-E - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-399-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1692

3. Asus X58 Sabertooth TUF Intel X58 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-429-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1692

4. Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (UD5 difference??) - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-235-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1692

5. MSI X58A-GD65 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-142-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1692

Trying to stay around the £1000 mark as money is tight but don’t mind a couple of hundred over if it will make that bigger difference.

Cheers

95thrifles · 31 Oct 2010 at 10:34

Id make the jump to win7 if I were you, they fixed all the bugs vista had
may as well go for the 950 over the 930, its not much more
As for mobo, any of those would do
Just get a decent cooler to add, soething like the Titan Fenrir Evo for your OCing, and a case with good cooling and you should be set to go

So an overall system looking something like this

Add your 6870 and youre good to go, included a nice big PSU in case you decide to add a 2nd 6870 later down the line
You can use the new 24" as your central monitor and still run the 2 19" alongside

Liampope · 31 Oct 2010 at 11:47

If money is tight you can get much more for your cash if you go i5 7xx. It wont be any slower than i7 in games/emulators/photoshop either. You can then get an SSD and win7, for example, in your budget. E.g. - same performance (in anything other than optimised multithreaded encoding/number-crunching), SSD for OS and important apps - i.e. CS2 (massive difference to speed/responsiveness), Bluray, slightly better monitor, Win7 included, ready to x-fire/sli.

IIyama Prolite E2472HD 24" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £174.99
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £144.98
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £143.24
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G) £99.99
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £82.99
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w Silent SLI Certified Modular Power Supply £72.99
Coolermaster CM-690 II Lite Dominator Case - Black £62.99
Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS34G1600LLK) £61.09
Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP 12x BD-ROM / 16x DVD Writer Drive - Black (Retail) £50.98
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £44.99
Titan Fenrir Evo CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366/AMD K8/AM2/AM2+/AM3) £32.89
Sub Total : £827.35
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £146.97
Total : £986.82

Zalman · 12 Nov 2010 at 23:58

Just wanted to say thanks for the help guys, managed to put something together. In the end I went with i7 950 and Asus P6X58D-E housed in a 600t .

Will post up some pics when I get the chance, although after reading around I think the i5 is what I should have based the system on. Made a few poor choices this time round but I was impressed by the noctua nh-D14, its the size of a small child.

Liampope · 13 Nov 2010 at 07:48

Pics would be good. Nowt wrong with an i7 at all, especially if you use apps that benefit from the hyperthreading, which some of your graphics stuff might. Enjoy. Did you get an SSD?