Upgrade to I7 Help, Purchasing a Bundle

Meds

Meds

Meds

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Joined
20 Oct 2004
Posts
650
Location
London
Hi Guys,

Once again I find myself in need of everyone's advise. I've decided that I would like to upgrade my main rig.

Im looking at getting the following bundle:

*OVERCLOCKED* Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz @ 4.20GHz Max / Gigabyte EX58-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard / Patriot Viper 6GB DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz DDR3 Bundle + World in Conflict Game

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-003-OB

Probably clocked at 4.0 ghz, this should cost me around £567.

This money is a little tight at the moment, I intend to reuse the following parts from my old rig:

GeForce 8800 GTX
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU
Hard drives

Will my old parts work with the new rig?
Also is it worth getting a small SSD for the OS?
Is this a good bundle?

Thanks for your help in advance :)
 
Well it think that yes they will be good;)

But then if u want to upgrade ur GFX card in future PSU problems will arrive;)


But its ok....although im not that happy to buy bundles because they will cost you more than getting parts and overclocking urself:D

Up to you:o
 
Problem is that I dont know how to overclock. And to be fair I just want a machine that can run fast without much work from myself.

I hadnt realised that I'd need a new PSU when I purchase a new GFX :(
 
i'd go for one of the cheaper gigabyte motherboards if money is tight and get the other parts seperate.

rest of the old kit will be fine, being as you say money is tight deffo no point going with an ssd.
 
Meds said:
Hi Guys,

Once again I find myself in need of everyone's advise. I've decided that I would like to upgrade my main rig.

Im looking at getting the following bundle:

*OVERCLOCKED* Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz @ 4.20GHz Max / Gigabyte EX58-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard / Patriot Viper 6GB DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz DDR3 Bundle + World in Conflict Game

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-003-OB

Probably clocked at 4.0 ghz, this should cost me around £567.

This money is a little tight at the moment, I intend to reuse the following parts from my old rig:

GeForce 8800 GTX
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU
Hard drives

Will my old parts work with the new rig?
Also is it worth getting a small SSD for the OS?
Is this a good bundle?

Thanks for your help in advance :)
Click to expand...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-002-OB

+

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-126-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1403


+

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-057-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=768
x2 in raid0


Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
*OVERCLOCKED* AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz @ 3.80GHz / Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P Motherboard / Corsair XMS3 DHX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600C9DHX Bundle *OVERCLOCKED* AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz @ 3.80GHz / Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P Motherboard / Corsair XMS3 DHX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600C9DHX Bundle £369.41
(£321.23) £369.41
(£321.23)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XT 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (Includes Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.) XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XT 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (Includes Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.) £154.99
(£134.77) £154.99
(£134.77)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD322HJ) Samsung SpinPoint F1 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD322HJ) £34.99
(£30.43) £69.98
(£60.86)
Sub Total : £516.86
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £79.03
Total : £605.89


30-40GBP over the budget but this will be soooooooooo much better than that i7 if you're on tight budget ; ).

--------
eventually if you can stretch out an extra 70-80 get the OCZ agility 64gb ssd instead of those 2.
 
Meds said:
I hadnt realised that I'd need a new PSU when I purchase a new GFX :(
Click to expand...

no reason the current psu won't work with single gfx cards, might start to get an issue if you run dual cards.

EDIT:
what are you using the system for ?, if its gaming then go with Phoenix's quad core, if your graphics card is doing what you need it too i wouldnt bother getting a new card, 8800gtx is still pretty decent.
 
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Thanks for the detailed replies.

But I beleive I'd like to stick to i7 configurations, sorry :(

So I thought prehaps this might be worthwhile:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
*OVERCLOCKED* Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz @ 4.20GHz Max / Gigabyte EX58-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard / Patriot Viper 6GB DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz DDR3 Bundle + World in Conflict Game £549.99
(£478.25) £549.99
(£478.25)
Options applied to the above product:
4.00GHz Overclock £17.24
(£14.99) £17.24
(£14.99)
OCZ Agility Series 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1AGT120G) £252.99
(£219.99) £252.99
(£219.99)
Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) £94.99
(£82.60) £94.99
(£82.60)
Sub Total : £795.83
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £121.06
Total : £928.14


A few questions on the above setup:

1) Will the Noctuna Cooler fit in an Antec 902 case?
2) Could I potentially run the OS (Windows 7) on a 60gb SSD?
3) If the answer to 2 is yes, then am I better off getting a 60 GB SSD, and adding a Nvidia 275 gfx to the mix??

Thanks again, i know my budget has increased, but sod it, as long as the mrs dont find out i should be ok :)

PS: The machine shall be primarily used for:
1) Photoshop
2) Video Editing
3) 2 x Clients of Eve Online
4) Usual Office, Internet, Music
 
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Meds said:
I'd go for the cheaper Gigabyte board, but I cant find a bundle on it :(
Click to expand...

don't worry about the bundles, buy the seperates, easy enough to overclock, threads in the overclock forum and people more than willing to help talk you through it, not much work required either, and well worth the saving made.

as for the extra costs gfx card/ssd i would seriously consider whether you can afford it.

not being funny but these things can tend to grow and end up spending a lot more than you planned :D.

if money really isnt an issue then go with the ssd/275 but i would also add a hard disk in there for storage.
 
Thats the problem with upgrades, I never seem to be able to stick to my original budget.

In terms of additional hard drive capacity, I have 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320 GB, and a 500 GB Sumsung spinpoint in my old rig which shall be moved over to the new one.

Thinking about my budget seriously, I could stretch to £1000 if the performance gains would be substantial enough. Problem is that I dont know how much additional performance an SSD would provide as opposed to the Seagates in RAID.

Alternatively I could just buy the Chip, Ram, and MOBO, and Case (Kids broke my current one) and then add the GFX and SSD towards the end of the year when new stuff is available. Hopefully the new DX11 cards and better SSD tech will be out by then.

Thanks for all the help so far by the way, really appreciate it dudes :)
 
Meds said:
Thanks for the detailed replies.

But I beleive I'd like to stick to i7 configurations, sorry :(

So I thought prehaps this might be worthwhile:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
*OVERCLOCKED* Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz @ 4.20GHz Max / Gigabyte EX58-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard / Patriot Viper 6GB DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz DDR3 Bundle + World in Conflict Game £549.99
(£478.25) £549.99
(£478.25)
Options applied to the above product:
4.00GHz Overclock £17.24
(£14.99) £17.24
(£14.99)
OCZ Agility Series 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1AGT120G) £252.99
(£219.99) £252.99
(£219.99)
Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) £94.99
(£82.60) £94.99
(£82.60)
Sub Total : £795.83
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £121.06
Total : £928.14


A few questions on the above setup:

1) Will the Noctuna Cooler fit in an Antec 902 case?
2) Could I potentially run the OS (Windows 7) on a 60gb SSD?
3) If the answer to 2 is yes, then am I better off getting a 60 GB SSD, and adding a Nvidia 275 gfx to the mix??

Thanks again, i know my budget has increased, but sod it, as long as the mrs dont find out i should be ok :)

PS: The machine shall be primarily used for:
1) Photoshop
2) Video Editing
3) 2 x Clients of Eve Online
4) Usual Office, Internet, Music
Click to expand...

Amazing how you have found another 400GBP out of nowhere, tell me the secret I would like to do that as well :D :D.

Yes, the system will be fine on 60GB. You also will still have enough space for the basic software (photoshop/3dmax/whatever/eve online) but not much will we left : ).

I would just get 60gb one
And yeh, the noctua should fit fine in this case, however I would myself pick a different, maybe a coolermaster or the new thermaltake element - they have so much better interior design and aren't dust magnets as the 902.

------------
EDIT:

Regarding the performance... how much is this rig going towards the encoding platform? And how heavy is your workload? How often do you do this stuff?

Sure the i7 is better, but what you gotta ask yourself is - do you really need it ?
What's your current setup and what are you aiming to achieve?

Also, buying the chip/ram/mobo now and GFX / ssd later is waste of cash as it's like saying "Ok so I buy the new porsche now coz it's super fast and cool but I'll get the sits and radio later because I'm tight on budget ".

As much as you can build an i7 setup for 500GBP already, I would always say that you have to match all of the components on the same level - so my way of going i7 will be not only the bundle, but probably stretch to 12GB ram, something near 285GTX or 4870x2 levels with SSD and raid0 setup.
Other than that you won't see much of a performance increase over half price cheaper setup.
 
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Lol, the secret to finding another £400... My budgets are self imposed based upon my spending on other toys, as I recently bought a new car, and want a Macbook pro 15" at some point in time I originally thought i'd set the budget at £500 ish. But then my greed for speed kicked in :) the rest is history :)

TBH I'm a confused soul, the original plan was to buy the mac, but since arandale is coming out towards the end of the year I thought I'd wait and upgrade my PC.

PS: Im checking out the other cases now :D
 
PhoenixUK said:
And yeh, the noctua should fit fine in this case, however I would myself pick a different, maybe a coolermaster or the new thermaltake element - they have so much better interior design and aren't dust magnets as the 902.
Click to expand...

i thought the dust problems had been improved with the 902 ?



PhoenixUK said:
Regarding the performance... how much is this rig going towards the encoding platform? And how heavy is your workload? How often do you do this stuff?
Click to expand...

agree with phoenix here, if your encoding is heavy usage then go i7, if not quad core am3 will do well enough.
 
H'mmmm, My current setup is:

E6850 Core 2 Duo 3.00ghz
OCZ 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2
Gigabyte P35 DS4 Mobo

Basically I recently bought a Nikon D90 and want to start editing and playing with the photos. I also want to edit HD movies from a Sony HD Camcorder.

In terms of how often I'll do those things, maybe 20% of the overall time I use the PC. The rest of the time I mainly play Eve, or surf, watch movies etc...

I also encode using Handbrake so videos will go on my iphone.

TBH my current rig is fast enough for me, only problem is that it keeps hanging, randomly, sometimes on startup, sometimes in the middle of me doing somthing, and I just dont know where the problem is, or how to fix it, I've done clean installs etc, but all have failed.
The problem is probably with my Ram, Mobo or chip, or prehaps even PSU???

Thats one of the reasons I wanted to go for a bundle, as it would already be tested etc, and compatability etc would be ok.

PS: Is 12GB ram not overkill? or is that where we have now moved to?
 
Meds said:
TBH my current rig is fast enough for me, only problem is that it keeps hanging, randomly, sometimes on startup, sometimes in the middle of me doing somthing, and I just dont know where the problem is, or how to fix it, I've done clean installs etc, but all have failed.
The problem is probably with my Ram, Mobo or chip, or prehaps even PSU???

In terms of how often I'll do those things, maybe 20% of the overall time I use the PC. The rest of the time I mainly play Eve, or surf, watch movies etc...

Thats one of the reasons I wanted to go for a bundle, as it would already be tested etc, and compatability etc would be ok.
Click to expand...

if its fast enough then its worth trying to diagnose before replacing.

any mates you can borrow bits off ?

first off try running a single stick of memory in different memory slots, and running memtest over them.

try running with a minimum system, unplugging everything from the power aside from the boot drive and gfx card (any chance you have a smaller gfx card to try ?) and 1 stick of memory.

20% ish of the time deffo go with the am3 quad core.

still doesnt mean when it gets to you it will work, if its badly handled, or your just plain unlucky it could have problems by the time it gets to you.
 
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Meds said:
H'mmmm, My current setup is:

E6850 Core 2 Duo 3.00ghz
OCZ 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2
Gigabyte P35 DS4 Mobo

Basically I recently bought a Nikon D90 and want to start editing and playing with the photos. I also want to edit HD movies from a Sony HD Camcorder.

In terms of how often I'll do those things, maybe 20% of the overall time I use the PC. The rest of the time I mainly play Eve, or surf, watch movies etc...

I also encode using Handbrake so videos will go on my iphone.

TBH my current rig is fast enough for me, only problem is that it keeps hanging, randomly, sometimes on startup, sometimes in the middle of me doing somthing, and I just dont know where the problem is, or how to fix it, I've done clean installs etc, but all have failed.
The problem is probably with my Ram, Mobo or chip, or prehaps even PSU???

Thats one of the reasons I wanted to go for a bundle, as it would already be tested etc, and compatability etc would be ok.

PS: Is 12GB ram not overkill? or is that where we have now moved to?
Click to expand...

Then my friend, not only the phenom setup will be a lot cheaper but have plenty more than enough power for your needs.

It should be around 2-3x faster than your current setup in the encoding/editing part.

The i7 is more for the people that actually work with designing/editing a lot, and for them, the 5-20% difference is a lot ( for example when they have to render heavy images that take lots of time to do it - ie. having to spend 2hrs instead of 2,5hr is a lot ).

If it's just camera image editing and some video encoding, I don't see a reason to justify the difference of 5minute encode to 4 or 4.5 minute encode for 200GBP ( and that's not always ).

In games you will see no difference whatsoever or find the phenom faster sometimes.

Especially that you say that your rig is fast enough for you.

If you really want to upgrade I would just get it and spend the extra cash on SSD/GPU or a better case, monitor or maybe even a watercooling setup - any of those will give you so much more than just the few % extra on rendering times which you won't do much anyways.
----------------

Also instead of just throwing your current setup away, give us some more info and maybe we figure out how to fix this.

First thing I would try out is increase the core voltage, memory voltage and northbridge voltage by 0.1v above the default ones - this will roll out any voltage dedicated instability issues ( PC parts after long time can 'degrade' and become unstable at the volts they've been stable before - therefore an increase might be needed ).

Also random freezes etc also looks like PSU problem - check your voltages with software or better multimeter if you got one and see if they are in the right range.
 
:D Thanks Pheonix and MP260,

If you guys dont mind me bugging you, prehaps it would just be an idea to try and fix the current rig and then decide where to go to from there.

But what you say about getting a phenom does make sense, especially when the speed gains for me going down the i7 route will be minimal......

kk, I shall try and unplug one stick of RAM now and see how things pan out, will update shortly.

Also I have increased the voltages in the past and this doesnt seem to have fixed the problem. This problem has been present since I bought the machine, (bought all parts new and self built), I know I should have figured it out then but im a bit silly.

PS: I find the quote about the mrs applies to most things in life :D
 
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OK I just pulled out one of my sticks and the machine still hangs, this time on the Vista log in screen.

Could you recommend me some software to test my voltages on please?

I'll probably also try and borrow a couple of sticks of ram from some place just so i can right that off as being the problem.

PS:

I also just swapped the RAM stick, so I can test the other one, will update with results shortly. EDIT: This also crashes :(
 
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