Yes I know ANOTHER one of these threads but I'd rather pick the brains of someone who knows about computers, I used to be a huge hardware geek but stopped trying to keep up with the Jones' in 2007 when I built my current Core 2 Quad PC. I am also going to apologise for the tl;dr in advance, if I'm going to spend £1500-2000 I'd rather annoy people than buy a lemon, plus I like to talk tech.
At the moment I'm just doing research because it will be another few months before I go out and buy the machine. My 'dilemma' is I will have £2000 to spend, I would rather spec out a nice machine for £1500 and have a bit of dosh left over but if the extra £500 provides a worthwhile speed bump I might consider blowing the lot.
I did consider a Phenom II x6 1090T machine but for the price of a good 890GX with 1090T I could get a nice X58 and Core i7 930 machine that will destroy the 1090T at most things, the thing that put me off was the 62c degrees thermal limit which compared to Intels 100c Degrees seems a little ridiculous, I do a lot of video encoding so the extra cores could come in handy but gaming performance is pretty weak compared to the Core i5/i7.
I did also consider the Core i7 970/980x but are they REALLY worth the extra £480+? (bearing in mind the £1500 soft cap budget).
For the graphics card I was looking at either SLI 1Gb GTX460, SLI GTX470, Single GTX480, Single 5970. Power usage is a big concern for me as there is no point buying a huge honking computer if I can't run it 24/7 like I do with my current machine. I am vaguely aware with the performance comparison across all cards. SLI GTX460 and Single GTX480 are about the same amount of money, will I run into any problems with SLI, say a game doesnt support SLI would I be able to force it to run in SLI or will it default back to a single card, with this in mind would it be worth just getting a single 'near performance' 480 for the times when a game just wont run in SLI?
Now thats out of the way this is the spec I have penned so far:
Intel Core i7 930 2.8Ghz 8Mb Cache
ASUS P6X58D-E
Corsair Hydro H70
3x2Gb Corsair XMS3 1600
1536Mb GTX480
2x 64Gb Crucial RealSSD C300 (will Raid 0 and have also added 500Gb drive and set up backup software so that every few days at night it does a drive image just in case an SSD goes or Raid array dies)
1Tb Samsung Spinpoint SATA2 drive (transplanted from my old PC)
2x 2.5 to 3.5" drive bay converters
24x DVD-RW Dual Layer SATA2
850W Coolermaster SilentProM Modular
Fractal Define R2 Case
6x 120mm quiet fans
3 channel fan controller with splitters
Xbox 360 Wireless controller with Wireless PC adapter
Does this look like a solid spec, apart from the 2x SSDs and the PSU I am up for suggestions as to alternatives, concerning the £1500 budget is there anything I could buy using the last £500 that would give me a significant enough performance increase for the cost?
Again sorry for the tl;dr just want to be 1000% sure I'm not wasting my money.
Thanks.
At the moment I'm just doing research because it will be another few months before I go out and buy the machine. My 'dilemma' is I will have £2000 to spend, I would rather spec out a nice machine for £1500 and have a bit of dosh left over but if the extra £500 provides a worthwhile speed bump I might consider blowing the lot.
I did consider a Phenom II x6 1090T machine but for the price of a good 890GX with 1090T I could get a nice X58 and Core i7 930 machine that will destroy the 1090T at most things, the thing that put me off was the 62c degrees thermal limit which compared to Intels 100c Degrees seems a little ridiculous, I do a lot of video encoding so the extra cores could come in handy but gaming performance is pretty weak compared to the Core i5/i7.
I did also consider the Core i7 970/980x but are they REALLY worth the extra £480+? (bearing in mind the £1500 soft cap budget).
For the graphics card I was looking at either SLI 1Gb GTX460, SLI GTX470, Single GTX480, Single 5970. Power usage is a big concern for me as there is no point buying a huge honking computer if I can't run it 24/7 like I do with my current machine. I am vaguely aware with the performance comparison across all cards. SLI GTX460 and Single GTX480 are about the same amount of money, will I run into any problems with SLI, say a game doesnt support SLI would I be able to force it to run in SLI or will it default back to a single card, with this in mind would it be worth just getting a single 'near performance' 480 for the times when a game just wont run in SLI?
Now thats out of the way this is the spec I have penned so far:
Intel Core i7 930 2.8Ghz 8Mb Cache
ASUS P6X58D-E
Corsair Hydro H70
3x2Gb Corsair XMS3 1600
1536Mb GTX480
2x 64Gb Crucial RealSSD C300 (will Raid 0 and have also added 500Gb drive and set up backup software so that every few days at night it does a drive image just in case an SSD goes or Raid array dies)
1Tb Samsung Spinpoint SATA2 drive (transplanted from my old PC)
2x 2.5 to 3.5" drive bay converters
24x DVD-RW Dual Layer SATA2
850W Coolermaster SilentProM Modular
Fractal Define R2 Case
6x 120mm quiet fans
3 channel fan controller with splitters
Xbox 360 Wireless controller with Wireless PC adapter
Does this look like a solid spec, apart from the 2x SSDs and the PSU I am up for suggestions as to alternatives, concerning the £1500 budget is there anything I could buy using the last £500 that would give me a significant enough performance increase for the cost?
Again sorry for the tl;dr just want to be 1000% sure I'm not wasting my money.
Thanks.
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They're insanely fast anyway, or is it just mainly because you want extra SSD space for installing more games etc?
and also you could if need be stick another one for crossfire...
