Time for another upgrade...

DarkSamus · May 29th, 2012, 05:29

I'm going to be upgrading my PC in the next month or so.

Here is what I am looking at getting...

Thermaltake BlacX Edition V9 Case - $128

^^Replaces my Antec P182 case

Intel Corei7 3930K 3.2Ghz - $619.00

^^Replaces my Intel Corei7 920

Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 MB - $239

^^Replaces my Gigabyte EX58-UD3R MB

G Skill 16G(2x8G) DDR3 1600MHZ x2 kits for 32GB ram - $250.00 for both kits

x4
^^Replaces my G.Skill 6GB (3x2GB) kit

I will be staying with my Gainward GTX580 3GB GPU...

Any thoughts people? Anything I should consider?

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Princess Garnet · May 29th, 2012, 05:47

What do you do?

I personally don't think it's worth the cost for the performance you'll get over what you have now (especially if it's largely for gaming), but that's a somewhat blind comment. Then again, your Core i7 920 was stock, so you might actually see a bigger increase.

I'd rather save the money for down the line, like for Haswell and GPUs of the time.

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PsyMan · May 29th, 2012, 06:50

I remember you mentioning that you were on a tight budget and managed to get some parts in the past through a loan or something.

Having a socket 1366 based system and planning an upgrade under those circumstances is foolish. I could understand it if your current system had something like a single core 32 bit processor and a shader model 1-3 video card since there were some major technological leaps in the last 5-7 years but this is not the case here.

What's your plan anyway? Run games at 100 fps instead of 80? Compile source codes in 5 minutes instead of 8? Convert videos in 10 minutes instead of 13?

For ****s sake the ram is more expensive than the motherboard here. You're not going to need more than 8gb right now and when you do ram sticks of this kind will be at 1/4 of their current prices.
I won't even compare the price and performance differences between what you have and what you're going to get here. But if you do it yourself for a few moments you'll realize that upgrading does not worth it.

It's up to you to decide how to spend the money in your possession but the whole deal here is not all that different compared to something like setting that money on fire.

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DarkSamus · May 29th, 2012, 06:58

I should probably mention that I have been offered $600 for my old case, MB, CPU, ram, GTX 470 (That is still here from my GPU upgrade early this year) and 160GB HDD.

So I am seizing the opportunity to build a nice new system for myself with some money I am getting soon.

Only thing I would like to see in improvements would be faster video encoding (But honestly I ain't fussy there) and to no longer see my CPU bottle-necked.

Also yes, 32GB ram is probably overkill at this stage so I will settle for 4x4GB instead.

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Last edited by DarkSamus; May 29th, 2012 at 07:04..

**n_w95482** · May 29th, 2012, 06:58

+1 for keeping what you have. The 920 is still a very capable CPU. Just clock it up a bit.

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DarkSamus · May 29th, 2012, 07:11

As I said, I have been offered $600 for my old case etc...

This actually won't be so expensive with that $600 cut off the price.

Also, I have had nothing but bad luck ocing in the past, so I try to avoid doing it these days.

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PsyMan · May 29th, 2012, 07:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkSamus

I should probably mention that I have been offered $600 for my old case, MB, CPU, ram, GTX 470 (That is still here from my GPU upgrade early this year) and 160GB HDD.

So I am seizing the opportunity to build a nice new system for myself with some money I am getting soon.

Only thing I would like to see in improvements would be faster video encoding (But honestly I ain't fussy there) and to no longer see my CPU bottle-necked.

Also yes, 32GB ram is probably overkill at this stage so I will settle for 4x4GB instead.

The new CPU will still be bottle-necked by some things and so will that 580 you already have. Adding 4 more threads and 600mhz to the CPU won't make a difference.

The case you already have has a worth of like 200$ alone. Let alone the rest parts. You'll end up selling your stuff at a ridiculous price and getting overpriced stuff that will eventually end up being slow for some stuff next year.

Computer software nowadays has ridiculously high requirements. You get "high end" hardware that came out one month ago and a game is released after a few weeks with some "extreme quality" setting present that needs a processor with 20 threads and 3 high end gpus to have a reasonable framerate (with micro-stuttering, since sli and cfx result to this by design).

Trying not to be bottle-necked is futile. It's a battle you're never going to win. ever.

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Princess Garnet · May 29th, 2012, 07:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by PsyMan

For ****s sake the ram is more expensive than the motherboard here.

To be fair, he seems to have chosen a budget LGA 2011 board, as it has four RAM slots and not eight, but yes, 8GB sticks are too expensive considering such RAM amounts like 32GB is usually overkill.

Otherwise, I mostly agree with what you say, save for being as harsh.

Anyway, If you just have to upgrade and have some money coming from the old parts, then maybe you can consider looking at an LGA 1155 setup? It's the same thing as what you were looking at sans two cores, and while it's not leaps and bounds better either, it is much cheaper, and if I remember right and you don't want to overclock (otherwise I'd echo the above advise), the ~1GHz clock speed difference (after turbo) plus the IPC increases as well as better heat and power features might make that a worthwhile option, especially if you can sell that stuff for as much; you might even be able to do it making money.

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DarkSamus · May 29th, 2012, 07:40

Door on the case is broken, as are the 2 front USB ports so I find it hard to see it worth anywhere near its full price. (That's just my opinion though)

Thanx for the advice about "bottle-necking". Its good to know that now rather then be shocked by "bottle-necking" latter.

I am already committed to selling the old parts (Have received some of the money already as a deposit) so my option of keeping the old parts has already past.

In the past few days I found out I am receiving over $2000 in the next month or so that I was not expecting so I really want to put some of that money into my PC as I am unsure when my next chance will be to do the CPU/MB/Ram combo upgrade.

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As far as handhelds go, well, I get the Nintendo one.
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PsyMan · May 29th, 2012, 08:01

Anyway, people's opinion is there for you to consider. What to do is up to you.

Regarding a socket 2011 based system consider the following.

Gigabyte, Intel and Asrock switched to digital VRM for this generation (Asus did it some generations ago), gigabyte messed up badly with some of their boards blowing up (the one you want to buy is a well known problematic case; gigabyte fixed the mess on their ivy bridge boards but those are for socket 1155 processors

), intel sets the standards so there's no problem there, asrock has dodgy quality on all of their boards so getting an asrock board is always a gamble (they might be doa, or die within the warranty period... or one day later

).

The rest (msi, evga, sapphire, ecs, biostar) use an analog VRM.
There are no real world differences in either approach as long as the design is sophisticated and the component build quality is good.

For this platform I'd stay away from gigabyte and look primarily at asus (all their boards should be fine), intel (excluding the dx79to that has no heat-sink on the vrm) and msi (excluding the gd45 4d and the mini atx version of gd45 that have relatively poor build quality, a common thing for lower end msi boards; the 8d version is fine though and so are the rest 3 msi boards).

When it comes to the processor do you really need the 2 extra cores compared to other processors? They are not much help in gaming and might actually decrease performance. Only video processing apps, compression algorithms and compilers will really use those and that only to a limited degree compared to a 4-core with higher clock speed.

As a manner of fact, do you actually need any of the features available on x79 based systems? Can't the job be done on a way cheaper socket 1155 based system? Do you need the extra pcie lanes or the 4 extra ram slots? You don't even seem to want a board with 8 ram slots. Did you use the 6 ram slots or the extra pci lanes on your x58 based system?

An x79 based system is gonna need lots of power too, especially with that 580 on top. A 650w-850w psu is enough at first (exact needs are relative due to possible extra h/w and possibility of overclocking) but within 1 or 2 years at most a psu of that caliber will lose its capacitance and die. This means that you'll need something like a 1000-1200w psu if you plan to keep it for more than about year (you can try to rma but in that case they might not accept the rma due to "wear and tear").

As for the case, there are lots of budget cases that get the job done and look good, like the cooler master elite series, or antec's xyz hundred. Is a 100$+ case all that important?

I suppose I forgot some things but that's it more or less. Good luck building your new system... or something.

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Princess Garnet · May 29th, 2012, 08:07

If you can put it into the PC now, what's stopping you from setting it aside and saving it? If you're going to do it, you're going to do it, but it honestly isn't that great of an idea. Though it's a smaller increase, I think what I proposed is still the more sane option. It'll get you the same things sans two cores, but it'll be much cheaper. If you want the more exotic stuff just because it's just that, then again, you're going to get what you're going to get, but as much as I loved my Core 2 Duo E8600 (in fact, it was/is my favorite CPU), I'm done buying stuff that's 5% better but 25%+ more costly just because it's higher end. It won't stay high end for long.

The way I see it is this; you have two areas worth improving.

The one is the CPU if you don't want to overclock. Sandy Bridge or even Ivy Bridge is much cheaper than what you were looking at; in fact, the whole thing alone (CPU, motherboard, RAM, and cooling) will probably be cheaper than just that one CPU you were looking at, and that's for shaving off two cores; it's otherwise practically identical (if you go with a Core i7 model). Those types of CPUs are only justifiable for people who use them for making money; where time is money as the faster they do things actually matters and helps the CPU pay for itself. Otherwise, they are a waste of money compared to something just as fast for the other 99% of us while being much cheaper.

The other area is the GPU since you do games and like 3D. I have little to say though as what you have is still good, but I think a new GPU would still make you happier than dumping it into that CPU and RAM. That'd do less for gaming than a new GPU would (though a stock Core i7 920 might start showing more of it's limits with some of the latest, higher end GPUs). On top of that, selling the GeForce GTX 580 would get you that much more you could sell.

Again though, if you have that much money coming and just have to burn it for the sake of it...

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Last edited by Princess Garnet; May 29th, 2012 at 08:18..

Princess Garnet · May 29th, 2012, 08:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by PsyMan

Gigabyte, Intel and Asrock switched to digital VRM for this generation (Asus did it some generations ago), gigabyte messed up badly with some of their boards blowing up (the one you want to buy is a well known problematic case; gigabyte fixed the mess on their ivy bridge boards but those are for socket 1155 processors

), intel sets the standards so there's no problem there, asrock has dodgy quality on all of their boards so getting an asrock board is always a gamble (they might be doa, or die within the warranty period... or one day later

).

The rest (msi, evga, sapphire, ecs, biostar) use an analog VRM.
There are no real world differences in either approach as long as the design is sophisticated and the component build quality is good.

For this platform I'd stay away from gigabyte and look primarily at asus (all their boards should be fine), intel (excluding the dx79to that has no heat-sink on the vrm) and msi (excluding the gd45 4d and the mini atx version of gd45 that have relatively poor build quality, a common thing for lower end msi boards; the 8d version is fine though and so are the rest 3 msi boards).

You sure know your motherboards! That was always my weak area. I'll remember to ask you if I need help there again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PsyMan

An x79 based system is gonna need lots of power too, especially with that 580 on top. A 650w-850w psu is enough at first (exact needs are relative due to possible extra h/w and possibility of overclocking) but within 1 or 2 years at most a psu of that caliber will lose its capacitance and die. This means that you'll need something like a 1000-1200w psu if you plan to keep it for more than about year (you can try to rma but in that case they might not accept the rma due to "wear and tear").

From what I recall, I was told that "PSUs don't lose their ability to put out a given wattage over time" like that; least not the decent ones in the ways people seem to think where they go "oh, it's two years old so it's a 550W PSU instead of a 650W PSU". From what I remember, the capacitors do degrade, but the literal wattage itself doesn't to that degree after a few years. Good PSUs have capacitors that can last a decade or more.

Even with that CPU and GPU, I don't believe that 1,000W+ would be necessary in his case, especially if he won't be overclocking. You probably need to get into multiple high end GPUs and overclocking and the works and all before 1,000W+ becomes essential.

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**Hard core Rikki** · May 29th, 2012, 08:16

The existing system looks significantly powerful, not yet in need of replacement for beefier specs. GPU aside, perhaps you could keep the processor too.

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Princess Garnet · May 29th, 2012, 08:31

Keep in mind that his Core i7 920 is at stock. It's not slow by any means, but considering that a Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge is also up to ~1GHz faster just at stock after turbo, then in addition with the IPC increase and other intangibles (run cooler and use less power), I wouldn't rule it out if he just has to make some sort of purchase. It's more sane than what he was looking at if he doesn't want to overclock.

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PsyMan · May 29th, 2012, 08:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Princess Garnet

From what I recall, I was told that "PSUs don't lose their ability to put out a given wattage over time" like that; least not the decent ones in the ways people seem to think where they go "oh, it's two years old so it's a 550W PSU instead of a 650W PSU". From what I remember, the capacitors do degrade, but the literal wattage itself doesn't to that degree after a few years. Good PSUs have capacitors that can last a decade or more.

Even with that CPU and GPU, I don't believe that 1,000W+ would be necessary in his case, especially if he won't be overclocking. You probably need to get into multiple high end GPUs and overclocking and the works and all before 1,000W+ becomes essential.

Heh, this is a tricky part. You see some companies -especially oems-, started fool-proofing what they sell by under-specifying their psus. That happened in order to "fix" capacitance problems (because people will otherwise rma a lot of psus that can't deliver what the users want anymore) and in order to pass the 80+ tests.
So a 750w "gold" psu might not always be based on a true "gold" platform but it might actually be one that can deliver when limited to giving "only" 750 watts, while being able to deliver 1000+ but without passing the "gold" tests.
The same applies when it comes to avoiding wear and tear, but in that case the company sometimes even advertises the so called "overload" capabilities of the psu.

So the thing is, when a psu works about 80% close to its output limit (the actual limit, not the advertised one) for extended periods of time then it does lose its capacitance fast, fast enough to not be adequate any more after a year. So when the cpu draws like 100 watts, the gpu 200 more, the mobo 100 more and the rest parts 100 more then a 625w psu will die in a year (that's a psu advertised as a ~550w one by today's standards).
Capacitance decreases even faster if the air flow in the psu is bad and the capacitors reach out of spec temperatures (usually the secondary ones, but sometimes the primary too).

TLDR version:

General rule is don't pass the 80% load mark. For exceptions, it's all there in the marketing.

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Last edited by PsyMan; May 29th, 2012 at 08:58.. Reason: sry, messed the calculation

Princess Garnet · May 29th, 2012, 09:06

The first part is true, as I believe Dell is an OEM that did it with their PSUs.

However, I think it's being overstated here. PSUs age and this has impacts, but I'm referring to people taking good units and going "oh, it's a year or two old so subtract 100W from it". I don't think he would need a 1,000W PSU even for that stuff due to aging. A solid 750W to 850W PSU would likely be plenty.

I remember one of the PSU gurus/editors over on OCN made a post explaining it once, and doing a quick Google search, I believe this is what I'm thinking of. There's little solid data on it though.

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PsyMan · May 29th, 2012, 09:20

Hmm... "Aside from the capacitors, the other components don't degrade extremely quickly unless continuously pushed at high capacity" <-- this is what I'm referring to.

Capacitors are more or less small batteries, they just don't store as much energy as your typical battery. Their characteristics do not differ much compared to cellphone, laptop, etc batteries. Their ability to store energy decreases the same way, just not as rapidly. So a psu will become "weak" after some time of extensive usage near its limits and it would be wise to take about 10% of its output capabilities out after some months/years you were hard on it (more than 80% load for many hours, after many months; heat on the secondary and even primary if the primary "just" has 85c caps will get high enough through that time to reduce capacitance).

It's just that psus nowadays are overspeced so the line you must cross for this to happen is further than most people think.

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**n_w95482** · May 29th, 2012, 09:55

I've put a decent amount of continuous load on all of my PSUs in the last several years with folding (and particularly severe load on my main PC's Seasonic with some bitcoin mining and CPU folding, over 600w sustained), they're all still working fine.

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thelittlegumnut · May 29th, 2012, 12:17

id love to learn about how motherboards work. as in, advanced stuff, i know the main components that allow it to work already. the pic inspired me lol.

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DarkSamus · May 29th, 2012, 12:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by PsyMan

Regarding a socket 2011 based system consider the following.

Gigabyte, Intel and Asrock switched to digital VRM for this generation (Asus did it some generations ago), gigabyte messed up badly with some of their boards blowing up (the one you want to buy is a well known problematic case; gigabyte fixed the mess on their ivy bridge boards but those are for socket 1155 processors

), intel sets the standards so there's no problem there, asrock has dodgy quality on all of their boards so getting an asrock board is always a gamble (they might be doa, or die within the warranty period... or one day later

).

The rest (msi, evga, sapphire, ecs, biostar) use an analog VRM.
There are no real world differences in either approach as long as the design is sophisticated and the component build quality is good.

For this platform I'd stay away from gigabyte and look primarily at asus (all their boards should be fine), intel (excluding the dx79to that has no heat-sink on the vrm) and msi (excluding the gd45 4d and the mini atx version of gd45 that have relatively poor build quality, a common thing for lower end msi boards; the 8d version is fine though and so are the rest 3 msi boards).

When it comes to the processor do you really need the 2 extra cores compared to other processors? They are not much help in gaming and might actually decrease performance. Only video processing apps, compression algorithms and compilers will really use those and that only to a limited degree compared to a 4-core with higher clock speed.

As a manner of fact, do you actually need any of the features available on x79 based systems? Can't the job be done on a way cheaper socket 1155 based system? Do you need the extra pcie lanes or the 4 extra ram slots? You don't even seem to want a board with 8 ram slots. Did you use the 6 ram slots or the extra pci lanes on your x58 based system?

An x79 based system is gonna need lots of power too, especially with that 580 on top. A 650w-850w psu is enough at first (exact needs are relative due to possible extra h/w and possibility of overclocking) but within 1 or 2 years at most a psu of that caliber will lose its capacitance and die. This means that you'll need something like a 1000-1200w psu if you plan to keep it for more than about year (you can try to rma but in that case they might not accept the rma due to "wear and tear").

As for the case, there are lots of budget cases that get the job done and look good, like the cooler master elite series, or antec's xyz hundred. Is a 100$+ case all that important?

I suppose I forgot some things but that's it more or less. Good luck building your new system... or something.

Thanx for the tips, am seriously considering an ASUS board now

My current PSU will be up for the job, that's the one thing in the old case I am keeping...

In case your curious, the PSU I have is this one and I will not be ocing the cpu...

To answer some of your other questions...
My current board has 4 ram slots (not sure why it has only one extra slot instead of 3) and I ain't bothered by only 4 ram slots as I would likely never use the others anyway. (Like I didn't use the extra slot in the X58 build)

I'm not overly fussy over the amount of cores, but I just thought it might be nice to go with a 6 core cpu with this upgrade

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May 29th, 2012, 05:29	#1
DarkSamus PC game modder Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Brisbane Australia Posts: Mail You Dummy _______________________ Posts: 5,884	Time for another upgrade... I'm going to be upgrading my PC in the next month or so. Here is what I am looking at getting... Thermaltake BlacX Edition V9 Case - $128 ^^Replaces my Antec P182 case Intel Corei7 3930K 3.2Ghz - $619.00 ^^Replaces my Intel Corei7 920 Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 MB - $239 ^^Replaces my Gigabyte EX58-UD3R MB G Skill 16G(2x8G) DDR3 1600MHZ x2 kits for 32GB ram - $250.00 for both kits x4 ^^Replaces my G.Skill 6GB (3x2GB) kit I will be staying with my Gainward GTX580 3GB GPU... Any thoughts people? Anything I should consider? __________________ Do you play PC RE5, RE6 or SSF4AE but hate that the button mappings uses XBOX360 buttons? Try my Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6 or Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition Playstation button mods! As far as handhelds go, well, I get the Nintendo one. Because I'm not an idiot.

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May 29th, 2012, 05:47	#2
Princess Garnet From Love and Limerence Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Ohio Posts: 6,555	What do you do? I personally don't think it's worth the cost for the performance you'll get over what you have now (especially if it's largely for gaming), but that's a somewhat blind comment. Then again, your Core i7 920 was stock, so you might actually see a bigger increase. I'd rather save the money for down the line, like for Haswell and GPUs of the time. __________________ "The heart has it's reasons that reason knows nothing of."

May 29th, 2012, 06:50	#3
PsyMan Bannҽd Join Date: May 2004 Location: Where banned people go Posts: 2,150	I remember you mentioning that you were on a tight budget and managed to get some parts in the past through a loan or something. Having a socket 1366 based system and planning an upgrade under those circumstances is foolish. I could understand it if your current system had something like a single core 32 bit processor and a shader model 1-3 video card since there were some major technological leaps in the last 5-7 years but this is not the case here. What's your plan anyway? Run games at 100 fps instead of 80? Compile source codes in 5 minutes instead of 8? Convert videos in 10 minutes instead of 13? For **s sake the ram is more expensive than the motherboard here. You're not going to need more than 8gb right now and when you do ram sticks of this kind will be at 1/4 of their current prices. I won't even compare the price and performance differences between what you have and what you're going to get here. But if you do it yourself for a few moments you'll realize that upgrading does not worth it. It's up to you to decide how to spend the money in your possession but the whole deal here is not all that different compared to something like setting that money on fire. __________________ I'm not insane. YOU are insane... You are all insane!** Click Here to Visit my Blog Page

May 29th, 2012, 06:58	#4
DarkSamus PC game modder Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Brisbane Australia Posts: Mail You Dummy _______________________ Posts: 5,884	I should probably mention that I have been offered $600 for my old case, MB, CPU, ram, GTX 470 (That is still here from my GPU upgrade early this year) and 160GB HDD. So I am seizing the opportunity to build a nice new system for myself with some money I am getting soon. Only thing I would like to see in improvements would be faster video encoding (But honestly I ain't fussy there) and to no longer see my CPU bottle-necked. Also yes, 32GB ram is probably overkill at this stage so I will settle for 4x4GB instead. __________________ Do you play PC RE5, RE6 or SSF4AE but hate that the button mappings uses XBOX360 buttons? Try my Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6 or Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition Playstation button mods! As far as handhelds go, well, I get the Nintendo one. Because I'm not an idiot. Last edited by DarkSamus; May 29th, 2012 at 07:04..

May 29th, 2012, 06:58	#5
n_w95482 Gone Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: California Posts: 6,336	+1 for keeping what you have. The 920 is still a very capable CPU. Just clock it up a bit. __________________ Later.

May 29th, 2012, 07:11	#6
DarkSamus PC game modder Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Brisbane Australia Posts: Mail You Dummy _______________________ Posts: 5,884	As I said, I have been offered $600 for my old case etc... This actually won't be so expensive with that $600 cut off the price. Also, I have had nothing but bad luck ocing in the past, so I try to avoid doing it these days. __________________ Do you play PC RE5, RE6 or SSF4AE but hate that the button mappings uses XBOX360 buttons? Try my Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6 or Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition Playstation button mods! As far as handhelds go, well, I get the Nintendo one. Because I'm not an idiot.

May 29th, 2012, 07:40	#9
DarkSamus PC game modder Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Brisbane Australia Posts: Mail You Dummy _______________________ Posts: 5,884	Door on the case is broken, as are the 2 front USB ports so I find it hard to see it worth anywhere near its full price. (That's just my opinion though) Thanx for the advice about "bottle-necking". Its good to know that now rather then be shocked by "bottle-necking" latter. I am already committed to selling the old parts (Have received some of the money already as a deposit) so my option of keeping the old parts has already past. In the past few days I found out I am receiving over $2000 in the next month or so that I was not expecting so I really want to put some of that money into my PC as I am unsure when my next chance will be to do the CPU/MB/Ram combo upgrade. __________________ Do you play PC RE5, RE6 or SSF4AE but hate that the button mappings uses XBOX360 buttons? Try my Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6 or Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition Playstation button mods! As far as handhelds go, well, I get the Nintendo one. Because I'm not an idiot.

May 29th, 2012, 08:01	#10
PsyMan Bannҽd Join Date: May 2004 Location: Where banned people go Posts: 2,150	Anyway, people's opinion is there for you to consider. What to do is up to you. Regarding a socket 2011 based system consider the following. Gigabyte, Intel and Asrock switched to digital VRM for this generation (Asus did it some generations ago), gigabyte messed up badly with some of their boards blowing up (the one you want to buy is a well known problematic case; gigabyte fixed the mess on their ivy bridge boards but those are for socket 1155 processors ), intel sets the standards so there's no problem there, asrock has dodgy quality on all of their boards so getting an asrock board is always a gamble (they might be doa, or die within the warranty period... or one day later ). The rest (msi, evga, sapphire, ecs, biostar) use an analog VRM. There are no real world differences in either approach as long as the design is sophisticated and the component build quality is good. For this platform I'd stay away from gigabyte and look primarily at asus (all their boards should be fine), intel (excluding the dx79to that has no heat-sink on the vrm) and msi (excluding the gd45 4d and the mini atx version of gd45 that have relatively poor build quality, a common thing for lower end msi boards; the 8d version is fine though and so are the rest 3 msi boards). When it comes to the processor do you really need the 2 extra cores compared to other processors? They are not much help in gaming and might actually decrease performance. Only video processing apps, compression algorithms and compilers will really use those and that only to a limited degree compared to a 4-core with higher clock speed. As a manner of fact, do you actually need any of the features available on x79 based systems? Can't the job be done on a way cheaper socket 1155 based system? Do you need the extra pcie lanes or the 4 extra ram slots? You don't even seem to want a board with 8 ram slots. Did you use the 6 ram slots or the extra pci lanes on your x58 based system? An x79 based system is gonna need lots of power too, especially with that 580 on top. A 650w-850w psu is enough at first (exact needs are relative due to possible extra h/w and possibility of overclocking) but within 1 or 2 years at most a psu of that caliber will lose its capacitance and die. This means that you'll need something like a 1000-1200w psu if you plan to keep it for more than about year (you can try to rma but in that case they might not accept the rma due to "wear and tear"). As for the case, there are lots of budget cases that get the job done and look good, like the cooler master elite series, or antec's xyz hundred. Is a 100$+ case all that important? I suppose I forgot some things but that's it more or less. Good luck building your new system... or something. __________________ I'm not insane. YOU are insane... You are all insane! Click Here to Visit my Blog Page

May 29th, 2012, 08:07	#11
Princess Garnet From Love and Limerence Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Ohio Posts: 6,555	If you can put it into the PC now, what's stopping you from setting it aside and saving it? If you're going to do it, you're going to do it, but it honestly isn't that great of an idea. Though it's a smaller increase, I think what I proposed is still the more sane option. It'll get you the same things sans two cores, but it'll be much cheaper. If you want the more exotic stuff just because it's just that, then again, you're going to get what you're going to get, but as much as I loved my Core 2 Duo E8600 (in fact, it was/is my favorite CPU), I'm done buying stuff that's 5% better but 25%+ more costly just because it's higher end. It won't stay high end for long. The way I see it is this; you have two areas worth improving. The one is the CPU if you don't want to overclock. Sandy Bridge or even Ivy Bridge is much cheaper than what you were looking at; in fact, the whole thing alone (CPU, motherboard, RAM, and cooling) will probably be cheaper than just that one CPU you were looking at, and that's for shaving off two cores; it's otherwise practically identical (if you go with a Core i7 model). Those types of CPUs are only justifiable for people who use them for making money; where time is money as the faster they do things actually matters and helps the CPU pay for itself. Otherwise, they are a waste of money compared to something just as fast for the other 99% of us while being much cheaper. The other area is the GPU since you do games and like 3D. I have little to say though as what you have is still good, but I think a new GPU would still make you happier than dumping it into that CPU and RAM. That'd do less for gaming than a new GPU would (though a stock Core i7 920 might start showing more of it's limits with some of the latest, higher end GPUs). On top of that, selling the GeForce GTX 580 would get you that much more you could sell. Again though, if you have that much money coming and just have to burn it for the sake of it... __________________ "The heart has it's reasons that reason knows nothing of." Last edited by Princess Garnet; May 29th, 2012 at 08:18..

May 29th, 2012, 08:16	#13
Hard core Rikki Moving into the beat Join Date: May 2004 Location: Perpetual Hawaii Posts: 11,268	The existing system looks significantly powerful, not yet in need of replacement for beefier specs. GPU aside, perhaps you could keep the processor too. __________________ deviantART \| Blog \| VBA-M \| GeneralEmu \| XTemu \| FMVTool2 \| @ES \| Shendo new NGemu toolbar http://ngemu.ourtoolbar.com

May 29th, 2012, 08:31	#14
Princess Garnet From Love and Limerence Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Ohio Posts: 6,555	Keep in mind that his Core i7 920 is at stock. It's not slow by any means, but considering that a Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge is also up to ~1GHz faster just at stock after turbo, then in addition with the IPC increase and other intangibles (run cooler and use less power), I wouldn't rule it out if he just has to make some sort of purchase. It's more sane than what he was looking at if he doesn't want to overclock. __________________ "The heart has it's reasons that reason knows nothing of."

May 29th, 2012, 09:06	#16
Princess Garnet From Love and Limerence Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Ohio Posts: 6,555	The first part is true, as I believe Dell is an OEM that did it with their PSUs. However, I think it's being overstated here. PSUs age and this has impacts, but I'm referring to people taking good units and going "oh, it's a year or two old so subtract 100W from it". I don't think he would need a 1,000W PSU even for that stuff due to aging. A solid 750W to 850W PSU would likely be plenty. I remember one of the PSU gurus/editors over on OCN made a post explaining it once, and doing a quick Google search, I believe this is what I'm thinking of. There's little solid data on it though. __________________ "The heart has it's reasons that reason knows nothing of."

May 29th, 2012, 09:20	#17
PsyMan Bannҽd Join Date: May 2004 Location: Where banned people go Posts: 2,150	Hmm... "Aside from the capacitors, the other components don't degrade extremely quickly unless continuously pushed at high capacity" <-- this is what I'm referring to. Capacitors are more or less small batteries, they just don't store as much energy as your typical battery. Their characteristics do not differ much compared to cellphone, laptop, etc batteries. Their ability to store energy decreases the same way, just not as rapidly. So a psu will become "weak" after some time of extensive usage near its limits and it would be wise to take about 10% of its output capabilities out after some months/years you were hard on it (more than 80% load for many hours, after many months; heat on the secondary and even primary if the primary "just" has 85c caps will get high enough through that time to reduce capacitance). It's just that psus nowadays are overspeced so the line you must cross for this to happen is further than most people think. __________________ I'm not insane. YOU are insane... You are all insane! Click Here to Visit my Blog Page

May 29th, 2012, 09:55	#18
n_w95482 Gone Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: California Posts: 6,336	I've put a decent amount of continuous load on all of my PSUs in the last several years with folding (and particularly severe load on my main PC's Seasonic with some bitcoin mining and CPU folding, over 600w sustained), they're all still working fine. __________________ Later.

May 29th, 2012, 12:17	#19
thelittlegumnut Registered User Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Australia Posts: 433	id love to learn about how motherboards work. as in, advanced stuff, i know the main components that allow it to work already. the pic inspired me lol. __________________ You say I'm crazy? I say you're talking to a gumnut.