Need advice on PC configuration (CPU & MB) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 12:37:42 pm
content: Hey,yesterday I had rather unpleasant experience, namely: desktop PC failure. Testing parts in my friends PC proven following:-HDDs are ok (otherwise i would be standing on a cliff rather than writing this post)-GPU's ok-optical drives are ok-pci extension cards with lpts and coms are ok-PSU seems ok: all voltages are proper and rather noise-free (checked with scope)PSU, CPU and MB were not tested in my friend's rig because despite having compatible MB and CPU to mine, he has this fancy diy liquid cooling system which is pain in the a** to disassemble and power supply cables soldered directly into MB with no connector (don't ask........ long story...)Anyway, on topic: facing either CPU or motherboard fail i took a decision to buy a new PC, but I have a problem choosing CPU (and motherboard). I'm staggering between following processors:-Intel Core i5 2550K ($290)-Intel Core i7 2600k ($370)-Intel Core i7 3700 ($378)-AMD X8 FX-8150 ($320 with liquid cooling in a set)My planned budget for CPU and MB is around $450-500. It's gonna be used mainly for Altium, Solidworks, AutoCAD, Spice programs + my girlfriends Photoshop. Maybe very occasional gaming, but I'm rather oldschool gamer so it has no influence on hardware.Do you have any experience with above listed processors? AMD X8 is advertised as 8-core, but it's really 4 units with 2 semi-cores sharing for example one FPU. On the other hand Intel stuff is far more expensive. I generally intend to overclock them all in some reasonable fashion (like 10-15%..? depends on power dissipation).Intels on the other hand (excluding 2550K) have HyperThreading so system recognizes 8 cores and i guess should give similar performance to AMD's 8 semi-cores.I don't count GPU (I'll get some cheap one, no need for uber-3d or XYZ kilowatts power supply requirement) and RAM (16GB of DDR3 CL9 is like $120) and I have separate funds for those.Any comments welcome.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 12:47:22 pm
content: I'm still using a Intel Core2 duo Q6600 (one generation behind the i5/i7)It's a quad core with stock cpu of 2.4Ghz and i have it overclocked to 3.2Ghz.The cpu is still perfectly fine for what i do (Altium and games like TF2 or Crysis)If i upgrade anything it will be the graphics which is currently an nVidia 8800GT (it's getting a bit slow in the latest games).So really i don't think the CPU matters that much, as long as it has 4+ cores and runs at 3+ghz it will be fine.

author: shebu18
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 01:03:36 pm
content: I would buy the i7 3700K, and a Asrock or Asus MB.CPU matters when using SolidWork or Photoshop. Rendering goes faster on more threads.Core2Quad (Q6600) is 3 generations behind the current core 3 CPU's. I also use a Core2Duo E8500 at home.You buy now a better config and use it 5 years with no problem.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 01:12:15 pm
content: The Nehalem vs Sandy Bridge doesn't count. they both carry the i3/5/7 name, it's a revision rather than a generation

author: shebu18
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 01:15:39 pm
content: Yes, but still Sandy is faster then nehalem, so i count it as a new set of CPU's, an improvement. I also think i jump over the current Ivy gen coz me C2D still offers me the power i need.

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 01:36:06 pm
content: I currently have (um.... HAD...) 6yr old setup: Core 2 Duo E6400+ASUS P5LD2 SE motherboards +2GB of DDR2+Seagate 320GB HDD+Radeon X1600 PRO 512MB. Altium 9 takes ~30s to load. It often freezes for half a second or second when scrolling/panning. Solidworks it much worse, but this is probably partial fault of GPU which is not compatible with Solidworks special 3D api. As for photshop I'm not doing anything that would have more than 3 layers (If grading from 'A' to 'F' my skill level in PS is somewhere between 'G' and 'H') , so no problem there. I'd have to ask my gf about her experience, as she's much more skilled in it than I am and probably makes more use of processing power.It's clear, that AMD is MUCH cheaper than Intel. I wonder if it's better to buy 4 core Intel which is faster, has HT, more cache, higher clock etc, or go for cheaper AMD which has more cores (so more parallel tasks and more oopmh in advanced applications like rendering). How does Altium handle multiple cores (for example when doing DRC or copper pour in larger and/or multilayer board). Does it even utilize multiple cores?I also forgot to mention, that I want to invest remaining sum of money in solid state drive for most important installations and operating system (probably Wind0ze 7 64-bit, I somehow don't see setting up all that stuff using Linux/Wine combo...). My friend owns a PC with SSD (can't remember exact model but it's not new and small capacity - like 50GB or so) and I must say that I'm impressed with speed improvement it gives.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 01:57:19 pm
content: If you want stuff to load fast get a SSD

author: olsenn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 02:42:49 pm
content: Get at least a i7-2600K or better, and lots (8+ gigs) of high speed RAM. If you intend on doing a lot of gaming, or advanced video rendering, then I'd recommend picking up a decent graphics card as well (GTX-580 or something in the 600-series NVidia range).I have a 128GB Vertex3 SSD, and it is nice, but not essential and not that drastic of a performance increase. Try two SATA 6Gb/s mechanical drives in RAID 0 instead.

author: nanofrog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 02:59:22 pm
content: I'd say the i7-2600k and a decent board.

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 03:42:28 pm
content: QuoteWhat are the real advantages vs AMD X8? It's like 1/3 cheaper. How do they compare in calculation-intensive applications not supporting multithreading? (like various spice simulators)Quotehow do you define high speed RAM? I mean bus frequency or clocking cycle counts? since processors now integrate memory controller, it seems to me like they are the limiting factor. For example i7-2600k supports only 1066 and 1333 Mhz modes, while memories over 2Ghz are available. Or am I mistaken? Would you recommend 4x4GB or rather 2x8GB arrangement? (seems like most processors have 2 channels and IIRC 2 modules of DDR rams is one channel). Is there any advantage in using two channels at a time as compared to one at a time?QuoteNot a lot of  gaming. I play stuff like Soldat, Starcraft:BW, Counterstrike, Diablo, Master of Orion 2 and such. And I guess that most of today's smartphones would exceed recommended requirements of those games:D. As for rendering videos, neither of us makes living of it, so it's not a priority (I don't make my living of Solidworks and mechanical CADs either)QuoteI'm rather planning on building RAID 1 with parallel R/W operations to avoid data loss. My plan was to use SSD for installations of OS and frequently used applications. SSD would also have work files (schematics, pcb documents, 3d models, etc) copied on it before they are opened. RAID system would be for storage and SSD for work and execution. Btw. I see that motherboards with LGA1155 socket and Z77 chipset have integrated RAID SATA controller, and so do AM3+ boards with 760G / 970 chipset. Are those integrated controllers somehow inferior to specialized RAID controllers? (I mean for non-enterprise usage).I have yet to try to resurrect the old PC. Getting new pc is one thing, but if i manage to find compatible motherboards or Core 2 Duo CPU it will probably be for free/totally cheap. If i can resurrect the pc for some other use (like driving the CNC machine on Linux) for like $20 then why not. Another option is to meticulously check all the connectors, use some contact cleaning solution and replace the heat conductive compound under all heatskinks. I think all parts also deserve a healthy dose of compressed air. We gonna see what happens...

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 04:04:44 pm
content: Go for the AMD, you won't regret having a true 8 core procDespite what they say it's really a 8 core proc with 2 cores sharing a FPU but with all the power of a true 8 core, unlike Intel's HT which is just software ya'know8 "semi-cores" you call them are not semicores, they are physical cores without resorting to a "extra thread"But i'm waiting for piledriverAnd plus, the FX is REALLY overclockable, somebody managed to get 9.something GHz ... in AMD's lab and somewhere in the worldAnd .. HT doesn't work for everything, physical cores doesIf you do need a new GPU you should be fine with the 7670 (7670=6670)Single threaded apps run slower on the AMD but heck, it probably doesn't need much more speed if it's single threaded (AKA quite old... multi threaded apps are everywhere)And it's already a speed monster, no need for intel unless you're folding and you want to win the AMD people!The FX-8150 supports min.1600 max.1866 so yes, less bottleneck but intel's RAM controller is faster ... YMMVIt's best to do 4x4 as there's is 8GB ram as far as that's concerned but if you do need better upgrade pathsthe Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz 8GB is at 99SGD ... the 2x4 fast ram kits are much cheaperBut yeah, you should be fine at 1600MHz 4x4 or 2x8 is up to youI can't have a say on harddisks because that's a highly subjective topic, leave it for yourselfSSD's are faster but make sure the mboard has EFI built in or else they will go to waste quick,use the SSD as the main portion and keep the programs you frequently open in there, just make sure you bought at least 64GB or you're gonna sufferAnd also don't cheap out that much, read about benchmarks of a SSD you are shooting for, sometimes you pay less and get moreThus use a 500GB/1TB 7200rpm 32MB/64MB HDD as the "data portion"

author: diracshore
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 04:36:30 pm
content: Why build your own ?I would suggest either the 27 inch 2.7Ghz iMac (can run windows) with SSD and 16GB memory upgrades from Apple or the Lenovo C30 dual processor, with after market memory and SSD upgrades. Samsung 830 series SSD's rock, they have a multi core controller.Today processor cache is more important than core count. The C30 is a great buy for CAD.

author: shebu18
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 05:18:26 pm
content: AMD is cheaper but Mhz/Mhz intel us much faster. The current AMD CPU's are crappy, they only make much advertisement. Search some reviews, I7-3700k vs the best amd. You got 9Ghz on amd in a LAB using nitrogen cooling. With a normal cooler, a Noctua NH-D14 you will not get 9Ghz at home. On intel you will get a stable 5Ghz on the 2700k and kick AMD.Why buy 2 PC's when you can buy one Mac, great. On the macs the software is great, the rest is a ripoff.I would go with a 2700k, 16Gb(2x8Gb) ram, a 120Gb ssd and 2x500Gb Hdd in raid 0. As a GPU i would buy a GT560 Ti or use the internal GPU for a time untill you have the money for a decent GPU.

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 06:16:56 pm
content: Quote from: diracshore on August 06, 2012, 04:36:30 pmOverpriced

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 06:30:15 pm
content: Quote from: shebu18 on August 06, 2012, 05:18:26 pmBut eight cores matter more and slightly more cache only give a 5-10% boost that's all.AMD CPU's aren't crappy, if used in a highly threaded application they shine in their category, trust me it loses out to the 2550K plusI know 9-point-something was on LN2 but i'm just saying, with a intel you can't do that.You can boost to 5GHz and not be worried on the FX-8150 (With the i5 ... not really)AND! the FX-8150 has 8MB L3+L2 Cache where latency matters, so the AMD has no fight with Intel, it's a clear win at his price rangeOf course if Intel's mboards could be cheaper yes i would buy, but no, their boards are slightly higher with less features( 2 16x full speed PCI-E slots anyone? )And you also get a water cooling setup

author: Zad
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 07:06:43 pm
content: I read Tomshardware, Anandtech and Hexus for hardware reviews. Basically, if you are on a tight budget, go AMD. If you need performance at all, go Intel. I can't see anything you mentioned stressing an i5, let alone an i7. I used to be a big fan of AMD, but right now they just aren't in the game.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 07:38:04 pm
content: Quote from: shebu18 on August 06, 2012, 01:03:36 pmAsrock is cheap in any meaning! Asus or Gigabyte are fine.

author: HardBoot
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 08:30:34 pm
content: I'd get the cheapest sandy bridge quadcore you can and a supermicro motherboard.Fast, efficient, reliable.

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2012, 09:10:02 pm
content: i can comment on the memory bandwith of the amd and intel side by side. i have an asus g73 laptop. ithas an intel 4 core+4software core processor i7 740qm 1.73ghz. 8gb ram at 1066mhz. its bandwith over 13gb/s, the desktop is an amd 1090t asus crosshair 4 mb. mem runs at 1600mhz its hitting the roof around 8.6gb/s!!! the same ssd performs better on the intel laptop motherboard approx 30% better then on the amd onboard controller, both i/o numbers and speed. i woudl love to see the new amd chipsets what can do, btw other computer here at home has an intel 2nd gen i7 i think its a 2600k same 1600mhz ram almost hitting 20gb/s mem bandwithedit: tested the ssd on that intel asus mb slightly slower the in the laptopits a vertex 2 120gb

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 08:03:38 am
content: Quote from: Zad on August 06, 2012, 07:06:43 pmThat's why you go for a FX-8150 over a i5

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 08:07:57 am
content: Quote from: M. András on August 06, 2012, 09:10:02 pmKeep in mind that this memory bandwidth is for the RAM only,sorry to burst your bubble, what memory test are you using?This is what i mean by BANG-FOR-BUCKthe i5-2500k is less than the FX8150 the difference between the i7-950 and FX8150AMD not in the $200 game ... ya rightAnd the i5-2550k doesn't have HT either

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 08:14:36 am
content: i was using the aida 64 memory tests. as for the real bandwith of the cpu to every bus, dunno. for the cpu cache i didnt even run a test on it

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 09:35:48 am
content: Gotopcper.comLook for the HW Leaderboard.This has the best choice (in their opinion) of hardware components of full systems broken up into price range and use category and is constantly updated.

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 10:27:36 am
content: QuoteI generally refuse to use anything that has 'i' as first letter of it's name. I consider myself an Apple hater mainly because their products are WAAY overpriced, they try to ENFORCE their way to do everything and I don't like their 'we-sue-everybody-for-everything' attitude. Another reason would be problems with cooperation with any hardware/software without letter 'i' in the name. Not intending to start flamewar here, just Apple is not an options.QuoteLol, I didn't know that. But I have no intent to do THIS kind of overclocking. I meant like going from 3.6to 4.0..4.3 GHz or something like that. Of course i might go a little further with water cooling (it comes in a set for about $40 extra as compared to set with traditional cooling) as normally i wouldn't go for it.QuoteI didn't mention it before, but I would prefer not to use ASUS conponents. I have extremly bad experience with their customer service and hardware repair (I purchased a netbook which has proven to be faulty and it took them 2 month to conclude it was broken and they don't have the parts for replacement and another 2.5 to give me the refund). Not that I say they produce crap, as this was probably broken BGA joint or somthing like that, but customer service is THE WORST. At least in Poland, as compared to MSI and Acer.I think I'm convinced to go with AMD. Performance gap is too small to justify huge price gap.btw.I have managed to boot up the old PC! (kind of...)I have blown all stuff in the PC with compressed air and used contact cleaner on all power and data connectors. I don't think I will do the same with ram modules. It didn't start at first attempt, but finally it did. I'm generally able to get it to boot windoze. PCProbe and RealTemp360 show normal temperatures of both cores. But in a random moment PC freezes completly. It just becomes totally unresponsive and only solution is hard reset after which it obviously doesn't want to boot (only black screen with cursor blinking). I can see Asus logo at first, but when i press Tab to see the post messages the screen is black with the mentioned cursor blinking.Freeze occurs with no regard to processor load (checked watching movie, zipping large file, idle). Generally seems to occur either in first 15 minutes after boot or after some 2 hours (not a strict rule though). I wonder if cleaning whole stuff had anything to do with it being able to boot eventually or is this pure coincidence...What ya think? CPU? Corrupt BIOS? (should not happen - it's dual) Blown or semi-blown MB chipset? Powersupply (seems clean, no glitches observed on a scope)? Take your bet

author: hlavac
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 10:37:44 am
content: Try a new power supply. 90% of issues described are caused by failing power supply.

author: Zad
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 06:07:08 pm
content: It sounds like a power problem to me too. You do have the separate processor power connector connected, and (if you have one) the PCI-E power connector plugged into the graphics card?I love all these people using statistics to prove their pet theories as to why their particular make of something is best. In the real world you just can't tell. 90% of the time I can't tell the difference between my old X2-3800 and my i7 with overclocked GTX670. The only difference is games or video/3D rendering. SSDs make a huge difference in boot time, but to be honest after that the difference is marginal.http://hexus.net/http://www.anandtech.com/http://tomshardware.co.uk/

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 06:19:46 pm
content: Well i most certainly can tell a BIG difference between my mom's A6-3400M 1.4GHz Quadcore laptop and my Athlon II P320 laptopBoth of them are based on the same platform ...

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 07:18:44 pm
content: can be failing ram too. i wouldnt hurt anymore a good cleaning and a memory test

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 08:13:46 pm
content: yea, I damaged a ram module by not plugging it in properly, computer still worked but highly unstable, sounds just like yours. I set-up a pc for my sister and that did random resets, used memtest to find it was 2 in 3 modules faulty.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 08:26:37 pm
content: i5-760 on a DP55GW mobo with 8 GB ram and a nvidia graph card with 1GB of video mem and DX10 in hardware. win7 64 bit.Altium / solidworks / Rhino run like a charm.since that hardware is 'old' now it can be had for cheap. the cpu will be around 100$ mobo maybe 80 or so.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 07, 2012, 08:31:25 pm
content: I find that a lot of software is not multicore compatible despite claims. Photoshop is the biggest con as many of its plugin's or subcomponents that actually do the intensive work are single core. I was stunned to find that dragon naturally speaking also only uses one core. I'd really not be too fussed about getting more than 4 cores, I only bothered to have 4 cores now because I run grid computing software so can run more than one project at once.

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2012, 02:58:26 am
content: Multiple cores are really useful for opening multiple instances of something, ah well.Quote from: free_electron on August 07, 2012, 08:26:37 pmInteresting you say that ... the FX-4100 is 100 bucks too ... But the LGA1156 platform is nowhere to be found already

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2012, 03:35:25 am
content: For general office and most electronics work, a dual core i3 or Atom is plenty. If you're planning to do SDR and/or FPGA work, you'll want something faster. Keep in mind that while some apps like GNURadio multi thread very well, while others like Xilinx ISE will only use one core effectively. For the former, a 6 core i7 would be excellent, while with the latter, you'll want an i5 or i7 that can turbo very high. I got a 6 core since I'm planning to do both (as well as distributed computing, gaming, and video work), and I got a nice deal on the CPU and motherboard.Something to keep in mind is that Turbo Boost is highly dependent on cooling. Therefore, don't go too cheap with the fans or heatsinks. With a Cooler Master heatsink and some Delta fans, my 6 core i7 will hold a 3.8GHz turbo (about 19% performance boost) on all 6 cores indefinitely.QuoteOn a laptop, a SSD will make a very big difference because laptop drives are slow compared to the desktop versions. It's enough that my old Core 2 Duo laptop equipped with a SSD will boot faster than a new Ivy Bridge i7 mobile workstation equipped with a HDD. On a desktop, a SSD will make a much smaller difference, especially if you make a 120GB or so root partition at the start of the disk to keep the speed critical files close together on the fastest part of the disk.

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2012, 11:47:38 am
content: I've chosen preliminary setup for the PC:-AMD X8 FX-8150 + water cooling-MSI 990FXA-GD65 motherboard-Corsair 16GB 1866MHz CL9 DDR3 ram (Vengeance Red)-OCZ Agility3 90GB SSD-WD 1TB Sata3 HDD-Gigabyte HD6570 2GB ram GPU-OCZ Fatality 550W modular power supplyTotal of $1k. Now i need to gather money for itI may choose to replace Ram with 8GB or get some smaller HDD. My internet connection sux and in my location there's currently no technical possibility to get a better one, so HDD space doesn't matter that much.I didn't include the case because it doesn't matter anyway, you can get one for free. I keep both side panels open all the time anyway. I will also have to buy some optical drive, because i don't happen to have SATA optical drive at hand, and this MB doesn't have ATA port. But some random SATA dvd drive is about $20 so no problem there.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2012, 02:39:38 pm
content: Ocz ssd ? Seriously ? You must like to replace that sucker every 2 months.Ocz are the most unreliable ssd's out there....Go for an intel drive. Those are most reliable

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2012, 05:10:17 pm
content: Here are some hard numbers ...Return rates for SSDs by vendor: ( confirmed defects )Prior to April 2011 :- Intel 0.1%- Crucial 0.8%- Corsair 2.9%- OCZ 4.2%(parts sold between April and October 2011, for returns created before April 2012)- Crucial 0.82% (against 0.8%)- Intel 1.73% (against 0.1%)- Corsair 2.93% (against 2.9%)- OCZ 7.03% (against 4.2%)splitout of the OCZ failers :- 15.58% 2 OCZ Vertex Series 240GB SSD- 13.28% 2 OCZ Vertex Series 160GB SSD- 11.76% 2 OCZ Vertex Series SSD 80GB- 9.52% 2 OCZ Vertex Series 120GB SSD- 8.57% 3 OCZ Vertex Series 120GB- 7.49% 2 OCZ Vertex Series SSD 60GB- 6.61% 2 OCZ Vertex Series 3.5 "SSD 120GB- 6.37% 3 OCZ Vertex Series 240GB- 6.37% March 60 GB OCZ Agility- 5.89% 2 OCZ Vertex Series 100GB SSDYou pull the conclusion ...Any modern operating system supports the TRIM operation. and the drives fully support that now.Samsung makes a pretty good drive as well but they are mainly focused on mSATA. Some newer motherboards have a slot for such a cartridge.My laptop runs from a Samsung mSata drive. Lightning fast. But... the machine also has two regular harddisks... the swap files , user folders etc live on the magnetic media. only he OS and software lives on the flash drive. so very little write operations ocurr there.As for magnetic drives :Western Digital BLACK series. without a doubt.Green is low power 5400 rpm... good for archival.Blue is an overall usage 7200 RPM desktop driveBlack is a 7200 RPM performance / reliability drive with more cache and a faster channel than the blue. they also use lower areal density (more platters) which makes them more reliable. but they draw more power...RED is for NAS systems and bulletproof backup. Basically BLACK drives with special firmware optimized for bulk throughput.and what's this obssesion with watercooling. An intel stock heatsink + cooler is all you need.

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2012, 05:15:11 pm
content: At 125W you need some big heatsink ... the water cooling only costs 30 bucks extra from AMD plus it's MUCH better than intel's stock HSF

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2012, 08:22:54 am
content: I didn't know that OCZ SSDs show that many failures. Is this also true for OCZ power supplies? I generally thought of OCZ as a company who makes gaming rig stuff... True is also that these OCZ drives are most affordable. Though I may wait a month or two longer, gather some more funds and make stronger setup with 2 HDDs in RAID 1.Btw, what do you think about that GPU? It's definitely on a cheap side ($80) and not the newest architecture (128bit bus). I'm not planning to play new games (IMO good games ended around 2003 - now they are too easy)As for watercooling: If not for very attractive price I probably wouldn't go for it.

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2012, 12:46:22 pm
content: Who cares if it's old or new! There's a quite big amount of power in this GPU! It's equivalent to 2008/9's ... 5670So yes it is decent unless you want to talk about the 7970 ... again no point but it beats nvidia at this price point that's what i'm concerned6570 is good for most things

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2012, 03:01:23 pm
content: Raid doesn't solve anything... A defect bit on a drive will happily be copied to the other drive yielding two corrupt files.It feels as if you are wasting money on stuff that brings nothing to the computing experience.Get an intel SSD of 120 gig. Install OS and apps ther. Get a WD black and use that to storeyour home directory and data. Run windows 7 backup tool to make a golden system image once al software is installed. If the SSD goes belly up : reload from the sysimage. The sysimages are about 5 to 10 gig depending on how much stuff you got. If you copy all data then they are larger ). Make a duplicate of the sysimage on an external usb drive. Laptop style drive. Those are cheap. Worst comes to worst you can redeploy from there that drive lies on a cupboard, disconnected and powered off until you either need it to recover, or want to update the sysimage.Now, i am talking purely technical apps here, i don't game, so you'll have to tweak my advice toward you liking.Intel i5-760. Older cpu , cheap but a true quad core. Stock cooler is dead quitIntel dp55bw or gw mobo. Bulletproof, nu futzing with overclocking. Built like a tank. I got about 20 of those in the lab ( we build or own ) and 4 at home.True 1.5 volt memory from a reputable brand like samsung, kingston or corsair.I use a simple nvidia graphics card with two dvi ports and 1 gig memory. I think its a 500 series. Was like 75$...4 gigs of ram ( we still run 32 bit win7 )That thing churns through Altium , solidworks , visual studio , Altera and Xilinx software , matlab , cadence viewers and all kind of other hi- end software without blinking.And you can get that stuff dead cheap because this is an older generation cpu.I stick em in Antec titan cases . Because they are long and squat. They dont topple over if you bump in to them and have lots of room. Since these are lab machines the sides are off. The antec psu in the titan is 650 watts. Plenty for what we do.We typically have additional sata boards in there with multiple drives on it, sometimes 12 per machine ( advantage of the titan case. Lots of room for drives.... But then again, we develop drives so thats why.. )

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2012, 03:33:43 pm
content: Well actually i didn't have to buy a i5-760 to run altium and such,i didn't even need a quadcoreI have a (i built in 1 month ago ...) uATX pc outside in the hallPentium Dual-Core E5700 3GHz( Don't talk about the motherboard ... it's a POS for overclocking )WD Black 1TB 64MB (well yeah ...)4GB of DDR3 Kingston 1333MHz RAM ...HD5450 ( Best bargain for 50 sing dollars! ) I didn't do overkill, i met my needs just a cheap as possible desktop for a "media" box that has HDMI and can play battlefield 3 at decent frameratesI mean of course he likes the FX-8150 lots of performance to had for less money plus you can't really find a LGA1156 CPU anymore easily ...plus that motherboard is begging for Piledriver

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2012, 09:56:57 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on August 09, 2012, 05:10:17 pmocz vertex 2 120gb reporting from here almost 2 years old used daily atleast 10+ hours as system drive.did you find any hard data on the total sold drives or just these failures in percentage? i would love to see if that 4.2% failed drive from few million sold unit or from few thousandi hope you get my point. im not an ocz fan.

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2012, 12:21:10 pm
content: I'm trying to get higer-end-of-chart coponents because this approach has worked to me quite well. At the time when I purchased the current PC (~2006) I chose the best components I could find that didn't cost ridicuolous amount of money. For example E6400 CPU was aroung $300-350 back then and another one in the chart was above $600 and the performance gap didn't justify paying $250 more for CPU. I did the same for all stuff other than GPU (didn't need a good one at that time).I'm not sure though if it makes sense now, because development in field of operation speed is slowing down as CPU manufacturers are hitting technology maxima. They are adding additional cores, wider bussed more cache etc, but operating frequencies don't go up that much anymore.I consider myself a little bit biased towards Intel products, but on the other hand last AMD CPU i had was LONG time ago (some 1GHz single core athlon). And nowadays price gap is so in relation to performance gap, that AMD seems more attractive. I'm also considering lower range bulldozers like X8 FX-8120 or X6 FX-6200. They cost around $200. I only wonder what is stock cooling system like (I mean would I have to raplace it with 3rd party one to get decent cooling)

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2012, 04:26:19 pm
content: It's aBIGGGdifference so big that only the 200 odd dollar HSFs can beat the Asetek Water Cooler/Antec Kuhler 920 (Asetek OEM's them all)http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1743/1/The main reason why AMD bundled this water cooler for only 30 bucks is that for overclocking this is really important, the max temp for it is 61C but yeah, that's just bullshit actually it's pretty safe at 77C