Hi guyz,as my redunduncy payout is getting closer and closer im faced with a bit of a dilema,my specs on the left are my current specs. i had originally set myself a limit of £2500 but my life is forever throwing complications at me and ive had a re-think about my planned upgrade, below ive created a list of planned upgrades and also an alternate inc current prices original plan Asus rampage BF3 edition skt 2011 £265 i7 3930 £400 2 x Point of View 2GB GeForce GTX 680 Beast Watercooled £587 x2=£1174 Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB £170(if i buy in next 19days.avg £240) Corsair Dominator GT Quad Channel 16GB DDR3-2133MHz £207 new skt 2011 cpu waterblock £60 -£450 from selling parts ive upgraded finished system cost £1826 alternate i7 990 £610 ASUS Rampage III Extreme LGA 1366(to allow for sata3) £160 Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB 10,000rpm sata3 £170(if i buy in next 19days.avg £240) Corsair Dominator GT 12gb Kit ( 3x 4gb ) 2000mhz Memory £130 2 x Point of View 2GB GeForce GTX 680 Beast Watercooled £587 x2=£1174 -£450 = £1794 cpu block not needed. either way im within £2000 budget but in regards to cpu which would be the best option for pure performance,also ssd not an option i just dont think there reliable enough atm,i mostly play arma2 and operation arrowhead+ace mod @ 1080p which are very cpu intensive,another alternative would be to get i7 3960 and only 1 gtx680 which would save another £223 if i went with my original plan your feedback and suggestions will be very much appreciated
Buy MB with 2011 socket + 3930 1366 haven't native SATA 3 support, so SSD works not so good. Also 3930 overclocks better than 990 and performs very good in games :nerd:
This is for gaming? i5-2500K or i5-3570K and a Z77 motherboard along with 8GB RAM. Anything more is a waste for gaming. Don't buy a velociraptor, those things are obsolete. Buy an SSD such as Samsung 830 or Crucial m4.
And then put like 4 games on it! Woowoo!| You'll be much better getting a 64GB SSD for the OS and programs and then another hard disk for your games.
Not sure what it is in the UK, but an M4 512 is $600 usd http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148444 Ideally 370 quid, but undoubtedly more. In any case, I have an M4 512 for games, and it fits plenty. 3930 should OC better, if you care for that. TBH, I wouldn't bother with watercooled video. I'd rather get vanilla 680s, and save the difference and buy vanilla 780s later. I.E. get the cheapest of the fast stuff, and upgrade more often... but that's just me. The problem with high end video right now is that almost no games take advantage of it. Unless it's a BF3 rig, it just won't matter - and even then the difference is limited. Folks that do large quad sli rigs find that they get anything from 'negative scaling' to 'hardly a benefit over 2 card sli' at normal resolutions. And when they do high rez surround (for good scaling), they're back to the FPS they had earlier at a normal resolution. It's pretty much impossible to get 120+ fps minimum with the current stuff at high settings. -scheherazade
I didn't mean he should buy only an SSD. Buy a 64GB or 128GB SSD along with a regular 5400RPM or 7200RPM hard drive.
thanks but ive been using a velociRaptor 10,000rpm 300gig for over 18 months and its perfomed flawlessly but just isnt large enough now, atm my system is on 12-16hrs a day and ive never had to worry whether its being over worked or if its going to fail because its been defragged too much,i know im looking for performance but reliability is important too, you say anything more than i5 2500k would be a waste...how can u compare a £170 cpu to £399 cpu at stock speeds. over the last few yrs i have tried many different brands of mobo but always go back to asus because in my experience they are the best for reliability,the only board ive seen for skt 1155 that i like the look of is the SABERTOOTH Z77 but i think i`d probably get the i7 2600k as opposed to the i5 2500 but i do want at least 2 yrs out of my next build thanks for your thoughts though
the cheapest ive found so far in the uk is £440 which is too much for something i might have to rma after 3 months of use but its something i might change in the future,also the reason im water cooling is for lower noise,the only other option would be the Asus gtx 680 directcuII which are due to be release shortly if its not already,at the moment i use 1080p but in the next 3-6 months i may upgrade my monitor aswell depends if i can get full time work in that time,this build has to be good for at least 2 yrs and of coarse arma3 maxed out
TBH, you might have to RMA anything. I've been using M4's for close to a year, with computer on 24/7, and have no problems with them. The reason people compare a 2500K to higher end cpu's for gaming - is because it actually is equally fast [or faster]. It's a conditional statement. Most games today do not take advantage of 6 cores - so 4 cores is plenty to take care of everything. And a 2500K, having less cores, gets less hot, and can OC higher, ultimately performing faster. Today, you buy a 6 core for computational tasks, 'feel good' factor, or e-peen. Not because it will give you more FPS. ... today. -scheherazade
as you actually have first hand experience of the i7 3930 could you post some benchmarks pls or pm me thx
SSD's are faster than Velociraptors and the ones I mentioned are reliable. As I said, SSD's make Velociraptors obsolete. For gaming, it is a fact that it doesn't get noticeably better than 2500K. The more expensive CPUs are meant for CPU dependent processing such as video encoding, modelling etc., not for empowering video cards to output framerates. Just look at benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=443. The performance in games is virtually the same.
Suggestions: 1) Get SSD for boot and game. Cheap 1TB SATA HD for data. SSD is extremely reliable. Yes, it has a limited life span, but if you actually do the math, it is beyond the 5 years you will keep your computer. And that's having it on 24x7. I have been using SSD since First Gen Intel SSD, I have like 15+ of them now and have yet to have any fail on me. 2) 3930 vs 990x? Honestly, if you are willing to shell out for a 990x, you might as well get a 3960x. Why go cheap on the 3930? 3) As for Motherboard, unless you really going to go nuts on PCI-E, and other feature, a lower version of x79 MB will do. Why go Rampage? Get a WS or Pro. You are not planning on Tri-SLi or Quad-SLi? 4) Waterblock. 990x's water block is exactly the same as the 3960/3930 waterblock. You don't need a new one. What you need is that 4 screws for the 3960/3930. All CPU coolers that fit 1366 CPU will fit 2011 CPU. You just need that 4 screws to put on the 2011 CPU sockets. And that 4 screws cost like $6 US. Don't believe me? Go read the instruction on Consair's H80 installation instruction. You will see that 4 screws.
thanks for the info on the 1366 vs 2011 fittings...was my next question,reason why i chose 3930 over 3960 is from what ive seen £350-£400 more for the 3960 for the sake of 3mb lv3 Cache difference and and the 3930 is unlocked,so the i7 3930 seems the better price/performance ratio i can get a 990 for £610,a 3930 for £400 and the 3960 is about 750-820, having looked through different comparison charts and benchmark mayhem the 3930 hits the sweet spot for 2 x gtx680s,the i5 2500 and i7 2600 need to clocked to 4.8ghz+ to get a good score where as the 3930 will do the same job at 4-4.2ghz,the water cooling block i use is from a TT bigwater 735 using the TT h bracket upgrade kit,i have tried ek blocks and watercool heatkiller blocks and both performed worse than my tt block,despite contacting TT on facebook regarding the difference between 1366 and 2011 they tried to sell me aircooling products instead , The reason for the the rampage is because of the colour, the look of it and it has everthing i need plus room if i decide to go 3 way sli or ocz revo pci-e card and the rampage has X-fi fxIII onboard audio,i already have a seagate 1.5 tb storage drive which im keeping, are the screws your refering too http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EK-M4-CPU...&otn=3&po=LVI&ps=63&clkid=8001096057990634318
was some thing else i`d considered but with 2 680`s better ram like gskill or corsair gt and a second wd 300gig 10,000 rpm drive and use raid0 but it kind of defeats the purpose of getting pci-e 3 cards and having more options for the future. When i first started this project in August 2011 i had planned on selling the 2 6970 i had at the time and eventually getting 2 590s but then i got made redundunt, i still ended up selling my 6970`s and bought the 4890s i have now but even though they are good cards they just wont let me maxout games,i have been out of work for nearly 8 months but have now secured part time work which i will be starting in the next fews weeks so in a way this is a present to myself to say well done for dealing with all the $hit thats been thrown at me from going without food for 3 days to 2 repossesion orders and now having to sell my house besides i may never get the chance to build a system this good
lol, talk about coincident... I just got 4 of these the past month from Amazon.com ocz-revo 3x... I got 2x240GB and 2x480GB. These things are FAST! Now know this, they won't make you boot any faster if you boot from it. As a matter of fact, you will be adding another 20 sec on boot time. I got the 2x240GB for some SQL database work that needed a HUGE amount of IO Speed. I was able to get to 1.5GB/s read and 1.0GB/s Write on these (single, not Raid 0). I used 1 for source database, 1 for target database. Later, changes to my project resulted that 240GB not enough room for a 2nd copy of the database, so I've gone and gotten the 2x480GB instead. I get to keep them all after the project Funny thing? These are only workstation level SSD. The enterprise level stuff is even more crazy (in price, speed, and reliablity)
i was looking at the 480gig version but decided to not to use them given the issues with ssd atm and of coarse the hefty price tags
Mind if I ask what issue are you referring to? I have been using these 4 SSDs for about a month now without problem. The price is crazy, but the performance is well worth the price for me. Cutting a 4 days process down to less than 2 days. In business, 1 day of no sales, no shipping, could easily be over $50k of lost revenue. Anyway, I did some research in SSD. I did notice there are a lot of articles headlines out there list out concern of reliablity and life span of the SSD. But if you read the actual articles, and convert the HOURS that it will take the SSD into having issues (performance degradation, etc), it is actually over 10 years. But if you are planning on using these revo drives for a hobby machine, I am not going to recommend them. Like you said, too expensive. And I was quite surprise when it increased my boot time by quite a huge factor.
