Crimson Eye

Whats up guys and gals. I wanted to bend your colective ear for a min and get you oppinions I am looking to upgrade and I would like some advise and opinions. I am looking to overhaul a six year old system so it will be pretty extensive. I am only bringing a few things forward from the old rig. This is my second build so any help would be greatly appreciated. I have a new 27inch LCD which I will be running at 1900x1080 with Windows 7. I have done allot of research but still have a few questions. I want to try my hand at overclocking for the first time. Nothing to crazy but still good.

My budget is 800 - $1000. I am a little over that right now but I am hoping Black Friday/Cyber Monday will help me out some. If you have alternative parts you would suggest let me know or if you would do some thing different I am all ears.

First what I have:

[*]Case: Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum

[*]PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower W0128RU 650W

[*]Storage Drives: 2x Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200YS 320GB

[*]DVD: SAMSUNG 18X DVD±R DVD Burner

[*]GPU: ASUS EAH6850

Thats everything that is coming forward.

This is what I am getting (I think):

CPU: Intel
[*]Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost)

Mother Board:
[*]ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 This is alot more then I was originaly thinking I was going to have to pay. I want a really good board but are there any other options?

Boot Drive:
[*] Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 128GB

Memory:
[*]G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB Thinking about two of these, I know it would be overkill but....

CPU Cooler: [*] Noctua NH-D14

New GPU:
[*] 2x ASUS EAH6850 Crossfire I have resently been researching micro-stuttering in sli and xfire set ups. Are any of you running duel cards, have you experienced this?

One of my biggest questions has to do with the power supply. I have read a lot of stuff but it is still Greek to me. I even went through the Toms Hard Wear page and this is what I came up with. My system runs around 148 at idle and 627 at load. Will my old PSU be able to handle running this new system and will be OK to run the new I5 core on a old PSU. I have done a good amount of research and I cant find a single post newer then 2009 that even mentions my PSU My question is in my old Thermaltake 650 going to cut it or should I go with something like this:

[*]PSU: CORSAIR Professional Series HX850

Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

Recently i upgraded to a dual card/triple monitor setup
2 x Nvidia gtx 560TI (SLI)
3 x Samsung 2233RZ 120hz 22" monitors

The rest of my rig is:
i7 860
4 gigs of GSkill ddr3 Ram
120Gb Intel 320 SSD (system drive and primary games)
2 other physical hard drives (media and lesser used games)
microsoft natural keyboard
various razer mice (Naga, Abyssus, Salmosa, Tron, DeathAdder), and a Logitech G5.
Cooler Master Cosmos S Case
Some kind of DvD R/W Burner



Since going triple monitor i have had some issues with bluescreening (during alt tab to and from WoW) and i've also had some bluescreens during windows startup. While playing wow I've been 100% stable, I'll work on resolving these issues this weekend.

Depending on what games you're going to play, SLI/CF will be great or nearly useless. Since i mostly play wow, LoL, and SC2, i can give you some anecdotes from those games.

WoW seems to depend pretty evenly on CPU clock rate, L3 Cache Size, and GPU. Although wow doesnt seem to scale well with multiple cores (even after setting processor affinity to use all cores). Despite this, because of the cache size and clock rate, the Quad Core i7 2600K is recommended here as it has the larger L3 cache and the highest clockrate possible. For GPUs, wow doesnt scale well with multiple cards usually, so normally you'll generally want to get the most powerful single card you can get. In my case, SLI is necessary because of my multi monitor setup.

SC2 seems to scale fairly well in SLI, with about 50% improvement after adding the second card. This is pretty typical for most games. Be aware that CF generally does not scale as well as SLI.

My frames on LoL were basically pegged before the upgrade, so i dont notice any difference there.

I think your choice of CPU is a good one for your budget, GPU's i'm not familiar with (I tend to buy NVidia)

If you want to overclock, just makes sure the RAM you get is rated for the frequency you want to run your FSB at. Usually you wont be pulling off overclocks that require insanely fast ram, so this really shouldn't affect the price of your rig much. Also make sure you have a good aftermarket HSF (heatsink-fan) that you KNOW works well. Beware alot of products in the HSF space are complete crap and while they might look nice many of them suck at actually doing their job. Look for a site that rates them and shows benchmarks for each HSF and pick the best one that still fits in your case.

For my 2 cents with the kind of ram you are getting make sure you check the placement of the cpu fan you are going to get, I have similar ram and had to get new ram with out the super cool heat sinks that stick out because they interfered with my fan. And really those huge heat sinks on ram don't add much cooling over flat top heat sinks.

If you look at the board you linked, if you have a larger fan on your cpu it will hover over where your ram is and it may become an issue.

Thanks for the info guys. To address some of the things you guys brought up.

Onihoof:
In terms of the fan, there is actually a webpage that has what is and is not compatible with it because it is so big. Now also the reason I picked this fan is I do want to overclock and so I new I would need a new fan. I went to Toms Hardware and this is the number one rated fan for OCing. It is literately crazy good impart because it is so low it also draws air across your motherboard. I have a full atx case so there will be more then enough room and both the board and the memory are rated ok with the fan.

Thanks for looking out for me man.

Xaanix:
I have herd that allot of people say that mmorpgs are not that GPU intensive and that I may not get much if any out of going the crossfire route. I am headed in this direction though because I just bought at 6850 like six months ago when my other card blew and I just cant justify going after a $300 card right now. I have looked and what I have found is that my card should be good enough to play SWTOR and it is goo enough to keep up with things like Dues Ex so i think I will be good for the most part but I also know my FR are not the best on FPS games so I wanted to flush those out a little more and the two cards will do that and help the other games at a cost of $120.

In terms of the memory it is certified 1.5V and is built to work with the Intel sandy bridge stuff. So I think I am good, is this what you where meaning when you where talking about ram.

Thank you both for your help. If you have anything else you can think of let me know. I am just itching to get this all set up. there are just so many things to think about I just want to make sure I don't make a mistake.

Nate,

You can absolutely drop $100 off that motherboard, or so.

You're looking at a Z68-based motherboard, but you only need a P67 for what you want:

http://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2011/06/09/h67-p67-and-z68-which-one-is-right-for-you/

"P67 - This chipset variant, which was available alongside H67 at the launch of the Sandy Bridge platform, does not support the use of integrated graphics – but in trade supports the ability to run two dedicated video cards (for Crossfire or SLI, if motherboard manufacturers license those technologies). It also is capable of being overclocked, and that combination of features have made it popular for gamers and other demanding users."

"Z68 - The Z68 chipset is a late arrival, but combines the performance-oriented features of P67 with the onboard graphics options of H67. This opens up the option for enthusiasts who want to have a powerful video card while also being able to access features of the on-chip Intel HD graphics, like Quick Sync, without needing multiple monitors. However, using both of those together requires third-party software from LucidLogix – which isn’t ideal, as it means depending on yet another layer of complication in order to access all the features of the hardware. Quick Sync in particular is also only supported by a few video transcoding programs, so unless you use software that is designed to work with it then there would be no need for Z68 over P67."

Try something like ASRock P67 Extreme 4 if you want to run multiple graphics cards in SLI/Xfire.

Try ASRock Fatal1ty P67 or ASRock P67 PRO3 if you only plan on running a single card (like myself).

Blake:

Thanks for the info man. I had no idea that it was just those differences. I read the article you linked and I am going to go with the ASRock P67 Extreme 4 you mentioned. I had looked at that board but some ppl on Tom's Hardware forum pointed me to the Z68 boards. For what I want the P67 will work great. I am going to go with a Gen 3 board because they seem to be better and the newer tech.

Thanks again for looking out and saving me $$$.

Pretty sure Z68 also does SSD caching, in case you have an SSD (or plan to get one)

#5193887 Xaanix Joz wrote:

Pretty sure Z68 also does SSD caching, in case you have an SSD (or plan to get one)

To my knowledge the only aid of the SSD caching is it allows you to load some of your most used programs fast, as if there where running off a SSD. Since I will have an SSD with my OS on it and what ever main games I am playing I don't see the need for it. Or is there something else. I also read where the N100 chip that is suppose to help run graphics better, only helps in very certain situations. On a whole since it adds a second level it actually limits processing.

But I am looking at not going Crossfire with my 6850 as I am going to sell it to my brother and pick this up.
SAPPHIRE 100312-3SR Radeon HD 6950 Dirt3 Edition 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16

If I am correct I can unlock this to a 6970. Or at teh least I can unlock the higher Stream Processors and then overclock it.