PC building and ordering recommendations

[Shadow6]

So my current desktop has finally ground to a halt (the PSU died), and considering most of the components date ‘06/’07, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and build a new system. My budget is $2000 AUD, but obviously I’d love to go under, and I was looking for any suggestions. I'm asking here, in addition to Whirlpool and Overclockers.com.au, just for a bit of diversity of advice.

So far, I've got a pretty good idea of what I want to go with. In addition to the below I have another 22" monitor, a DVD-RW drive and some extra hard drives. The pricelist below is sourced from CentreCom:

• $84.00 - Logitech G110 Gaming Keyboard USB
• $95.00 - Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 7200RPM 32MB SATA 3Gbs
• $96.80 - Microsoft Sidewinder X8 Mouse
• $128.70 - Antec Nine Hundred - Black Ultimate ATX Gaming Case (No PSU)
• $135.30 - Antec TruePower New Series 650W ATX Power Supply
• $159.50 - Corsair DDR3 6GB PC-12800/1600 (3x XMS3 2GB) CMX6GX3M3A1600C9 Ram
• $219.00 - Benq 24" G2420HD BLACK LCD - 5MS / WUXGA 1920x1080 / D-SUB / DVI / HDMI
• $246.00 - Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel Mainboard - 6x DDR3 / 6x Sata Raid / 1x IDE / Gigabit Lan / LGA 1366
• $338.00 - Intel Core i7-950 / 3.06GHz / 8MB Cache / LGA1366
• $472.00 - Asus ATI EAH5870-2DIS-1GD5-V2 RADEON 5870, 1G, DDR5, PCIE2.1, 2xDVI, HDCP, HDMI, DX11, ATX

This comes to $1974.30, plus an extra $70 or so for shipping (I'm in Tasmania).

So, my questions are as follows:

1) Is it really worth it to buy a 1366 socket CPU, motherboard and corresponding RAM over the 1156? While the price of 1366 and 1156 processors is about the same for similar clockspeeds, I'd save at least $100 on the motherboard and RAM. The only disadvantage I can see in going with the 1156 is that, later on, when my system is feeling the strain of new games again I could slot in another 5870, which I have been led to believe will run much better on the 1366 architecture.

2) Do NVIDIA have a card comparable to the 5870 at the same price point? From what I've read ATI is much better value.

3) Any bottlenecks in the above system that you can think of?

4) For Australian residents: where would you recommend ordering this stuff online? CentreCom seems pretty reasonable, Umart is about $100 cheaper, MSY considerably more so, however I am somewhat wary of ordering from them, especially MSY, from the reports I've heard on other forums.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Mr Bean]

1) Is it really worth it to buy a 1366 socket CPU, motherboard and corresponding RAM over the 1156? While the price of 1366 and 1156 processors is about the same for similar clockspeeds, I'd save at least $100 on the motherboard and RAM. The only disadvantage I can see in going with the 1156 is that, later on, when my system is feeling the strain of new games again I could slot in another 5870, which I have been led to believe will run much better on the 1366 architecture.

Toms Hardware did some tests on this before, the difference is noticeable but only in 2560x1600 with all the eyecandy turned on and AA turned up to max. At those settings but you can see a 4 FPS difference between the x16 and the x4. Not you'll note the x16 and x8 which still are only 1 fps difference. Thing is the PCI express bus is pretty hefty as is. We are still two or three generations where you'll notice the difference between two cards running at x16 each on a 1366 chipset and two cards running at x8 on a 1156 system. Hell even the x4 is rarely slowed down except at the bleeding edge.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci ... 96-17.html

2) Do NVIDIA have a card comparable to the 5870 at the same price point? From what I've read ATI is much better value.

Two Nvidia 460 running paired will be cheaper and faster than a single 5870. In fact beat the pants off faster. As far as single cards go the 5870 is the single card king. Also two 460's will require you upping to at least a 700 watt power supply(Better a 750) (Each 460 can require as much as 320 watts when under heavy load/overclocked, as high as 380 if you get into voltage tweaks or pre-overclocked boards. Of course at idle they sip power right around 89 watts (On some boards) but throw a super graphic intensive game at them and you need that higher power supply.

If you want more preformance now the twin 460's are the best route, long term the 5870s are better

3) Any bottlenecks in the above system that you can think of?

The power supply if you want to toss in that extra 5870 will require at least a 750 watt to supply the juice

[Skgoa]

Ok, first I want you to bear in mind that I am from Europe, so prices may vary by an amount that I don't know.

So my current desktop has finally ground to a halt (the PSU died), and considering most of the components date ‘06/’07, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and build a new system. My budget is $2000 AUD, but obviously I’d love to go under, and I was looking for any suggestions.

In my experience anything above 1200-1500 AUD (if you convert european prices) is simply a waste of money. Yes, you get more power, but imho it doesn't make that much of a difference. Thus in generall, I would advice against buying the best of the best of the best, you can often replace it with something even better one year later at a lower combined price. (gross simplyfication, of course )

I'm asking here, in addition to Whirlpool and Overclockers.com.au, just for a bit of diversity of advice.

So, do you want to overclock? Are you after the highest benchmark ranking?

So far, I've got a pretty good idea of what I want to go with.

I am going to give you my oppinion, but in the end you should buy whatever you want.

1) Is it really worth it to buy a 1366 socket CPU, motherboard and corresponding RAM over the 1156? While the price of 1366 and 1156 processors is about the same for similar clockspeeds, I'd save at least $100 on the motherboard and RAM.

Is there a reason you want to buy intel? Anyways: no, there is not that much of an advantage. Once again, more money will buy more perforfmance, its just such a marginal increase that I wouldn't recommend it.

The only disadvantage I can see in going with the 1156 is that, later on, when my system is feeling the strain of new games again I could slot in another 5870, which I have been led to believe will run much better on the 1366 architecture.

Repeat after me: I will never ever consider adding a second outdated card, unless I am simulating things with CUDA or need to attach more monitors. Its just not worth it, get a 7850 or wathever it will be called then, instead.

2) Do NVIDIA have a card comparable to the 5870 at the same price point? From what I've read ATI is much better value.

Don't buy NVidia at the moment. But you might want to consider wether or not you really need a 5870 at this time. After a quick glance at euro prices, you should be able to save ~150 AUD without sacrificing much power, if you get a 5850 instead.

3) Any bottlenecks in the above system that you can think of?

The hard drive. You want to spend so much money and yet you are willing to wait
minutes for the OS and games to load. edit: what I meant by this is, that imho you should get a medium sized SSD for speed and/or a 2TB Western Digital Cavier Green HDD for mass storage.
Although I don't know if you can call it a bottleneck, you don't have a soundcard in the list. Onboard soundchips aren't good enough in your price bracket. And while we are at it: get a good 5.1 set, it will greatly enhance the experience.


Overall I would say this computer is massively overpowered. You don't need all that computing performance right now - and by the time you need it, you could just get another not so overpowered computer.

[Joviwan]

I can't believe you're wasting $200 on a mouse and keyboard.

Your theoretical build here is really bloated and opulent. Excluding monitor, mouse and keyboard, you're spending $1600 on components. What for?

Bean and Skgoa offer sound advice. You only need a single card. a 5770 or a 5850 will do you just fine. Wait a few weeks for the new ATi's to come out and the prices on them might drop even further.

For $600 USD, I could put together a computer that will run all of today's current games without sweating or stuttering, while leaving plenty of room for upgrades. $150 for a decent monitor and $25 for mouse and keyboard, and that's pretty much exactly one half of what you are spending right now, and I'd put money down that no one would even notice the difference.

[starslayer]

Your theoretical build here is really bloated and opulent. Excluding monitor, mouse and keyboard, you're spending $1600 on components. What for?

If he's a total max settings whore like me, those components will make a difference. If he doesn't care about that (and most modern games still look awesome at medium or whatever, so really this is just one of my idiosyncracies), then he could stand to save a lot of money like you said. For specifics reagrading your build, Shadow6:

-Ditch the 1366. You'll save money on the RAM, mobo, and CPU, and the extra performance from the 1366 won't make a lick of difference to you unless you do a lot of video editing/similar. If you go Intel (AMD is a perfectly viable option again, though), an i5-760 with 4 GB RAM (you do not need 6 or 8 GB RAM yet, so save the money) + ASUS mobo would run you around $500 AU, quite a bit cheaper than what you have currently.
-Like Joviwan says, ditch the expensive keyboard and mouse. They're nice, but you can easily live without them, and your gaming experience really won't benefit all that much from it in proportion to the cost.
-With the extra money we've saved (around $350 AU so far), we can go for 460 SLI easily (two 460 1 GB's would run you around $550 off CentreCom). However, like I explained above, if you're not a max settings whore like I am, you can downgrade to a 5850, and go CFX later on. If you are, do the 460 SLI, and make sure the mobo you select is SLI compatible. You will want to get a larger PSU, but not for the reason Bean says; a 650W is perfectly sufficient to run 460 SLI, but it won't be as efficient doing it as a 750W.

Thing is the PCI express bus is pretty hefty as is. We are still two or three generations where you'll notice the difference between two cards running at x16 each on a 1366 chipset and two cards running at x8 on a 1156 system. Hell even the x4 is rarely slowed down except at the bleeding edge.

The exact opposite is true. The PCI bus bandwidth is tiny compared to the bandwidth present on the card itself, so modern video cards are designed to communicate over the PCI bus as little as possible (there's a reason they include SLI/CFX bridges, after all). Since the cards basically don't use the bus, limiting the bus bandiwdth does nothing, except at very high resolutions like 2560x1600 or 5760x1200, where the card actually has to use the entire bus.

[Starglider]

I keep saying this, but DO NOT BUY A GRAPHICS CARD IN THE NEXT MONTH. The AMD 6xxx series will be out very shortly (67x0 this month, 68x0 in November, 69x0 supposedly in December). Leaked benchmarks strongly suggest that they will trounce the Nvidia equivalents at each price point, unsurprisingly since they're a design generation ahead. If you absolutely must have Nvidia for some bizarre reason, note this should also prompt even deeper price cuts in the Nvidia line-up (since they're desperate not to lose more market share).

The PCI bus bandwidth is tiny compared to the bandwidth present on the card itself, so modern video cards are designed to communicate over the PCI bus as little as possible (there's a reason they include SLI/CFX bridges, after all).

The performance difference between running a graphics card on PCIe x16 vs PCIe x8 is limited, usually less than 10%. Bus bandwidth really only comes into play when you travel around an environment very fast and have to page textures.

I can't believe you're wasting $200 on a mouse and keyboard.

Absolutely worth it if you (a) like those peripherals, (b) use them very heavily and (c) they will last a while. Given a $2000 budget, the comfort factor here is worth a lot more than the extra $150 of components that getting shitty keyboard/mice would buy you. In fact I would consider spending more of the budget on a nice monitor, for better colour rendition / contrast / refresh rate. You'll probably keep it longer than the video card.

In my experience anything above 1200-1500 AUD (if you convert european prices) is simply a waste of money. Yes, you get more power, but imho it doesn't make that much of a difference.

Driving a 30" monitor does take about twice as much GPU power as 1080p, i.e. it actually justifies a 5970 / GTX 480. Personally, I love my 30" monitor, even though it's currently driven by my laptop and useless for gaming (new PC still under construction). I haven't tried Eyefinity yet, but it does look neat and 3 x 24" monitors again takes a 5970 or 2 x GTX 470 in SLI to drive. It's a genuine improvement in the gaming experience, though I'd spend the money on a decent home cinema setup first (if you're still using crappy PC speakers).

Of course the ideal setup is Eyefinity 5 x 30" monitors in portrait mode, for which even four overclocked 5870s in Crossfire is just not enough (for high graphics settings)... and that's before you start talking about 120 Hz 3D

The people saying 'oh you must not spend more than $500 on a computer' are presumably the same people who buy Skoda Fabias and Honda Civics. Yes, if you have no interest in hardware and want a utilitarian box that will deliver mediocre-but-acceptable performance for the minimum possible price, they are making sense. So I suppose you should ask yourself, 'Am I a computer enthusiast who enjoys having a cool computer, or do I not really care and am hence just wasting money?'

[Shadow6]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

So, would it be fair to say that the consensus is to drop the 1366 in favour of, say, an i5-750 or better, and couple it with 4GB RAM and an ASUS or Gigabyte board? I know its better value for money, but what does that do performance wise in the 'real' world of gaming as opposed to benchmarks? Furthermore, I'll hold off on the graphics card (and used my 8800 GTS for the moment) until the 6XXX ATI cards come out and I either go with one of them or take advantage of the drop in price of the 58XX series.

Regarding Starglider and starslayer's points, yes, I do want a system that will play most current and near future (hopefully til the end of 2011) games on max (or at the very least high) settings with smooth framerates at 1920 x 1200 resolution, with AA and AF. I also think that its worthwhile buying an expensive mouse (perhaps not the keyboard) - partially for the extra buttons and on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment, but also the ergonomics and (hopefully) better construction (my current optical mouse has something wrong with the sensor; it's just a cheap Acer one.) Yes Starglider, I am the former of the two.

Re: the sound system, I am primarily a multiplayer gamer, and as such I often play games which require me to chat over VOIP/Teamspeak with others, so a headset is the only real option for those games. Re: the SSD: as much as I'd love to get one, my Steam directory alone is pushing 200 GB, not to mention my other games and the OS itself, so it really isn't viable to put them all on one, and as far as I know you can't split up the Steam directory (maybe something ala symbolic links in *nix?) Re: overclocking, my current system is (was) OC'ed, but it ran awfully hot (even worse is I didn't have a case fan and only stock cooling, but it was the only way to keep up with new games) and I'd like to avoid it til I find it sluggish.

Repeat after me: I will never ever consider adding a second outdated card, unless I am simulating things with CUDA or need to attach more monitors. Its just not worth it, get a 7850 or wathever it will be called then, instead.

"I will never ever consider adding a seco..." Why not? I understand that dual cards will draw more power, create more heat and require extra space, but it seems that the trend is two cards from X gen will be cheaper and result in better performance than one from X+1 gen. I'm just curious what your reasoning is here.

Anyway, I think I will go with the 5870 (in Nov/Dec), and with the savings from the 1156 setup, I'll go a 750W PSU, which should provide for future expansion. So what about this updated list?

• Same graphics card (at a later date), peripherals, hard drive, monitor and case
• $148.00 - Antec TruePower New Series 750W ATX Power Supply
• $204.00 - Asus P7P55D-E-PRO Intel Mainboard - 4x DDR3 / 6x Sata Raid / 1x IDE / Gigabit Lan / LGA 1156 (Yes, it does support Crossfire)
• $90.20 - Corsair DDR3 4GB PC-10600/1333 (2x XMS3 2GB) CMV4GX3M2A1333C9 Ram
• $229.00 - Intel Core i5-760 / 2.80GHz / 8MB Cache / LGA1156

That comes out to $1,766.70 AUD. Considering I hope to see a price drop in the ATI range, that should bring it down close to your $1500 AUD mark, while not compromising any of my original performance goals. Any more comments/criticism would be appreciated. So far its looking fairly similar in spec to the Tom's Hardware most recent $1000 system, although I have put in a higher spec graphics card, more HD capacity and obviously a KB/mouse and monitor.

One minor question re: RAM. What exactly am I supposed to be getting by paying $60 more for RAM sticks from the same manufacturer (Corsair) that have the same frequency and latency timings? (I am guessing nothing.)

Thanks again.

[Mr Bean]

One minor question re: RAM. What exactly am I supposed to be getting by paying $60 more for RAM sticks from the same manufacturer (Corsair) that have the same frequency and latency timings? (I am guessing nothing.)

Thanks again.

Check the details closer you might be getting more OC friendly ram with attached heat sinks, ones that little up, or ones that go boop beep. You might also be getting a lifetime warranty or a higher bin item.

Or you might also just be getting ripped off. Check the sticks themselves to see if there's some clue.
Do you have a link to the two items in question?

[starslayer]

So, would it be fair to say that the consensus is to drop the 1366 in favour of, say, an i5-750 or better, and couple it with 4GB RAM and an ASUS or Gigabyte board? I know its better value for money, but what does that do performance wise in the 'real' world of gaming as opposed to benchmarks?

In gaming? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Seriously. Almost all games today are GPU-bound, so as long as the CPU is at least moderately high-end, like an i5-750, you'll be fine.

If you were to buy your system right now, I would say definitely get 460 SLI; I run that and it's awesome. Since you're holding off (for the GPU at least) until the release of the 6000 series, I would advise you to go with one of those when they come out. If AMD follows form, the 6850 will likely be the best value single card, and prices on them won't go down any time soon. Do note that CFX seems to have more trouble than SLI in games; before the 10.8 drivers came out, 460 SLI was able to beat 5870 CFX in several tests by HardOCP.

In addition to Bean's comments on RAM, usually the higher-priced modules have a lower failure rate than the cheaper ones and/or have been tested to run at an OCed spec or whatever. Since you don't want to OC, and OCing RAM does nothing anyway, just get the cheapest compatible stuff. All of your other components look just fine, but Corsair also makes excellent PSUs; you may want to check them out, though they are more expensive than Antec.

[weemadando]

Check all of your prices against StaticIce. Because I be that you'll be able to find better value.

And another Tasmanian? Really? There's too many of us now.

[Starglider]

Do note that CFX seems to have more trouble than SLI in games; before the 10.8 drivers came out, 460 SLI was able to beat 5870 CFX in several tests by HardOCP.

AMD trailed Nvidia on multi-GPU scaling for the last few years, but the 6xx0 series specifically includes 'improved multi-GPU scaling' in the feature list (at least going by the leaked slides). How much of an improvement this entails remains to be seen. It is possible, although IMHO unlikely, that this means a working implementation of Sideport. That would massively improve performance by actually allowing GPUs to share data; all current multi-GPU setups share completed frames (partial or full) only.

[Shadow6]

Check the details closer you might be getting more OC friendly ram with attached heat sinks, ones that little up, or ones that go boop beep. You might also be getting a lifetime warranty or a higher bin item.

Or you might also just be getting ripped off. Check the sticks themselves to see if there's some clue.
Do you have a link to the two items in question?

Yeah, the two I was comparing turned out to have different heat sinks and latency timings (and presumably parts quality as well).

Thanks for the help everyone, I'll probably do some shopping around online and order by Friday. I'll stick with the parts list I've compiled so far, unless I come across something comparable for significantly less.

[Edward Yee]

I keep saying this, but DO NOT BUY A GRAPHICS CARD IN THE NEXT MONTH. The AMD 6xxx series will be out very shortly (67x0 this month, 68x0 in November, 69x0 supposedly in December). Leaked benchmarks strongly suggest that they will trounce the Nvidia equivalents at each price point, unsurprisingly since they're a design generation ahead. If you absolutely must have Nvidia for some bizarre reason, note this should also prompt even deeper price cuts in the Nvidia line-up (since they're desperate not to lose more market share).

Wait you mean the 6000 series isn't rolling out at the same time?? Shit, are they still doing the thing where 67x0s will only be compatible with other 67x0s, vice versa for the 68x0 and 69x0? That sucks. Then again, I was aiming for 57x0 or 58x0 on Black Friday... but the 67x0 is going to debut in like a week or two, right?

Only reason I can think for nVIDIA right now is 3D (Call of Duty: Black Ops' 3D for PC is nVIDIA), otherwise... for some reason though, Computer Power User October 2010 was pushing SLI'd GTX 480s as the bees' knees, the shit, in their "Dream PCs" builds.

[Starglider]

Wait you mean the 6000 series isn't rolling out at the same time?

Of course not, no one does that, it would be a massive strain on the supply chain and would hinder marketing efforts. The 5xxx-series rolled out over three months, the Nvidia 4xx-series has been rolling out for the last six months and still counting (low end cards supposedly out this month).

Shit, are they still doing the thing where 67x0s will only be compatible with other 67x0s, vice versa for the 68x0 and 69x0? That sucks.

I don't know what you're talking about, you can Crossfire 5770s with 5870s if you want, it's just that performance will be very poor because of the dissimilar GPUs (inherently to the coarse-grained way in which multi-GPU currently works). Crossfiring a 5970 with a 5870 or 5850 works fine, because the GPUs on the 5970 are virtually identical to those on 58x0 cards. Crossfire of a 5-series with a 6-series is extremely unlikely because the basic shader architecture is different, meaning that the cards take different shader executables. This is still better than Nvidia who do not allow SLI of different GPU types at all.

Then again, I was aiming for 57x0 or 58x0 on Black Friday... but the 67x0 is going to debut in like a week or two, right?

It is supposed to become available in the last week of October.

Only reason I can think for nVIDIA right now is 3D (Call of Duty: Black Ops' 3D for PC is nVIDIA),

Nvidia's 3D is a proprietary solution. An open 3D standard has been in development (see 3D extensions in HDMI 1.4) and AMD will be supporting this in the next driver release (e.g. proper DirectX quad buffering). Nvidia's solution is to make an closed technology and bribe (a few) developers to use it, as with PhysX.

for some reason though, Computer Power User October 2010 was pushing SLI'd GTX 480s as the bees' knees, the shit, in their "Dream PCs" builds.

That is not unreasonable, it's the highest performing gaming solution you can build without getting into extremely overpriced setups such as crossfire 5970s (which only just beat 480 SLI due to poor quad GPU scaling) or tri-SLI.

[starslayer]

AMD trailed Nvidia on multi-GPU scaling for the last few years, but the 6xx0 series specifically includes 'improved multi-GPU scaling' in the feature list (at least going by the leaked slides). How much of an improvement this entails remains to be seen. It is possible, although IMHO unlikely, that this means a working implementation of Sideport. That would massively improve performance by actually allowing GPUs to share data; all current multi-GPU setups share completed frames (partial or full) only.

I think it was mostly a driver problem on AMD's part. If you go look at HardOCP's tests, before Catalyst 10.8 was released, CFX sucked. Then it miraculously got better when 10.8 came out, so that 5870 CFX was comparable to 480 SLI for the most part (Arma 2 and Metro 2033 were the two games where the Radeons lagged a little, IIRC), and left 460 SLI rightfully in the dust.

If it is a working implementation of Sideport, so much the better.