- Dec 9, 2013
- 59
- 2
- 18,545
Hi everyone,
I'm going to build a new system to replace my six-year old, home-built dual-Opteron workstation. I want to go single-processor this time around, because I no longer need the power I needed with the workstation, but I still want a relatively high-end system. I do a lot of video and photo editing with Adobe Elements and Lightroom (not professionally though) and I play RPG games like Skyrim and Dragon Age, but never FPSs (so nothing that would require bleeding-edge hardware).
All that said, after a lot of research, I believe my CPU choice is clear: i7 Haswell. I am not looking to overclock at all, because what I want more than anything is a stable and reliable system, so my first question is whether there’s a significant performance difference between the 4770 and the 4771. A hundred hertz doesn't sound like much to me, and the only other difference between the two according to is the Turbo numbers, which I don’t really understand. (Is there a good explanation somewhere online? I looked and found some, but understood none.)
For the motherboard, I think an H87-based board would be best, given my needs; I don’t really care about size (though MiniITX won’t do). ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI all seem to have similarly-decent offerings, but I'm having a hard time choosing. Is there anything I should stay away from? “Ultra durable”, “mil spec”.. those are just marketing gimmicks, right?
Memory-wise, since the H87 chipset won’t go higher than DDR3-1600, I guess pretty much any decent 16GB two-stick dual-channel kit will do, right? (I'm thinking two sticks in case I want to upgrade to 32GB in the future, so I don't end up throwing anything out.) I don’t need anything “flashy-looking” (since all this is going into a quiet, windowless Fractal Design case) but again, stability and reliability are most important to me, so recommendations with these in mind would be awesome!
For the video card, I've settled on a 4GB GTX 770: 4GB because Adobe Premiere Elements needs it and because it’s future-proofing the system for gaming (especially Bethesda's offerings), and 770 because the 760 doesn’t have what it takes to really deal with and take advantage of the 4GB I need. Are there any good reasons for choosing one over another, aside from overclocking of course (which I also don't need)? Are there any manufacturers that I should stay away from? (And, any idea why EVGA’s products are SO much more expensive than other manufacturers'?)
Finally, I believe a 650W PSU will do for all this, but please correct me if I'm wrong. (The only other components going into the system will be a SoundBlaster X-Fi sound card and a BluRay burner, plus I’ll be connecting a bunch of peripherals like colorimeter, card reader, wireless USB adapter and scanner.)
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and for your reply!
Cheers,
Dany
I'm going to build a new system to replace my six-year old, home-built dual-Opteron workstation. I want to go single-processor this time around, because I no longer need the power I needed with the workstation, but I still want a relatively high-end system. I do a lot of video and photo editing with Adobe Elements and Lightroom (not professionally though) and I play RPG games like Skyrim and Dragon Age, but never FPSs (so nothing that would require bleeding-edge hardware).
All that said, after a lot of research, I believe my CPU choice is clear: i7 Haswell. I am not looking to overclock at all, because what I want more than anything is a stable and reliable system, so my first question is whether there’s a significant performance difference between the 4770 and the 4771. A hundred hertz doesn't sound like much to me, and the only other difference between the two according to is the Turbo numbers, which I don’t really understand. (Is there a good explanation somewhere online? I looked and found some, but understood none.)
For the motherboard, I think an H87-based board would be best, given my needs; I don’t really care about size (though MiniITX won’t do). ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI all seem to have similarly-decent offerings, but I'm having a hard time choosing. Is there anything I should stay away from? “Ultra durable”, “mil spec”.. those are just marketing gimmicks, right?
Memory-wise, since the H87 chipset won’t go higher than DDR3-1600, I guess pretty much any decent 16GB two-stick dual-channel kit will do, right? (I'm thinking two sticks in case I want to upgrade to 32GB in the future, so I don't end up throwing anything out.) I don’t need anything “flashy-looking” (since all this is going into a quiet, windowless Fractal Design case) but again, stability and reliability are most important to me, so recommendations with these in mind would be awesome!
For the video card, I've settled on a 4GB GTX 770: 4GB because Adobe Premiere Elements needs it and because it’s future-proofing the system for gaming (especially Bethesda's offerings), and 770 because the 760 doesn’t have what it takes to really deal with and take advantage of the 4GB I need. Are there any good reasons for choosing one over another, aside from overclocking of course (which I also don't need)? Are there any manufacturers that I should stay away from? (And, any idea why EVGA’s products are SO much more expensive than other manufacturers'?)
Finally, I believe a 650W PSU will do for all this, but please correct me if I'm wrong. (The only other components going into the system will be a SoundBlaster X-Fi sound card and a BluRay burner, plus I’ll be connecting a bunch of peripherals like colorimeter, card reader, wireless USB adapter and scanner.)
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and for your reply!
Cheers,
Dany
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