New Build indecisive about what CPU

[giovanni86]

I have a new build and I'm a bit torn into what CPU i should get. I currently have the QX6850 and from my eyes it seems i need a fresh set of wheels. The reason this is a bit tough is that i could get a 3960X intels top of the line cpu for around $300 USD, would take a few hurdles for me to possibly get it but i could get it at that price brand new. That and of course there's the new IB intel recently released which i could get on my own which currently I'm looking at the 3770K or the 3570K. Or i could just go with the old 2500K which is of course older but Tom's always has it as a great processor. I'm torn between which one to get, i have a few ASUS motherboards lined up and thats because i want the SSD caching. Besides the CPU's i was torn if putting two 3TB harddrives in a raid array was a good or bad idea with 1 SSD working as the cache?

Graphic wise i will have 1 580 possibly getting another soon to SLI if not later down the road will wait for the 700 series and SLI those, i will once this build is done with move from a 22inch screen to 27inch so i really want my games to scream Maxed out.

I really want more then 16GB's of memory, although as many will say its pointless but memory is soo cheap these days i don't see why not to get 32GB's yet if i don't build with any of the SB-E processors most of the MB's are limited to a 32GB cap which i've heard is bad to fill the slots of all the memory slots especially if your overclocking and i do plan on overclocking the machine once i get it up and running and it doesn't matter if its SB or SB-E or IB i will OC it. I just wanted some opinions on what route i should take. So far the purchases I've made that i can't return which i have in my posses is as follows.

Antec DF-85 Case
Cooler master 1200 Watt Gold PSU
64GB Samsung 830 Series SSD
Seagate 3TB HDD - Looking to buy 1 more for Raid possibly.
Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional
Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate
Keyboard and mouse.

Any advice opinions i would greatly appreciate, Thanks

 

[s3anister]

First off, if all you will be doing is gaming then there is no reason to buy anything other than a 3570K. Games don't utilize more than four cores and Hyper-Threading (HT) does almost nothing positive for your frame rate in any game.

As for SSD caching, it's a joke. It would be very useful on older machines but it is very useless for a new machine. Now the reason I say this is that ideally you want to have your Operating System (OS) and your select few (or all if you get a large SSD) games on it and then use your traditional HDDs as large space storage for movies, music, pictures, etc. as using any rotational media as the main image for your OS will give unsatisfactory performance compared to just using the SSD by itself.
^TL;DR: For your setup use the Samsung 830 SSD as your OS boot drive and setup your HDDs in the RAID setup of your choice (I'd go with RAID 1) to install your games on and to store data that won't fit on your SSD.

As for RAM, 8GB (2x4GB) is fine, 16GB (2x8GB) is ideal, and 32GB (4x8GB) is alright but mostly unnecessary unless you're running a server or want to use part of your memory like a RAM disk. If you overclock then you absolutely do not want to populate all four memory banks on your motherboard as you will not be able to reach as high of a stable memory overclock than if you only populated two slots in a dual channel motherboard (unless of course you're using an X79 motherboard which utilized a quad channel motherboard, but I digress).

Finally, as for your graphics card... The 580 isn't a bad card by any means but it uses a massive amount of power compared to the AMD 7870 or 7950 which perform similar or better at a much lower power draw. If you don't like AMD buy the GTX 670. Regardless, something to keep in mind is that all 5xx series nvidia and AMD 6xxx series cards are "end of life" meaning that if you plan to crossfire/SLI at some point in the future it's going to be harder to find the mate to your video card and if you do manage to find a mate it will likely be twice what you paid for your first card.

Hope this gives you some insight.

 

[jasont78]

what is the primary use for your compu if its gaming you just wasting money for the sake of it your better off putting your money into the gpu and if your gonna get 32 gb of ram and only using a ssd a cache which i think is a waste you could set up the 16gb or so of ram, use as a ram drive as a cache drive and ditch the ssd,it will be much faster than a ssd as cache only, but it would be much better to have a system drive on ssd all the same. but hey some people have too much money and if i did i guess i would get the best of the best but i would definately have a ssd for my system drive and games, storage doesnt need mass cache

 

[GamingRigga]

Don't bother looking at the old 2500K unless you can get it significantly cheaper than a 3570K as the 3570K is just the Ivy Bridge's version of the 2500K. With little price difference you get the 22nm processor with the newest intel architecture and 0.1GHz (i5 2500k goes up to 3.7GHz on Turbo and the 3570k goes up to 3.8GHz) clock speed difference. The 3570k also performs closer to the i7 range than the 2500k.

As for an SSD, i'm not that knowledgeable so I wont say anything for that.

Graphics wise, the nVidia GTX 580 performs well and should be able to play games at 1080p maxed with reasonable FPS and if you upgrade to SLI you should get reasonable FPS on 2560x1600 screens aswell depending on your monitor. You could wait for a new line of nVidia GPUs but they are quite expensive so if your motherboard can, you could switch to AMD and get a 6850 then go crossfire which would be a lot cheaper and still perform well.

As for RAM, I personally am going to wait for the new speeds of RAM to come out (2133MHz and onwards) then build off of that. The Ivy Bridge processors can handle quad-channel DDR3 RAM at high-speeds. The new high speed ram is just around the corner so if you wait, and it will cost you a bit aswell, you can go one up from the 1866MHz.

Everything else looks good. A 1200W PSU could be overkill depending on the choices you make but at least you will be sure you have enough power for upgrades. Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate is good as it will take advantage of the mass amount of RAM you choose and the case will provide good airflow with options to add more fans if you wanted.

Hope I helped

GamingRigga!

 

[Avaruz]

The 3570K with a bit of overclocking magic is more than enough for games.

16GB memory is way over the top as far as games go.

Is it safe to assume that your 27" monitor runs at a 2560x1440 resolution?
If you want your games to scream maxed out, a single GTX 580 will disappoint you greatly.

 

[jasont78]

Don't bother looking at the old 2500K unless you can get it significantly cheaper than a 3570K as the 3570K is just the Ivy Bridge's version of the 2500K. With little price difference you get the 22nm processor with the newest intel architecture and 0.1GHz (i5 2500k goes up to 3.7GHz on Turbo and the 3570k goes up to 3.8GHz) clock speed difference. The 3570k also performs closer to the i7 range than the 2500k.

As for an SSD, i'm not that knowledgeable so I wont say anything for that.

Graphics wise, the nVidia GTX 580 performs well and should be able to play games at 1080p maxed with reasonable FPS and if you upgrade to SLI you should get reasonable FPS on 2560x1600 screens aswell depending on your monitor. You could wait for a new line of nVidia GPUs but they are quite expensive so if your motherboard can, you could switch to AMD and get a 6850 then go crossfire which would be a lot cheaper and still perform well.

As for RAM, I personally am going to wait for the new speeds of RAM to come out (2133MHz and onwards) then build off of that. The Ivy Bridge processors can handle quad-channel DDR3 RAM at high-speeds. The new high speed ram is just around the corner so if you wait, and it will cost you a bit aswell, you can go one up from the 1866MHz.

Everything else looks good. A 1200W PSU could be overkill depending on the choices you make but at least you will be sure you have enough power for upgrades. Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate is good as it will take advantage of the mass amount of RAM you choose and the case will provide good airflow with options to add more fans if you wanted.

Hope I helped

GamingRigga!

ivy is only dual channel ram, although im assuming ur implying that it can handle running all 4 sockets at once in dual channel, in that case yes you are right and you will probably find the newer speeds of ram will be based on the ddr4 spec so i wouldnt hold out based on that fact, as it is the higher speed you buy the less return you get for your money and most things dont benefit all that much more from the extra bandwith, a good set of ddr3 1600 is good you can push for lower latencies if you want and you dont have to worry about your ram running over its rated mhz now you are leaving the core 2 architecture as your pretty much only bumping up the multiplier with ivy and sandy, much more than 3 or 4 on the bclock (sorta like the old fsb) and you will run into stability issues.

 

[giovanni86]

Good information, i wasn't entirely sure you could install games on a HDD, if it didn't have the OS on it. Call me stupid but thats entirely new to me. I usually upgrade every 3 years but was hoping to stretch this system to 5 years its probably why I'm very concerned on all fronts. I could of sworn that Toms did a comparison with SSD caching and it proved to be almost as fast as having a SSD but still using a mechanical drive as the main HDD. I could be wrong but i was sold on it after i read that. As for the option with the 3570K, getting the 3770k wouldn't make any difference considering it has more L3 cache and has 8 threads instead of 4? It will in fact improve performance 10 folds over my QX6850 though right? hahah. I just feel weird going to another quad core processor even though it much much newer. Was on the wall with getting another 580 and you are very correct they are at the end of there life, i can't go ATI even if it saved my life. Thanks for all the great replys and information, i do hope to maybe see more from others even though my mind seems to want stick with the 3570K you all seem to agree on that front.. And a FYI its mainly a Gaming PC but i do some programming and video editing on it from time to time.

Also any great MB recommendations that OC amazingly well?

 

[GamingRigga]

ivy is only dual channel ram, although im assuming ur implying that it can handle running all 4 sockets at once in dual channel, in that case yes you are right and you will probably find the newer speeds of ram will be based on the ddr4 spec so i wouldnt hold out based on that fact, as it is the higher speed you buy the less return you get for your money and most things dont benefit all that much more from the extra bandwith, a good set of ddr3 1600 is good you can push for lower latencies if you want and you dont have to worry about your ram running over its rated mhz now you are leaving the core 2 architecture as your pretty much only bumping up the multiplier with ivy and sandy, much more than 3 or 4 on the bclock (sorta like the old fsb) and you will run into stability issues.

Your right about the dual-channel ram, sorry i got that wrong (read it somewhere and just stuck in my head). I thought that it supported quad-channel woops!

 

[s3anister]

Your right about the dual-channel ram, sorry i got that wrong (read it somewhere and just stuck in my head). I thought that it supported quad-channel woops!

X79 Sandy Bridge-E supports quad channel (and eight physical DIMMs) so that's probably where you got confused.