I need help

[noluckk]

I am wanting to build a second PC desktop for multitasking and on line searching No gaming What motherboard do I use? I am leaning towards 1156 because of it being cheaper Can I still run i7 920 and would 1366 be overkill

 

[GhislainG]

You can't install a socket 1366 CPU in a socket 1156 motherboard. An i5-750 exceeds your requirements.

 

[noluckk]

Your answer was a bit confusing So I would be better off going with 1156 i5 750?

 

[GhislainG]

You asked if you could use an i7-920 on a socket 1156 motherboard and the answer is no. You have to install a CPU that matches the socket.

What are your requirements for multitasking? Do you need a discrete video card or would on-board video be enough? In other words, do you need an office PC or a very powerful PC for video editing, etc.?

 

[noluckk]

I will tell you what I do I burn alot of movies,download alot of music and search the internet. But not be slowed down if I want to play a game every now and then or watch a high def movie.

 

[noluckk]

This is everything I am considering. A-Power 900-Watt 20+4-pin ATX Power Supply
Serial ATA II (SATA 300) Western Digital WD10EADS One Terabyte 1TB 7200RPM 32MB Power-Saving Hard Drive OEM
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Digital Theater Systems (DTS), Dolby Digital EX, ASIO 2.0, THX, EAX ADVANCED HD 7.1 Channel Surround 24-bit PCI Sound Card, CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory, ASRock P55 Deluxe LGA1156/ Intel P55/ DDR3/ Quad CrossFireX & 3-way SLI/ A&2GbE/ ATX Motherboard, i5-750 2.66GHz 8MB LGA1156 CPU, Radeon HD 4670 1GB DDR3 750MHz PCI-E 2.0 Video Card - HD-467X-DDF2

 

[saint19]

+1 to ghislaing. I think that with a Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2 and a 4770 is enough for your requirements.

 

[aford10]

The i5 doesn't have hyperthreading ability, so it won't be able to multitask well. The i7 860 has an 1156 socket and will run on that motherboard. You can use dual channel memory instead of the triple channel memory on the 1366 socket motherboards. It will save you some $$, but not much.

I've got a high end dual core (E8500), and I do all those things you've listed. There lag isn't terrible, but it's noticeable. It all depends on your tolerance.

Another option, is to go AMD and get their better priced quad core or triple core CPUs.

 

[GhislainG]

This is everything I am considering. A-Power 900-Watt 20+4-pin ATX Power Supply
Serial ATA II (SATA 300) Western Digital WD10EADS One Terabyte 1TB 7200RPM 32MB Power-Saving Hard Drive OEM
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Digital Theater Systems (DTS), Dolby Digital EX, ASIO 2.0, THX, EAX ADVANCED HD 7.1 Channel Surround 24-bit PCI Sound Card, CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory, ASRock P55 Deluxe LGA1156/ Intel P55/ DDR3/ Quad CrossFireX & 3-way SLI/ A&2GbE/ ATX Motherboard, i5-750 2.66GHz 8MB LGA1156 CPU, Radeon HD 4670 1GB DDR3 750MHz PCI-E 2.0 Video Card - HD-467X-DDF2

It's a decent selection that's more powerful than you need, unless you plan on gaming. I would recommend an energy efficient 600W PSU instead of the A-Power 900-Watt PSU. What's the part number of the CORSAIR XMS3? The Radeon 4670 is very weak if you plan on running current games. You probably already know that there are better P55 motherboards, but your choice is good.

 

[GhislainG]

The i5 doesn't have hyperthreading ability, so it won't be able to multitask well. The i7 860 has an 1156 socket and will run on that motherboard. You can use dual channel memory instead of the triple channel memory on the 1366 socket motherboards. It will save you some $$, but not much.

I've got a high end dual core (E8500), and I do all those things you've listed. There lag isn't terrible, but it's noticeable. It all depends on your tolerance.

Another option, is to go AMD and get their better priced quad core or triple core CPUs.

An i5-750 is a quad-core. If it isn't appropriate for multitasking, then neither are the AMD CPUs and Intel Core 2 Quads that don't have hyperthreading. Your E8600 is a dual-core without hyperthreading.

 

[noluckk]

To answer your corsair question- Desktop Memory Model CMX4GX3M2A1600C8 - Retail, ok Hyperthreading is it important I get an i5 that does that or quad core better or the same,worse?

 

[aford10]

An i5-750 is a quad-core. If it isn't appropriate for multitasking, then neither are the AMD CPUs and Intel Core 2 Quads that don't have hyperthreading. Your E8600 is a dual-core without hyperthreading.

Yes, I realize the i5 is a quad core. I simply was making a comparison to the i7 920 that the OP mentioned. I said I have an e8500, which you're right, doesn't have hyperthreading. I was using it to compare to Saint's recommendations for the Intel or AMD dual core CPUs.

 

[aford10]

To answer your corsair question- Desktop Memory Model CMX4GX3M2A1600C8 - Retail, ok Hyperthreading is it important I get an i5 that does that or quad core better or the same,worse?

There isn't an i5 with hyperthreading. That's one of the reasons the i7 860 and 920 are more expensive.

 

[GhislainG]

That memory kit isn't the best, but it will work. G.SKILL Ripjaws http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277 is a good choice.

You don't need hyperthreading (which helps a bit, but it isn't like adding 4 cores). Just review a few benchmarks if you need to convince yourself. If you really want hyperthreading, then get an i7-860: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3641

 

[GhislainG]

There isn't an i5 with hyperthreading. That's one of the reasons the i7 860 and 920 are more expensive.

I just wanted to point out that if an i5-750 isn't suitable for multitasking, then neither are AMD CPUs.

 

[aford10]

I just wanted to point out that if an i5-750 isn't suitable for multitasking, then neither are AMD CPUs.

That's a good assessment of performance. Though, the point of throwing the AMD CPUs out there, is because of the price difference.

 

[noluckk]

I appreciate all of you helping me with my delima. Bottom line is that motherboard and CPU combo going to work best for what I am doing and if not please give me some ideas.

 

[GhislainG]

Any Quad core should meet your requirements (I basically do what you do with an E8400 or a Q6600). What's your budget and how many CPU intensive concurrent tasks will you run? If need be, you can assemble a very powerful system with Xeon processors, up to 192GB of memory, lots of SSDs in RAID, etc. First you need to determine how much you want to spend. If your budget is unlimited, then we can come up with extremely fast systems.

 

[aford10]

Here's a decent combo with the i5 750. $350
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.315596

Here's a decent combo with the i7 860. $372
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.322629
For what you are looking to do, I would pick ^ this one. The downside of this combo, is the motherboard. It's a decent board, but it lacks the 2nd PCIe x16 slot. But since you aren't a big gammer, you probably won't need it anyway. So you can save some $$ there.

 

[noluckk]

My budget is about 1200 U.S.

 

[noluckk]

I run burning programs,download some pretty big files at times I do some office stuff word,excel and search the internet. Usually all at the same time lol.
I have a 755 socket with an I4 3.2ghz, 3gigs of ram and a 200 gig hard drive ati raedon 5600. i built this one 5 year ago

 

[GhislainG]

No matter how fast your system is, downloads from the Internet won't be faster. How many burning tasks are running at the same time? Those can slowdown a system simply because the hard disk is busy, making the system less responsive. Using more than one disk can help with that issue by making sure that the files to burn are not on the boot/applications disk. Using more than one partition on a large hard disk doesn't help at all since it still is the same hard disk.

I can do everything that you do with an E8400 (one burning task at a time since I only have one burner, but the files to burn normally are on the server or on the second hard disk). An i5-750 is at least 6-8 times faster than your P4 3.2 (which probably is a 540 or a 541). Your hard drive also is slower than new large drives like the Samsung F3 (which is faster than the WD10EADS that you selected). Using two 500GB hard disks (one for the OS and applications) and one for the large downloads, files to burn, etc. would provide better performance. You should be more worried about disk I/O that CPU performance. A system can feel sluggish with 5% CPU utilization.

 

[noluckk]

So what your saying is to get 2 hard drives instead of one and that would be better for disk I/O.

 

[GhislainG]

That's correct. As far as I'm concerned, you haven't determined why your current system isn't as responsive as you'd like it to be. At a minimum you need to understand where the bottleneck is; otherwise you might build a new system and be unimpressed by it's performance.

As an example, if a system's CPU utilization is 60% and we upgrade it to one that's 8 times faster, the CPU utilization will drop dramatically, but if disk I/O is the bottleneck and we keep the same disk subsystem, then performance gains will be minimal.

 

[noluckk]

Got ya, now I know waht to buy and look for I really appreciate all your input and time spent on me.