New Setup

[Ritz61190]

I plan on getting a new setup.

I currently have:
Core 2 Duo E6750
Gigabyte P35-S3
Gigabyte GTX260
Zalman 1000HP
Zalman CNPS7000C-ALCU

I want to upgrade my motherboard, CPU and RAM, but are torn between 2 decisions.

1.
Intel i7 870
Gigabyte P55A-UD5
4G DDR3 2200 G.Skill PI
(with 32 bit OS)

Total: $1'133

2.
Intel i7 950
Gigabyte EX58-UD5
6GB DDR3 2000 G.Skill Trident
(with 32 bit OS)

Total: $1'243

Any other choices you guys may have would be appreciated

 

[a4mula]

Is there any particular reason you've gone out of your way to add 400$ to these builds?

Like extreme overclocking using l2n/dice?

Otherwise you've picked two insanely overpriced cpu's that will be matched by the 920 and 860 respectively after all 4 reach their 4ghz (typical) thermal limits.

 

[Ritz61190]

I'm mainly using the PC to play games. Maybe a bit of 3D modeling.
That's pretty much it

 

[a4mula]

i7-920 or i7-860, take your pick. Either will do what you're expecting the 870/950 to do.

Even if you're adverse to overclocking, current software based safe overclocks (ships with motherboard) will get it to 870/950 speeds w/o having to adjust any bios settings.

Your RAM is overkill also. Unless you plan on overclocking the X58 chipset has a maximum supported memory speed of 1033. 1333 for the P55.

G.Skill 2x2gb 8-8-8-24 kit for 96.99 for 1156
G.Skill 3x2gb 8-8-8-24 kit for 149.99 for 1366

No such 1156 motherboard as the one you've listed. Gigabytes SATA/USB III boards are P55a - ud3, ud3p, ud4p, ud6. And they all sacrifice any crossfire support for that capability. Look into the Asus p7p55d-e pro.

Meanwhile your 1366 board is a dated design that's been replaced by the x58a-ud5. It's a decent board. X58 doesn't have the pcie limits that p55 does so you don't lose the ability to crossfire/sli in order to gain usb/sata III.

 

[Ritz61190]

I checked the Gigabyte website and I found the following:

GA-P55A-UD5 which supports to DDR3 2600+/2200/2000...

Here is the catalogue from the store where I'll be buying all my parts from.
All prices are $AU

 

[Ritz61190]

Best answer selected by Ritz61190.