What components to use for my new PC? Help!

[Yukster]

I tentatively chose the below components for my new PC upgrade (I have an ATX case and a PSU). But my knowledge is quite limited and I would appreciate your candid feedback, particularly re my choice on CPU and Mobo.

Intel Corei7 920 D0 SLBEJ Bloomfield 45nm, 2.66 GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 20x Ratio, 130W, Retail £163.17 £191.72

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, Intel X58, S1366, SLi/Xfire PCI-E 2.0, DDR3 2200/1333, SATA 6Gb/s, RAID, ATX £129.17 £151.77

4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, DHX, 1.5V £101.98 £119.83

60GB OCZ Technology, Vertex SSD, MLC-Flash, 2.5", 1 x SATA 3Gb/s, Read 230MB/s, Write 135MB/s £129.60 £152.28

Titan Fenrir TTC-NK85TZ 120mm PWM 17dBA+ "HDT" CPU Cooler (775/1156/1366/K8/AM2/AM3) £24.98 £29.35

1.5TB Samsung HD154UI Spinpoint F2 DT EcoGreen, SATA 3Gb/s, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ £62.97 £73.99

 

[Lmeow]

Get the Intel Core™ i7 930 D0 2.8GHz for nearly the same price (they're meant to replace the Core i7 920s, and thus be priced equally), and get a triple channel 3x2GB 6GB in total, that's how Core i7 900s roll, and instead a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB. Typically any computer hardware which is 'Eco' or 'green', whether it be graphics cards or hard drives, tend to perform slower than their non-environmentally friendly counterparts.

 

[ammhardware]

Yes, I'd definitely get a Core i7 930. They are better than the 920 and don't cost a lot more. The Motherboard looks like a fine choice. What do you plan to use the machine for? You may want faster memory.

 

[Yukster]

Get the Intel Core™ i7 930 D0 2.8GHz for nearly the same price (they're meant to replace the Core i7 920s, and thus be priced equally), and get a triple channel 3x2GB 6GB in total, that's how Core i7 900s roll, and instead a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB. Typically any computer hardware which is 'Eco' or 'green', whether it be graphics cards or hard drives, tend to perform slower than their non-environmentally friendly counterparts.

Thanks a million for your tips

I changed the CPU to the i7 930. Can I ask what is the significance of the CPU's core? I've seen CPUs with different core names but I have no idea what the difference is and whether the Bloomfield core is a good choice

I changed the memory to 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.65V. Is that what you had in mind? I went for the 1600MHz edition because the 1800MHz was about double the price. Is that sensible?

The Samsung HDD is for storage and will be fitted in my Synology NAS box. The PC itself will run on a 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12

 

[Yukster]

Yes, I'd definitely get a Core i7 930. They are better than the 920 and don't cost a lot more. The Motherboard looks like a fine choice. What do you plan to use the machine for? You may want faster memory.

Thanks for your reply. I plan to use this PC for video editing, music ripping, word processing internet surfing etc. Am I going overboard my getting such fancy hardware?

 

[amdfangirl]

Yes, choosing 1600mhz RAM is much better. The extra 200mhz is superfical...

 

[ammhardware]

Thanks for your reply. I plan to use this PC for video editing, music ripping, word processing internet surfing etc. Am I going overboard my getting such fancy hardware?

No, I think your choices look fine. I was only thinking that if you were going to be playing a lot of games you would want faster and/or more memory. But for your uses it looks like a fine system...

 

[amdfangirl]

If it's not so serious you could base the computer off AMD so it'll be cheaper. Athlon II X4?

 

[Yukster]

Thank you all for your responses! Does anybody know what the different core names mean. The CPU on my list has a Bloomfield core but I dont know what it means and whether that's the best one?

 

[ammhardware]

Thank you all for your responses! Does anybody know what the different core names mean. The CPU on my list has a Bloomfield core but I dont know what it means and whether that's the best one?

I wondered the same myself, but I think the names are just for reference. Perhaps a "nicer" way to refer to them, I'm not quite sure.

 

[amdfangirl]

It's like a codename, nothing more.

 

[Yukster]

The i7 930 (130w) clearly got the vote over the i7 920. I did some further research and i came across the i7 860 (95w) which is apparently newer and cooler! the 930 and the 860 re both similarly priced. So which one shall I get?

 

[ammhardware]

I don't personally know a lot about the 860. Here is a comparison of the two. http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=41316,41447,

 

[Haserath]

The 860 is a "mainstream" version of the core i7 900 series. The 860 still has 4 cores+HT but it is on a different socket(socket 1156). If you plan on a CrossfireX or SLI setup the 860 will bottleneck the cards because it has less pci-e lanes than the 930(16 Pci-e 2.0 lanes compared to 36 for the 900 series). Memory bandwidth is also less since it has a dual memory controller compared to triple channel for the 930.

The 860 would be slightly cheaper and still give you everything you would need, unless you wanted to play games with 2 cards. The memory bandwidth shouldn't really affect the processing speed.

 

[amdfangirl]

I'd get the i7 860, it's almost the same but it's cheaper.