Motherboard needed for my other parts

[kloud]

CPU: Intel Core i7 950
GPU: Sapphire FLEX 5770
PSU: Enermax Noisetaker 480W
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD3200 320GB
DVD: Pioneer DVR-110D
Case: Coolermaster Centurion 5
RAM: ?? (4GB)
Motherboard: ??

Hey guys, so those are the parts for my future PC. Please let me know if they are all compatible with each other. Any bottlenecks?
Do I need a new power supply? I bought mine like 4 years ago, but people tell me it's quite good. You guys think it will support the new CPU and GPU I'm getting?

I still need help choosing a good motherboard. I kind of want something better than ASUS because the one that died on me was ASUS.
I don't plan on doing crossfire.
A decent onboard sound card.
A good amount of USB ports.
I think I'll need 6 slots for RAM that supports 4GB each. (planning to eventually upgrade to 24GB in the future)
By the way, what's a good brand for one stick of 4GB DDR3 RAM?

Thanks

 

[mgrzTX]

CPU: Intel Core i7 950
GPU: Sapphire FLEX 5770
PSU: Enermax Noisetaker 480W
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD3200 320GB
DVD: Pioneer DVR-110D
Case: Coolermaster Centurion 5
RAM: ?? (4GB)
Motherboard: ??

Hey guys, so those are the parts for my future PC. Please let me know if they are all compatible with each other. Any bottlenecks?
Do I need a new power supply? I bought mine like 4 years ago, but people tell me it's quite good. You guys think it will support the new CPU and GPU I'm getting?

I still need help choosing a good motherboard. I kind of want something better than ASUS because the one that died on me was ASUS.
I don't plan on doing crossfire.
A decent onboard sound card.
A good amount of USB ports.
I think I'll need 6 slots for RAM that supports 4GB each. (planning to eventually upgrade to 24GB in the future)
By the way, what's a good brand for one stick of 4GB DDR3 RAM?

Thanks

First, Get a new Power Supply. The PSU is the most likely component to fail, and should it fail could have potentially the most catastrophic results, especially from a financial stand point. You can get a PSU for ~ 50$ that should be more than enough for your system, or ~80-90$ should you want the ability to upgrade your GPU. Also, a good new PSU will come with a warranty that should cover any damages caused by the PSU should it fail. If your old PSU fails, which isn't all that unlikely, you're pretty much out of luck. I usually tell people to think of it as purchasing insurance for your PC.

I would reccomend venturing over to the systems forum, creating a new post, and filling this out:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261222-31-build-advice

It'll give people a better idea of how to help!

 

[jonpaul37]

Enermax PSU's are not known to fail, i'm not sure where you get this information from but Enermax PSU's are very nice PSU... That being said, i would go for more wattage on the PSU in case you decide to get a beefier video card in the future.

As for the motherboard, what kind of options are you looking at, do you want USB 3.0? do you want SATA-6? Do you want to be able to crossfire or SLI?

As far as RAM goes, that all depends on what motherboard you get.

 

[MC_K7]

Here's my 2 cents advice:

CPU: i7-950 looks a little bit overkill to me. From the recent benchmarks I've read the i5 series perform in the same realm as the i7. A recent "Recommended-buy" CPU from Tomshardware suggest the i5-750 or 760. If you overclock an i5 you can even get more performance than the Intel i7 extreme edition. An i5-760 costs 100$ less than the i7-950. With the money saved, you can invest on a more powerful graphic solution or SSD storage, it will have a more significant impact on performance. I suggest you read this recent "best CPU for the money" article from Tomshardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i5-760-core-i7-970,2698-6.html

Motherboard: I agree with you, Asus is not what it used to be. I've heard a lot of good things about Gigabyte. So my next board is probably going to be a Gigabyte. One thing to note, depending on the CPU you choose it might affect your motherboard model, i5 and i7-800 series use socket 1156 and i7-900 series use socket 1366.

PSU: 480W should be enough to run your CPU and GPU. However, as someone else pointed out PSU tend to fatigue over time and be less effective, so it might not be 480W anymore. Not to mention higher chances of failure. If you have extra money you could invest in a bigger PSU, something like 600W or more. It might be useful in the future if you plan to upgrade your GPU or other parts, then you won't have to worry about power. However, if you're on a tight budget you could keep your current PSU and take the risk. But even though your current Enermax is reliable, you never know, *** happens.

RAM: 4 GB should be enough for most applications and games today, but RAM being very cheap, don't be afraid to go for 6 or 8 GB. One advice too, don't go for super fancy tech NASA-like type of RAM. You won't see much of a performance difference compared with cheap value memory. Same thing with speed, don't need to go over 2000 Mhz, your CPU and FSB can't feed it anyway. The sweet spot seems to be with 1333 and 1600Mhz kits right now, but even so, I don't think you would see much of a difference compared with a 1066Mhz kit. And same thing applies with dual-channel and triple-channel technologies too, you're going to see a 5% performance increase at best. So the thing to remember with RAM is: go cheap and keep it simple! You can see for yourself in the following article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-870-1156,2482-9.html

And by the way, why would you want 24 GB of RAM in your system? Unless you run a very particular application that requests this amount of RAM like for high-end rendering and video editing... but seriously 99% of the people don't need so much RAM. And when comes the day you will need 24 GB to run standard applications and games, you will probably need to replace your whole system anyway. For instance, I have 8 GB in my current rig and I never use more than 3, even when I'm gaming or I have many windows opened.

GPU: You should measure the length of your card to make sure it's gonna fit in your case, you'll see, new video cards are quite big. And like I suggested earlier, if you save money on the CPU and RAM, don't be afraid to invest that money in a bigger card if you plan on gaming. For instance, you'll get a significant performance increase if you go from a Radeon 5770 to a 5830 or 5850. I just got myself a new EVGA GTX-460 1 GB and I bought it because I have a mid-tower case and some other cards wouldn't fit in my case. I'm pretty happy with my 460 so far, it's small, cool, silent and fast. A very good bang for the bucks and currently a recommended buy on Tomshardware.

Hope this helps you!

 

[kloud]

To be honest, I have no idea how to overclock. But if I could, wouldn't it be even faster if I overclocked a 950? I get that you're saying that the i5 can be overclocked to run as fast as the i7. But if I OCed an 950, wouldn't that be better?

For the motherboard, somebody recommended EVGA because of the lifetime warranty. Are you familiar with this brand?

The 5770 I'm getting is already an upgrade for my 7800GT nvdia. So I dont think I have enough money to upgrade further.

For the RAM, what does triple channel mean? 3 sticks of RAM? So should I get 3 sticks of 4GB for triple channel technology?

 

[MC_K7]

Did you read the following article I sent you?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i5-760-core-i7-970,2698-6.html

It is clearly explained why any CPU beyond a Core i5-760 is a waste of money (although in some rare circumstances the i7 can be worth the extra money). And you don't need to overclock it. At stock speed it will perform really great. Overclocking is optional and I was just saying an overclocked i5 can surpass the performance of a $1000 CPU like the Intel extreme edition. I still don't get why you want an i7-950, especially if you say you're on a tight budget.

Motherboard: I don't know about their motherboards but I know EVGA video cards are really great (they're no.1 in the US for nVidia product sales). I currently own an EVGA GTX-460 1 GB and I upgraded from an EVGA 9600 GT. I expect their motherboards to be good too. But as I said before I heard a lot of good things about Gigabyte boards also and a lot of guys are going for Gigabyte these days.

GPU: You have money to waste on a i7-950 but you don't have money to put on a better graphic card??? Not that the 5770 is a bad card, but if you use this PC for gaming you'll get better performance in your games with a i5-760 paired with a 5830 or 5850, compared to a i7-950 with a 5770. And the total cost of your system will be about the same, you save 100$ on the CPU and you invest 100$ more on the GPU. If you don't want to invest in graphic, you could save this 100$ for other parts or just save it for yourself and keep it in your pockets.

I like ATI products and I wanted to get a 5850, but it wouldn't fit in my case, this is why I got the nVidia GTX 460 1 GB because it is smaller. The 460 is supposed to perform like a 5830. By the way if you want this card too go for the 1 GB version, it is about 20% faster than the 768 MB version.

RAM: I think you didn't get what I just said. With RAM: keep it cheap and keep it simple. Triple-channel is not worth it. And if you go with a Core i5 you can only do dual-channel anyways. But don't bother too much with this, single-channel, dual, triple, you won't see much of a performance difference between those anyways. If you are on a tight budget just start with 4 GB of RAM (something like a 2 x 2GB DDR3-1333 kit). 4 GB is enough for most needs today and you can upgrade to 8 GB later along the way.

Once again I have a feeling you didn't take time to read the article I sent you about RAM, it will help you understand:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-870-1156,2482-9.html

Tomshardware also has a lot of other useful articles and reviews to help you understand which parts are the best bang for your bucks today so I suggest you do a little bit of reading it will help you in your research.