[Solved] AMD 1095T build...What to upgrade?

Hello, I recently built a new computer and was able to pickup some really good deals from NCIX, newegg, and some local stores (I live in Canada) so I spent quite a bit less than what I had planned and wondered if it would be worth it to make some additional purchases. I mostly use my computer to play games, watch movies, and do some video editing.

Here is my current rig.

-CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1095T
-MOBO: Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0
-RAM: 4Gb G.Skill Ripjaw DDR3 1333Mhz 7-7-7-21
-HDDs: x2 1Tb WD Caviar Black 7200rpm 64mb cache (I got 2 of these hoping to setup a raid 0 and but these models cannot be set in an array due to the firmware)
-GPU: Sapphire Vapor-x 5770
-PSU: Seasonic MD12 850w
-Cooler/Heatsink: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus - Arctic Silver 5
-Case: CoolerMaster Haf 922 Case
-Case Fans: x4 GELID Solutions 120mm Gamer Fan WING (2 side, 1 on the back of my cpu heatsink for a push/pull, 1 bottom, and I have a CoolerMaster 120mm R4 Green twist tied onto my HD rack)
-Optical Drives: LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS424-98 LightScribe Support
-Monitor: Acer T230Hbmidh Black 23" 2ms(GTG) HDMI (1920x1080)
-Keyboard: Logitech G15 104 Normal Keys 29 Function Keys USB Wired Standard Gaming Keyboard
-Mouse: GIGABYTE GM-M6880 Metal Black USB Wired Laser Gaming Mouse
-Speakers: Some old Dell 5.1 from a long time ago
-OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

Was expecting to spend around $1500 but everything came up to around $1300 after shipping and taxes so I felt I should buy something else.

I'm definitely getting a 4 or 6 channel fan controller because plugging my case fans directly to the PSU gets really loud (I don't want to clip any wires on my case fans) but I'm not sure what model what I should get (Been looking at the Scythe ones).

These are some additional components I've been considering at so far...

-An SSD for OS boot/Most used programs: 60Gb OCZ Agility 2 Sandforce SSD - $200
-More HDDs for raid 0 OS boot/most used programs/games/Storage: 500Gb F3 Spinpoint (x2 raid 0 for OS/Games) - $120
-Another Sapphire Vapor-x 5770 for crossfire: $180-200
-A Blu Ray burner/player
-More Ram
-Buy something for my girlfriend

I'd like some opinions on which fan controller to get, what I should upgrade or if I should make any additional purchases at all and perhaps some guidance on better products than the ones I've been looking at. Also would I be able to crossfire my current GPU with a reference model 5770?

Thank you in advance.

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Message edited by karma831 on 06-03-2010 at 09:14:16 PM

Reply to karma831

All of the ideas you're considering are good ideas although I don't know if I would buy the SSD. The only affordable ones now are MLC and they go bad faster and read slower. Also other than boot and load times unless you are editing a lot of big files quickly it isn't worth the tons of cash it costs to get a good one. More RAM is what I would do. 4GB is ok but 6 or even 8 is what I prefer. 2x 4770s are what TH recomends on their front page for unbeatable performance at the price so 2x 5770s would definitely be a powerful rig, maybe to the point that it is unnecessary. A single 5770 scores 1560 on PassMark G3D which puts it among some of the most powerful GPUs made. A Blu Ray burner/player would be cool but only if you plan on using it. DVD is what most people still use but Blu Ray is much more future looking. Personally I would put the money into RAM (Love the choice of G.Skill btw) I personally think they make the best 8GB kit available. I'd go with this one http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=239 but I don't know how many slots you have available and if you don't want to throw out the memory you already have.

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Reply to metalicaman8

Best answer

if you want your system to boot fast and load things fast then go for SSD, which is what i recently did with my rig and make sure you only put the OS and some important games or programs in it as you won't have that much space for it...i would suggest going with intel SSD x25m 80G, i got this one down below and is a good price.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6820167016

Raid 0 don't really increase that much performance so i would stick with SSD if you are thinking about raid 0 and raid 0 increases your chance with HDD failure b/c if one dies then all your info is divided in two and saved into to drives

second 5770 crossfire would be a good upgrade

blue ray burner/player i agree with metal on this one...only worth it if you will use it.

with ram which is also what i just upgrade...i didn't see much diff in performance...so that is why i went the SSD way which will cut down my boot time and other load speed

buy sth for you girlfriend would be nice too lol as mine was giving my heck for spending some much money and time tweeking my system lol

So my conclusion to this would be SSD or Crossfire

Reply to Jacks_85

For an SSD wait for 5-6 months.

Reply to False_Dmitry_II

^is it b/c the new intel one is coming out?

Reply to Jacks_85

karma831 wrote :

-An SSD for OS boot/Most used programs: 60Gb OCZ Agility 2 Sandforce SSD - $200
-More HDDs for raid 0 OS boot/most used programs/games/Storage: 500Gb F3 Spinpoint (x2 raid 0 for OS/Games) - $120
-Another Sapphire Vapor-x 5770 for crossfire: $180-200
-A Blu Ray burner/player
-More Ram
-Buy something for my girlfriend

We need a pic of your GF in order to decide.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to mosox

metalicaman8 wrote :

All of the ideas you're considering are good ideas although I don't know if I would buy the SSD. The only affordable ones now are MLC and they go bad faster and read slower. Also other than boot and load times unless you are editing a lot of big files quickly it isn't worth the tons of cash it costs to get a good one. More RAM is what I would do. 4GB is ok but 6 or even 8 is what I prefer. 2x 4770s are what TH recomends on their front page for unbeatable performance at the price so 2x 5770s would definitely be a powerful rig, maybe to the point that it is unnecessary. A single 5770 scores 1560 on PassMark G3D which puts it among some of the most powerful GPUs made. A Blu Ray burner/player would be cool but only if you plan on using it. DVD is what most people still use but Blu Ray is much more future looking. Personally I would put the money into RAM (Love the choice of G.Skill btw) I personally think they make the best 8GB kit available. I'd go with this one http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=239 but I don't know how many slots you have available and if you don't want to throw out the memory you already have.

1.A single 5770 is far from the most powerful GPU ever made. In crossfire they perform somewhere around a single 5870.

2. More than 4gb ram won't do much difference for him at this time.

I didn't quite understand why your HDDs cound't be striped? Firmware limitation? For what?
I'd probably go for a second 5770, will do wonders on that res.

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Reply to cobot

mosox wrote :

We need a pic of your GF in order to decide.

Hehe, this might be the winner here, though. $1500 on a computer and nothing for your GF? Better make sure she doeesn't find out.

Reply to cobot

metalicaman8 wrote :

All of the ideas you're considering are good ideas although I don't know if I would buy the SSD. The only affordable ones now are MLC and they go bad faster and read slower. Also other than boot and load times unless you are editing a lot of big files quickly it isn't worth the tons of cash it costs to get a good one. More RAM is what I would do. 4GB is ok but 6 or even 8 is what I prefer. 2x 4770s are what TH recomends on their front page for unbeatable performance at the price so 2x 5770s would definitely be a powerful rig, maybe to the point that it is unnecessary. A single 5770 scores 1560 on PassMark G3D which puts it among some of the most powerful GPUs made. A Blu Ray burner/player would be cool but only if you plan on using it. DVD is what most people still use but Blu Ray is much more future looking. Personally I would put the money into RAM (Love the choice of G.Skill btw) I personally think they make the best 8GB kit available. I'd go with this one http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=239 but I don't know how many slots you have available and if you don't want to throw out the memory you already have.

SSD: MLC's have 10,000 write cycles of 100 GB. If you use your MLC SSD as an OS, and tell your OS to use your other drive as a page file, and the location of temporary internet files it will significantly extend the life of your SSD. Also Intel developed TRIM which manages the SSD more efficiently, elongating it's life even more. If you wrote 100GB to your MLC SSD everyday it would last minimum 7-10 years. Personally I'm ok with that.

Your information on "editing alot of big files" is also wrong. SSDs excell at random reads/writes. When it comes to static/long writes they don't perform much better than 7200 RPM HDDs.

See the article here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/22 for speed comparisons of the SSDs in relation to Raptors and other drives for random read/write.

4 GB is the sweet spot for AMD gaming rigs. 6 GB is useless unless you are in some weird 2x2GB 2x1GB config, and 8 GB is will show less than a 1% performance increase

5770: As said before the 5770 ranks below the top cards of the 4000 series so to say it's one of the most powerful cards made is akin to me saying that I'm one of the tallest people in the world @ 6'4". Sure I'm tall but only by comparison to average(performance)

------------------------------ i5-2500k / H70 / MSI P67-GD80 / Antec 1200 / 8 GB DD3-1600 C9 / 2x40 GB Intel SSDs / 2.25 Misc TB HDDs / amBX Professional Lighting and Sound / Seasonic X750 80+ Gold / Diamond 5970 + Sapphire 5870 2GB DDR5 Eyefinity6 5760x1080
Reply to cmcghee358

The reason for that length of time to wait on SSD's is they should become cheaper/bigger by the end of the year.

Reply to False_Dmitry_II

cobot wrote :

1.A single 5770 is far from the most powerful GPU ever made. In crossfire they perform somewhere around a single 5870.

2. More than 4gb ram won't do much difference for him at this time.

I didn't quite understand why your HDDs cound't be striped? Firmware limitation? For what?
I'd probably go for a second 5770, will do wonders on that res.

Western Digital disabled TLer on their newer Caviar Black drives. Actually they might've disabled it on most of their newer drives that are not raid class.

Here are some links about it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] black-raid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time- [...] r_Recovery
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2579-001098.pdf

Anyways back on topic, I'll wait a bit for an SSD at this time as Dmitry and many others have pointed out that there should be some cheaper/larger ones by the end of the year.

For the RAM I've been told by many that getting more won't really do me much good but I'll consider it for my next upgrade after a SSD.

As many of you have suggested I have decided to get another 5770 for a crossfire because newegg is actually having a promo for the same model as the one I have this week. However, Nobody has yet to answer a few of my questions.

Although I will be getting the same vapor-x 5770 that I have I was just wondering if I wanted to, could I crossfire it with a reference model say xfx, gigabyte, or asus (just curious)? Also could I get some reccommendations on 4 or 6 fan controllers?

Edit: haha I recently bought my gf a black berry so shes not really complaining about much other than the fact that my computer sounds like a turbine engine when shes trying to sleep.

Message edited by karma831 on 06-03-2010 at 09:07:43 PM

Reply to karma831

Oh, you could run it with pretty much any other 5770. If the one you got is faster than stock I bet it would either just run at stock after crossfiring or at least you probably wouldn't get the extra.

I haven't done fan controllers myself so no, I can't answer that one.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to False_Dmitry_II

double check and make sure you have the crossfire connectors with your video cards...if not then you need to get one.

i was just looking into fan controllers...i don't know if you care about looks or not but for me i do so i am going to get the Aerocool touch 2000 which takes up to bays spots but they have a 1000 which takes up 1 but doesn't look as cool.

but scythe seems to have good controllers according to some people...

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to Jacks_85

False_Dmitry_II wrote :

Oh, you could run it with pretty much any other 5770. If the one you got is faster than stock I bet it would either just run at stock after crossfiring or at least you probably wouldn't get the extra.

I haven't done fan controllers myself so no, I can't answer that one.

I see. Thanks for the answer.

Jacks_85 wrote :

double check and make sure you have the crossfire connectors with your video cards...if not then you need to get one.

i was just looking into fan controllers...i don't know if you care about looks or not but for me i do so i am going to get the Aerocool touch 2000 which takes up to bays spots but they have a 1000 which takes up 1 but doesn't look as cool.

but scythe seems to have good controllers according to some people...

Yes I did get a crossfire bridge with my video card (its sitting in my mobo box).

Hmms I think I'll go with something with some knobs as I don't really like idea of touchscreen to adjust my fanspeeds. At the moment I'm leaning towards this
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6811998063
or
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6811998077

Edit: I wish newegg had some lian li ones in stock...

Message edited by karma831 on 06-04-2010 at 05:02:09 AM

Reply to karma831

^links doesn't work...

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to Jacks_85

Jacks_85 wrote :

^links doesn't work...

Wow...I got problems linking things or something. Doesn't seem to work for me
Guess you'll have to look it up in newegg yourself or something =___=

Scythe KS01-BK "KAZE SERVER" Advanced Fan Controller
or
Scythe Kaze Master Pro 5.25 Fan Controller

Message edited by karma831 on 06-04-2010 at 09:42:33 AM

Reply to karma831

i personally lie the looks of the master more...it seems the numbers are easier to read but i have no experience with them

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to Jacks_85

Jacks_85 wrote :

i personally lie the looks of the master more...it seems the numbers are easier to read but i have no experience with them

Yea I decided to get the 4 channel Master ACE because its VFW and is a few bucks less than the Kaze Server.

So what I ended up spending my $200 or so on was...
-$169 SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100283VXL Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
-$33 Scythe KM02-BK 5.25" Bay Fan Controller

Thanks for the advice guys

Reply to karma831

Best answer selected by Karma831.

Reply to karma831

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