What GB mobo to pick for i5 2500K ?

The Gigabyte P67A UD3 is your best bet for 1 x graphics card or the UD4 for future Crossfire/SLI. I have the UD4 and love it.

DDR3 1600 cas 8 or 9 is best for Sandy Bridge.

570 is a great card.

2500K is perfect for gaming.

You need a good quality 550w power supply for 1 x graphics card. If SLI is in the future you need 750watts.
Corsair, Seasonic, PC Power and Cooling, XFX, Silverstone ,Enermax or Antec are the best power supply companies.

Thanks........

Can I use DDR3 1866MHz with the Gigabyte P67A UD3 B3 and I5 2500 ?

1. 2500K is a great CPU for gaming.
2. Gigabyte P67A-UD4.
3. GTX 570 is a powerful graphics card, right near the top.
4. I would recommend 8GB of 1600 CL9 RAM.
5. I would recommend Thermaltake TPX-575M or Silverstone ST60F-P or SeaSonic SS-560KM.

Yes, you can use the 1866 memory, but it's really a waste of money. 1600 CL9 is Sandy Bridge's sweet spot.

1. Yes, the 2500k offers the best bang for the buck .... the 2600K seems to have a higher OC ceiling tho ... while only 0.1 Ghz apart at stock I am seeing 0.3 differences in most OC's.

2. The overwhelming review favorite is the Asus P8P67 Pro which is a x8 x8 SLI/CF board. The Gigabyte equivalent would be the P67A-UD4. Here's what Anandtech says in his comparison of the two:



Personally, my fav is the Asus WS Revolution w/ x16 x16 GFX card capability and excellent power / temperature features. It's compared with the Gigabyte P67A-UD7 here:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3795/asus_p8p67_ws_rev...

3. The 570 is a great card .... however it is almost equaled by the 560 900MHz version. When ya consider that the 570 costs $345 (you seem to prefer Gigabyte), the Gigabyte 900 Mhz GTX 560 Ti costs just $215 .... and it can easily be OC'sd to 1000Mhz.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

The factory OC'd 560 Ti's perform very close to the 570's. Guru3D uses the following games in their test suite, COD-MW, Bad Company 2, Dirt 2, Far Cry 2, Metro 2033, Dawn of Discovery, Crysis Warhead. Total fps (summing fps in each game) for the various options (single card / SL or CF) are tabulated below:

6850 (371/634)
6950 (479/751)
560 Ti (455/792)
6970 (526/825)
560 Ti - 900 Mhz (495/862)
570 (524/873)
580 (616/953)
6990 (762/903)
590 (881/982)

With the $120 savings, you are more than half way there to adding a 2nd one in SLI.....and, as you can see, twin 900MHz 560's almost catches (11 fps or 98.7% of) twin 570's.....for $240 cheaper !

4. I'd grab DD3-1600, lowest CAS that fits ya budget. A year ago I woulda said do 4 GB only if ya gonna do the swap file and other mods recommended here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,...

But RAM is so cheap right now, it's hard not to just get 8 GB from the getgo ... not worth $40 to pay the shipping and spend time ordering, unpacking and installing again. My fav's:

$90 Cosair CAS 9 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
$100 Mushkin CAS 9 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
$145 CAS 7 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

In time the difference in price between CAS 7 and 9 should drop when CAS 6 arrives but for now, you will have to decide whether the $50 or so is worth the 2% or so performance difference. In a $2k system, that's a 2.5 % increase in system cost.

5. For any single GFX card system, I'd recommend a minimum of a 650 watter mainly because going any smaller doesn't save a significant amount of cash. The XFX XXX and Core Edition series are the best buy here w/ 9/5 performance ratings

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=E...

Other choices would be Antec TP New and Corsair TX

If ya thinking perhaps SLI is in your future, for 570's the best alternative is the Antec CP-850. As joinnyguru writes:



But that would need a Antec 1200, DF-85, P193 or P183 case, so the other jonnyguru 10.0 performance rating candidates would be th Antec SG-850, Corsair HX or AX series, XFX Black Edition or Seasonic X series. The XFX model is far cheaper than any of those except the CP-850

$130 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

With twin 560 Ti's, you could drop to the XFX Black 750
$110 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Yo Jack...

Revise your recommendations for Sandy Bridge RAM. It really does need 1.25v/1.35v/1.5v spec RAM, as Intel's warranty is null and void when you use 1.65v RAM, and you really do risk damage to the CPU when running it that high. The useful voltage range is 1.25v-1.6v while still maintaining the warranty.