Rig that can be upgraded easily in a few years

[crorens]

Hi, Im building a new computer and I want to make one that can be easily upgraded in 2-3 years, so I was thinking of a SLI capable computer with one graphic card and in a few years I buy another card and just plug it in.

So what i need is a CPU, Motherboard and PSU that can handle SLI 470s

I had these in mind

INTEL Core i5 661 3.33GHz --or-- INTEL Core i5 760 2.8GHz
ASROCK P55 Extreme4, iP55 link (just scroll down for specs)
650W, CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX link

Or should i just ignore SLI and put 470 in now and in 2 years replace it with another high end card (ofcourse buying another 470 in the future would be cheaper, so thats why i want to do SLI)


PS. what HDD do you recommend

 

[sadams04]

IMHO the AMD AM3 platform is better suited for a planned upgrade in a few years. Picking up a 3 or 4 core today and upgrading to a 6+ core later will be a piece of cake with an AM3 motherboard. I do like the LGA1156 platform for those i5 processors, but don't see a major upgrade down the road when Intel stops making LGA1156 processors and switches to Socket 1155 and 2011 (Sandy Bridge).

The power supply you have here is fine, however if you are planning a 5+ year investment consider a larger modular unit.

The GTX 470 will treat you well, but the GTX 460 will probably do the same and SLI 460s down the road would be great! Radeon HD 6850's if you go with an AMD build.

What HDD? RevoDrive!!! If money is a concern (always), I have been on a Hitachi kick since reading a long term study showing a VERY low failure rate. Much lower than competitors...
RevoDrive => http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227578&cm_re=revodrive-_-20-227-578-_-Product

 

[mianmars]

You should wait till early Jan next year for new sockets and CPU's to have a better system and long term system.

Better buy a 750w or above PSU for future sli or crossfire while also target Ati 6870 GPU. Target a Samsung F3 1TB HDD and a regular SSD for boot drive. If budget is not a concern then as sadam04 said u should look into Revodrive but i wont suggest it if u r going to only play games on ur system, revodrives are much more suited for video editing etc.

 

[Griffolion]

Yeah you're better off waiting for Sandybridge because the current I series are bound to become redundant after Jan. At least with Sandybridge you'll have an up to date platform for about a year. Not to mention improvements that will come in the CPU's as the platform grows and matures.

 

[alyoshka]

Difficult to say at the moment, 'cos I'm really very amazed at the rate at which technology today is progressing. The movement is too fast to predict what would be there in a year.......
Most probably, they'll have embedded SSDs on the Mobo with optional OSes that will automatically update themselves..... as it is we've heard of them trying to kill the BIOS since the instruction set is outdated....
Faster and more power efficient architecture for the mobo, on the mobo for the optic fiber HDDs..... for all you know the next generation processors maybe pin-less and optical.....
So most probably by the same time next year we'll be talking a different tune.....
They have just released info on Sandy Bridge but are still to release information of the Core i series embedded onto GPUs.... ..... or Sandy Bridge GPUs.....
So by this time next year we might see a whole new generation of computing.
So all in all it's going to be a big move....
For buying a system and assembling it, wait till Jan 2011 or mid Feb 2011.
Either way you'll get a bleak view into the future of whats coming and the prices of current stuff will come down.....

And for an HDD if you don't want to go the PCIe way then you can always try a NanoSSD that fits straight onto the Mobo... I think there is a company that's got a 256Gb version out at the tech thing in Asia this year. Although I doubt it'll beat a PCIe SSD.....

 

[crorens]

thanks alot guys, ill wait till january as you recommended,

So, making a SLI ready machine and buying another card later is more cost effective than replacing the card with a better one (without SLI)in the future?

 

[alyoshka]

Logically what you're asking is one and the same.......the rig is going to be the same right in both cases......
So " Buying another card later....." or " Replacing the card with a better one" is the same......
But you can go in for Hybrid SLI where a slight bump in the models of cards is allowed so you can have a rig right now with a good GPU (SLI Capable) and then later drop another GPU in a little higher one which will go cheap in the future into the rig and still keep it at pace with times of the future.....

 

[boiler1990]

Hybrid SLI only exists for Nvidia notebooks; the only type of motherboard that could do what you're suggesting is one with a Lucid Hydra chip in it. Otherwise, all GPUs in the SLI config must be the same.

 

[alyoshka]

Hybrid SLI only exists for Nvidia notebooks; the only type of motherboard that could do what you're suggesting is one with a Lucid Hydra chip in it. Otherwise, all GPUs in the SLI config must be the same.

ONLY??? tried the ASUS M3N HT.....???
Hydra is basically to mix and match ATI and NVIDIA...... that was the idea behind the chip..... .
For ATI you can always CF two different cards.... there are limits though.....
But for SLI yes.... there used to be earlier spec when you could only SLI same cards.... not with the coming of Hybrid SLI..... and for "Notebooks"..... it's really no point getting into that or I wouldn't have told the OP.... so he can try a board that supports Hybrid SLI and still have cooler capabilities, not limitless though.

 

[boiler1990]

That motherboard isn't made anymore, and it was an AM2+ DDR2 AMD board. The original release of Hybrid SLI was in 2008: http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1199686779262.html

NVIDIA doesn't advertise Hybrid SLI on anything but notebook computers, since they don't have chipsets that support it: http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli.html

The idea behind the Hydra chip was to allow ANY 2 graphics cards to work together as if they were in paired in SLI/Crossfire. The "same GPU" requirement hasn't died off; it is still the MOST important requirement of SLI.