Rating my i7-870 build

[npowers86]

i was wondering if i could get some advice on my new build and see if it will be sufficient to my needs. i didnt want to wait for sandybridge and wonder how many real world differences i will see. i mostly will encode dvds, some photoshop some gaming and then just general office software. large amounts of music will be stored also. here is my build. how well will it work? thanks! (By the way im moving from a 2 gz intel core duo with 2gb)

gigabyte p55 ud3
intel i7-870
4gb corsair dominator ram 1333mhz
sapphire radeon 4870 1gb
1tb samsung spinpoint f3
ultra 650 watt psu

haf-x case

waiting on the vertex 3 will be getting a 120 gig of that soon

 

[boiler1990]

It should work well for what you're going to use it for, though the 4870 is a pretty old GPU to throw into a newer system.

You would have seen some massive gains on the CPU-side by waiting for Sandy Bridge, since the i5-2500k beats all of the i7-900s in recent tests. That would've sped up your DVD encoding.

 

[npowers86]

cool thanks for the response. at least it will be alot faster then my core duo haha

 

[residentdean]

I would go with and i7 -940, It costs the same but with better overclock ability. Also I like the 1366 board better! Also I would suggest at least getting a raedon 6850, it uses less power and has direct 11. At the price point of around $ 180 you can't go wrong. The 4870 is dated. Also go a little bit higher on your psu, maybe at least a 750w so in the future if you need to upgrade you will have head room.

 

[boiler1990]

It's not a gaming rig, so the requirements are a bit different. The GPU isn't a huge necessity, though better GPU ~ better Photoshop ability in most cases.

 

[residentdean]

If it is for encoding then I would still go with I7 940! With a good cpu cooler he can get stable @ 4.0 no problem. That will do wonders for his encoding! The 1366 boards are all over the 1156 boards.

 

[mortonww]

What's your target budget? I know you said you didn't want to wait for Sandy Bridge. And you're right, an i7 870 will probably do pretty well for the occasional encode and photoshop work and whatnot. But, the i5 2500k is cheaper /and/ faster. It's just really tempting, is all I'm saying. Especially if it's not needed immediately.

Also, for photoshop and encoding tasks, the likelihood is that you'll run into some software that can utilize Nvidia CUDA technology. This is what I would put together for about $1000

Core i5 2500k ($230)
G.Skill Ripjaws 4 GB DDR3 (~$50)
ASUS P8P67 PRO ($190)
GTX 560 Ti ($250)
OCZ Modxstream Pro 700 W ($70 AR)
HAF 912 ($60)
DVD Drive ($20)
1 TB Samsung F3 ($65)

TOTAL: $935

You could switch out the ASUS pro board for a gigabyte ud3p to save $30 and lose sli. Then you could drop the PSU down to a corsair builder series 500 Watt or so.

EDIT: This isn't for gaming, so you would be fine with a non-sli capable motherboard a 500 Watt PSU and then adding 4 GB of RAM.