- Mar 16, 2011
- 5
- 0
- 18,510
Current system:
Abit IP38 Pro
Q6600 w/ Zalman CNPS9700
4GB G. Skill DDR2 800
MSI 8800 GT
ThermalTake Toughpower 700W
I do a little gaming here and there, but not enough to justify buying a new graphics card. I'm mostly looking for motherboard, CPU, and RAM to speed up video editting and encoding and a replacement hard drive to my aging 74GB Raptor (standard SATA II drives are faster according to HD Tune Pro, it's that old and tired).
First off, the hard drive. I'm looking at a few WD Caviar Blacks on Newegg and will likely go ahead and get one of those. SSD would be nice but I am not ready to take the plunge and would like more storage space, possibly considering 2 Blacks in RAID 0. Any thoughts on that?
CPU wise I like the sounds of the AMD 6 core (probably 1050T). They're cheap and sound like they've got plenty of oomph for video encoding, and the turbo core should do nicely for gaming. I mostly play Left 4 Dead, StarCraft 2, and some GTA 4 so I don't need anything too special for gaming. I'm running 4GB of RAM now and W7 32 bit runs great but will probably switch to 64 bit and 6GB. Any reason to go higher than 6GB for my uses? I peaked around a little and didn't see any Abit motherboards for sale on Newegg anymore which is a shame, my last 2 builds have used them and I love how stable and reliable they are. I'm told Asus is the way to go but have had 2 of them in the past and both sucked so I'm a little hesitant to try them again. SATA 6 would be nice but not a requirement, same goes for USB 3.0. Mostly just looking for a solid board that won't break the bank.
My Q6600 has been an excellent processor and does everything I need it to right now, but the big thing I'm looking for is better encoding with HandBrake. I am in the process of putting my DVDs (movies and TV shows both) onto hard drive for a future HTPC build and with my encoding settings I'm averaging 12 FPS and that just isn't enough.
I would prefer to keep my Zalman CNPS9700 on whatever new CPU I get, it's been a good cooler and should cool even the latest CPUs without a problem. I paid over $80 for it when it came out and would like to keep it. Also, I would like to keep my ThermalTake 700W PSU, it's very quiet and provides reliable power and would save me $100-$150 over replacing it with a new PSU. I'm open to suggestions, I'm on a budget but can't really put a dollar value on it. If the 6 core AMD CPUs are good for my use then I'll stick with that idea but if spending another $100 on an i7 or something would make a huge improvement I'll do that. I prefer to spend a little extra and get quality stuff but never buy top of the line (price vs. performance). The new Sandy Bridge CPUs sound promising and I may wait for that technology to mature a bit and get some better options available but they're also pricey.
EDIT: Guess I should've read the sticky
Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next 2 months
Budget Range: I'd be ecstatic to do this for $400 but that's not a firm limit
System Usage from Most to Least Important: HandBrake encoding to X264 MPEG4, Some Gaming, otherwise just use for movies, music, internet, and a file server for my laptop.
Parts Not Required: Case, PSU, Graphics card, secondary hard drives, keyboard, mouse, monitor, Windows
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg.com
Country of Origin: U.S.A.
Parts Preferences: ABIT motherboards if possible, I like Corsair RAM as well. No real preference though, anything reliable for a decent price is good.
Overclocking: Maybe
SLI or Crossfire: Maybe SLI in the future
Monitor Resolution: Currently 1440x900, may step up to 1080p in the future
Additional Comments: I'd like it to throttle itself back when not encoding or gaming and use as little power as possible. 90% of the time my computer is on I could be using my old P4 2.0, 512 MB 266 RAM machine (on W7) and not have any lack of processing power. It would be cool for it to just come alive when I need it to and stay sedate and sip at power when I'm not using it for anything more than a file server. I can make it quiet on my own, just need some tips on making it save power.
Abit IP38 Pro
Q6600 w/ Zalman CNPS9700
4GB G. Skill DDR2 800
MSI 8800 GT
ThermalTake Toughpower 700W
I do a little gaming here and there, but not enough to justify buying a new graphics card. I'm mostly looking for motherboard, CPU, and RAM to speed up video editting and encoding and a replacement hard drive to my aging 74GB Raptor (standard SATA II drives are faster according to HD Tune Pro, it's that old and tired).
First off, the hard drive. I'm looking at a few WD Caviar Blacks on Newegg and will likely go ahead and get one of those. SSD would be nice but I am not ready to take the plunge and would like more storage space, possibly considering 2 Blacks in RAID 0. Any thoughts on that?
CPU wise I like the sounds of the AMD 6 core (probably 1050T). They're cheap and sound like they've got plenty of oomph for video encoding, and the turbo core should do nicely for gaming. I mostly play Left 4 Dead, StarCraft 2, and some GTA 4 so I don't need anything too special for gaming. I'm running 4GB of RAM now and W7 32 bit runs great but will probably switch to 64 bit and 6GB. Any reason to go higher than 6GB for my uses? I peaked around a little and didn't see any Abit motherboards for sale on Newegg anymore which is a shame, my last 2 builds have used them and I love how stable and reliable they are. I'm told Asus is the way to go but have had 2 of them in the past and both sucked so I'm a little hesitant to try them again. SATA 6 would be nice but not a requirement, same goes for USB 3.0. Mostly just looking for a solid board that won't break the bank.
My Q6600 has been an excellent processor and does everything I need it to right now, but the big thing I'm looking for is better encoding with HandBrake. I am in the process of putting my DVDs (movies and TV shows both) onto hard drive for a future HTPC build and with my encoding settings I'm averaging 12 FPS and that just isn't enough.
I would prefer to keep my Zalman CNPS9700 on whatever new CPU I get, it's been a good cooler and should cool even the latest CPUs without a problem. I paid over $80 for it when it came out and would like to keep it. Also, I would like to keep my ThermalTake 700W PSU, it's very quiet and provides reliable power and would save me $100-$150 over replacing it with a new PSU. I'm open to suggestions, I'm on a budget but can't really put a dollar value on it. If the 6 core AMD CPUs are good for my use then I'll stick with that idea but if spending another $100 on an i7 or something would make a huge improvement I'll do that. I prefer to spend a little extra and get quality stuff but never buy top of the line (price vs. performance). The new Sandy Bridge CPUs sound promising and I may wait for that technology to mature a bit and get some better options available but they're also pricey.
EDIT: Guess I should've read the sticky
Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next 2 months
Budget Range: I'd be ecstatic to do this for $400 but that's not a firm limit
System Usage from Most to Least Important: HandBrake encoding to X264 MPEG4, Some Gaming, otherwise just use for movies, music, internet, and a file server for my laptop.
Parts Not Required: Case, PSU, Graphics card, secondary hard drives, keyboard, mouse, monitor, Windows
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg.com
Country of Origin: U.S.A.
Parts Preferences: ABIT motherboards if possible, I like Corsair RAM as well. No real preference though, anything reliable for a decent price is good.
Overclocking: Maybe
SLI or Crossfire: Maybe SLI in the future
Monitor Resolution: Currently 1440x900, may step up to 1080p in the future
Additional Comments: I'd like it to throttle itself back when not encoding or gaming and use as little power as possible. 90% of the time my computer is on I could be using my old P4 2.0, 512 MB 266 RAM machine (on W7) and not have any lack of processing power. It would be cool for it to just come alive when I need it to and stay sedate and sip at power when I'm not using it for anything more than a file server. I can make it quiet on my own, just need some tips on making it save power.
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