Is this a good cpu for gaming

[vishalaestro]

my friend wants to buy a new system which is for both gaming and video converting..as he is budget oriented he does not want to invest in k series processors,p67 mobos and coolers..instead he wants to invest them in gpu..so i suggested this specs...intel core i5 2500,MSI H67MS-E43 or intel d6h7cl..probably the intel as it is cheap and highly stable.,kingston 4gb ddr3 1333mhz ,msi gtx 560ti,corsair 550tx,and a normal cabinet with good air flow as he doesnt wants to invest money in those kind of stylish gaming cabinets and finally lg dvd writer and 1tb seagate barracuda 7200.6gb/s hdd ..monitor is a budget monitor lg 20inch e2041t 1600x900 res led monitor which has already buyed...

 

[ncc74656]

I love MSI but there are some things I myself would change. first off the H67 is a single PCI-e board. if he NEVER intends to run 2 video cards then fine this will work but a H67 board is around 95.00 while a Z68 low end is 115.00 with dual PCI-E. makes upgrades in the future cheaper and more options are open. just a thought

second is the ram, memory is very cheap right now. a 1600Mhz kit is only 4.00 more than a 1333 for a sizeable performance boost. also make sure the ram you buy is 1.5v. like these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233144

The video card is fine. the 560 is a strong card for a normal multi use comp. I would look into another brand than MSI as i myself has not had good luck with there video cards, there heat sinks are very flimsy.

I would strongly recommend looking into a 2500K CPU, its 10.00 more than a standard 2500 and then you can over clock. you CAN NOT over clock a standard 2500 by more than a couple hundred Mhz.

you can find cheap monitors on craigs list, thats where i buy most of mine. i have 3 22" screens here that i paid 15 bucks each for.

so all in all by spending 40 extra $$ you can get a more future proof and faster machine. imo that is not enough cash to warrant downgrades. considering you are already looking at a i5 2500. it would be different if you were looking at a i3 or a Pentium. that 550tx i assume is the PSU, if its a 550 then that should be fine.

edit: also make sure with what ever ram you buy you get the 2 4GB sticks. that way you dont need to throw out ram if he ever needs to upgrade to 16GB.

 

[etk]

I would go the other direction and go down to an i5-2400 and an H61 mobo. I would get a samsung f3 or a WD Black over the seagate. That should free up some funds for a quality PSU and 560ti.

 

[ncc74656]

it all depends on the games you play and what your actual budget is. if you are a bit under budget with your current parts then i would buy the higher end. if you are already over budget or want to spend less then yea, downgrade to a 2400 or lower. once bull dozer comes out in a few days prices should drop a bit so watch for that. as for the MB... i would hate to buy a single PCI-E MB if i didnt have to. if you truly are never going to use dual cards then sure i suppose the H61 would be fine but last i looked they were close to the same price as the H67.

i prefer WD drives as well, every segate i have ever had has died on me. that said its all about price, ive been building many comps with hatchi drives as they are 20 bucks or more cheaper. (i realize the companey who owns hatchi).

If you do want a high gaming card then the 560ti is better, the TI adds some shaders and clock speeds. its worth while to buy it over the 560. dont bother with any over clocked cards, just over clock it your self.

its all on the budget, perhaps even wait for bulldozer and see how fast they are. perhaps you should go AMD instead.

 

[CaedenV]

These are 2 very different things that he wants the computer to do. Transcoding/ripping is all about HDD throughput, and processor. Gaming is all about GPU, with a quad core processor being required. If it is a tight budget, consider carefully what the primary use is, or he will be forced to make cuts which could make the computer suck at both.


I would find the cheapest board possible that supports sandy bridge and RAID. If the budget allowed and this is going to be a long tearm investment (5yr) then I would splurge for OC and SLI abilities. Not much worst than having a platform you max out when you need more performance, but are not financially ready to move up to a new platform.

While I am an nVidia fan, I would suggest an AMD GPU if your friend is on a budget as you get more bang for the buck, and a lower power draw.

Buy 2 2TB drives in Raid1 for transcoding and storage (3TB if budget will allow). If he is doing video, then space is worth gold! It will not help your write times, but it will kick more data to the CPU which will help the overall conversion time, as well as providing redundancy for the data he creates. Also, have a separate system drive, and seriously consider SSD! They are a dream to use! 9 out of 10 times it is the system drive that fails; Protect your data! Especially if this machine will be the 'home' of said ripped content. I know I am beating a dead horse, but as someone who does video on the side, it is astounding how small 1TB drives are. I have 2, and while the first one took a good few years to fill, the 2nd filled almost instantly, and I never know where to put anything. I actually deleted my small 600GB movie collection to make space (I still have original discs, and have learned a few tricks, so next time the process will go better), and that is a problem nobody wants to deal with as cheap as drives are now. Personally I do not have redundancy (built this machine originally as an entertainment PC, not as a workstation), but that will be top priority on the next build.

Games mostly rely on the GPU, so getting a non-K i5 is just fine.

Consider more RAM. It is cheap, and while he may never NEED it, it would be a dumb thing to run short of when the prices are so low. I personally run 4GB of ram, and while I generally stay in the 1-2GB range, current games do run into the 3GB range, and will only go up exponentially in the future. 8GB seems to be a good amount for a moderate gamer.

Lastly, while I am a HUGE Intel fanboy, consider AMD. Bulldozer will come out eventually (supposedly in a few days/weeks), and your friend is going to kick himself if he finds he could buy a cheaper AMD chip, and overclock it to match a nice i5. Also AMD motherboards tend to be much cheaper. Between the two you are talking enough money for extra RAM or more HDD space, or a coveted SSD system drive. Either way, it wont hurt to wait a few weeks. If bulldozer is good then you can go with AMD, if bulldozer sucks then Intel is still going to drop prices a little, which will still save some money in the end. I wouldn't wait forever, but as it is so close why not?

 

[ncc74656]

alot of the ideas above are based on a system platform (MB) that has the options to upgrade. some examples of being future proof are: buying high density sticks of ram (2 4GB vs 4 2GB sticks) this means you have 2 banks open for future upgrads with out throwing out ram that you have now. buying a MB that has good feature support such as raid, sata 3, and dual PCI-E. (sata can be added for very cheap through low end sata cards). having raid for data speed on video editing will help you alot, i run raid-5 with 9 2TB drives and this makes adobe premiere run like a dream with 20GB HD video files.

having an SSD is great but dont fall into buying a cheap one just to have one. make sure its large enough for your OS and installed apps. do not try and get one that can hold your HD video as that will not be economical. i realize that the odds of you affording a SSD right now are very slim but just in the future. to buy a SSD or 2 smaller SSD's and raid-0 them would be an option. say a 220GB to hold your OS, programs, and what ever video file you are working with. unless you do large video edits what i do is copy my HD videos to the SSD and edit them, then save the finished work to the platter drives. i notice a speed boost by having the raw video on the SSD during editing.

I completely agree on waiting a few days before you buy your build. make sure that the new hardware is out, even if you dont buy AMD the release of it should effect i5 CPU prices.

if you are going to buy a i5 2500 then buy the K seriously do not even consider the standard 2500 it just makes no sence to loose that much OC ability over 10 bucks. if you need to skim on cash then buy a lower end CPU but i would seriously try and stay in the i5 range, like a 2400 or lower (i think there is one lower than the 2400). the main reason for this is the editing and multi tasking ability you gain with 4 cores vs 2.

I am a ATI fanboy but ATI stream is less compatible than Nvidia Cuda. ATI is cheaper tho so perhaps you may want to look into a 6870. i think they are 40 or 50 cheaper than a 560ti. however they are 30 more than a 550ti. it goes like this in performance vs price. cheap get 550ti, more performance for a lil bit more get 6870, then the next level of nvidia 560ti. the 6850 is very close to a 550ti but is only a few dollars apart from a 6870 so it makes no sense to buy one.

may i ask what the actual budget is? we would have a better job at understanding what you can and can not afford if we had a rough dollar figure?

 

[vishalaestro]

if i buy a k a series processor.. i should buy a p67 or z68 motherboard..then i should buy a cooler..if we take a z68 chipset only intel dz68db is the only cheapest motherboard available in my area and asrock boards are not available in my area..still these parts like cooker .board and a k series processor makes costlier budget..so i told him to stick with a non k series processor..

 

[ncc74656]

you loose alot of functions on a H series board but the P series is not to much more on there low end. i just priced up a i5 system for under 550 bucks on newegg a few min ago.

i still stand by what i said before, 2500 is pointless, get a 2500K if either are in your price range. even a lower end MB will have OC functions, just not automatic. you can run stock cooler and get a i5 to +1Ghz from stock. but its not about what you do right now, its about what you might need down the road. run stock now and 6 months down or a year down if you need more power then spend 30 bucks on an after market cooler and OC. just because you can OC now doesn ot mean you need to do it now.

i dont care for intel MB's i would recommend shopping online and getting a gigabyte, asus, or MSI. msi and gigabyte are cheap while asus normally costs more.

 

[vishalaestro]

ok ..my friend is having power issues in his area so ups is necessary he brought an apc ups which is only 600watts compatible one..if he buys a i5 2500k processor a gtx 560ti a p67 board with sli compatible surely he will add a another card after 2 or 3 years so..his power requirements will be high..so will a 600w ups will be enough dont care about psu because psu is still needs to be brought so a good psu can be brought but what about ups it has already brought just before 3 months..how i can buy a machine which is sli capable as it increases the power requirement..

pls give ur idea... tell me a specs what he should buy under this power requirements..wat about this specs below

intel core i5 2500k
Intel - DZ68DB(chosen beacuse it is the cheapest overclockable board available in my area as asrock boards are not available)
cooler master hyper 212 plus cooler
corsair vengeance 1600mhz 4gb ddr3
asus gtx 560ti
seagate 500gb 6gb/s hdd
corsair 550tx
a normal cabinet
lg dvd sata..after 1 year ssd will be added like 64 or 128gb

 

[etk]

What kind of UPS? Square wave or decent sine approximation?

 

[vishalaestro]

a normal budget ups for computer..

 

[ncc74656]

my build runs from a 1500va apc (300.00 modle) and that will run it for about 12-45min depending on tasks.

 

[vishalaestro]

my ups is just 600watts capable of providing backup for only 10min even with very light resource..so sli is not possible with my ups and also there will be low voltage in night times so the will will struggle a lot in sli..so pls tell whether i should buy a 2500k cpu and sli it with these problems..actually my specs was the 1st one it satisfies the power requirement..

 

[ncc74656]

Your power sounds very bad... I would invest into a larger UPS if you really want to OC and such. with out a beefy enough UPS you can have issues with either build.

 

[vishalaestro]

even i could buy a very good ups ..still there will be a low voltage in my area at night times..so instead of i5 2500 ..i will choose 2400 and instead of gtx560ti i will choose gtx 460 psu will be a 450w corsair psu..and others are same will this be a good cpu at min voltage

 

[ncc74656]

first off the voltage difference between a2400 and 2500 is miniscule... i5's are very power efficient, there is no reason to buy a lower end cpu over a voltage issue as they will all have the same problems.

the 460 is a very fast GPU but lacks new features that the 560 has. in pure FPS for DX9 or 10 the 460 is able to match the 560 in some games but you wont get dx11 or other higher end features. the 560ti adds more texture units and shades so its a faster GPU.

a 450w psu is very low for today's computing. that said everything is more efficient now so your CPU will use about 125w max, your gpu will use around 85 for a 460 or 130 for a 560 so yes, the 450w will handle it but you wont have much upgradeability.

3rd.. there is no way your power drops to 18v. that would be a full power outage and i know of no where in the US that such power drops are a regular occurrence with out there being some form of disaster to contribute to it.

a standards outlet needs to be between 90-140v for most products to function properly. this includes UPS systems. a good UPS with AVR will fix over and under volts in your house. the most common cause of voltage issues is things such as air conditioning units or a furnace coming on or off in your house.

if your budget allows for it and you want good performance then get the 2500k, buy the 560ti, dont skim just because where you live now happens to have power hiccups. how long do these hiccups in power last for? im going to assume only a couple min at a time.

a good 600W APC should be around 1000VA, you will not be using anywhere near that much with this system and certainly not if you dont OC. you should have at least 25min of run time or more if you setup windows power saving when the battery kicks in. I run a highly OC'd system with 9 platter HD's, if i keep my 46" LCD on battery i can run for 17min on a 1500va APC. if i put a 20" lcd on it then i can run for 40 min and that's with 5870 video cards as well.

 

[vishalaestro]

Best answer selected by vishalaestro.