Pros and cons of waiting, 4k budget...

[bms85]

I'm looking at building a new machine based on:

Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128472
processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116402
GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130693
HDD 2x: SSD
RAM:24gb

and a budget of about 4k.

The Issue i'm running into is the LGA 1366 being dated. I don't really want to go to the 1155 because it doesn't seem like they have any six cores that can be easily clocked to 4.5 (i'm considering the extreme as well)

Someone pointed out that the socket 2011's will be coming out soon as well as the PCI Express 3.0 lineup and quad channel ram.

I'm self employed and do a lot of video/3d for work, but I also enjoy taking a break now and then for video games.

Any suggestions on waiting? Advice on buying outdated hardware that I'm sure will be more than sufficient? I guess I'm just looking to see that I get the best bang for my buck. I upgrade about every 2-3 years so i'm usually stuck buying a whole new rig anyways.

 

[michxymi]

Seriously 4k? With half of them or less you can build a great pc...give us more information like monitor resolution, use etc (fill sticky form)

 

[morgoth780]

and the gtx 590 is by far the worse price/performance

 

[bms85]

I'm aware of the price points, I'm just looking for some opinions on waiting for new stuff vs going 6 core now.

Approximate Purchase Date: this week Nov-Dec,

Budget Range: $4,000

System Usage from Most to Least Important: 8-16 hours daily. Heavy video, 3d, photo editing, and video gaming. with a little audio editing. I use this pc to stream 1080p to media center pcs distributed throughout the house.

Parts Not Required:
case (cooler master hafX),
power supply (CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX1200 (CMPSU-1200AX) 1200W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply),
HDD X2 (Kingston HyperX SH100S3B/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD))

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg, tigerdirect, amazon

Country of Origin: USA

Parts Preferences: Intel, 2x 3gb gpu (I think they're already paired cards so it would be quad SLI)

Overclocking: Yes

SLI or Crossfire: Yes

Monitor Resolution: (1920x1200) X3

Additional Comments: liquid cooled CPU air cooling for everything else. If you see above I think I have some parts picked out, I'm just interested in some opinions on waiting vs purchasing a 17 extreme series now (since its socket 1366 and at the end of its line)

 

[bms85]

and the gtx 590 is by far the worse price/performance

What do you suggest?

 

[morgoth780]

i'd wait, find out more details about sandy bridge-e, and see if there will be an upgrade path and if it's any good for gaming

 

[morgoth780]

What do you suggest?

either gtx 580 sli or gtx 570 sli, or even hd 6970 cfx

 

[Twoboxer]

A $4K budget puts you into an area where all the parts you might choose will be poor price performers. Because that last few % of additional power costs a lot to provide. So you need to decide.

You can find benchmarks of the contending processors on this site, Anandtech, and selected others that might show comparisons using your specific software. If heavy video editing many hours per day is your main use, that would be my strongest recommendation.

If your specific software is multi-threaded enough to use 6-cores, then you might be "better off" using an 1100t. If your workload is divisible, you might consider two "smaller", cooler PCs connected to a single monitor/keyboard/mouse.

We tend to favor 2xSLI/CF because the scaling (price-performance) is better than 3xSLI/CF is FAR better than 4x. But there's no denying 3x and 4x are faster than 2x.

If you just want a PC fast enough to do your list of things very comfortably rather than as fast as possible, there's no need to spend $4k. And that's what's relfected in the suggestions you're getting so far.

 

[Wolfshadw]

I agree with Morgoth780. If there is no rush to purchase now, then wait until the new socket it released and see how it stacks up to the current line-up.

-Wolf sends

 

[feartrich]

Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1JLy
Part price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1JLy/by_merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($308.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($198.49 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($94.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($58.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Hard Drive: Samsung 470 Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($356.97 @ CompUSA)
Video Card: PNY GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($447.55 @ Newegg)
Video Card: PNY GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($447.55 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 600T White Graphite ATX Mid Tower Case ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec 750W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($160.74 @ Mwave)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $2334.25

build this now, then when some new tech comes out two years from now, sell the build minus SSD on craigslist for $400, and build a new PC of the same price value with windows 8

boom. done.

if you keep waiting for the next iteration of technology, you're never gonna build anything

 

[bms85]

Thanks for the advice. I think I might hold off a couple months to do my homework and see what they have coming down the line.

The applications I use definitely make use of multiple cores. Though what I've been reading suggests that processor cores aren't the best bang for your buck. Nvidia cards with a lot of cuda cores makes the most difference.

Also just because I put $4k aside for the build doesn't mean I have to spend it all. I'm not in the business of spending an extra $1000, for only a small improvement. I'm hoping to find a good balance.

Last time I built a new PC i'm pretty sure SLI didn't support multiple monitors, it does now correct?

Also to those that suggested it why would two gtx580s be more cost effective than one 590? Does something get sacrificed when they combine two cards? from my understanding a 590 is just two 580s in one package and a couple hundred cheaper than buying them independently?

 

[morgoth780]

Thanks for the advice. I think I might hold off a couple months to do my homework and see what they have coming down the line.

The applications I use definitely make use of multiple cores. Though what I've been reading suggests that processor cores aren't the best bang for your buck. Nvidia cards with a lot of cuda cores makes the most difference.

Also just because I put $4k aside for the build doesn't mean I have to spend it all. I'm not in the business of spending an extra $1000, for only a small improvement. I'm hoping to find a good balance.

Last time I built a new PC i'm pretty sure SLI didn't support multiple monitors, it does now correct?

Also to those that suggested it why would two gtx580s be more cost effective than one 590? Does something get sacrificed when they combine two cards? from my understanding a 590 is just two 580s in one package and a couple hundred cheaper than buying them independently?

sli does now support multiple monitors. However, while the 590 is essentially two 580s in a single package, they have been massive underclocked so it doesn't overheat ridiculously, and there isn't much oc headroom at all

 

[badtaylorx]

here is a con......waiting sucks hard!!!

and there is NO SUCH THING as futureproof......

build now and love it looooonnngggg time!!!!

 

[morgoth780]

here is a con......waiting sucks hard!!!

and there is NO SUCH THING as futureproof......

build now and love it looooonnngggg time!!!!

but is a couple weeks really that long, especially if there is a significant improvement.
however, an i5 2500 will be just fine for quite a while

 

[badtaylorx]

if you're gonna wait....dont wait for sandy-e wait for ivy.......otherwise the performance isnt going to be a big diff from a 2600k......its really a hell of a chip

and at that price point you may want to consider a 6970 tri-fire.....with 3 cards or a 6970+6990.....AMD took a baseball bat to the law of diminishing returns!!! check out this article

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/04/11/amd_radeon_69906970_crossfirex_trifire_review

 

[morgoth780]

if you're gonna wait....dont wait for sandy-e wait for ivy.......otherwise the performance isnt going to be a big diff from a 2600k......its really a hell of a chip

and at that price point you may want to consider a 6970 tri-fire.....with 3 cards or a 6970+6990.....AMD took a baseball bat to the law of diminishing returns!!! check out this article

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/04/11/amd_radeon_69906970_crossfirex_trifire_review

very true, even though scaling does get worse in trifire or quadfire, even though you do get more power.