First off, I hate your guts and will steal your computer when you aren't looking. Second, Nvidia>ATI AMD.
Poll: Build a PC 2.0
- Thread starter TOO S0BER
- Start date
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First... CPU ? A bit overkill, IMO.
I have recently bought an i5 760 myself (2.8GHz stock quad core, no hyperthreading), and one of the first thing I did was DISABLE "TurboBoost" because in conjunction with auto-voltage regulation and other mobo features it made the CPU run about 6 degrees (Celsius) hotter for a negligible performance improvement. No overclocking here.
HOWEVER, so far, I haven't really tried any game or benchmark so far that would tax even this CPU in its less-than-stock state to near 100% usage for any significant timespan.
1080p movie playback ? Pah, hovering around 15% CPU usage most of the time.
EVE-Online in 1600x1024 with everything ramped up to the max and capped to 85 FPS (vsynch on) ? Hovering around 20%.
Unigine Heaven 2.1 benchmark in 1600x1200 ? Hovering around 30%.
Long story short, you could just as well downgrade to a LGA1156 for a noticeable reduction in price while not really noticing the "lacking" performance.
And since you mentioned you're not planning to overclock (unless I'm misunderstanding something), you don't need an aftermarket heatsink either, the stock one is just fine for normal usage.
The triple channel memory ? In practice, not many things will really benefit from it. Might as well not miss it much if you do decide to "downgrade" the CPU, since, well, only LGA1366-based builds support it anyway. I'd dump the 3x2GB and just buy two kits of 2x2 or one 2x4 kit for 8 GB total instead.
Oh well, too bad you're already commited on those. I don't suppose you can send them back now for an exchange... or can you ?
PSU ? Waaaay, WAAAY overkill. That configuration you have there won't even use half of its power output. Even a 450 W one might just barely suffice. Make it a 550 W to be on the safe side, but motherofgod what do you need a 1KW PSU for anyway ? Even for explosive overclocking it would still be overkill, let alone normal usage.
The SSD... hmm... well, 60 GB might be enough, but just barely. I mean, you want the OS on this drive, and you'll want Win7 anyway since Vista kind of sucks and XP can't handle anything beyond DX9, so just the OS plus the swap file (which really SHOULD be on this drive too) plus the usual programs you use, and you'll probably be counting well over 20 GB already so far total, maybe even closer to 30 GB (depending on what you usually install that you consider "essential").
Now, you might also want to put your games on this drive, since, hey, why bother buying one in the first place if you're not going to use it for THAT... so you're looking at 3, 4 or maybe 5 games tops before your HDD is full.
I'd really go with a 80 GB or even a 128 GB one instead. There's also the added advantage that for SSDs, the larger they are, the FASTER they are too. So it's usually worth upgrading here for multiple reasons.
And finally... the GPU. In a word, completely UNDERWHELMING.
You got this monster build so far, and on the one thing that's most vital for gaming, you decided to pull your punches and save cash ? REALLY ?
I'd say you should be looking at minimum at a 1 GB card, but not a 5770... more like Radeon 5850, or maybe 460 GTX. Heck, why not just go Radeon 5870 while you're at it anyway ?
I went with a 1 GB, factory-overclocked, over-engineered 460 GTX myself.
Drivers are not that much of a problem, but HDR+AA or similar needs... *ahem* tinkering with, quite nastily. SLI profile tool FTW (no, I don't have two video cards, but the options that need tweaking are not available in the "regular" driver menus/options and you need to use that tool to change them. No, nHancer no longer works with the latest drivers).
Oh yeah, and I have a 550W PSU.
HDD-wise... I was planning on a SSD myslef, but then again... I'm not really bothered by loading/saving times too much, and I'm more of a "storage" kind of guy. So I only got a 2 TB WDC Green. Copied over all the stuff from my old machine, whoomp, 600 GB filled. Got the machine at the START of this month, copied some more stuff over from older DVDs I don't like to use much due to wear, another 100 GB gone. Plus about 200 GB of recent stuff, and whoa, I'm down to half HDD capacity already.
I'm seriously pondering buying a SECOND 2 TB drive soon, before buying a SSD at all.
I have recently bought an i5 760 myself (2.8GHz stock quad core, no hyperthreading), and one of the first thing I did was DISABLE "TurboBoost" because in conjunction with auto-voltage regulation and other mobo features it made the CPU run about 6 degrees (Celsius) hotter for a negligible performance improvement. No overclocking here.
HOWEVER, so far, I haven't really tried any game or benchmark so far that would tax even this CPU in its less-than-stock state to near 100% usage for any significant timespan.
1080p movie playback ? Pah, hovering around 15% CPU usage most of the time.
EVE-Online in 1600x1024 with everything ramped up to the max and capped to 85 FPS (vsynch on) ? Hovering around 20%.
Unigine Heaven 2.1 benchmark in 1600x1200 ? Hovering around 30%.
Long story short, you could just as well downgrade to a LGA1156 for a noticeable reduction in price while not really noticing the "lacking" performance.
And since you mentioned you're not planning to overclock (unless I'm misunderstanding something), you don't need an aftermarket heatsink either, the stock one is just fine for normal usage.
The triple channel memory ? In practice, not many things will really benefit from it. Might as well not miss it much if you do decide to "downgrade" the CPU, since, well, only LGA1366-based builds support it anyway. I'd dump the 3x2GB and just buy two kits of 2x2 or one 2x4 kit for 8 GB total instead.
Oh well, too bad you're already commited on those. I don't suppose you can send them back now for an exchange... or can you ?
PSU ? Waaaay, WAAAY overkill. That configuration you have there won't even use half of its power output. Even a 450 W one might just barely suffice. Make it a 550 W to be on the safe side, but motherofgod what do you need a 1KW PSU for anyway ? Even for explosive overclocking it would still be overkill, let alone normal usage.
The SSD... hmm... well, 60 GB might be enough, but just barely. I mean, you want the OS on this drive, and you'll want Win7 anyway since Vista kind of sucks and XP can't handle anything beyond DX9, so just the OS plus the swap file (which really SHOULD be on this drive too) plus the usual programs you use, and you'll probably be counting well over 20 GB already so far total, maybe even closer to 30 GB (depending on what you usually install that you consider "essential").
Now, you might also want to put your games on this drive, since, hey, why bother buying one in the first place if you're not going to use it for THAT... so you're looking at 3, 4 or maybe 5 games tops before your HDD is full.
I'd really go with a 80 GB or even a 128 GB one instead. There's also the added advantage that for SSDs, the larger they are, the FASTER they are too. So it's usually worth upgrading here for multiple reasons.
And finally... the GPU. In a word, completely UNDERWHELMING.
You got this monster build so far, and on the one thing that's most vital for gaming, you decided to pull your punches and save cash ? REALLY ?
I'd say you should be looking at minimum at a 1 GB card, but not a 5770... more like Radeon 5850, or maybe 460 GTX. Heck, why not just go Radeon 5870 while you're at it anyway ?
I went with a 1 GB, factory-overclocked, over-engineered 460 GTX myself.
Drivers are not that much of a problem, but HDR+AA or similar needs... *ahem* tinkering with, quite nastily. SLI profile tool FTW (no, I don't have two video cards, but the options that need tweaking are not available in the "regular" driver menus/options and you need to use that tool to change them. No, nHancer no longer works with the latest drivers).
Oh yeah, and I have a 550W PSU.
HDD-wise... I was planning on a SSD myslef, but then again... I'm not really bothered by loading/saving times too much, and I'm more of a "storage" kind of guy. So I only got a 2 TB WDC Green. Copied over all the stuff from my old machine, whoomp, 600 GB filled. Got the machine at the START of this month, copied some more stuff over from older DVDs I don't like to use much due to wear, another 100 GB gone. Plus about 200 GB of recent stuff, and whoa, I'm down to half HDD capacity already.
I'm seriously pondering buying a SECOND 2 TB drive soon, before buying a SSD at all.
The system looks good. But don't over complicate it, ditch the water cooling and get a decent cpu fan. Even though the stock ones are ok, but for longevity, buy a better cpu fan.
Also, repeating what other people say, a better video card. heres a link for comparison:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gts-450-radeon-hd-4850-gpu,2732.html
The power supply is overkill but just make sure it is a good power supply. I usually buy more power then needed for upgrades. So go for it!
Since this is your first build keep it simple. You can always add items later.
Also, repeating what other people say, a better video card. heres a link for comparison:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gts-450-radeon-hd-4850-gpu,2732.html
The power supply is overkill but just make sure it is a good power supply. I usually buy more power then needed for upgrades. So go for it!
Since this is your first build keep it simple. You can always add items later.
About the SSD bootdrive. You need a fast BIOS to take advantage of the SSD (I assume for a faster boot) because if the BIOS on that board is a slow as most of them are you are spending a ton of money on a 15 second improvement in boottime.
An ASRock motherboard can boot into Windows in 4-10 seconds (mine does it in 7-8, faster than my monitor comes on) with the ASRock Instantboot software. It's basically a "suspend to RAM"-hibernate mode, but it works.
An ASRock motherboard can boot into Windows in 4-10 seconds (mine does it in 7-8, faster than my monitor comes on) with the ASRock Instantboot software. It's basically a "suspend to RAM"-hibernate mode, but it works.
The whole idea behind an Nvidia card is that it has more "grunt" (higher Mem. Bandwidth, faster core clock/overclock, more on-board processing features for effects, etc.), but at the same time it uses more power and is less likely to play nice with the other components(I've had one act up because of a certain sound-card I had).TOO S0BER said:
ATI is reliable, quiet, and cooler-running, but it has less ability.
The ATI I use (since I don't like tweaking too much) takes a dive when I turn on features like blur or over-bright effects, though it can handle LOADS of pure 3D rendering.
