First Build need advice (Gaming/Music Production Rig)

Hey guys,
I've finally got enough money to buy a new computer, this one barely runs lol.
I want something for gaming and music production, something that I won't have to replace for a while.
I was thinking something along the lines of

i7 2600k Sandy Bridge
EVGA GeForce GTX 580 3GB
G.SKILL Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) x2
Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SSD
Silverstone Fortress FT02B with Window

I'm unsure of the M/B and Power Supply required for this setup.
I wanted to get enough ram that I wouldn't need to upgrade but I was unsure if 4 of those would be compatible?
Any recommendations would be great.

Thanks =]

Looks pretty choice to me so far. The SSD Im not to excited about. They are fast, but the money for them and the sizes available make it a tough buy for me. I would love to have one if I built a new pooter! I'm a long way away from that!

I'm in the mobo market too for a "new" system. The guys on here will recommend one soon!

Good Luck!!

I believe there is a recall notice out on that SSD. BFM you've never used an SSD I take it. Best thing ever. Worth the money.

OP Music production like I like to fiddle with music production or actual music production? Ie, need a sound card?

Change the SSD to an OCZ Agility 3 if you want good bang/buck they're cheap and do 500MB up/down.

MOBO depends on whether you want high end medium end or low end. $150 is fine. So's $380. Depends what you want.

Z? P? Going to be handling huge files? Want to cache a big HD? Think you might use igpu and discrete GPU together?

Well I was looking to spend up to $2-2.5k to get a decent system that will last me a few years, so I guess around $300 for a mobo is what I'd be willing to pay.
At the moment It's just fiddling around as I don't have a good enough computer to run production software without it crashing.
I think for the time being I'd just stick with the stock sound card and buy an external later on once I get into it a bit more.
If I do get 4 sticks of the ram mentioned above could you suggest a mobo that could support it + the CPU I mentioned aswell.
But I will be gaming on it BF3, MW3 when they come out so I want something that won't have a problem with that and wont' have a problem with newer games that will come out also.
Something that can handle SLI if I decide to upgrade to a second card later on too.

As for the Z?P?
Not actually sure what you mean there =P

Hope that info helps =]

Well, AMD is launching Bulldozer CPU architechture in T-minus 23-53 days now.
It'll be 8 core vs 4 core Sandybridge and may give an edge in multithreaded apps. Also has better PCIE bandwidth and better storage I/O (all ports are 6gbps vs 2).

If you want to buy now you should get an intel 2000 series like you are looking at.

P= overclockable CPU, locked integrated graphics (unusable) H= locked CPU overclockable graphics Z= unlocked everything + the ability to use integrated and discreet graphics together + using an SSD to cache a hard drive for faster speed

If you want to spend $300 on a motherboard let's start with this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128480&Tpk=P67 UD7

SLI and Crossfire, tonnes of power phasing, really nice quality PCB, LCD poster, augmented PCIE lanes through an NF200. This is Gigabyte's top end P board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128499&Tpk=Z68 UD7

Same board in Z

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128494&cm_re=Z68_UD4-_-13-128-494-_-Product

For $140 less you lose power phases on the CPU, the NF200 controller, and some expansion slot connectivity.

Remember to look at the slot layout of the board as well as what controls what slot before you buy. On that last board, if you had a 3 slot graphics card like mine and a PCIE soundcard that card would have to go in the second X16 slot making the GPU run at X8, for example. Gigabyte explains this exceptionally well. You can download the manual for the board you want from their site as a PDF and then on like page 6 there is a block diagram showing the bandwidth of everything and what controls what.

Also as far as buying graphics cards, you're always better off with 1x insane vs 2x good.
A safe bet is always to buy 1 insane card now and then in a year when that card is just 'average' buy another one for cheap.
There's no need to get anything better than say, a 6990 or a 590. There's nothing out there that needs more. Only if you were running obscenely high resolutions, like a couple of 2560 resolution monitors, would you be wise to consider something obscene like 2 6990s. Even then it'd only be because 58FPS was unacceptable and you needed 16xaa/af and transparency multisampling on everything to be happy. The current top end cards are ridiculously powerful. And expensive.

Ah ok, so you think the Bulldozer will be worth the wait then?
From what you said I'm guessing Z is the way to go, are there any downsides to getting a Z board?

In regards to graphics cards does Radeon or NVIDIA make a difference if you have an Intel board or an AMD board or is it just personal preference.

Also I noticed that the G.skill sniper 3x4 Gb RAM only worked with certain boards, if I was to get 2 lots of the 2x4Gb package (16Gb total) would my board run it okay?

Thanks for the advice so far you've been a huge help =]

Ah ok, so you think the Bulldozer will be worth the wait then?
From what you said I'm guessing Z is the way to go, are there any downsides to getting a Z board?

Nobody knows until it comes out. People said Sandybridge was going to be garbage and slow. If it's bad, AMD might as well start building a coffin. They release new architechtures like molasses and they're too far behind Intel on the desktop side not to at least match Sandybridge. Otherwise they're basically sealing their fate as a 'budget, low power computing' company... save for their graphics division.

The downside of a Z board is that the 2 VTT phases become iGPU phases. So no, you won't hit that 5.9Ghz home run. For 99% of users there's no difference.

IMO, if the CPU can match SB, the platform will be better overall as it has more PCIE lanes and better SATA. All at a lot less $ for the equivalent board to what you'd pay for those features on the Intel side.

On the flipside of that, BD has been in dev for five years. Intel was just starting on Core 2 at retail at that point. One has to assume a company as big as Intel has spies at AMD and is making sure to be at least one step ahead. I don't think Intel would let 'Pentium 4 VS FX' happen again. (Pentium 4 was maybe 50% as fast as an AMD FX cpu in 2003/2004 at the same speed. 8Ghz of Pentium 4 was 4Ghz of FX. Pretty sad for Intel.)

Also I noticed that the G.skill sniper 3x4 Gb RAM only worked with certain boards, if I was to get 2 lots of the 2x4Gb package (16Gb total) would my board run it okay?



3x4 is triple channel. 1155 is dual channel. Only 1366 is 3 channel. 16GB is more for people who want to launch a satellite, run 89 spreadsheets, play starcraft and maybe have 70 browser windows open. 8 is fine. If you are doing professional level image/rendering/video, get 16. Otherwise, don't waste $. Whatever you get, there's a kit. It's cheaper. A 4GB kit is cheaper than 2 2GB sticks seperately, ditto for 8 and 16.


In regards to graphics cards does Radeon or NVIDIA make a difference if you have an Intel board or an AMD board or is it just personal preference.

One has a green logo, the other has a red logo. Nvidia has less torturous drivers, AMD does better high resolution and scales better in resolution and multi card setups. You DO tend to get a couple more frames per second out of ATI/AMD. I just hate the drivers so much. Agh. How do you adjust the anisotropic filtering for JUST Call of Duty? I still have no idea. NVidia also has PhysX, which like 4 games actually use, and is only marginally better than Havok physics and the like employed by most other games. In some cases it's really no better at all. The Physics in GTA4 are just fine and those are Havok. Nvidia also has CUDA and is better for parallel computing like folding and stuff like that...
More of a swiss army knife part than an AMD card.

No AMD/NVidia do not work better/worse on an Intel/AMD platform.

You'll want to look at your music production needs next. Do you need a high quality MIDI interface? Etc.

Ah ok.
At the moment I only use a MIDI keyboard and a pair of studio monitors, depending on what sort of price we're talking about I wouldn't mind a decent sound card and something that can support the monitors and keyboard and perhaps something bigger later on.

Throw in a sound card in the top PCIe slot and you're set. This wont have to be upgraded for a long, long time.

^
That doesn't make sense IMO. Nobody needs 2 580s atm unless they are multi-mon. Big time. Also, at that budget to not have a dedicated SSD for the OS is no good IMO. I'd make the 60GB a 20GB and put a 120 or 240GB Agility 3 in there instead. And if he ran 2 top GPUs like that, a UD7 or Maximus IV would be the way to go for the NF200.

We're all going to have conflicting opinions, though. I'd also go higher on the PSU with 2 580s etc etc. Could be running like 150W through the CPU if you OC it enough, not to mention overvolted GPU if you ever do it, lots of high power fans. You never know.

I also don't care for the corsair A70 just for the fans. Their fans are very bleh and very loud for what they are in my opinion. Very few people will push their Sandybridge past what a CM Hyper 212 can handle. If they do, again, IMO, there are better higher tier coolers out there.

A70 is cheaper since Newegg put the H212+ at $50. Amazon still has it for normal price.

People use different amounts, I have a dedicated 60GB V2 for my OS and I don't use half of it.

Dual 580s was on the assumption he wanted to build and leave for a couple years. Dual 285s was extreme overkill when it came out, but people who got it then don't necessarily need to upgrade even now.

UD7 and multiple SSD's, +1 to that.

I kinda thought is get the 120g ssd for OS + games and get a 600g velociraptor for all the production stuff. I'm not sure on the best way of doing things though as I've never had a ssd.
Do you think a 20gb one purely for the OS and a 240 for everything else would be better?

In regards to CPU & gpu I think ill try OC CPU to around 4.5 eventually and ill stick with 1 3gb 580 for now and upgrade to a seco nd one when I need it. so ill need a power supply & CPU fan that can handle that if I upgrade

srichards said:

In regards to CPU & gpu I think ill try OC CPU to around 4.5 eventually and ill stick with 1 3gb 580 for now and upgrade to a seco nd one when I need it. so ill need a power supply & CPU fan that can handle that if I upgrade

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Get a PSU rated over 850W. You don't need to change a CPU fan when you add a video card though..

I meant handle overcloking the CPU to 4.5 in regards to the fan =P
If I was to get a 20g SSD dedicated to the OS nd a 240g for programs would I really have a use for a Z board?

What's the point of two different SSDs? You can't get fast ones in sizes <60GB.

The point of the Z board is to combine the cheap and slow (relatively compared to newer gen SSDs) SSD with an HDD to make the HDD faster, simply put.

Ah ok, well what combination would you say works best for what I'm doing then? I'll probably buy a 240gb ssd regardless but would it slow down the ssd if I cache it with a larger drive and put my games and programs on the other 180ish GB?

As far as I know, you can take a SSD and use part of it for SSD cache and part of it for storage. However, you cannot split an SSD and have your OS on the non-cached portion.

For me, I just have my OS on my SSD and Windows feels much snappier then on other machines. I highly recommend just having a SSD for OS and your most frequently used stuff, then put everything else on a cached volume with another SSD. IMO game load times aren't so horrible that you need to put them on an SSD.

So windows and cached part goes on the 64gb the rest for whatever programs I want. and get another larger HDD to take advantage of the cached portion? and that shouldn't effect the speed of the SSD in any way?

You can't have OS and cache on the same SSD.