New Rig Advice

[SiniStar]

Hi,

1st time caller, long time listener here

I'm researching a new gaming rig i'm putting together in the next few days and wanted some community input regarding the overall system.

I am a little over budget ($1500 USD) but if do not mind too much as long as I am getting the best bang for the dollar from each component.

CPU i7 3770K http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0388575​

SSD CRUCIAL M4 256 GB http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0364547​

PSU OCZ TECH 850 MODULAR http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0389135​

INTERNAL HD SEAGATE BARRACUDA 2TB http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0383892​

GPU EVGA670 FTW http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130787​

MOBO ASUS P8Z77 DELUXE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131818​

I'm having a hard time deciding between the i7 2700k or the i7 3770k listed above (IB or SB? how much of a difference would this make for me in the future?). I keep reading about heating issues with the 3rd gen chip but doesnt seem to be such a big deal unless i'm missing something (i'm obviously looking into an after-market heat sink).

What kind of benchmarks should i expect with this rig and what kind of stable overclocks should i expect off this chip?

I apologize in advance if I posted in the wrong section and would appreciate and and all constructive criticism/advice.

Thank you for taking the time to read this noob post.

 

[Knufire]

RAM? Case?

Which Microcenter?

IMO, Ivy Bridge is only worth $20 or so more than Sandy Bridge. That makes the 3570K worth it over the 2500K, and the 3770K not really worth it over the 2700K.

That being said, the main difference between the i5 and i7 is Hyperthreading, which doesn't help a huge amount in games.

 

[SiniStar]

Ram: Kingston DD3-16000 http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0370021

I already have a full tower i'm gonna salvage from my old rig. Been modded so I can throw a water cooling kit on it if I wanted to.

Could you please explain why you said the 3770k is not worth it over the 2700k? It's only a $10 difference at Microcenter. Is there a performance or over clocking issue I am not aware of?

Thanks for your quick response.

 

[Knufire]

They have the deal (which your probably aware of) that a 2500K, 2700K, or 3570K with a Z68 or Z77 motherboard gives you a $50 combo discount. This does NOT apply to the 3770K.

Which Microcenter again? Each one has slightly different stock, so I can check online on what's available there. Depending on what state you live in, you might not be charged tax on Newegg, so while Microcenter seems cheaper, it actually isn't.

If you're looking for price/performance, you're a little bit on the expensive side.

Are you planning to do a custom water loop or should I put a heatsink in the budget as well?

Also, do you need 2TB of storage? I ask because as hard drive size increases...so does the DOA rate, especially with the cheaper drives.

 

[SiniStar]

They have the deal (which your probably aware of) that a 2500K, 2700K, or 3570K with a Z68 or Z77 motherboard gives you a $50 combo discount. This does NOT apply to the 3770K.

Which Microcenter again? Each one has slightly different stock, so I can check online on what's available there. Depending on what state you live in, you might not be charged tax on Newegg, so while Microcenter seems cheaper, it actually isn't.

If you're looking for price/performance, you're a little bit on the expensive side.

Are you planning to do a custom water loop or should I put a heatsink in the budget as well?

Also, do you need 2TB of storage? I ask because as hard drive size increases...so does the DOA rate, especially with the cheaper drives.

I'm using the New Jersey microcenter. And I was aware of the combo sale they're having but that Asus mobo I linked has a ton of features to include the WiFi.

I had downloaded a crapton of turrents and my old slave drive is nearly full on its 750 gb capacity.

I realize my build is a bit pricey, but I'm trying to future proof a bit as well as trying to get components that perform well.

I was curious about the i7 3770 ceiling for overclocking or if there would be much of a performance difference with the i5.

 

[Knufire]

How many of those features do you actually need? The main ones I see are the dual NIC, Wifi, Bluetooth, and a few more ports.

Another NIC (same quality Intel port) can be added for around $30, several on the Classifieds. Wifi is also another $30 for a nice card. Bluetooth, it's a short range communication so a $15 adapter should be fine. That's about $75 in features that you might not even use. On the other hand, with the Microcenter, you can get an ASRock Extreme4, one of the most recommended boards here for price/performance for only $75. Even if you spend all the money to add those extra features, you're at $150. More than $100 less than the ASUS board. For what, a few USB and SATA ports?

Also, with this design of CPUs, overclocking ability is more chip limited and thermal limited, the motherboard doesn't play a very big impact past power delivery, which is also reduced by the fact that these CPUs draw less power (Ivy Bridge is only 77W).

This is what I would recommend. If you need a heatsink, grab a TRUE Spirit 140 from Amazon. If you need another NIC or Wifi or Bluetooth, just search some adapters on Newegg.

I did include a much lower wattage PSU, but here's why. Ivy Bridge CPUs have a TDP of 77W, and GTX670s have a TDP of 170W. The rest of your system, mainly hard drives and fans, might draw another 50W of power. Therefore, a GTX670 SLI system at stock settings comes out to be about 470W. Even with HEAVY overclocking on all major components, you'll probably won't ever exceed 600W. 650W gives you plenty of headroom.

Gaming is not a very RAM intensive task. They do not use much RAM in terms of amount (4GB -6GB is probably sufficient for gaming, 8GB is plenty futureproofed and adding RAM later on is a very simple upgrade). In terms of speed, looking at this article here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6, you can see that memory speed has pretty much zero impact on gaming, so getting what comes in a combo deal with another desired component seems to make the most sense to me.

The Vertex 4 is a MUCH faster drive than the Crucial M4, and only for a few dollars more. If you want to save a bit of money there, the Agility 4 is also very nice.




Since you are way under budget, and this rig is already sufficient to max out any game at 1080P, I would look at several other options to improve the gaming experience.

1. Water cooling takes a bit more effort and time and money, but you essentially can make the computer be as cool as you want it and as quiet as you want it.
2. I believe sound quality is something that is forgotten in the gaming world, espeically with so many "gaming" headphones and whatnot on the market. If you're interested, I would consider picking up a nice headset, such as the Audio Technica AD700 on Newegg, and an nice sound card such as the ASUS Xonar Essence STX or Creative X-Fi Titanium HD
3. If you don't already have it, a nice mechanical keyboard and mouse.
4. Look into multimonitor or 3D gaming. Even if you prefer single screen, look into getting one of the extermely nice Korean IPS monitors, I can link you to a thread about those if you're interested. These use the same panels as the Apple 27" iMac display, and can be had for $300-400.

 

[SiniStar]

No PCI Express 3.0 x16 on that board from what I can see. Not sure if I'll need that at the moment but the GPU is PCI Express 3.0 x16 so when i was looking for a mobo, i wanted to make sure it would support that.

I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this with me, i really have no one else to talk to about this since most of my friends don't even overclock.

Of course if i can economize a few dollars here and there that would be awesome,but i'm afraid that if i cut a few corners here and there, i'd regret it a month or 2 or 6 down the road. I'd love to save some cash to get a couple of decent Asus 2 ms monitors (got a 24 inch Sansung now which either i can keep or give to my kid). I just don't wanna hamstring myself. I know i can save $100 bucks on the mobo, the CPU and the GPU (Probably save $300+) but will I regret my decision? I typically upgrade my system every couple of years or so.

Typically how much can I overclock the 3rd gen i5 or i7 on air and have a stable system? I'm not trying to use any exotic cooling systems to get to 5.0+ was thinking 4.5 on air or a decent water cooling system.

The price difference between the 2700k and the 3770k is negligible. So why not go with the latest the IB chipset? That's my thinking anyhow.

 

[SiniStar]

Off topic: Your signature is killing me! it's blue on a gray background and so hard to make out lol. Sorry had to put that out there, was bugging me lol.

 

[Knufire]

Here's how the PCIe slots work. The general concept is that the computer can control how much bandwidth to give to each slot in order to maximize the potential. This bandwidth is given in terms of "lanes". 16 lanes is the max bandwidth per slot, so if the computer detects that only one slot is in use, it will allocate all 16 lanes to that slot. However, say you put in two graphics cards. Since Ivy Bridge CPUs don't have enough connectivity for two full slots of bandwidth, it will split it in half, giving 8 lanes to one slot and 8 lanes to the other. This is okay, as current video cards are only the speed of a x4 slot, so there is no performance hit going from x16 to x8. Here's a diagram that explains it if you're a visual thinker: http://www.overclock.net/t/1267524/...the-ivy-bridge-i7-3770k-support#post_17438263

The TRUE Spirit 140 I linked before should get you to 4.4-4.5GHz on a decent chip. Frankly, a lot of Ivy Bridge chips don't really go much above that.

Here's the thing, since technology moves at an exponential rate, no matter how much you throw at a rig, it will always be outdated in a few years. Look at this scenario.

Spend extra $300 now, have rig last 30 months.
Spend less now, rig only lasts 25 months. Spend saved $300 to get a new GPU, rig lasts a total of 40 months.

Your money will always buy you something better in the future. Spending conservatively but more often will get you better results than lumping money together at once. Also, strictly gaming speaking, CPUs last quite a while. Games are way more dependent on the GPU, so usually all you need to get a new life out of a rig is a GPU upgrade.

The price difference between the 2700K and the 3770K is more because you're giving up the potential $50 in savings.