Building a new system, one part at a time - thoughts about priorities?

[AnitaPeterson]

Howdy folks,

I have an aging HTPC: P4@3.6 GHZ, 3 GB RAM, Radeon HD3850, SB X-Fi Platinum, in a Thermaltake Bach case.

I don't do much gaming on it, (and when I do, it's old-school FPSs, like Q3, Serious Sam, Postal and the like). Mostly, it's used for web surfing, Skype videocalls and audio/video playback. However, it stumbles at 1080p playback (unless I use Splash), and generally feels sluggish. Having too many tabs opened in Firefox eats up 70% of the resources, and even the mouse starts to behave erratically. I did a clean Win7 install on it about three months ago, and I have a minimum of programs (including up-to-date antivirus and antispyware), so I know that it couldn't have accumulated too much crap over time.

In short, I think it's time to retire it.

The problem is (surprise, surprise!) I can't afford to go "big" and spend a lot of dough on a replacement. Ideally, I'd like to use as much as possible from the old machine (such as the case, the HDDs, optical drive and the X-Fi card), and keep the videocard for another six months or so.

Over the next year, I plan to do some video encoding and editing on the machine, so eventually the old HD3850 card will go. But that won't happen until early summer.

So right now, if I want to build a new machine, my only option is to buy stuff slowly,
over several months, with the goal of completing the new build by March 2012.

I've put together two scenarios. Both use AMD architectures, since Intel combos are too damned expensive (and I have a fondness for the AMD/ATI brand)...

Scenario A is "The Cheapest Combination"; I'm going for the best bang for the buck, while at the same time trying to keep things at a decent minimum:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T ............ 159.99
Mobo: Asus M5A87 Socket AM3+ ............ 94.99
RAM: Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 ............ 44.99
Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 60GB SATA III ............ 99.99
PSU: Corsair Gaming Series 500W 80PLUS Certified PS ............ 75.99

Grand Total = 475.95

(Note that all the prices are in CAD, not USD, and they reflect the current best deals available locally to me. I tend to favour local shops, where I can return items without a hassle if they prove defective, and CanadaComputers usually has the best prices, anyway.)

As you can see, I try to maintain a balance... the SSD is small but fast (and the reviews seem to indicate it as reliable), the PSU is quiet and 80PLUS certified, and I went for the six-core Phenom, while the mobo includes USB 3.0 ports and comes from a reliable manufacturer.

The second scenario is what I optimistically call "Futureproof system":

CPU: AMD Bulldozer X8 FX-8120 (95W) ............ 229.99
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 Socket AM3+ ............ 129.99
RAM: Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 ............ 44.99
Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 60GB SATA III ............ 99.99
PSU: Corsair Gaming Series 500W 80PLUS Certified PS ............ 75.99

Grand Total = 580.95

You'll note that the price difference between the two configurations rests mainly in the CPU/mobo combo, and everything else stays the same.

Still with me so far? Good, now here come the questions:

1) Is the $100 difference between the two systems justified, in terms of current and long-term (~5 years) performance? As you might have guessed, I like to "milk" my systems for all they're worth, which explains the long upgrade cycles (I don't think there are many ATers still rocking P4s...)

2) If you were to buy these components, what would you start with, and what would you leave for last (the projected end date being March 2012)?

Your thoughts and ideas are appreciated. Thanks in advance, sorry for the long post.

 

[GoStumpy]

Unfortunately for building peice-by-peice, (which I did for mine), you need to buy the Mobo/CPU/Ram all at the same time... And that's usually about half your budget...

I'd buy the PSU first, but everything else really needs to be purchased together...

I would suggest watching shell-shocker deals EVERY DAY and try your luck at building it that way... I found G.Skill 8GB Ram on there yesterday for $35CDN. Corsair CX430V2 was on 15% off $49.99, with a $20 MIR, free shipping... Worked out to $18 shipped!

 

[lehtv]

So right now, if I want to build a new machine, my only option is to buy stuff slowly, over several months, with the goal of completing the new build by March 2012.

Don't you also have the option of starting to save money for upgrading everything on one go in March 2012? You could probably get an Ivy Bridge system by then.

Scenario A is "The Cheapest Combination"

Hmm, I'm thinking it'd be better to go with
i5-2400 + H67 Sata 6gb/s motherboard
1333MHz RAM
Corsair CX430, Antec EA430D or Antec Neo Eco 400C PSU
Crucial M4 64GB

Should cost about the same. i5-2400 is faster than 1055T, and you'll probably be fine with a microATX motherboard. The Corsair GS 500W PSU you picked is pretty expensive and a bit overkill unless you're planning to buy a video card that requires 2x6-pin PCIe connectors. You can find a lot better PSU deals online, perhaps even in your local shop. Crucial M4 is probably a better SSD than the Patriot.

1) Is the $100 difference between the two systems justified, in terms of current and long-term (~5 years) performance? As you might have guessed, I like to "milk" my systems for all they're worth, which explains the long upgrade cycles (I don't think there are many ATers still rocking P4s...)

For long term performance you should definitely get a Z68 motherboard e.g. Asus P8Z68-V LE (for USB3) or Asrock Z68 Pro3 Gen3 (for PCIe 3.0 compatibility), and i5-2500K.

2) If you were to buy these components, what would you start with, and what would you leave for last (the projected end date being March 2012)?

I would not buy anything just yet, I'd buy everything in March. I'd aim for Intel Ivy Bridge.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

@GoStumpy:
Thank you for the suggestions. from my own observations, the PSUs seems to be the slowest at changing their price over time, so it makes sense that that this component would be acquired first.

Though I'm not sure why you suggest the CPU/mobo/RAM would have to be bought at the same time... RAM, especially, should not be that big of a deal, as long as the specs are decent (and both motherboards support those specs). Am I missing something here?

I assume the shellshocker you're referring to are Newegg deals? Good idea, I'll look for those

@lehtv
You have a good point about saving money. However, in my household, very little actually gets set aside... plus, in my experience, buying things slowly builds an expectation, and give me something to look forward to. Somehow, that's just how things work with me.

I'm not too keen on going the Intel way, and the prices that I've seen here are definitely higher than for the AMD solutions. The suggestion to wait until March, when Ivy Bridge is supposed to be released is tempting. But there's no way of knowing how those chips will be priced at retail (especially here in Canada)... which may push the acquisition date (and budget!) further. Of course, holding out for the latest and greatest is a game that can be played indefinitely

Interesting that you suggest a slower RAM (1333, as opposed to 1600) - why is that?

Good point about the PSU, I hadn't realized it's overkill.

I don't want a MicroATX, because these have a limited number of PCI and memory slots. I need to fit in the X-Fi, a FireWire card, and have at least one more slot available, in case I decide to add in something else. Similarly, i might want to up the memory to 16 GB, by simply adding more sticks, as opposed to having to replace the 4GBs with 8GBs.

 

[Ken g6]

Given the prices you list, I assume you can spend up to $160 at a time?

OK, I'd start with these all at once:
H61 mobo: ~$50
Celeron G530: ~$60
RAM, as you listed: ~$50

Then, as you get money, you can replace your Celeron with a 2500K or something. If you want to overclock later, you can replace the mobo with a Z68. The RAM should be fine; though if you want to pay even less at the outset you could start with a single $15 2GB stick or something and upgrade to 8GB later. Or buy 2 4GB sticks, just one at a time.

 

[lehtv]

Interesting that you suggest a slower RAM (1333, as opposed to 1600) - why is that?

Because the H67 (also H61) chipset supports only up to 1333Mhz. Besides, the benefits of faster RAM on Sandy Bridge are very minute; on a budget I'd recommend 1333mhz even for the Z68 chipset.

I'm not too keen on going the Intel way, and the prices that I've seen here are definitely higher than for the AMD solutions.

Well true, Intel doesn't have a direct competitor to 1055T at $160. The nearest is i5-2300 for $40 more. However, Intel 2500K costs the same as FX8120 and is easily faster. Even the i5-2300 will be quite a bit faster than AMD FX8120. When it comes to Intel motherboards, a full size Z68 board can be had for about $100.

I have to agree with ken_g6 though, a Celeron G530 would be fast enough for your uses, and you could always upgrade it to a much faster quad core later. The motherboard you buy will possibly be compatible with Ivy Bridge quad cores. A G530 system using integrated graphics would consume many times less power than a 1055T with a HD3850.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Given the prices you list, I assume you can spend up to $160 at a time?

Wow! You actually nailed it... I'm in the process of paying off some debts, and I'm determined to get rid of those as soon as possible. Which is exactly what limits my spending power.

The "placeholder" (or incremental) strategy you describe is something I hadn't considered!

It's feasible, but it would leave me with equipment that I'll need to unload somehow. A few years back I put together a charity program to send second-hand computers to poor children in Eastern Europe. I even took computers to Cuba! When that ended, I gave the accumulated surplus of computing equipment to family and friends. And now they've had their fill as well. Even the current HTPC I intend to replace won't be trashed; it will continue to serve an older couple with little computing demands. So these intermediate parts would have to go somplace; I don't even know whom I haven't gifted yet... maybe I could go the Kijiji way...

 

[sm625]

Just scour ebay for deals on socket 775/AM2 stuff. You dont need to spend much more than $100 to get the performance you need.

PSU: You shouldnt need a new psu. If it can push a P4 it can push a 45nm X2 or a 65nm E6xxx.
RAM: 4GB DDR = $44
CPU: Used E6xxx or X2-240/245/250 = $30
mobo: Used S775 or AM2/3 = $30.

You can get the RAM for $20 but I dont like to mess around with RAM. I buy the top rated ones off newegg because I had too many bad experiences with budget ram.

 

[mfenn]

Anita, I'm a little perplexed how you can say that Intel is too expensive and then propose a high-end Bulldozer based solution. Dollar for dollar, Sandy Bridge is just plain faster.

i5 2400 $200
MSI PH67S-C43 $83
DDR3 1333 8GB $40
430CX $50
M4 64GB $120
Total: $493

This costs only slightly more than your low-end build and is faster than your high-end one.

Though I'm not sure why you suggest the CPU/mobo/RAM would have to be bought at the same time... RAM, especially, should not be that big of a deal, as long as the specs are decent (and both motherboards support those specs). Am I missing something here?

Your current motherboard supports DDR2 at most and all new CPUs are DDR3. So you will need to buy the CPU, mobo, and RAM at the same time unless you want parts to sit on the shelf.

 

[volcane]

I've put together two scenarios. Both use AMD architectures, since Intel combos are too damned expensive (and I have a fondness for the AMD/ATI brand)...

As the other posters have pointed out, current Intel combos can be just as affordable while outperforming the scenarios you put together.

So that just leaves your fondness for AMD to deal with.

I can understand how emotions can get in the way of car purchases where looks can sway you despite poor efficiency or reliability. Heart over head and all that stuff.

But we're dealing with the guts of a PC here. Best performance within your budget is the only thing that should matter (unless you have thing for handsome motherboards and chips), and right now Intel is the way to go.

 

[Zap]

So right now, if I want to build a new machine, my only option is to buy stuff slowly,
over several months, with the goal of completing the new build by March 2012.

There are a number of reasons why buying piecemeal is bad.

1) Many resellers have a limited return period. Anything you buy in the next few months will not be returnable by March.

2) Warranty period is time limited. Something purchased now will have five months of its warranty gone by March.

3) Generally speaking, as time goes by either new stuff comes out that is better than old stuff, or prices drop.

4) What if something happens to your finances and you are unable to finish the build? You have then already spent money on essentially useless items which you can't use and may not even get your full value out of by selling.

There are exceptions to this. For instance anything you buy that can be used in your old rig (hard drive, PSU, graphics card if PCI Express) can just be used to incrementally upgrade the old rig until one day it finishes the metamorphosis into the new rig. Also, some deals are just plain HOT and are worth buying as long as you have a well defined parts list. For instance, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up fast. While typically they are the realm of hot deals at department stores, there can be deals on computer parts. Some stuff will be VERY unlikely to change by March, for instance power supplies and DDR3 RAM. For those, if a deal comes along (and by "deal" I mean costing significantly less than normal) then go ahead and buy it. Other things like graphics cards and to lesser degree CPUs and motherboards probably should not be purchased ahead of time.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Thank you for all your suggestions so far, folks!

I'll try to address your observations in order.

1. Although a restrained budget is in effect, I would like to buy new and current parts only. At this point, I think that investing in a an E6xxx of X2 series CPU, while significantly cheaper, would not keep the rig running for the desired five-year useful lifetime.

2. I did not say that the RAM would be recycled from the old machine, since I think I actually uses DDR1 (!), so that's out of the question

3. The arguments made by many of you in favour of an Intel solution are convincing, and now you've put me on the edge

I've seen the benchmarks, and I agree that the 2500k is a great CPU, which slaughters the AMD Thuban/Bulldozer competition. However, I have one last question... considering the five-year useful life that I hope to extract from this rig (and not taking into account an intermediary CPU upgrade), would it be possible that a six- or eight-core would gradually get more "traction and support" (for lack of a better word), leaving the quad-core behind?

4. With regards to the "piecemeal" approach, the points raised by Zap are well taken. It's also perfectly true that some parts may be useful anyway, even as spares (such as the PSU and SSD). So whether I buy things slowly (taking advantage of sales and special offers), or put money aside and get everything at once, it makes sense that the mobo/CPU would be the last items in the shopping cart, so to speak.

But I'm particularly interested in the suggestion (prediction?) that PSU and DDR3 prices are not likely to change until March. That's exactly what I am wondering myself. And that's precisely where the AT hive mind becomes more reliable than my own rumblings:

Would the SSD prices go up or down, considering the current HDD shortage? In theory, SSD makers should seize the opportunity to sell more at lower prices, thus establishing them more firmly as a mainstream product, instead of a niche gadget. But what if all they care for is a quick profit? In that case, they might keep, or even hike their prices - which would provide the decisive argument for the "buy now" approach.

Yes, yes, I'm rationalizing too much

 

[Mike64]

Holiday sales (Black Friday to post-Christmas) are probably your best bet for an SSD.

In general, I don't think the current shortage of hard drives is going to have a dramatic impact on SSD at all. The shortage isn't going to be severe enough or long enough to give SSDs much of a wedge at prices they can afford to charge. Hard drive prices may have skyrocketed, but even at today's highs, they're still measured in "cents per gigabyte" rather than "dollars per gigabyte." On the other hand, for that very reason, demand for SSDs isn't going to increase dramatically in the short term either which would tend to drive prices up.

 

[mfenn]

I've seen the benchmarks, and I agree that the 2500k is a great CPU, which slaughters the AMD Thuban/Bulldozer competition. However, I have one last question... considering the five-year useful life that I hope to extract from this rig (and not taking into account an intermediary CPU upgrade), would it be possible that a six- or eight-core would gradually get more "traction and support" (for lack of a better word), leaving the quad-core behind?

There are two important metrics to look at, single-threaded performance (some tasks will always be serial) and aggregate FLOPS (multithreaded performance). I think that we can all agree that Intel slaughters AMD in single-threaded performance.

Whether or not future applications will be able to take advantage of all the FLOPS available on a modern processor is somewhat murky, but let's assume for the sake of argument that they can. Cinebench is a good example of an application that scales linearly with core count and can thus take advantage of all the FLOPS available on a CPU. The 1055T scores 16K whereas the i5 2400 scores 19K. An FX-8150 and i5 2500K both score around 20K.

So, to answer your question: No, current AMD CPUs will never "catch up" to current Intel CPUs by leveraging more multithreaded code. They simply do not have enough raw performance on tap.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Thanks mfenn!

You just pushed me over the side to Intel

[humming Christmas songs]

 

[mfenn]

No prob, though maybe you should be humming the Imperial March instead? :awe:

 

[AnitaPeterson]

How's this now?


1) Crucial M4 SSD Micron C400 64GB 2.5IN Solid State Disk Flash Drive SATA3 6Gbps
.......................................................$112.82

2) G.SKILL Ripjaws X F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-1333 CL9-9-9-24 Memory
.......................................................$40.38

3) Intel Core i5 2500K Quad Core Unlocked Processor LGA1155 3.3GHZ Sandy Bridge 6MB
.......................................................$219.69

4) Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 ATX LGA1155 Z68 DDR3 2PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 2PCI HDMI SLI SATA3 USB3.0 Motherboard
.......................................................$154.69



Total: $527.58

 

[Ken g6]

Have we narrowed down what you want to do on this system? Gaming, general office-type stuff, video editing, or other?

The SSD is good for general office-type stuff, but I wouldn't bother for just gaming. Conversely, the 2500k is good for gaming, or other processor-intensive tasks; but otherwise you could save a lot with my little $150 build above.

If you go for the 2500k, I'd go with this ASRock instead of your Gigabyte.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Thanks for the feedback!
The Asrock goes for almost the same as the Gigabyte here, in Canada...

The sytem will be doing a bit of everything, except Autocad and gaming "Crysis 2"
Light usage includes 1080p playback and HD videocalling.

The most demanding work will be audio-video encoding/decoding/transcoding. I'm routinely dealing with large-size, large-bitrate 1080p video files from my Canon camera, and editing these behemoths is currently a painful and time-consuming proposition.

Oh, I forgot to mention why I go for a SSD... the current boot drive in the machine that will be replaced is a 70 GB WD HDD first-generation SATA. The cheapest 7200 rpm SATA HDD I can find right now is a 500 GB WD, for CAD90.
I figured out that the price difference makes up for the speed boost and lack of noise - and I'm NOT storing much on the boot drive anymore, these days....

 

[mfenn]

SSD and CPU look fine. The two things that I question are:

- What does the GA-Z68XP-UD3 get you that the ASUS P8Z68-V LE does not?
- That RAM is DDR3 1066. You might as well get DDR3 1333 for the same price.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

1) Strange, the memory IS supposed to be DDR3 1333... it's also in the description :/
2) That ASUS is a beautiful motherboard!... I just didn't see it before. Excellent! Thank you so much mfenn for pointing it out to me!

*edit* Kick-ass! the whole thing comes down to just a tad under $500 now!

 

[lehtv]

Yes, the RAM you listed is 1333mhz... mfenn probably read the "10666" in the product number as "1066mhz". The 10666 is the peak transfer rate in mb/s for modules with 1333mhz clock frequency.

 

[mfenn]

1) Strange, the memory IS supposed to be DDR3 1333... it's also in the description :/
2) That ASUS is a beautiful motherboard!... I just didn't see it before. Excellent! Thank you so much mfenn for pointing it out to me!

*edit* Kick-ass! the whole thing comes down to just a tad under $500 now!

Glad to help!

Yes, the RAM you listed is 1333mhz... mfenn probably read the "10666" in the product number as "1066mhz". The 10666 is the peak transfer rate in mb/s for modules with 1333mhz clock frequency.

Yep, you are correct. I mentally removed the last 6 in the number. My bad.

 

[theAnimal]

Don't forget to price match. NCIX does this as well as CC. Use shopbot.ca to find the best prices.