Finally invested in an IB rig - the 10-year rig

[2is]

They certainly go down in price on the used market. They go down SLIGHTLY for new ones, until they're phased out completely.

 

[Hubb1e]

Well, as long as the 3570 (non-K) drops $50 in price in five years on the used market, I'm golden.

I paid $200 for my Q6600 CPUs at MC, on sale, and now you can get them for $50 on ebay.

So I wouldn't say that Intel CPUs don't go down in price over time.

Well, it all depends on how much service you want to do. Replacing a CPU means you need to roll over there and dig around the the computer. You may not mind that but that's worth maybe $50 to me to not have to do again. But $50 isn't $150 so it's up to you. I dropped a 3570 in my wife's machine just because I could and didn't want to have to fiddle with it anymore. The extra speed now is a nice bonus over the alternative that would have been a 3ghz Pentium. That, and I got the 3570K at Microcenter and I felt like it's a crime to not walk out with one of those.

 

[ALIVE]

True.

Tough one, the encoder/decoders aren't finalized yet. I've read that one current decoder can push 1080p on an 2600k with some spare resources, but there were still compression options left unchecked.

Well, Qualcomm demonstrated a 800*480 clip with low bitrate and unknown options. Leave enough options unchecked in h.264 and the original PSP can play 480p60 with its 0.33 Ghz dualcore Mips CPU. The BluRay profile ended up being a lot more demanding and murdered most Athlon XPs and P4s.

Odd choice. Opera is one of the browsers that work great even with an USB2 5200rpm HDD as source...

well i do it so i am sure the browser does not store anything

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, as long as the 3570 (non-K) drops $50 in price in five years on the used market, I'm golden.

I paid $200 for my Q6600 CPUs at MC, on sale, and now you can get them for $50 on ebay.

So I wouldn't say that Intel CPUs don't go down in price over time.

I had a dual core E4500 that lasted for six years, and would have been still more than enough if I wasnt into gaming and had no really good upgrade path.

Considering the way the performance increase in cpus is slowing, I could see that cpu lasting 10 years. I think more the problem is if there is some new type of software ecosystem or such that requires a newer cpu, or a totally different type of cpu.

 

[mavere]

After 4-5 years, let's say, I imagine the toughest workload you'd be willing to let the computer do is media-related (streaming/skyping/playback/etc). With that in mind, it seems like Haswell would have been a better choice due to the automatic huge bump in integer throughput (which benefits all multimedia applications) and the possibility of HEVC encoding/decoding in Quicksync 3.0 or whatever.

From that point on, as software advances, I'd be weary of lack of support for AVX2+FMA, which from what I understand, roughly equals SSE2 in terms of 'significance'.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, it all depends on how much service you want to do. Replacing a CPU means you need to roll over there and dig around the the computer. You may not mind that but that's worth maybe $50 to me to not have to do again. But $50 isn't $150 so it's up to you. I dropped a 3570 in my wife's machine just because I could and didn't want to have to fiddle with it anymore. The extra speed now is a nice bonus over the alternative that would have been a 3ghz Pentium. That, and I got the 3570K at Microcenter and I felt like it's a crime to not walk out with one of those.

You're right of course. I contradicted myself by saying I wanted to upgrade the PC once and not touch it again for 10 years. I guess what I really meant was that I didn't want to do an OS upgrade or platform upgrade for 10 years, not so much that I literally never wanted to open the PC again for 10 years. (It will likely need a new case cooling fan long before 10 years.)

If I had the budget for it, getting a 3570K would have been a wise choice, but that just wasn't in the budget right now.

 

[tweakboy]

As much as I like AMD, I have to admit, I was swayed by the possibilities regarding low power-consumption with an IB Celeron.

Plus, there is a current Hot Deal on Biostar mobos for 20% at the egg. So they have this B75 board with all solid caps, one SATA6G port, USB3.0 front/rear, four DDR3 slots, and VGA/DVI/HDMI, all for $56. Other places on the internet have it listed for $80-90. So I had to buy it.

And of course, what good is a mobo without a CPU? I had to buy the cheapest but best budget CPU for the mobo, and I had to get it with the mobo instead of waiting a month, so that I wouldn't be stuck with a bum mobo past Newegg's return period. So I also picked up the Intel Celeron G1610 (Ivy Bridge) CPU. Dual-core, 2.6Ghz, integrated HD2500 video, minus quicksync, etc.

As admirable as the current mobo in a relative's rig is performing (S775 Celeron 440 2.0Ghz C2D single-core), I figure it's due for a slight upgrade. I'm figuring, that unless CPU demands for basic web browsing and desktop software increase dramatically, that I should be able to get by with the Celeron for a long time. I'm planning on putting 8GB or perhaps possibly 16GB into the machine as well. The mobo has solid caps, and I'll throw in an SSD too. So the whole computer could potentially last 10 years. If, during that time, it ever gets "too slow", then I could still probably pick up a used 1155 quad-core CPU and drop it in, they are rated at 77W, and the board can handle up to a 95W IB CPU, so I should be good there.

Not that the relative has ever said that the computer is too slow. They are a light user.

So here's some ideas for discussion, the (low) power draw of an IB rig, and the possibility (and wisdom or lack thereof) of building a computer, and expecting someone to use it for 10 years. (A euphemism for a "really long time".)

Very cool. Thanks Larry, your smart. People think they need to go from sandy to ivy then to haswell.... .. who ever has a sandy 2600k going to haswell you wont tell a difference at all. But then again the enthusiast Haswell 4 and 6 core,, GPU is very fast, other then that its 5 percent faster then a Ivy Bridge 3770k OCed.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Why didn't you just go with a NUC?

 

[nenforcer]

DDR3 RAM prices have gone up considerably the last couple of months. You can't really buy less than 4GB modules at a time now and the cost per gigabyte goes down if you purchase double, triple or quad kits.

So your really looking at 2 x 4GB=8GB at a minimum with 4 x 4GB = 16GB at the top.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Why didn't you just go with a NUC?

Too expensive for what you actually get, and the relative in question already really likes the case that this build is going in.

I've offered to get a mini book-sized computer (like one of those Foxconns, or that Lenovo that was in the Hot Deals forum recently), but they turned it down. They specifically want a computer that fits into a GlobalWin slimline case. Hopefully the PSU holds out.