Finally ordered - How does it stack up?

[Slufa111]

Here is my first build. I want to know peoples opinions. I ordered the stuff today.


MoBo = Asus P8P67 with USB 3.0 Header

CPU = i5 2500k

RAM = Kingston 8GB DDR3 1333

SSD = Intel 510 Series 120GB SATA 3

HDD = Western 1TB Caviar Black SATA-600

Optical Drive = LG DVD RW +/- Burner & Media Card Reader

GPU = Sapphire HD 6950 2GB Dirt 3 Edition (choose this edition since it has 2 fans)

Case = Cooler Master Storm Enforcer

PSU = Cooler Master Silent Pro M 700 Watt 80+

O/S = Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

Keep in mind I live in Canada and allot of parts are not available to me. Even through newegg.ca allot of the parts would have to be shipped internationally and in the long run I don't like ordering anything over the boarder encase I need to send it back for repair / replacement. I don't want to end up with a down unit for 2-3 weeks.

Good choice of parts I would say. Could have gotten a better powersupply but whatcha going do?

I actually agree with you, I had the ASROCK Extreme6 and I thought it was a horrible board. I got myself a ASUS Z68 PRO and its like night and day.

ALL in all, you did well with the constraints you had.

 

[aphelion02]

Except that those constraints aren't real, as forum members suggested many viable alternatives.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

Thanks for your excellent counterargument. Now could you look at the rest of the post?

Yes the Dirt 3 edition "does" have 2 fans.
Look here: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...2gb%20dirt%203

I didn't buy it for dirt 3. I bought it because it had 2 fans.

I am looking forward to trying out the EYEFINITY this 2gb card will offer me even though it wont be as good of graphics quality as it would be in my 1 single monitor.

Didn't see that one on Newegg when I was browsing. Also, if you're gonna spend this much on a build, it's a good idea to make it so it can play games in high quality, don't you think? If you have three monitors, the 6950 2GB isn't gonna be enough for that, so it would've been a good idea to get a motherboard with PCIe 2.0 8X/8X for another 6950 in the future. Now you're essentially stuck with the same gaming performance until you upgrade to another platform or you're willing to live with the X4 10% frame-rate penalty.

In your OP, you never mentioned your country, nor did you mention any other constraints. I told you you could've done much better, but then said it's your opinion that it was good given the circumstances. Why would you ask us for our opinion on the build if you're not gonna listen to it, even with the viable alternatives presented?

Again, you could've done a lot better for the price.

 

[Justinator]

Its not a bad computer, but you could have done better for less, even considering your circumstances and location. This has been communicated to you through posts ad nauseum. The fact is, you ignored advice and made your own advice. That's fine, but don't keep posting here looking for validation. The truth still remains the same.

Yes I have posted a few threads...

No! I have not repeatedly posted this build for what you call validation. This build has been changed from my first and second build ideas and I never posted it here before.

 

[Justinator]

In your OP, you never mentioned your country, nor did you mention any other constraints. I told you you could've done much better, but then said it's your opinion that it was good given the circumstances. Why would you ask us for our opinion on the build if you're not gonna listen to it, even with the viable alternatives presented?

Again, you could've done a lot better for the price.

Man settle down... Your getting worked up. LOL. It's all cool. It's only a computer and it's not even yours...

I have the choice to purchase my parts from where I want and if I want to support a local vendor in my town and country oppose to supporting the USA that's my personal decision.

All I wanted to know is what kind of a PC I got here... Is it low, medium, high... I was just curious???

Chill...



As far as the poll results are looking I'm quite happy considering the last computer I bought was a "pre made" Sony VAIO from a big chain store 6 years or more ago for $2200. LOL
I'm way ahead of the game compared to that purchase. LOL

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Man settle down... Your getting worked up. LOL. It's all cool. It's only a computer and it's not even yours...

I have the choice to purchase my parts from where I want and if I want to support a local vendor in my town and country oppose to supporting the USA that's my personal decision.

All I wanted to know is what kind of a PC I got here... Is it low, medium, high... I was just curious???

Chill...

Um, I am chilled. If you don't want for us to critique it, don't post about wanting our opinions on it. Not trying to be rude, but it's a common problem on the forums.

Also, buying things simply to support local businesses seems to be quite a lot more expensive, but whatever.

 

[Falc-X]

I know we had points proven to show that there are some better choices but for me it boiled down to availability for me. newegg.ca wasn't a good option for me being I live in Canada and allot of things would have had to come from the USA resulting in sever headache if something didn't work and needed to be returned.

The XFX 550w was my first choice but it wasn't available to me.

Which sites have you all examined in canada ?? Im currently piecing a build together and have been using Newegg.ca, NCIX.com, and Directcanada.com.

Ive used ncix and directcanada in the past also and just got some parts this last week from both.

ncix will do price match of other competitors sites which is great.

I know its overkill but ncix has a Corsair AX750 watt ps for only 149.99 this week. Kinda what Im leaning towards for the price.

 

[Blain]

OP, you got a solid upper midrange build for a high-end price. We beat this to death in your other threads though.

Is this common practice here in the AnandTech Forums?

Here is my first build. I want to know peoples opinions. I ordered the stuff today.

Optical Drive = LG DVD RW +/- Burner & Media Card Reader

What LG model is it that has card reader capabilities?

 

[lehtv]

Absolutely, patently wrong. There's a reason why the i7-980 costs more and there's a reason why it's used instead in ultra high-end builds.

Yes yes I know, multithreaded applications. No need to bother with the graph spam. Since 1) 2600K is a bit faster in non-multithreaded tasks and quite a bit slower in heavily multithreaded tasks, and 2) multithreaded tasks account only for a very small number of all tasks, I think it's fair to say 2600K is on par with 980X in performance, if not better. But considering all the other reasons I listed earlier, 2600K is an obviously better choice for a high end build.

Thanks for your excellent counterargument.

You're welcome.

Now could you look at the rest of the post?

I took a look at it. Happy?

 

[Justinator]

Is this common practice here in the AnandTech Forums?


What LG model is it that has card reader capabilities?

Sorry about that. I meant to say I am getting a LG drive, and an LG card reader. It isn't a 2 in 1 unit.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

you could of LISTENED to what we had to say.

but you wanted to use YOUR own parts you chose out

you dont have the knowledge and the experiance to KNOW whats good and whats bad

CM PSUs=trash
p67 mobo which costs very close to the z68=didnt listen
alot of other messed up crap=you didnt listen either

good job

you wasted alot more money than you should have

 

[Justinator]

you could of LISTENED to what we had to say.

but you wanted to use YOUR own parts you chose out

you dont have the knowledge and the experiance to KNOW whats good and whats bad

CM PSUs=trash
p67 mobo which costs very close to the z68=didnt listen
alot of other messed up crap=you didnt listen either

good job

you wasted alot more money than you should have

LOL... :biggrin: The 15 year old voted it a "Low End Build". Oh if I'd only listened to him and shipped parts in from around the world...
Who cares about warranty? right....

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I did call it a lowend build (just to troll :3)
the truth is, its a mediumish build (on this forum atleast)
You could of just shipped it...

 

[lehtv]

He's 15... but he's armed and dangerous

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Yes yes I know, multithreaded applications. No need to bother with the graph spam. Since 1) 2600K is a bit faster in non-multithreaded tasks and quite a bit slower in heavily multithreaded tasks, and 2) multithreaded tasks account only for a very small number of all tasks, I think it's fair to say 2600K is on par with 980X in performance, if not better. But considering all the other reasons I listed earlier, 2600K is an obviously better choice for a high end build.

You're welcome.

I took a look at it. Happy?

Wrong. There's no point in making a very high-end build that will suck once you throw something very multi-threaded on it. Single-threaded tasks means audio encoding (iTunes, LAME) and those are typically done in less than two minutes for a full album. Mildly multi-threaded accounts for gaming, which uses two-four threads and the advantage of SB over Nehalem is only 10% higher frame rate. It won't give you a better gaming experience. Then there's the very multi-threaded, and that will use anything you can throw at it. In there it's 20-35% faster.

Basically what you're saying is that the 2600K is better for high-end because it can encode audio in a few seconds less, and because it'll give you a bit more frame-rate that won't make a difference in playability. A title that's unplayable isn't gonna suddenly be playable switching to Sandy Bridge. If you want something very high-end, it's because you're gonna have high-end workloads to throw at it. Gaming is not a high-end workload, nor is audio encoding. The 2500K can do both of those the same, and it costs $100 less. In multi-threaded Gulftown leaves Sandy Bridge in the dust, and the gap is much bigger than comparing in single-threaded. So your statement that a 2600K is overall faster than a 980 is completely false.

Also, there's more multi-threaded programs than there are single-threaded.

 

[lehtv]

There's no point in making a very high-end build that will suck once you throw something very multi-threaded on it

It won't suck. It'll be slightly slower.

Single-threaded tasks means audio encoding (iTunes, LAME) and those are typically done in less than two minutes for a full album.

So what? SB still has a very real advantage.

Mildly multi-threaded accounts for gaming, which uses two-four threads and the advantage of SB over Nehalem is only 10% higher frame rate. It won't give you a better gaming experience.

That may be true for most games at 1080p, but try running new titles in Eyefinity/NVSurround on the highest settings and that 10% higher frame rate becomes very important.

You can argue all you want that multi-threading is somehow more important than single-threaded when it all depends on what the user is doing with the PC. Overall, SB is faster in some tasks, slower in others. The average difference between these two is just so minute, whichever way you look at it. At half the price, with better features, lower power consumption. I eagerly await you to cry some more.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

It won't suck. It'll be slightly slower.

20-35% slower isn't "slightly slower". Just taking an encoding job that takes 60 minutes on the 2600K can take 45-50 minutes on a 980. That's A LOT.

So what? It's still a very real advantage.

A very small one. Much smaller than the one in multi-threaded like encoding. Are you suggesting we compare saving 10-15 minutes on a video encoding job to saving 15 seconds on audio encoding? Really?

That may be true for most games at 1080p, but try running new titles in Eyefinity/NVSurround on the highest settings and that 10% higher frame rate becomes very important.

That 10% advantage vanishes to around 5-0% at those very high resolutions (5760x1080) because the titles become very GPU-limited. The lower the res, the bigger the performance difference can be; the higher the res, the smaller the difference will grow.

You can argue all you want that multi-threading is somehow more important than single-threading when it all depends on what the user is doing with the PC. Overall, SB is faster in some tasks, slower in others, but on average it's on par with 980. At half the price, with better features, lower power consumption. I eagerly await you to cry some more.

An enthusiast is much more likely to be encoding video or doing content creation than encoding albums on iTunes. SB is faster by a very small amount (10-15%) in audio encoding and mainstream gaming. Gulftown is faster by a very significant amount (20-35%) in video encoding, 3D rendering, file compression/decompression, compiling, content creation, and productivity. Your notion that somehow there's more single-threaded programs than multi-threaded is completely wrong, as is the notion that an enthusiast is just as likely to care about encoding albums (where the difference is only 15 seconds) as encoding videos (where the difference can be anywhere from 10-30 minutes, or even more).

No, the 2600K is not overall the same speed as the 980. It's slower.

^^

 

[lehtv]

20-35% slower isn't "slightly slower". Just taking an encoding job that takes 60 minutes on the 2600K can take 45-50 minutes on a 980. That's A LOT.

First off, if 980 is 20-35% faster, it means 2600K is 17-25% slower. And no I don't think that's "A LOT". And it certainly doesn't mean it sucks.

A very small one. Much smaller than the one in multi-threaded like encoding. Are you suggesting we compare saving 10-15 minutes on a video encoding job to saving 15 seconds on audio encoding? Really?

You should be comparing performance difference in %, not actual time, because audio encoding takes much less time to begin with. This should be obvious.

That 10% advantage vanishes to around 5-0% at those very high resolutions (5760x1080) because the titles become very GPU-limited. The lower the res, the bigger the performance difference can be; the higher the res, the smaller the difference will grow.

True. But that 10% advantage will also ensure that there is no CPU bottleneck when driving multiple GPUs to their max at such a resolution. And still, that 10% advantage is very real in some games at 1080p, especially when you consider the longevity of the setup. 2600K will be able to play every game at max for longer.

No, the 2600K is not overall the same speed as the 980. It's slower.

As I said, it depends on what you do with the PC. And I think an enthusiast is as likely to be an enthusiast gamer as an enthusiast content creator.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

i am armed and dangerous

with enough knowledge to build a pc and stuff lol
hope they let me work at comp usa

even thoughit says i need my hs diploma...make an exception?

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

First off, if 980 is 20-35% faster, it means 2600K is 17-25% slower. And no I don't think that's "A LOT". And it certainly doesn't mean it sucks.

Clearly saving 15 seconds is comparable to saving 15 minutes. Clearly...

You should be comparing performance difference in %, not actual time, because audio encoding takes much less time to begin with. This should be obvious.

I already told you both; stop looking for a scapegoat. In encoding it's where the difference is the highest, so 35% overall. That means an encoding job that would take 60 minutes on the 2600K would take 45 minutes on the 980.

True. But that 10% advantage will also ensure that there is no CPU bottleneck when driving multiple GPUs to their max at such a resolution. And still, that 10% advantage is very real in some games at 1080p, especially when you consider the longevity of the setup. 2600K will be able to play every game at max for longer.

That 10% advantage is not a 10% advantage anymore. The more you raise the resolution, the more the GPU is the one that needs data, hence the CPU limitation is gone and you're GPU-bound. This is stuff most gamers and enthusiasts know...

You might want to take a look at this:

So no, at 2560x1440 or higher there's no reason to go for one over the other. If you're a very high-end enthusiast, you wouldn't be running at a mainstream 1920x1080 resolution, either. If all you care is about gaming, you would go for the 2500K over the 2600K.

As I said, it depends on what you do with the PC. And I think an enthusiast is as likely to be an enthusiast gamer as an enthusiast content creator.

An enthusiast gamer will go for the 2500K, not the 2600K. They're the same speed in gaming. Disregarding that, there's little (10% at 1920x1080) to no (0% at 2560x1440) difference in gaming between Sandy Bridge and Gulftown, while there a big (20% in productivity) to huge (35% in content creation and video encoding) difference in multi-threaded. Given this, the 980 is overall faster.

^^

 

[lehtv]

Clearly saving 15 seconds is comparable to saving 15 minutes. Clearly...

You should be comparing performance difference in %, not actual time, because audio encoding takes much less time to begin with. This should be obvious.

^ Can you read?

So no, at 2560x1440 or higher there's no reason to go for one over the other.

Those test results come from a test system with one GTX 580. Of course there won't be bottleneck. That was my whole point - for very high res gaming, 2600K should be able to power more GPUs and more powerful GPUs. An enthusiast with a Quad-SLI and 5760x1080 setup would care about that, no?

If you're a very high-end enthusiast, you wouldn't be running at a mainstream 1920x1080 resolution, either.

Perhaps you could argue that. But we're not talking about very high end enthusiasts, we're talking about enthusiasts.

If all you care is about gaming, you would go for the 2500K over the 2600K.

Being an enthusiast gamer doesn't mean "all you care about is gaming". I'm a gamer, and I like to do content creation every now and then. And if you're an enthusiast gamer who likes to do some content creation every now and then, you would go for 2600K. Now we're back to square one - it depends on what you do with the PC.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

^ Can you read?

The irony...

Those test results come from a test system with one GTX 580. Of course there won't be bottleneck. That was my whole point - for very high res gaming, 2600K should be able to power more GPUs and more powerful GPUs. An enthusiast with a Quad-SLI and 5760x1080 setup would care about that, no?

No, it won't. You can add two more GPUs, but at such a high resolution you'll be completely GPU-bound. Quad-SLI isn't even something that's used now, only Tri-SLI.

Perhaps you could argue that. But we're not talking about very high end enthusiasts, we're talking about enthusiasts.

A normal enthusiast won't have Tri-SLI GTX 580s.

Being an enthusiast gamer doesn't mean "all you care about is gaming". I'm a gamer, and I like to do content creation every now and then. And if you're an enthusiast gamer who likes to do some content creation every now and then, you would go for 2600K. Now we're back to square one - it depends on what you do with the
PC.

Wrong, again. The argument was that the 2600K matched the 980 overall, which is clearly wrong. Perhaps you should just admit you were wrong, because looking at the performance of both the 980 comes out winning because of how much faster it is in multi-threaded and since it's only a bit slower in single-threaded, not to mention there's more multi-threaded programs than single-threaded.

We're back to square one. The Core i7-980 is faster than the Core i7-2600K

 

[lehtv]

Wow. I would like to hand you the Darwin award.

The Core i7-980 is faster than the Core i7-2600K ...

... which depends on what you do with the PC.

 

[Justinator]

Roar! Roar! Roar!...

"My computer can do this", "My computer can do that".

"you didn't buy what I told you to and now everything sucks", "You should do what your told". "Now your in trouble". "You wasted all my money... I mean your money, well it feels like my money?". "you could have built a Russian space station and didn't"...

"i5", "i7"... ii captain!

Man oh man isn't this all so mature and entertaining. LOL

Lets keep er' rollin!

 

[T_Yamamoto]

^scrub. LOL