i7-3820 Tri-6950 Build advise please

[mugsir]

Planning a S2011 build, pending the affordable quadcore i7-3820.

CPU
The 3 reviews I've found of this chip are here @
Toms Hardware
Hot Hardware
PCper

Only note I've found about the Release date Looking like February 13th

Thoughts on this chip?
The stock clocks?
Limited overclock ability(which should be plenty for my needs for now)

Anyone got any insight into a solid release date for this chip?
From what I hear it's looking like mid February. Which will give me a bit of extra time to research getting this beast right.

RAM
The decision is now, 16GB or 32GB of ram and what speed?
Pretty crazy money again for the 32GB ram kits at higher speeds 32GB of 1866MHz is a mental price of ~£500
But a set of 1600 is a little more fair @ ~£250

Some nice vids regarding Asus' take on ssd caching and ram disks

My reasoning for looking at 32GB of ram is for the possibility to have a 16GB ram disk to run games that are just getting bigger and bigger.
Would I be better off with just ssd caching or a ram disk setup?
It seems both is also possible but might be overkill

MOBO
Choices:
ASUS P9X79 Deluxe
ASRock X79 Extreme9

5-Way Intel X79 Mobo Shootout

Any other vendors offering ssd caching tech?
From the vids linked above it seems that the chipset does not support it natively

PSU
1000w gold rated should do it?
Recommendations?

Any and all thoughts are appreciated.

 

[HendrixFan]

What does your current setup look like and what games do you play? What resolution will you be running at?

I think having a RAM disk for gaming wouldn't be too useful. Games take 10-15GBs these days, so you could really only fit one game into the 16GB RAM disk you are trying to create. That would only affect load times, and if you are gaming online that won't make any difference since you have to wait for everyone else to load the map before it starts. The money would be better spent on a much cheaper 16GB kit and putting the savings towards a SSD drive.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

its cheaper to go i5.

i5 is MORE than enough for gaming

 

[mfenn]

What does your current setup look like and what games do you play? What resolution will you be running at?

I think having a RAM disk for gaming wouldn't be too useful. Games take 10-15GBs these days, so you could really only fit one game into the 16GB RAM disk you are trying to create. That would only affect load times, and if you are gaming online that won't make any difference since you have to wait for everyone else to load the map before it starts. The money would be better spent on a much cheaper 16GB kit and putting the savings towards a SSD drive.

Not to mention the fact that the game has to get onto the ramdisk somehow, which means copying from your HDD. Kinda defeats the purpose of having fast loading times if you have to wait 10-20 minutes before running the game!

 

[rgallant]

in 2 weeks I7-3820 retail should be out.with C2 stepping ,as of today the 3930k C2 are not out to bench.
-maybe C2 will get the voltage leakage under control that the 3820 es had.
- a 4c\8T 3820 on paper should oc the near as a 1155
-if I pick up a 3rd 580 it will run @ x4,x4,x4 on ib , so I'm looking at the 3820 also.
but will wait for ib benches.

 

[Topweasel]

its cheaper to go i5.

i5 is MORE than enough for gaming

It's funny how many people instantly revert to a statement like that without ever reading anything in the OP.

For starters an i5 wouldn't be a great solution for a Tri-video card build and its obvious that this build isn't about saving an extra $100.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

It's funny how many people instantly revert to a statement like that without ever reading anything in the OP.

For starters an i5 wouldn't be a great solution for a Tri-video card build and its obvious that this build isn't about saving an extra $100.

I'm used to doing mid budget builds xD

 

[Topweasel]

I'm used to doing mid budget builds xD

My point is more people should read the op or in fact the whole thread before posting a recommendation based on "the usual" or "what I normally use".

 

[Zap]

Planning a S2011 build, pending the affordable quadcore i7-3820.
...
My reasoning for looking at 32GB of ram is for the possibility to have a 16GB ram disk to run games that are just getting bigger and bigger.
Would I be better off with just ssd caching or a ram disk setup?
It seems both is also possible but might be overkill
...
PSU
1000w gold rated should do it?
Recommendations?

Any and all thoughts are appreciated.

Here are my thoughts.

Go with a pair of Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards. Two cards won't be bottlenecked by socket 1155, and the performance of two of these may or may not be close to three 6950, plus you get the benefit of lower power draw and less heat output, meaning you may be able to overclock them higher than three 6950 sandwiched together.

With socket 1155, you can wait for Ivy Bridge. IB quads are supposed to be out first week in April. You will get lower power draw than anything socket 2011, plus higher overclockability, plus higher CPU performance per core once overclocked.

With Ivy Bridge socket 1155 and dual cards, you can get by on 750W, or a bit more if you do crazy overclocking.

Is this for gaming only? If so, just get some 8GB DDR3 kit and spend the rest of your money on big enough SSDs to hold all of the games you currently play (plus Windows, etc.). That would be faster overall than SSD caching, plus less of a hassle than RAM disk.

FWIW I first played around with RAM disks back in 1989 (running Q3test off it, first in each level running around grabbing weapons and red armor FTW!). I last used it maybe 3 years ago prior to Windows 7. Was running a WinXP machine with 8GB RAM. Thus, I am saying this as someone who has used RAM drives: Go with an SSD.

 

[mugsir]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the input. Sorry I should've given a bit more background.

>> My current setup:

Asus Rampage Formula 775

4GB Corsair Dominator 1066 DDR2

Intel Q6600 B3 @ 3.0GHz
Running sweet, 25-30 idle, 55-60 load with below cooling.

Thermalright Ultra 120
With one of these installed
Sharkoon Silent Eagle 2000

Asus Xonar DS PCI

Corsair HX750

The above served happily for many a year paired with a 4870 1GB and 2* 500GB samsung F3 Intel SW raid.

Worth noting is all of the above bits are getting rebuilt for a buddy of mine looking for an entry level BF3 Machine on a budget.

>> Recent additions, that will stay with the build

Coolermaster HAF X

2* 2GB MSI HD Radeon 6950 Twin Frozr
I have a 3rd one still awaiting installation as I don't have sufficient PCI-E on this board.

Crucial M4 256GB
(Currently running at SATA2 speeds on intel controller)

2*Samsung F3 502HJ striped

23.5" Dell U2311H @ 1920*1080

I understand that 3*gpu is overkill for 1* 1920*1200 screen. Planning to go eyefinity a bit down the line.


** Current storage setup

OS + BF3 on ssd, certain steam games junctioned to ssd.
Main steam install and HD media stored on 1TB raid volume

** Plan at time of writing

Grab the i7-3820 for now, then slot in a more beefy IB-E next year some time. I don't really plan to OC the 3820 much as I think the stock clocks will be sufficient for the next year or so, Also the fact that it's somewhat limited with no unlocked multi.
My overclocking experience is pretty minimal, not gone past tuning up base clock and increasing voltage a bit. Still my q6600 has been running a nice stable OC from 2.6 to 3.0 for the last year or 2.

I'm kind of intrigued by the 3 gpu setup and the realworld performance it will offer.
It may be true that a 7970 setup will bring less possible issues but I will go down that road if I need to. Also I got the 6950s for a damn good price -VAT.
I'm not really keen on OCing gpus, but do plan to flash them to 6970s so they might draw a bit more juice then.

The quad channel ram interests me, with the possibilities of ram-cache for ssd, ram disks. Again testing the real world gaming benefit of it versus windows caching. Also virtualisation(nested esx boxes running in VMware workstation).
I plan to use the ram-disk as a blank disk, then quick copy on a game, junction it and test. Always leaving the original copy on its home disk and config that will change, save files else where.
I'm sure it will be messy and give me lots of headaches to get right but some fun and learning along the way too 🙂


** Power consumption
is definately an important factor in a build like this.

Devices needing juice are as follows:

Mobo
4 sticks ddr3 1600 (possibly 8 later on)
3*6950(6970*)
Possible extra 6pin to power the memory of the cards included on some boards

Fans
3*200mm (1 with led i wont use)
1*140mm
3*120mm (2 for cpu powered off mobo+ 1 extra fan internally if needed)

Storage
1* SSD (Pri 1 Games + OS)
2* sata 7200 (raid stripe for priority 2 games)
1* sata 5400 (Media storage)
1* DVD-RW (If forced 🙂 )

Misc:
PCI-E 1x audio (Loving my current Xonar DS PCI in current rig. Thoughts/experiences with the DX, D2X )
fan controller (Looking at the NZXT Sentry atm) Thoughts on this?

Have I missed/overlooked anything?


Thanks for taking the time to read folks, really appreciate all the feedback.

 

[mfenn]

Given your needs, I would honestly just sell the spare 6950 2GB to your buddy. It'll do great things for him in BF3.

I've seen many many many people go down the road of "well, I'll build this monster gaming computer now so that I'll be able to get a better monitor later". Trust me, it rarely works out like that. Focus on getting a triple-display setup first and then worry about how to drive it. That way you can spend your money on something that actually matters (lots of desktop real estate!) without wasting a bunch of cash going from 100 FPS to 150 FPS at 1920.