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My $1000 Sandy Bridge to Terabithia

B

Battoe

Member
I'll just follow Señor Blain's handy little sticky at the top.

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
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I want to be able to play the latest games with the highest detail settings, but this isn't just a dedicated gaming build. I'd like to be able to use it as my everyday PC, doing basic photo and video editing and encoding, and a bunch of other less hardware intensive tasks. Like listening to Justin Bieber on iTunes as I have 17 tabs open in IE editing my various myspaces and facebooks and emoscene.com profiles.

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
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Within about $100 of $1000.

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
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T49zr.jpg


4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc.
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I wouldn't consider myself a fanboy of any hardware manufacturers, but I do appreciate companies with reputations for consistent quality and customer service. I generally like Intel CPUs, Abit ASUS motherboards, Samsung Hard Drives, and Corsair PSUs. Lian Li cases are the hotness, but I'm not Bernie Madoff circa early 2008.

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
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I have nothing but a soldering iron and dremel, which I hope to put to good use :thumbsup:

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
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While I'm 18 and have never built a computer, I've religiously followed anandtech.com and bit-tech.net (tomshardware.com is really losing its luster) since 13, so I like to think I know what I'm talking about.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
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Is this even a real question? While I don't keep any LN2 handy, I do plan on upgrading the air cooler (if not going to a water loop) soon after completing my build.

8. What resolution YOU plan on gaming with.
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1920x1200 seems to be the sweet spot.

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
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ASAP

10. Don't ask for a build configuration critique or rating if you are thin skinned.
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Bring it.

Now, on to the good bits. I am obviously completely open to whatever suggestions you may have (why else post here?).

CPU: 2500K sound about right? Not wildly different from the 2600K, much cheaper, and should be plenty powerful/fun to play around with. $225

Motherboard: ASUS P8P67. P67 = overclocking fun, the color scheme is teh sex for when I eventually do some case mods, USB 3.0, SATA3 so any future SSD purchases won't be bottlenecked, and a beautiful UEFI. $160

RAM: Whichever (preferably black) 2x4GB DDR3 1600 mhz 1.5V kit is cheapest at the time I place my order. 1600 mhz/CL9 seems to be the price/performance king right now, and I figure anything less than 8GB really isn't fitting for sandy bridge, now is it? I understand 4GB will suffice most of the time, but I can see lots of multitasking in my future, and I know future programs will only use more and more memory. ~$110

GPU: XFX 6950. Can be unlocked to be a 6970, which is kind of the shit, and stores the original BIOS as well so as not to mess with that double lifetime warranty. $300

Hard Drive: Samsung F3 1TB. Seems like more storage than I'll need for the foreseeable future, and the performance is about as good as it gets in the realm of mechanical disks. Should also do nicely as bulk storage when I eventually jump on the SSD bandwagon. $70

Optical Drive: Whichever 24x DVD Burner is cheapest when I order, although I tend to prefer LG and Samsung. ~$20

Case: I'm probably looking at the Antec 300 for now, as I don't want to spend a ton, it performs admirably, should fit everything, and is a blank canvas for future mods (and won't cost a fortune to replace when I do something stupid). $60

PSU: Corsair 550VX? I know Corsair are about as good as it gets for the most important (reliability wise) component in your build. I figure 550w is plenty, even with future additions and overclocking in mind, and I've heard the Builder Series isn't quite as good as previous editions. $80.

That puts me right at $1025, certainly within my budget, and I think it provides me with exactly what I'm looking for. I have a copy of Windows 7 64-bit, I've got plenty of mice and keyboards, and I'll budget out a monitor (24", 1920x1200) and speakers later. So sound off!
 
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Battoe said:
PSU: Corsair 550VX? I know Corsair are about as good as it gets for the most important (reliability wise) component in your build. I figure 550w is plenty, even with future additions and overclocking in mind, and I've heard the Builder Series isn't quite as good as previous editions. $80.
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Correct, though the Builder Series are pretty good for the price. I would go with the Builder Series than take any other random cheap PSUs, even for a very low budget build.

For around $80, I think the Seasonic S12II 520 would be a better choice, though it looks like the VX550 comes out cheaper with the rebate.

You can save about $30 going with 8GB of DDR3-1333 ram. Just so you know.

Other than that, the build looks great overall.
 
Also, as someone who's never bought computer hardware before, anything to watch out for between ordering products on newegg and buying from a local MicroCenter with regards to what I'll go through if I need to make returns and such? I'm inclined to just go wherever each part is cheaper, unless one can turn out to be a much bigger hassle or something.
 
Relatively it does. Law of diminishing returns and all that. I'm increasing my build price by 5% to get a 4% performance increase? It rarely scales so well.
 
What do you mean otherwise? The only times I'll want more from my memory are during gaming (bit-tech showed 1-5% performance increases from 1333/CL9 to 1600/CL9 in their gaming benchmarks) and multitasking. I don't like stuff freezing on me, whether it's one of a myriad of open programs, or a game playing like a slide show. I couldn't care less that this won't take 2 seconds off of a 20 minute process in video encoding or something. Where would that $50 be better spent?
 
That build looks pretty much perfect to me. I'm not sure if the PSU will be enough, but I always over estimate on that. Personally I would put a 650-750 watt unit in it "just in case." And yeah take a look at this bit-tech article and decide if the difference between 1333 and 1600 mem is worth it to you.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/memory/2011/01/11/the-best-memory-for-sandy-bridge/1

Personally I don't see ~$20-$30 difference to be substantial, so I would go with the 1600. That's what I plan on doing with my SB build anyway. 😀
 
Nice hivemind. MicroCenter sells the 2500K for $180, so I figure shopping around I might actually be able to get this thing under $900. Hopefully I can get started this weekend.

As for the power supply thing, I've found that people tend to wildly overestimate how much power they need, and underestimate how important the quality of the PSU is compared to it's (claimed) wattage. Kind of the least interesting, and therefore most misunderstood, component of a PC build. Sort of baffling considering it's the only thing that can take the rest of the build with it when it goes (and your house in some cases).

As a for instance, whenever you see power consumption graphs at the end of hardware review articles, chances are those aren't the numbers for the wattage being drawn by that component alone. It's hard to isolate that. Instead, the system's power draw at the wall as a whole is measured, and you can just do the basic subtraction on your own to see the difference between components. Overclocked to 4.9Ghz (about as high as you'd use daily on air with a 2500K), on this system:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/03/intel-sandy-bridge-review/6 the entire system only draws 221 watts, as seen here: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/03/intel-sandy-bridge-review/11 That is the power being consumed with the PC being unrealistically thrashed (it's more power than you'll ever consume if you're not running benchmarks), and it's not even some average, but the peak, or highest mark they hit. Without overclocking, under the same circumstances, the entire system peaked at 148 watts. I figure the 550 should leave me with, at minimum, 250 watts of overhead.
 
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Keep in mind that "unlocking" a 6950 to be a 6970 voids the warranty. The 6950 is extremely fast as it is though, so I would not risk it. As for CL9 <CL7 it's BARELY better. I do NOT think it's worth the premium. Otherwise, it looks like you have a mighty fine build there.
 
Davidh373 said:
Keep in mind that "unlocking" a 6950 to be a 6970 voids the warranty. The 6950 is extremely fast as it is though, so I would not risk it. As for CL9 <CL7 it's BARELY better. I do NOT think it's worth the premium. Otherwise, it looks like you have a mighty fine build there.
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What is the risk associated? The 6950 has 2 BIOS's. If you ruin one, you can switch to the other and reflash.
 
dpodblood said:
What is the risk associated? The 6950 has 2 BIOS's. If you ruin one, you can switch to the other and reflash.
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The risk is if your GPU goes bad, instead of getting a replacement you get the wonderful $300 hole in your pocket for a second 6950. So that 6970 flash could cost him $600, which is nowhere near the $370 of the 6970. Just saying, it's a risk I wouldn't take. Worst case scenario is costing too much money.
 
Davidh373 said:
The risk is if your GPU goes bad, instead of getting a replacement you get the wonderful $300 hole in your pocket for a second 6950. So that 6970 flash could cost him $600, which is nowhere near the $370 of the 6970. Just saying, it's a risk I wouldn't take. Worst case scenario is costing too much money.
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I think the risk is pretty low as long as you do proper stability testing. But, yeah I get where you're coming from, and I'm not even sure I would try it myself.
 
Obviously I would just switch to an H67 motherboard...

butnahhhhhh

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159

Over 97&#37; of the 282 cards tested thus far unlocked and ran perfectly, while of the other 2.8%, none were permanently damaged. Probably inadequate cooling by the user in most of those cases as well. Let's say all of those 2.8% were irreparably damaged though. $300 for the 6950, plus ($300X.028) equals a cost of $308.40 on average if I got infinite 6950s and replaced any that were bricked. A 6970 costs $370 in the first place. Getting a 6950 and trying to unlock it is wildly +EV. While it MAY cost me more this time, if you play those odds your whole life you're coming out way ahead. Wouldn't you bet your $8.40 to someone else's $70 on a coinflip? It's the same as if a replacement cost $8.40, and they failed 50% of the time.
 
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Zargon said:
fair enough! missed that thread.

I opted for 1333 based on my misunderstanding, but I did get CL7 instead of 9 so that should help a little.

I have 8gb of ddr3-1600 cl9, but its 1.65v
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Say whaaaa?

I think you're drawing the wrong conclusions here. The reason that you get DDR3 1333 for Sandy Bridge is because you don't need to overclock the memory in order to overclock the CPU. Sure you can overclock the memory separately, but you're not seeing much of an increase. DDR3 1600 was a necessary expense for overclocking before Sandy Bridge, but it's not needed anymore.
 
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