Need some expert advice on building a new rig.

[aico]

Hi, I'm planning on building a new intel rig and need some advice. The "easy" way is to go for the newest 4770k and just be done with it. But after reading some of the threads here, it seems like the 4770 is not worth it compared to the 3770? although they seem to be priced the same...

But what do you guys think? Not really into OC that much, maybe a little.
It's more for some gaming.. but around 95% multiple apps running, some dev, sql server running etc.

Any suggestions on how I go about building my new system?


PS, I'm using a Lenovo X200 right now, and I have an old Phenom-X4 rig @ home just so you know where I'm coming from.

Thanks and sorry for the n00b 1st post = 1st thread asking for advice right away. :ninja:

 

[dma0991]

But after reading some of the threads here, it seems like the 4770 is not worth it compared to the 3770? although they seem to be priced the same...

What made you think that is the case? Performance jump isn't that great but getting the Core i7 4770K over the Core i7 3770K is a no brainer, especially when they both cost the same. Why spend money on an older platform(LGA1155) which hits a dead end with IB when you can spend on a newer platform(LGA1150) that you could upgrade to Broadwell in the future?

 

[GreenChile]

Yeah I'm not sure what posts gave you the idea to choose 3770 over 4770. It's probably not worth the upgrade cost if you already own a 3770 but you'd be crazy not to go with a Haswell if purchasing all new stuff.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

But after reading some of the threads here, it seems like the 4770 is not worth it compared to the 3770? although they seem to be priced the same...

The threads essentially mean that if you already have a decent 3770(K) setup, it is NOT worth upgrading to a 4770(K), as it would only give you a slight increase in performance.

But if you don't have anything relatively modern, then the latest 4770(K) is the thing to go for (unless you are trying to save money, or want to go the AMD route).

newer platform(LGA1150) that you could upgrade to Broadwell in the future?

I don't think it's clear, if Intel are going to bring out an LGA1150 broadwell version, and if they do, if it would be better at all (as it's power saving, rather than speed enhancing, but maybe it's faster than haswell, as well, I don't know).
I think it's Haswell REFRESH, which is the LGA1150 (plug in) replacement to aim for, but it may only offer a very marginal improvement.

 

[dma0991]

I don't think it's clear, if Intel are going to bring out an LGA1150 broadwell version, and if they do, if it would be better at all (as it's power saving, rather than speed enhancing, but maybe it's faster than haswell, as well, I don't know).
I think it's Haswell REFRESH, which is the LGA1150 (plug in) replacement to aim for, but it may only offer a very marginal improvement.

It may be possible that Broadwell wouldn't be available for LGA1150 but after seeing countless rumors in the past, I'd take these prerelease facts with a grain of salt. Even by the time Broadwell is out, Intel wouldn't kill the desktop SKUs. I think despite the delay and a possible Haswell refresh, Intel would stick to LGA1150 with Broadwell if they were to stay true to their Tick Tock model.

Broadwell should offer better power saving with at least some performance improvement. Unlikely that Intel would sell a direct replacement SKU that has lower performance.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

Broadwell should offer better power saving with at least some performance improvement. Unlikely that Intel would sell a direct replacement SKU that has lower performance.

It may be designed to have lower clock speeds (to help it get great power savings), hence the lower performance, even though its IPC may be better than haswell.
But it's all speculation at this point in time, unless we work for Intel or something.
So I can't agree, or disagree with you, as there are no confirmed facts to do so with (that I know of, anyway).

Even if Broadwell had definitely been aimed at the desktop (LGA1150), it was NOT a new architecture (Tick/Tock etc), anyway, only a die shrink, which these days, seems to give little speed improvement.

 

[aico]

So what do you guys think?

Core™ i7-4770K
GA-Z87X-UD3H
Ripjaws X 8gbx2 DDR3 1600 CL9
Geforce GTX 650 1GB GDDR5 128-BIT OC Edition
CX Series CX600M 80Plus-Bronze
Vertex 4 - SATA 3 2.5" SSD (128GB)
Black 1 TB SATA HD
Noctua NH D14 CPU Cooler

Win8Pro

Planning to do some c# dev with vs.net + full sql server
Some basic photoshop
Lots of Web browsing, cctv viewing blah blah (monitor my biz)
Some gaming here and there

Any issues? Thanks!

 

[Essence_of_War]

What is your use-case, and your budget?

If you're a gamer, marginal value of i7 vs. i5 is quite low. You get more value out of spending that price difference on the gpu.

WD black drives are overpriced. You're paying for an extended warranty, and likely not even getting 1tb platters. Get a 1 tb blue or 1tb barracuda instead.

 

[aico]

Budget? $1k-1.2k?

More like my workstation test server at the office. Game when bored.

 

[RonAKA]

So what do you guys think?

Core™ i7-4770K
GA-Z87X-UD3H
Ripjaws X 8gbx2 DDR3 1600 CL9
Geforce GTX 650 1GB GDDR5 128-BIT OC Edition
CX Series CX600M 80Plus-Bronze
Vertex 4 - SATA 3 2.5" SSD (128GB)
Black 1 TB SATA HD
Noctua NH D14 CPU Cooler
Win8Pro!

I'll be a contrarian and suggest another alternative:

AMD A10-6800K
Asus F2A85-V PRO
Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB DDR3 2133MHz
No plug in GPU
CX Series CX600M 80Plus-Bronze
Samsung Pro Series 128 GB SSD (or 840 EVO for a little less $$ if you can wait for it)
Seagate 1 TB Hybrid SSD/HD (just released, available on Amazon)

Price it out. My thoughts are higher performance (unless you are a heavy gamer), and lower price.

 

[Durp]

Price it out. My thoughts are higher performance (unless you are a heavy gamer), and lower price.

In what way is your suggestion higher performance than what you quoted?

 

[wilds]

For your needs, an i7 or an 8320/8350 would be perfectly ideal. In fact, I doubt you would see a difference while multitasking as both CPU's are great for virtualization and multitasking.

If you go the AMD route, you would save money to get a more beefy GPU, but the Intel route promises better single-threaded performance (noticeable in software that utilize 1-2 threads) and lower power consumption.

The GTX 650 is a good card for around $100. If its in the $150 range, I would snag the 7850.

It all depends on your personal preferences.

 

[Essence_of_War]

I might try to grab some of the excellent deals on the:

1) HD 7850 - great mid-range dgpu for ~140 AR, shipped
2) SeaSonic 650W Gold Rated PSU for ~60 AR, shipped.
3) Corsair 300R for ~$50 AR, shipped.

And as I said, I think the WD Blacks are overpriced compared with 1 TB Blue's that perform identically (or potentially better depending on the # of platters in the Black).

 

[Arkaign]

In what way is your suggestion higher performance than what you quoted?

Yeah that makes absolutely no sense. The A10 vs. a 4770K would get utterly destroyed in absolutely everything. It would be like comparing an Atlus V rocket to a bic lighter.

The A10 isn't a terrible chip per se, but 4770K + GPU = outrageously faster performance.

 

[Arkaign]

Forgot to mention, if this is a work machine, skip the K variant of the 4770, and just save a few bucks and get 4770 vanilla. You get some extra features that were cut from the K chip, a lower price, and it will still perform magnificently. Overclocking is not terribly exciting with Haswell anyway.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2323164

4770K means you lose :

vPro
VT-d
Trusted Execution
TSX-NI

 

[Arkaign]

Ah, another thing : going with the non-K means you don't need Z87.

Go with B85.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157387

$79, and totally fine, plenty of features. I've used a ton of Asrock boards for Sandy, Ivy, and Haswell builds, and even with lots of overclocking they do well. Great $ value.

Dropping the mobo price to $79 and the CPU price by $30 gives you $110 opened up in your budget to up your GPU, or up your SSD.

All while getting more dev/pro friendly features.

 

[crashtech]

Forgot to mention, if this is a work machine, skip the K variant of the 4770, and just save a few bucks and get 4770 vanilla. You get some extra features that were cut from the K chip, a lower price, and it will still perform magnificently. Overclocking is not terribly exciting with Haswell anyway.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2323164

4770K means you lose :

vPro
VT-d
Trusted Execution
TSX-NI

Or, he could go the other way and get an E3-1270V3, and get all the performance of a 4770K (plus some, oddly, in some benchmarks) as well as getting all the extra goodies you mention above.

 

[aico]

Or, he could go the other way and get an E3-1270V3, and get all the performance of a 4770K (plus some, oddly, in some benchmarks) as well as getting all the extra goodies you mention above.

Can you enlighten me on the pros on E3-1270V3?

 

[aico]

Ah, another thing : going with the non-K means you don't need Z87.

Go with B85.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157387

$79, and totally fine, plenty of features. I've used a ton of Asrock boards for Sandy, Ivy, and Haswell builds, and even with lots of overclocking they do well. Great $ value.

Dropping the mobo price to $79 and the CPU price by $30 gives you $110 opened up in your budget to up your GPU, or up your SSD.

All while getting more dev/pro friendly features.

Hmm very good suggestion! Thanks!

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Can you enlighten me on the pros on E3-1270V3?

Pretty much an i7 but without a iGPU (should be cheaper)

 

[Aikouka]

Forgot to mention, if this is a work machine, skip the K variant of the 4770, and just save a few bucks and get 4770 vanilla. You get some extra features that were cut from the K chip, a lower price, and it will still perform magnificently. Overclocking is not terribly exciting with Haswell anyway.

He mentioned SQL, so he may be interested in the following bolded feature:

vPro
VT-d
Trusted Execution
TSX-NI

To be fair, unless he's running a heavy database request load, I doubt TSX will do much for him. For example, my server runs a MySQL server that handles XBMC profile syncing, but you don't see me racing to utilize TSX.

$79, and totally fine, plenty of features. I've used a ton of Asrock boards for Sandy, Ivy, and Haswell builds, and even with lots of overclocking they do well. Great $ value.

I've had some really bad luck with my ASRock Z87 Extreme4-based build, which is a bummer since my ASRock P67 Extreme6 has been solid so far. Thankfully, I'm dropping that board for a high-end, waste-of-money ASUS board.

 

[crashtech]

Can you enlighten me on the pros on E3-1270V3?

It's at least as fast as a stock 4770K, but retains the features Arkaign mentioned:

vPro
VT-d
Trusted Execution
TSX-NI

It has no integrated graphics, and it's marginally faster than a plain 4770. It also supports ECC with the right motherboard, but I doubt that is a concern here. It will work in place of a 4770 on any 1150 board.

The pricing I have seen doesn't look too favorable, but if it can be found for close to the price of a 4770K, it might be worth a look.

 

[crashtech]

I just looked again at the various LGA1150 CPUs available, and actually the E3-1240V3 provides the most "bang for the buck," with identical performance to a 4770 for approximately $30 less. That is the CPU to get for non-overclocked, fairly heavily threaded apps, imo.

 

[Arkaign]

I just looked again at the various LGA1150 CPUs available, and actually the E3-1240V3 provides the most "bang for the buck," with identical performance to a 4770 for approximately $30 less. That is the CPU to get for non-overclocked, fairly heavily threaded apps, imo.

Sounds great

 

[Arkaign]

He mentioned SQL, so he may be interested in the following bolded feature:



To be fair, unless he's running a heavy database request load, I doubt TSX will do much for him. For example, my server runs a MySQL server that handles XBMC profile syncing, but you don't see me racing to utilize TSX.



I've had some really bad luck with my ASRock Z87 Extreme4-based build, which is a bummer since my ASRock P67 Extreme6 has been solid so far. Thankfully, I'm dropping that board for a high-end, waste-of-money ASUS board.

That's disappointing. I haven't tried to overclock on any of their Z87 products yet, but have used probably 3 dozen AsRock boards over the past couple of years with overall superb results. Having MC right down the street means I can take the odd bad one back. I think I had one that had dead USB out of the box, and another that was just plain DOA.

What have been the bad things on your Z8E4?