New i7 build

[X Neo X]

New i7 based build, I'm living in the uk and will be using this for gaming and as a media centre. Thanks in advance for any help.
1. What YOUR PC will be used for. - ripping dvds/ gaming and watching movies

2. What YOUR budget is. £1350 bit flexable though.

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from. England UK

4. No brand prefference.

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are. Moitor, case and sound card as well as input devices.

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads. I had a look through but it's not the same as getting a personal responce.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds. Overclocking it a fair bit.

8. WHEN do you plan to build it? next couple of months,

Proposed spec:

1. Power supply - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114941]Corsair 620W HX Modular PSU[/url]
2. Case - Going to use current cm stacker 810 that I have.
3. Motherboard - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/.../show_product_overview]Asus P6T DELUXE X58[/url]
4. CPU - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151477]Intel Core i7 920[/url]
5. Heatsink/fan for the CPU - no idea, suggestions please?
6. Memory - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152747]OCZ 6Gb (3x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz Memory[/url]
7. Primary hard drive http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143288]Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB[/url]
8. Primary optical drive - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136317#]LG GGW-H20L[/url]
9. Video card - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152466]Gainward HD 4870[/url]
10. Monitor(s) ? later upgrade when i have more money
11. Mouse/keyboard ^^
12. Operating System Already have Vista.
13. Snacks - lots

That all comes to £1100. ideally, being a student, I would like to keep price down to a minimum.


6. Audio card - X-fi fatal1ty i still have.
7. Video-capture card and/or TV-tuner card - would like to be able to record hd/digital content onto HD, could someone recomend somthing appropriate?
14. Pizza - Hawaian of course!

 

[DSF]

When you say media center, can you be more specific? Are you planning on encoding/editing movies, or just watching them?

If all you want to do is watch movies and game you could go with a fast dual core and probably save enough money to get a nice new monitor now.

 

[X Neo X]

Originally posted by: DSF
When you say media center, can you be more specific? Are you planning on encoding/editing movies, or just watching them?

If all you want to do is watch movies and game you could go with a fast dual core and probably save enough money to get a nice new monitor now.

I do tend to rip dvds and then encode them. Also, id like to try and make it last as long as possible hence why I intend to invest in new technology. Although it would be interesting to see benchmarks between a Q6600 heavily overclocked against an overclocked i7 920.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: X Neo X
ideally, being a student, I would like to keep price down to a minimum.

it would be interesting to see benchmarks between a Q6600 heavily overclocked against an overclocked i7 920.

1. If you're interested in bang for the buck, a Core i7 isn't the path you should trod.
2. The i7 920 wins by plenty.
3. You mention an old school, way-back Q6600 and then a new Core i7 920...
Why would you skip over the very nice 45nm C2D & C2Q processors? :roll:

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: Blain
Why would you skip over the very nice 45nm C2D & C2Q processors? :roll:

...especially when the prices just dropped?

Here in the US -

Q9550 $274
Q9400 $224

Prices may not have dropped over there yet but they will. Or you could even look at a Phenom II system with an AM2+ board & DDR2 - which would be considerably cheaper than i7 and still handles encoding nearly as well.

 

[X Neo X]

Why would you skip over the very nice 45nm C2D & C2Q processors? - because I wasnt aware of them, Since i built my last pc (few years ago) I havent, even read a pc magazine.

Or you could even look at a Phenom II system with an AM2+ board & DDR2 - which would be considerably cheaper than i7 and still handles encoding nearly as well. - I guess I want good performance, I read the review on here about the new phenoms and they didnt seem to be competetive with the the new i7.

How far will the i7 path go? or rather how long will intel be on the 1336 socket ?

 

[Koharski]

I'd think that i7 should be around for a pretty long time, although I understand that they could be releasing a core i5 for mainstream markets with a smaller socket. The i7 die size is too big to support midrange mass produced CPUS.

 

[Denithor]

Let me play heyheybooboo here for a minute.

The PhII is actually a quite capable chip, especially when looking at encoding. It handily beats the 45nm C2Q chips and hits just a smidge below the new i7 chips.

Pricewise it beats them both. Compared to the i7 it's going to be much cheaper as you can get a cheap ($100 or less) AM2+ board & use DDR2 RAM (versus a $300 X58 board & DDR3 RAM for i7).

So PhII is definitely something to consider.

/heyheybooboo