so, it's been about 2.5 years since i last put together a computer, and recently i've started thinking about upgrading again. i actually picked a radeon 4850 recently to replace the old radeon x1950pro, and while it helped a LOT in games, now i want to spend even more money on upgrades for some reason... alas.
anyway, today somewhat on a whim i picked up this phenom II 720 BE/ASUS M4A78T-E deal for $180 after rebate. seemed like a great price for a good cpu and a quality mainboard, with the potential for significant overclocking/4th core unlockage. now i need a little help picking out which components i can scavenge from my current pc, and which ones i'll need to re-purchase.
standard build questions follow:
web browsing, movies, word processing, moderate gaming.
don't really have a budget at the moment, but in general i'm looking to buy from the "value performance" market segment, as with the CPU/mainboard purchase.
america, f*ck yeah!
no brand preference.
current build:
C2D 6400 2.13GHz (currently OC'ed to 2.4)
ASUS P5B-E mainboard
silverstone element ST50EF-PLUS 500W PSU
scythe NINJA PLUS rev. b heatsink/cooling fan
lian li PC-7B plus II midtower ATX case
2 x 1GB crucial ballistix DDR2 800
MSI radeon HD 4850 512 MB
seagate barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD
samsung 18X DVD±R DVD burner
a bit. most of these threads seem to be for entirely new builds.
i would like to. i see a number of posts where people have OC'ed their phenom II 720's to 3.4-3.5 ghz, and in some instances up to 3.7 or even 3.8 ghz. i'd also try to unlock the disabled 4th core, if my chip will go for it. the 720 has been out for a while though now, so presumably AMD is dialing in the binning process and fewer and fewer chips can be unlocked in this way.
soon. over the next month, perhaps.
--
regarding my current components:
-i will definitely be re-using the case.
-i don't intend to purchase another PSU; although it is 'only' 500W, it was judged to be of very high quality when it was released (see the linked review), and i'm skeptical of the some folks' views here that 750+W is needed for a reasonably well-configured system. i played around with the extreme power supply calculator and, even if i add another HDD, another radeon 4850, OC the CPU to 3.5 GHz, OC each 4850, keep my external HDD and webcam - i'm still looking at only 396W at 90% system load. so i'm not too worried.
-the scythe ninja was a pretty nice heatsink for its time. i imagine it would hold up well for stock clocks, and even permit some OC'ing. unfortunately, i think it was designed for socket 775 CPUs and does not appear to be configured for AM3 usage. does anybody know whether i can/should use this heatsink with the phenom II 720? if i need to buy another one, i suppose i will. a lot of people here seem to like the xigmatek dark knight s1283, though it might be overkill for what i'm trying to do.
- it's a little late to provide shopping advice, but does anybody have any comments/suggestions for the use of the phenom II 720 + ASUS M4A78T-E combo?
- before i bought the aforementioned combo, i went back and forth a little bit on whether i should pick another board that accepted ddr2, so i could re-use my current sticks. a lot of folks with similar needs/price range seem to like the gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P. i think i got caught up a little 'BUY IT NOW' fever, and might have given a little more thought to picking up a DDR2 board, but with the great price of the combo i think picking up some ddr3 sticks will only cost a little bit more in the end than buying the 720 and something like UD4P individually. DDR3 will be more future-proof, for what it's worth, which is probably not much.
so: i was thinking of buying a 2 x 2GB DDR3 pack. i don't think i really need 6GB. there don't appear to be any super specials right now, though i can wait for a few weeks to see if any pop up. in the meanwhile, though, there seem to be a bunch of g.skill 2 x 2gb kits on newegg (here, here, here, and here) that i'm having a hard time evaluating. am i correct in assuming that the CL8/HK and CL7/PI kits are actually faster or better? i'm a bit confused as the g.skill web page seems to suggest that these 'faster' kits need to be slightly over-volted to 1.65v to function at the rated speeds. any suggestions?
- i am thinking of picking up another radeon 4850 512mb for crossfire since they are still pretty cheap, though not as cheap as they once were a week or two ago. will they be going back down in price? i'll probably wait for another to deal to come up.
- i am thinking of picking up a 640/750 GB or 1TB WD HDD if i see another deal come up. they seem pretty cheap lately too. is 16mb cache ok, rather than 32?
- i'll definitely reuse the DVD burner.
- i'm thinking about installing the win 7 release candidate, and picking up the $50 home premium pre-order at amazon. i don't imagine there will be any problems with any of the above components and win7, but let me know if anything jumps out as problematic.
thanks for reading this long post, and for any suggestions.
EDIT: forgot to mention that i'm using an NEC 20.1" 20WMGX2 LCD at 1680x1050, so i won't be doing any gaming or anything else at a resolution higher than that. ideally, i'd like to max out most/all the current games at that resolution if i end up picking up another radeon 4850 and putting them in crossfire.
anyway, today somewhat on a whim i picked up this phenom II 720 BE/ASUS M4A78T-E deal for $180 after rebate. seemed like a great price for a good cpu and a quality mainboard, with the potential for significant overclocking/4th core unlockage. now i need a little help picking out which components i can scavenge from my current pc, and which ones i'll need to re-purchase.
standard build questions follow:
web browsing, movies, word processing, moderate gaming.
don't really have a budget at the moment, but in general i'm looking to buy from the "value performance" market segment, as with the CPU/mainboard purchase.
america, f*ck yeah!
no brand preference.
current build:
C2D 6400 2.13GHz (currently OC'ed to 2.4)
ASUS P5B-E mainboard
silverstone element ST50EF-PLUS 500W PSU
scythe NINJA PLUS rev. b heatsink/cooling fan
lian li PC-7B plus II midtower ATX case
2 x 1GB crucial ballistix DDR2 800
MSI radeon HD 4850 512 MB
seagate barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD
samsung 18X DVD±R DVD burner
a bit. most of these threads seem to be for entirely new builds.
i would like to. i see a number of posts where people have OC'ed their phenom II 720's to 3.4-3.5 ghz, and in some instances up to 3.7 or even 3.8 ghz. i'd also try to unlock the disabled 4th core, if my chip will go for it. the 720 has been out for a while though now, so presumably AMD is dialing in the binning process and fewer and fewer chips can be unlocked in this way.
soon. over the next month, perhaps.
--
regarding my current components:
-i will definitely be re-using the case.
-i don't intend to purchase another PSU; although it is 'only' 500W, it was judged to be of very high quality when it was released (see the linked review), and i'm skeptical of the some folks' views here that 750+W is needed for a reasonably well-configured system. i played around with the extreme power supply calculator and, even if i add another HDD, another radeon 4850, OC the CPU to 3.5 GHz, OC each 4850, keep my external HDD and webcam - i'm still looking at only 396W at 90% system load. so i'm not too worried.
-the scythe ninja was a pretty nice heatsink for its time. i imagine it would hold up well for stock clocks, and even permit some OC'ing. unfortunately, i think it was designed for socket 775 CPUs and does not appear to be configured for AM3 usage. does anybody know whether i can/should use this heatsink with the phenom II 720? if i need to buy another one, i suppose i will. a lot of people here seem to like the xigmatek dark knight s1283, though it might be overkill for what i'm trying to do.
- it's a little late to provide shopping advice, but does anybody have any comments/suggestions for the use of the phenom II 720 + ASUS M4A78T-E combo?
- before i bought the aforementioned combo, i went back and forth a little bit on whether i should pick another board that accepted ddr2, so i could re-use my current sticks. a lot of folks with similar needs/price range seem to like the gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P. i think i got caught up a little 'BUY IT NOW' fever, and might have given a little more thought to picking up a DDR2 board, but with the great price of the combo i think picking up some ddr3 sticks will only cost a little bit more in the end than buying the 720 and something like UD4P individually. DDR3 will be more future-proof, for what it's worth, which is probably not much.
so: i was thinking of buying a 2 x 2GB DDR3 pack. i don't think i really need 6GB. there don't appear to be any super specials right now, though i can wait for a few weeks to see if any pop up. in the meanwhile, though, there seem to be a bunch of g.skill 2 x 2gb kits on newegg (here, here, here, and here) that i'm having a hard time evaluating. am i correct in assuming that the CL8/HK and CL7/PI kits are actually faster or better? i'm a bit confused as the g.skill web page seems to suggest that these 'faster' kits need to be slightly over-volted to 1.65v to function at the rated speeds. any suggestions?
- i am thinking of picking up another radeon 4850 512mb for crossfire since they are still pretty cheap, though not as cheap as they once were a week or two ago. will they be going back down in price? i'll probably wait for another to deal to come up.
- i am thinking of picking up a 640/750 GB or 1TB WD HDD if i see another deal come up. they seem pretty cheap lately too. is 16mb cache ok, rather than 32?
- i'll definitely reuse the DVD burner.
- i'm thinking about installing the win 7 release candidate, and picking up the $50 home premium pre-order at amazon. i don't imagine there will be any problems with any of the above components and win7, but let me know if anything jumps out as problematic.
thanks for reading this long post, and for any suggestions.
EDIT: forgot to mention that i'm using an NEC 20.1" 20WMGX2 LCD at 1680x1050, so i won't be doing any gaming or anything else at a resolution higher than that. ideally, i'd like to max out most/all the current games at that resolution if i end up picking up another radeon 4850 and putting them in crossfire.
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