SB Tale Swapping - The Machine of my Dreams

[Dadofamunky]

I have to say, I had to spend $1800 to get it, but the Sandy Bridge upgrade (see sig) is the first time I've spent that kind of money and not had elements of disappointment in the build. This is the first machine I've done where I have everything fully balanced, there are no significant I/O bottlenecks, and the system literally does everything I want without a hiccup. (Photoshop opens in 2 sec.! Framemaker 10, with 800 fonts installed - a stitch more than two seconds! On my quad-core i5 laptop from work, the same thing takes 30 seconds!)

I didn't even have to spend that much cash to get this. I'm not a serious gamer so I won't be running SLI, and 30-inch monitors hurt my neck esp. in portrait mode.

To really build a fully responsive system you need a reliable SSD. Period. Without it the remaining $1500 I would have spent still would have left me with significant I/O bottlenecks in my OS. The SSD is what tied the whole system together. One of the guys (I think Edrick) told me I was stupid if I bought an i7-950. I have to admit - he was right. Running at 4.7 GHz, IBT Standard stable, is completely ridiculous. A 42% OC is the best I've ever achieved, and it wasn't really that hard. (I hit a stable 3.71 GHz on an Intel 65nm E6750, which really wasn't bad at all.)

Even memory overclocking, with the right RAM, is now shamefully straightforward. Intel took all the rocket science out of OCing, but at least they gave us cheap K chips to play with. All in all this turned out to be the machine of my dreams (knock on wood). At some point I may make an effort to reseat my HSF and that was by far the hardest part of the build (temps are average 36-38-39-38 idle, OS running) but other than that this thing is just creamy soft.

I think the last time I was that satisfied was when I built a 286-20 with 8 MB of RAM to run Windows 3.0. That thing lasted me almost five years, running NetWare afterwards.

 

[magomago]

How was the OC? Smooth, easy? Did you use in the built in utility on your p8p67, or did you do it manually? I'm waiting for the fixed boards to hit retail before I do an OC....

 

[grimpr]

Congratulations on your build and for breaking away from the 300$+ cpu segment and according cpu centric mentality that dominates. Indeed balanced systems such as your fresh SB build are the now and future of performance and enthusiast PC Desktop, i've built similar setup for friends/relatives and clients in balance and all came through champions in high user satisfaction.

 

[OCGuy]

Welcome to the SSD club. Great OC, great build. You can enjoy that sucker for years to come.

 

[Dadofamunky]

@magomago: I did everything in the UEFI. I have found that UEFI is basically just the BIOS with a prettier face. And nice that Intel kept the price point reasonable for this generation of unlocked chips.

@Grimpr: In 8-9 months I'll probably be looking enviously at the Socket 2011 crowd :twisted: I think Intel has many more pleasant surprises up its sleeve for us, but some of them will cost. I wanted to build something that would help me avoid the temptation for another build for awhile and I think I succeeded.

@OCguy: Thanks for the ping. Yeah, that was my intent, which was why I decided to bite the bullet on the SSD. I'm not planning on doing this again for awhile.

 

[Spike]

Welcome to the SSD club. Great OC, great build. You can enjoy that sucker for years to come (as soon as you replace the mobo with a fixed version).

Fixed for you

Congrats on the great build!! I know in my case the SSD + SB + 6970 has made me wet my pants with the speed and capability. Too bad I only play games on it. I may have to do something *gasp* productive now that I have such a fast and capable build...

 

[Drsignguy]

Yes, congrats on your build. I must agree with the i7 SB along with the SSD is a huge improvement. I feel just as giddy. :awe:

 

[Idontcare]

 

[bryanW1995]

Welcome to the SSD club. Great OC, great build. You can enjoy that sucker for years to come.

ssd is like a drug, you start with 128gb but you keep wanting more and more...

 

[Dadofamunky]

The C300s seem to be a consensus choice and the kind of solid product that appears after a market has had time to mature. (Not enough for prices to go down though!) A 1 TB C300 for $300 - now that would be sweet. We would have to cover the planet's surface with new fabs for that to become a reality, however.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Sweeeeet setups!!! Congrats!!

Yes, the SSD drives really make the difference just as 120Hz LCDs do in gaming!

 

[Anomaly1964]

@magomago: I did everything in the UEFI. I have found that UEFI is basically just the BIOS with a prettier face. And nice that Intel kept the price point reasonable for this generation of unlocked chips.

@Grimpr: In 8-9 months I'll probably be looking enviously at the Socket 2011 crowd :twisted: I think Intel has many more pleasant surprises up its sleeve for us, but some of them will cost. I wanted to build something that would help me avoid the temptation for another build for awhile and I think I succeeded.

@OCguy: Thanks for the ping. Yeah, that was my intent, which was why I decided to bite the bullet on the SSD. I'm not planning on doing this again for awhile.

Great rig! I may hit you up for some OC advice!

 

[slag]

The price/size/performance ratio just isn't there for SSD's yet. I don't want a boot drive, I want full SSDs in my system of around 3-5 terabytes. Not worth the price currently imho.

 

[Krynj]

How much did those 1GB Spinpoints cost ya?

 

[aigomorla]

lol woo hoo!

Dream builds are fun.

I havent had one of those in ages...

For me to build the system of my dreams i would need probably the equivalent price tag of a European high end sports car.

LOL... but my dream system is massive.. and i mean super massive... down to a gold plated Motherboard Tray holder, and custom silver water blocks for everything.

You see why it will only be considered a dream and never a reality. :X

 

[Drsignguy]

lol woo hoo!

Dream builds are fun.

I havent had one of those in ages...

For me to build the system of my dreams i would need probably the equivalent price tag of a European high end sports car.

LOL... but my dream system is massive.. and i mean super massive... down to a gold plated Motherboard Tray holder, and custom silver water blocks for everything.

You see why it will only be considered a dream and never a reality. :X

And now I am dreaming of being rich!

 

[Dadofamunky]

How much did those 1GB Spinpoints cost ya?

$55 apiece.

@slag: I agree - but like I said in a roundabout way, I don't think prices are going to drop much anytime soon. Until then, having a brutally fast boot drive is gonna have to suffice.

I will say - the Spinpoints are too slow for my taste even in a RAID. They take 5-6 seconds to spin up when I access them. I'm thinking about swapping them out for a couple of the Hitachis that I've had good luck with.

Fixed for you

Congrats on the great build!! I know in my case the SSD + SB + 6970 has made me wet my pants with the speed and capability. Too bad I only play games on it. I may have to do something *gasp* productive now that I have such a fast and capable build...

That 6970 is awesome. I was looking hard at that but decided on NVidia for the CUDA capabilities with 64-bit Photoshop.

 

[Dadofamunky]

lol woo hoo!

Dream builds are fun.

I havent had one of those in ages...

For me to build the system of my dreams i would need probably the equivalent price tag of a European high end sports car.

LOL... but my dream system is massive.. and i mean super massive... down to a gold plated Motherboard Tray holder, and custom silver water blocks for everything.

You see why it will only be considered a dream and never a reality. :X

I dunno, looks to me like you've been doing pretty well for some time! I'm just happy with the performance I was able to get for under $2K.

 

[HendrixFan]

The price/size/performance ratio just isn't there for SSD's yet. I don't want a boot drive, I want full SSDs in my system of around 3-5 terabytes. Not worth the price currently imho.

It is a shame you feel that way. The performance difference with a SSD boot drive it well worth the price of admission, and any speed gains using a SSD for storage will be minimal to unnoticable.

 

[Dadofamunky]

It is a shame you feel that way. The performance difference with a SSD boot drive it well worth the price of admission, and any speed gains using a SSD for storage will be minimal to unnoticable.

Yeah, I *used* to feel that way. Now I feel like no new build should be without one. Kinda pointless to have an SB system without it, IMO. I tried to get away without it but when I discovered that a 2 TB RAID setup wasn't cutting it for bootload or appload times I swallowed hard and did it. Well worth it. There's about a 30% increase in sequential read speeds over my RAIDs and boot times are about a third of what they were previously. Apps - well jeez, who doesn't want their apps to load in less than three seconds?

 

[Dark Shroud]

I'm currently fighting the urge to buy a SATA 6gig SSD for my SB system. I'm waiting for Intel's G3 drives that are supposed to have larger capacity. Not to mention upgrading my mobo when I swap it out for a non-flawed one.

I thought I would be able to live with the onboard sound but I want an HTOmega sound card. Between that, my Killer 2100, & needing a 4x slot for a Thunderbolt controller card that I'll just have to buy. Well lets just say my current mobo isn't up for the challenge.

Once you start upgrading you just can't stop.