Looking for suggestions regarding my new PC build.

[Hooves]

Gnum sent me here, he says a few of you put him to shame when it comes to current hardware knowledge.

The parts are all from newegg.com, and come to a little above $1,500. Currently I am $200 over-budget and cannot justify going for an i7, more ram, or a SLC SSD. My goals for this machine are, of course, to play lots of games; anything out there on the highest settings possible.

I considered going with a lesser capacity SSD x 2 and tossing them in raid0, but most of what I have read says the gain in r/w speed is negligible. Instead, I am using the single SSD for my OS, games, and other frequently used programs. The other WD hard drive will be used to store media and backup.

Thanks for taking some time to look.

Newegg Wishlist Link, Go.

[bananahammock]

Hey dude,

You're among fans of the i5, so I don't think you'll get anything more than people peddling their personal preferences. My only recommendation (to save some loot initially) is to start with 2x500gb HDs in RAID0. That'll save you $265. That way, you're not compromising on anything now and you can save your Washingtons for a great SSD deal a few months down the road. Once you do buy an SSD, copy over the OS and consider switching the array to RAID1 for a secure backup volume.

I do dig that mainboard. Support for USB3?

[Dimeq]

personally, i'm still iffy on SSDs. they're supposed to complicate things if you're running an OS on them because concurrent writes trip them up (especially with superfetching and stuff for win7). and then there's the issue of price: for the same price ($300), you can get at least 25 times as much space on 7200 rpm HDDs, so i'd just go with RAID if you really want speed like banana said.

for graphics cards, two HD4890s crossfired if you can still find them are supposed to vastly outperform the hd 5870, with the caveat of no DX11 support, which isn't a huge deal. most games aren't even DX10, and the only game i know of that needs DX11 for anything is stalker call of pripyat.

[bananahammock]

I'm considering a 30gb SSD just to try it. Local comp. shop has one for $100. I wouldn't even consider $300 when I could score two OEM WD 10k Raptors for the same price. That's just me though. Some people are doing cartwheels for SSD's, bragging about their 12 second boots into Win7. Big hairy fucking deal imo.

$400 for a single card solution is also a little too high up the ol' exponential price curve for me as well. I'd sooner rock a pair of cheaper cards as well. Two things; nothing worth playing will require DX11 and with new product lines coming from Nvidia and ATI coming soon, price drops are inevitable. Just my opinion tho.

[fireknight43]

Everyone's talking about the hard drive, I saw you're going sapphire 5870 for g-card.
May I recommend this?
Newegg.com - XFX HD-587A-ZNF9 Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card w/ATI Eyefinity - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards
You're saving about 20$ and you're getting a double lifetime warranty not to mention you can overlock the gpu on while you're in windows. Just go into CCC then crank the bar over to get more out of the card. Hope it helps.

[Hooves]

Is CrossFire/SLI a pain to set up? I have zero experience with running vid. cards in tandem.

Literally everyone I have spoken to has suggested avoiding the SSDs for now and going with a couple Raptors (or the likes) in RAID. I am convinced.

[Jelly]

I'm considering a 30gb SSD just to try it. Local comp. shop has one for $100. I wouldn't even consider $300 when I could score two OEM WD 10k Raptors for the same price. That's just me though. Some people are doing cartwheels for SSD's, bragging about their 12 second boots into Win7. Big hairy fucking deal imo.

$400 for a single card solution is also a little too high up the ol' exponential price curve for me as well. I'd sooner rock a pair of cheaper cards as well. Two things; nothing worth playing will require DX11 and with new product lines coming from Nvidia and ATI coming soon, price drops are inevitable. Just my opinion tho.

I think DX11 is sort of worth it if only for future proofing and it looks like some devs are already starting to implement it. Look at the new STALKER, that's the poster child so far.

And you're right that Nvidia has new stuff coming out (or so they say, we'll see when March gets here), but ATI's done doing big new stuff for about a year. They might have a refresh part coming out at some point, but that's definitely not until after Nvidia drops their cards and refresh parts generally aren't worth delaying a purchase for anyway.

[fireknight43]

Is CrossFire/SLI a pain to set up? I have zero experience with running vid. cards in tandem.

It's not a pain to set up. As long as your board (which i'm sure it will) supports dual x16 lanes then you'll be fine. But if I remember correctly (someone correct me on this) the i5 only supports x16 lanes so if you crossfire/sli then you're only getting x8 at each card.

[Jelly]

It's not a pain to set up. As long as your board (which i'm sure it will) supports dual x16 lanes then you'll be fine. But if I remember correctly (someone correct me on this) the i5 only supports x16 lanes so if you crossfire/sli then you're only getting x8 at each card.

This is correct in most cases. There are a few boards out there that have an auxiliary PCI-E controller that allows for more PCI-E lanes, but those boards are usually pretty expensive.

IMO, I'd rather go with one strong card as opposed to throwing two smaller ones in. Your performance is going to be much more consistent and you aren't going to have to worry about how good the drivers are for a specific game. There's much less hassle as far as software configuration is concerned.

[Dimeq]

to clarify fireknight's post: if you go crossfire/SLI, see if you can also go i7 (lga 1366) instead of i5 (lga 1156), since i7 can have two x16 PCI-E lanes while i5 has to split them into two x8 lanes, meaning performance losses.

the cons of crossfiring the hd4890s over the hd5870 are power consumption, heat (meaning less or no overclocking), a few issues with badly ported console games/old games/poorly supported games, and having to choose a more expensive processor/motherboard for the best performance. the hd4890s do consistently perform a lot better than the hd5870 at stock though.
PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 LCS VS 2X Radeon HD4890 CrossFire - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

[Hooves]

While going with an i7 isn't that much more expensive, switching to a non-scrub 1366 motherboard is. Plus I read that 4g of ram with an i7 is barely sufficient, so I would probably have to bump that too. That would put me over the 2k mark and I really can't do it.

I am waiting on my tax return to pull the trigger which is why I have been taking so much time to be anal about this; I really appreciate the help.

[bananahammock]

Meh, i7 isn't esential. The i5 is a great performer, just keep in mind you're limited to a single video card (which I had completely forgotten). With the 5870, it should be a while before you're running into things you can't run at your desired resolution anyways.

Hooves. Hmm, I believe those were the shoes my ex-girlfriend wore.

[Jelly]

Completely ignoring your budget, you can go with a Core i7 chip without going to the bigger socket:

Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

These are about as fast as the i7 920s and they use the LGA1156 socket, meaning you won't need to upgrade anything else in the build.

[Hooves]

Completely ignoring your budget, you can go with a Core i7 chip without going to the bigger socket:

Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

These are about as fast as the i7 920s and they use the LGA1156 socket, meaning you won't need to upgrade anything else in the build.

What is the downside?

[Jelly]

The LGA1156 Core i7 doesn't have the ability to due triple channel memory, which isn't that big of a deal as far as performance goes. The LGA1366 boards also have the ability to do 16x/16x Crossfire/SLI natively and they're supposed to have more high end chips available for them in the future, including a 6-core monster at some point. Still, I think it's hard to say what processors are going to become available for which socket in the future. I think as long as you aren't planning Crossfire, you're not missing anything important from LGA1366.

[Dimeq]

if you're not going to crossfire, then i'd say stick with the i5 750 over the i7 860. the i7 860 does perform better than the i5, but the primary reason that you would want an i7 would be for crossfire/SLI without performance losses (which the LGA 1156 i7 860 won't help with). it's an extra $80 saved that could be put elsewhere.

(as a sidenote, i don't think the amount of RAM needs to correlate to what processor you get. 4 GB of RAM isn't going to bottleneck an i7, as long as the RAM's fast enough in the first place; the amount of RAM you need depends on your operating system/what programs you're running rather than what your other specs are.)

[Jelly]

I agree with you on the RAM thing, you hit the nail on the head with that.

However, I do think the 860 is worth it if you have the money for it because it's going to give you better performance than the 750. The 860 has hyperthreading, the 750 doesn't (for no apparent reason). The 860 also has more clock speed, a higher uncore speed (which means the caches have a higher clock frequency) and more turbo bins overall, which means the performance difference between it and the 750 is going to be more than just the couple hundred megahertz that it looks like.

[fireknight43]

I agree with Peppy(dime), you really don't need an i7. I have an i5-750 as well as I don't have any regrets. I don't see the need for an i7 unless you want to future-proof yourself for 5 years. Other then that you should be fine. Also I see you have a keyboard on that wishlist, but do you have a mouse? Don't forget that.

[Gnum]

IS IT BUILT YET PLAGUE INFESTED MAN?!