bikerdude on 9/12/2011 at 19:54
Quote Posted by Yakoob
* Any particular reason for EVGA?
* Regaring ASUS P8Z68-V, Any good choices out of the $100 bunch?
* The RAM says "Designed for Intel P67 motherboard" but the board is Z68,
* PSU - lots of reviews on the link you posted say it has issues under stress (heavy gaming)
I'd love a bit more detailed spec over the weekend, if you don't mind. I am actually abroad and coming back to the US on the 17th,
* You have the option for a 5/10yr warranty with EVGA, unlike the 1/2yr with Zotac/Msi. Also the quality of the EVGA card ahould supass that of the other 2. And the EVGA should overclock well and run as cool or cooler.
* I choose the P8Z68-V as it was the same price as the Asus gene and has more features, but I will see what I can dig up for closer to the $100 based on the Z68 chipset.
* Its been demonstrated that the optimum memory speed for the sandbridge cpu is DDR3-1600 and I took this a step further finding the tightest timmings-with the lowest voltage-to price ratio.
* I just choose that PSU as it was made by the same manufaturer you originaly choose, I will take a more detailed look.
Ostriig on 9/12/2011 at 23:08
I've got the P8Z68-V and the onboard audio was picking up so much noise that I bought a dedicated soundcard. No problems on your end?
Yakoob - for what it's worth, I've never seen my 570 go over 60°C. It idles just under 40 and goes up into mid 50s to 60s under load with fans spinning up to around 60% as I recall. It is definitely audible at that point, though.
Volitions Advocate on 10/12/2011 at 07:06
EVGA seems to be the go-to company for nvidia cards by most enthusiasts. Nobody beats XFX in the warranty / customer service dept though. If you register your video card with your account on their website within 30 days of purchase, your 2 year warranty gets bumped to a lifetime warranty, and its' transferable to the 1st person you sell it to if you ever upgrade.
The problem is I think they focus more on building AMD cards than NVIDIA, at least in the online retailers I've noticed their geforce pickings are slim compared to radeon.
bikerdude on 10/12/2011 at 08:35
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
Nobody beats XFX in the warranty / customer service dept though. If you register your video card with your account on their website within 30 days of purchase, your 2 year warranty gets bumped to a lifetime warranty, and its' transferable to the 1st person you sell it to if you ever upgrade..
Well I live and learn, is the above true for users in america, or worldwide...?
Volitions Advocate on 10/12/2011 at 09:13
I'm in Canada, and it worked for me. :)
Yakoob on 10/12/2011 at 09:36
edudrekib, just FYI, only the processor and card is what I am set on. Everything else was just a matching filler I found via "users who bought this also bought..." because I know little about current gen mobos/rams/cases/psu/etc. Feel free to change those as you see fit, with a few points:
CPU: i5-2500k . For sure unless there's some damn good deal on i7-2600K
GPU Geforce GTX 560 Ti 448. I heard good things about EVGA so I might go with the one you pointed, if not then probably Zotac or MSI.
Mobo, I'm thinking P67 slot - or should I go with Z68? Reading on it, the extra features are meh (like using the CPU as GPU) and P67s are cheaper. Besides that, I want a PCIe2 (16x) for the card, supporting 16GB Ram at 1600+, onboard LAN and audio, and at least 2 USB3 slots. So there's plenty of cards in the $100 range that deliver but, as I said, they all look like cryptic numbers, so no idea what to choose. Tw that matched this criteria and seemed decent were ASRock P67 PRO3, GIGABYTE GA-P67A-D3-B3, but again, there's way more out there.
RAM I want 2 x 4GB-1600 DDR3. Again, don't know what brand (I know corsair was good back in the day, G.Skill seems to be big now, but then there's like few different versions of the same G.Skills at the same Mhz so again dont know what the difference is). what you posted seems good.
Case and PSU, whatever is adequate and cheapest. My initial choice (Rosewell GEAR X3) looks pretty good imo - 59 bucks and comes with 3 fans. The PSU got decent reviews as well.
HDD - The one you linked looks good and has solid reviews, so I might go for that. Never had a hybrid before so we'll see. I was also considering getting a small SSD (for OS and few programs) and a main HDD for rest, but not sure how that would turn out money wise.
DVD - whatever. The ones I/you linked seems fine.
Others - Anything else I might need I dont realize no clue about (thermal paste, better CPU fan, cables etc).
Again, thanks for doing this, much appreciated :)
Koki on 11/12/2011 at 12:28
Wasn't the k model of 2xxx only popular because it had unlocked limiter? If you're not going to OC you can probably save a few bucks on a non-K model.
[Edit] N/m, 2500K has 1000 more HD Graphics, whatever that means
[Edit2]I started putting together a rig myself out of curiosity and 2500k might be great but FFS it's expensive. I can't even find a 560 GTX out here which costs more. I should go with i3 or something.
Zerker on 11/12/2011 at 13:29
Quote Posted by Koki
Wasn't the k model of 2xxx only popular because it had unlocked limiter? If you're not going to OC you can probably save a few bucks on a non-K model.
[Edit] N/m, 2500K has 1000 more HD Graphics, whatever that means
[Edit2]I started putting together a rig myself out of curiosity and 2500k might be great but FFS it's expensive. I can't even find a 560 GTX out here which costs more. I should go with i3 or something.
Yeah, I mentioned that earlier in the thread, but it sounds like people actually like overclocking (weirdos :) ). I bought the i5-2500 (sans-K) for my main PC earlier in the year for $215 CDN, and my GTX 560 Ti was $250 CDN. Funny how that combination seems to be rather popular.
The HD graphics thing only matters if you are running your i5 with the onboard video... and if you are: what is wrong with you?
My i3-2100T (for my "console PC") arrived yesterday, and it seems to be working quite well. Just Cause 2 ran at a full 60 fps, which is the only thing I tried on it. I'll give Witcher 2 a shot on that PC and see how it behaves. It's almost a certainty that the non-T i3s are even better, so you'd probably be fine with one of them, Koki.
Koki on 11/12/2011 at 14:19
Yeah, I just finished reading Tomshardwareguide's "best CPUs for the money November 2011" and I found the i3-2100 there. At first I was skeptical since I'm on dual core right now but then I found my current CPU(E6600) in their "power ranking" and holy shit was it completely outclassed even by this funny little chip.
Since I don't care how fast my OS launches or how many seconds I have to wait to run Office, I'm seriously considering getting it. This way my GPU can be twice as expensive as my CPU, as god intended.
Relevant to the thread, the article states that if you're not going to overclock you not only should skip the K, you should scratch another 100 off the name and go with i5-2400 since the few hundred Mhz between 2500 and 2400 hardly make any difference. And as you said, Intel HD doesn't matter at all if you have a graphics card(I thought it provided some extra ooomph even with the card, guess I was wrong).
Yakoob on 12/12/2011 at 12:39
Quote Posted by Koki
Wasn't the k model of 2xxx only popular because it had unlocked limiter? If you're not going to OC you can probably save a few bucks on a non-K model.
[Edit] N/m, 2500K has 1000 more HD Graphics, whatever that means
[Edit2]I started putting together a rig myself out of curiosity and 2500k might be great but FFS it's expensive. I can't even find a 560 GTX out here which costs more. I should go with i3 or something.
Yea but it's only 10 extra dollars for the K. 10 dollars to be potentially able to increase your CPU clock almost 2x? Sounds like a good investment at best, and one less shitty TGI Fridays dinner at worst.
