7 replies to this topic

[ansichart]

[EDIT]Changed the power-supply to the modular version for less clutter thus easier management and better air-flow. Also removed Windows 7 64-bit Professional on the list since I already have that. New total: $1743.50[/EDIT]

Over the last few days I have been picking out parts for my new gaming PC. I have been going back and forth making changes and I think this is my final list for what I am getting: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/42HB

After much contemplation I decided to go with Intel's i5 2500k processor as opposed to the i7 2600k. This surprised some people but check out this benchmark on anandtech: http://www.anandtech...duct/288?vs=287
As you see the difference in performance is actually really close, especially when just looking at the gaming benchmarks, it is quite negligible; the price difference, circa $100, however is not.

Since I plan on overclocking the CPU, I went with a higher quality CPU Cooler, the Thermaltake Frio. The cool (no pun intended) thing about this device is that it uses heatpipes, which takes advantage of the phase transitioning principle. It's a simple idea really; Inside It has a liquid under a low pressure that gets heated by the CPU turning it into a gas which takes energy with it, which then later condenses back into a liquid to repeat the cycle.

Regarding the video card, I am going with the HIS Radeon HD 6970 2GB Video Card. Here is a benchmark test chart comparing it to others in the same league: http://www.videocard...=Radeon HD 6970
It was difficult to decide weather to go with GeForce (NVIDA) or Radeon (AMD). They both have their pros and cons; My understanding is that the Radeon is better for really high resolution, since it packs in more memory, and it also focuses on the philosophy of giving you "more bang for your buck." On the other hand NVIDIA is higher performance but the price is not as reasonable. I feel like less money in my wallet would be more noticeable than the performance of a slightly better video card. For my purposes the Radeon will be sufficient. And later if I need a performance boost, I can always get another Radeon to crossfire it with. Also, I like to support AMD... but apparently not enough to go with their CPU, sorry AMD but as far as gaming is concerned, Intel is the best way to go.

This system will have two hard drives. The OS and Games will go on a 120 GB Solid State Drive. I found that the Kingston HyperX is one of the best performing ones out there. It also is a fair price in my opinion. A lot of the other ones were cheaper but could not sustain a good throughput like this one. The other drive will be just a regular 2 TB SATA which I will be for my Music, Movies, Pictures, Ebooks, etc.

I am going to order these parts later tonight unless someone here convinces me to change something up for a better item or deal. Let me know what you guys think, I am looking forward to your comments. (:

Edited by ansichart, 24 January 2012 - 05:00 PM.

[tekio]

Looks like a nice system.


I think the biggest difference is the i7's support for hyper-threading and 2MB more L3 Cache. I don't think the 100Mhz is big, especially when overclocking comes into play. I'm assuming the i5 2500K has an unlocked multiplier as does the i7 2600K. For the i7 to really shine the software (I'd speculate) would need to be designed with quad-core hyperthreading in mind. Like when the box/website has the i7 logo or reads, "Designed for i7". I think I've seen that twice.

I got a used 2600K off ebay. Got lucky, it was a good cpu, and could not be happier with the performance. My friend says the same about his i5. Good gaming is mostly from a beefy video card anyway.

EDIT: I think it would be interesting to post some benchmarks of our rigs. Mine has the i7 2600K and x2 gtx 460's. Mine are SLI'd, but the 6970 nears double the frame rates with more ram per GPU with a single card.

Edited by tekio, 25 January 2012 - 07:56 AM.

[tonyakerman]

Looks like a nice system.


I think the biggest difference is the i7's support for hyper-threading and 2MB more L3 Cache. I don't think the 100Mhz is big, especially when overclocking comes into play. I'm assuming the i5 2500K has an unlocked multiplier as does the i7 2600K. For the i7 to really shine the software (I'd speculate) would need to be designed with quad-core hyperthreading in mind. Like when the box/website has the i7 logo or reads, "Designed for i7". I think I've seen that twice.

I got a used 2600K off ebay. Got lucky, it was a good cpu, and could not be happier with the performance. My friend says the same about his i5. Good gaming is mostly from a beefy video card anyway.

EDIT: I think it would be interesting to post some benchmarks of our rigs. Mine has the i7 2600K and x2 gtx 460's. Mine are SLI'd, but the 6970 nears double the frame rates with more ram per GPU with a single card.

congrats...,i wish i can find same as you purchase...


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Edited by tonyakerman, 05 February 2012 - 06:40 PM.

[Afterm4th]

that's a very sexy machine.

If you're configuring it yourself rather than receiving it fully assembled, be sure to use your sata6 ports for your hard drives as it appears both of the hard drives you are buying are sata6.

use them to their fullest potential and have fun gaming

[ansichart]

I got my parts and put everything together. Everything works great.... except for my video card, which is not being detected ):
I see that the fan spins on it, so it is getting power. But Windows just fails to detect it. It is using Intel's integrated video card instead. I have tried installing the drivers but it does not recognize my card. I tried disabling the integrated card and installing the drivers and I get the same issue. I made sure that my video card is in the right PCI slot. I think the Video card is a defect/damaged. I'll probably have to send it in for a replacement.

Edited by ansichart, 31 January 2012 - 04:32 AM.

[ansichart]

I got my video card working now!

There are two power cables, an 8-pin and a 6-pin connector, the 8-pin was not in all the way... I had to really force it in there.

Using NovaBench3 I ran all the benchmarks and these are the results

1/31/2012 11:20:51 AM
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Intel Core i52500K 3.30GHz @ 3366 MHz
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series

8168 MB System RAM (Score: 212)
- RAM Speed: 15223 MB/s

CPU Tests (Score: 541)
- Floating Point Operations/Second: 103577820
- Integer Operations/Second: 512937712
- MD5 Hashes Generated/Second: 1439403

Graphics Tests (Score: 810)
- 3D Frames Per Second: 2137

Hardware Tests (Score: 26)
- Primary Partition Capacity: 112 GB
- Drive Write Speed: 198 MB/s

And in Windows 7 Experience Index (performance rating on a scale of 1.0 to 7.9):

Processor: 7.6
Memory (RAM): 7.9
Graphics: 7.9
Gaming graphics: 7.9
Primary hard disk: 7.9

[5imp7y]

Nice system man, Very jelly!

I'm about to pull an upgrade, but not a overhaul or even completly new like you, But im switching to Liquid cooling soon :-) Building my first system, with GPU blocks and all!!!

[peanutedd]

my one pc I went with the 2600k and I dont have one hair of regret, I see the difference when starting up crysis 2 with high def and witcher 2 which punishes a cpu and it performs like a monster