Hello all, After a bad experience with a company called PALICOMP, i have decided to build my own sandybridge rig (have built a few p.c's back in the AGP days). Im pretty happy with my wishlist of parts apart from the MOBO.Im up to speed with the B3 revision situation...so here is my outline.....no real budget constraints. running through a t.v/widescreen monitor. mainly gaming and general p.c duties. already have (brand new) MSI GTX560TI TWIN FROZER OC GPU I7 2600K CPU C/M ATXC 840 CASE Thinking of a T/T frio cooler and two 4gig sticks of RAM (AWARE OF HEIGHT ISSUES ON mobo WITH THESE AND CHANNELS to seat them in. Will be looking for a 120 gig SSD (have my own HDD's) An 850w PSU Blu-ray drive W7 64 bit So a bit out of the loop on some area's,any suggestions or corrections will be greatfully received. apologies if i have not adhered to the post format on build questions Thanks for reading.
This MSI one is ment to be fairly good value. This Asus one is pretty good for 'clocking. This Asus one looks bomb-proof. And this Gigabyte one is meant to be a good all rounder.
Do you plan to go SLI in the future? The Gigabyte P67A-UD4 would be a good choice. My UD7 has been 100% faultless since the day I built my system.
Opinions divided on the motherboard, personally I have the Asus P8P67 Deluxe and find it a wonderful piece of kit to work with. Also once you get used to the BIOS it's easy to kick around the options! The Corsair XMS3 4GB dual channel kit would be fine, you really don't need more unless doing some intensive memory hungry professional application (games don't count!). Power Supply go for a Corsair AX850, highly rated and easy to work with. As for SSD a new Vertex 3 due out some time this month and the fastest you can get! On to the cooler, FRIO is damn good but I just like a PWM fan on my CPU. Be Quiet Dark Rock Advanced is up with the best of them, just check your case can accommodate it! Think that covers it! Oh and a Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm fan for exhaust wouldn't go a miss!
I'd go for the sabertooth. New SSD's are coming out soon so it might be worth waiting. 850 Watts is huge overkill, you could run the rig on literally half that power. It would be worth getting 8gb of ram, since 4gb can be eat up fairly quickly with windows 7.
Sorry to take the thread OT for a sec, but have you RMA'd your UD7 for a B3 dead beat? Also what vcore are you running to get 5GHz? Everything else on Auto I assume?
For what its worth, running a bog standard P8P67 at 4.6Ghz with a i5 2500k with no issues, just can't go SLI in the future but I really don't see that as an issue tbh. Also, unless you are getting it for asthetic reasons the Frio is a bit OTT (imho) unless you will be running at 100% load 24x7. Maybe have a look into the Gelid Tranquillo which I have, bout £15 cheaper and more than does the job. Currently doing F@H and CPU is only sitting at 58 degrees in a 23 degree room.
I will be RMAing my board within the next couple of weeks. I broke my wrist whilst skiing in the winter and was in plaster for 13 weeks so I was unable to dismantle my waterloop to RMA my board. I don't actually even use the affected sata ports. I will just be doing it for the resale value when the time comes to upgrade. Vcore is set to 1.375v. I have disabled quite a lot of stuff in the bios (line load calibration is set to level 2), but a fair bit is left on auto. It was pretty easy to get that overclock.
Thanks guy's for all the helpful replies. Alot of useful info. @murraynt....going for 8gig of RAM (2 x 4).not 4. Also, you think scale down the PSU? I was thinking 850 would give room for upgrading down the line and not have to figure a new PSU into the upgrade. @tarka....TBH i was looking for the 'star' cooler and the frio is getting a lot of love, the dark rock i think may give me issues with RAM head clearance (looking to go for low profile anyway) Will give the Gelid another look. @deadbeat....Not planning to go SLI,but is there any real advantage? curious to hear, as it is something i can consider. @blogins....thanks mate, some good suggestions there, the case i have is nice and roomy with good airflow, but i was considering upgrading a couple of the stock fans that come with it. Cheers guy's, any more more nuggets of info/experience will be greatfully received....my shopping basket is still open. Flitting between Scan/Novatech right now...any other worthy mentions? Crudey.
In my opinion the ASUS P8P67 is by far the best board for sandybridge and unless you plan to go sli then you may as well get the standard version as there are very little point in spending the extra money on one of the other models otherwise.
