Ok bare with me coz i'm new to the whole building your own pc thing, but i thought it was time that i tried to build my own as i want it for gaming but also need it for uni as i use adobe after effects and autodesk maya a lot. i've had some previous advice from the custompc forums. i've made up 2 shopping baskets in scan.co.uk, one with a core i7 920 and the other with a Q9550, everything else (apart from the obvious) is pretty much the same. the i7 build comes to £100 more than the Q9550. my questions is this; is the performance of the i7 920 worth an extra £100, or am i better saving my money (oh and i dont have any experience with overclocking and wouldn't even know where to start). Thanks!
I certainly wouldn't build a system around a Q9550 anymore, if you go with the older socket 775 system I would definitely go with a lower-powered chip i.e. a Q6600 which you could overclock for free. What system do you have at the moment? I'd be tempted just to splash the cash and get the i7 - oh wait I did.
For multimedia work, definitely the I7. Even without touching the voltage settings, the I7 should overclock to 3Ghz, if you needed the extra power. Plenty of people on here would help guide you through it
I dont have one at all, thats why im in the market for a new one. as i said i wouldnt even know where to start with overclocking so i wouldnt be too confident about messing with the whole settings.......just in case
There's really no competition, a low-end i7 system is worth the extra £100 over a high-end Core 2 system for the upgrdeability alone. But you might want to consider a lower spec Core 2 system being a (presumably poor) student to save you a bit of moneys As for overclocking, no one knows where to start at first - we all have to learn somewhere
Even stock the I7, is still the best choice. Without being rude, if you're not too confident in terms of messing around with PC hardware/software, maybe it would be better to buy a ready made PC. An I7 build is an expensive system to make mistakes on. Maybe buy cheap PC on ebay, to learn from and take to pieces, that way if you mess up, it doesn't involve major wallet pain, once you are more confident you can get to work on the I7 build.
well i thought of that but scan do this thing called scansure, which insures any mishaps i might have whilst building it. for an extra £20-30 they'll replace anything that i break and it lasts for 28 days
If you don't have any experience with overclocking, I'd get the Q6600, a large heatsink and buy the Asus Maximus II Formula. It's an expensive motherboard, but there's a setting in the BIOS called "Crazy" that basically auto-overclocks the CPU for you to about 3.4GHz. If that doesn't work, then set it to "Q9770". (I can't remember if the P5Q Deluxe offers it as well - that's cheaper!) Either that, or Gigabyte boards have EasyTune 6 which is a great piece of software to overclock with - very simple to learn and comes with all their motherboards. The i7 920 will certainly provide more core performance if you aren't overclocking, but if you do learn it's got great overhead too. Don't dismiss the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition too - just use AMD OverDrive to increase the multiplier a few notches, don't adjust anything else, and see if that gives you free speed
Interesting, this is from their terms & conditions. "Damage caused by You failing to follow the manufacturers instructions" However, I recently purchased quite a few items with Scan, and could not fault their service. Scan often do their best supersaver deals over the weekend, helps to save a few extra pounds.
the scansure is just marketing BS to me like the 10 point checks other people do. if you mess with the components it will void your warranty as stated in the terms and conditions of scan
I'd definately go for the i7. They are far more powerful. Should you also choose to upgrade in the next couple of years you may not be able to get new components for the older 775 sockets. Going i7 should at least prolong your system life. As for overclocking, I have found the i7's are far easier to overclock. My DO stepping i920 overclocks to almost 4.5gig. If I set all of the voltages to the minimum recommended it will still go over 3.5ghz.
