Hardware PC Hardware Buyer's Guide - April 2010

Really? I'm sure I can think of a few worse things.

 

A price rise in cpu, gpu and memory. Looks like a bad time to upgrade. God I still gotta stick to my e4500!

 

I want a 5870 to replace my 4890 but at $400 (U.S.) thats crazy high. ATI had it right when they released the 4800 series at fantastic prices. Practically everyone was upgrading. They are now in Nvidias pricing territory and you see where that got them.

 

You guys need to update your premium player motherboard a bit or at least add an alternative. You should try to get a GA-X58 UD3R to review. It costs ~$70 USD less than the Asus one you recommend and overclocks like a champ. People have complained about electronic whining noise coming from the mobo but that is fixed by manually setting the voltages instead of leaving them set to “auto”.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128423&cm_re=ud3r-_-13-128-423-_-Product

 

spec for spec I have the exact build that you describe in the "gaming workhorse" and it does a good job, is 100% stable and not too loud either. It handles any game I throw at it at 1920x1080 for the record.

I'm using ocz ram @ 1600
and a cooler master powersupply
I'm using the power color 5850 because it has an aftermarket cooler that is more powerful than stock.
I'm using an antec p180 case to keep everything quiet.

Anyways I highly recommend this build I came in at $1200 all from newegg except the titan fenrir which I sourced from heatsink factory.

 

liquid cool the card then you won't hear any noise from it =)

still no liquid cooling components in this month again

 

I got a 5750 for £88 from ebuyer. That's the best value graphics card available right now. Should get a solid recommendation.

 

480 + liquid cooling is still expensive though

and i still think an money no object build would be better

 

Liquid cooling is prohibitively expensive for any rig except the highest-end, and even then its benefits over air cooling are minimal for the amount of work that goes into building and maintaining a loop.

 

Maintaining liquid cooling is easy I have my CPU on a 2rad loop setup needs topping up every now and then

or mostly when I dust it out(once a month

 

It may be expensive but your ears will thank you for it! Especially when gaming.

And the amount of extra work that goes into building it over normal heatsink-fans makes you all the more proud when you display the final build sat next to your desk.

 

Oh good, more choice

*sigh* I'm undecided between the i7 930, the i7 860 (which cost about the same) and now you've brought up the i5 750.
Whatever it's going to be it's going to be paired with a Radeon 5870 and I don't want to slow down the GPU with the CPU.
Also I'm not planning to overclock heavily as i'm looking for long term stability.
(what was that about the lifetime of the overclocked Bit-Tech rigs beeing about half a year?)

Maybe this question should be in the "advice" section... Hmmm

 

i5 750 -- +£60 --> i7 860 -- +£100 --> i7 930

you make up your own mind on which one to get, but others are correct, in gaming, there is virtually no difference from the 750 all the way to 930.

 

Greetings!

If you do get a 4C/8T CPU, check with each game if the HT isnt harming your performance.
Like Farcry 2 here:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/does-core-i7-hyper-threading-helps-/6160.html?doc=6160

 

Waiting to hear news from you about the 890FX although I won't want to upgrade just now, I think my Phenom 9950BE still has a lot of potential but I'm eager to see if AMD hit the spot with the 890FX, the ???FX chipsets is what I always aim for.

[drooling] Heard of anything, some photo or specs' leaks? [/drooling]

 

I wonder why it's the i7 860, why not the i5 750?

 

Hmmm, maybe where you live. Here it's:

i5-750 170€
i7-860 240€
i7-930 240€

The i7-860 clocks highest (turbo) out of the box...

Then there's the motherboards:

S1156 (i5-750/i7-860) about 130€ (for instance: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3R)
S1366 (i7-930) about 160€ (for instance ASAU P6T SE)

and memory of course.

2x2GB for i5-750 and i7-860 about 110€
3x2GB for i7-930 about 150€

So Prozzy+MoBo+Memory

i5-750 ~410€ (2.66-3.2 Ghz 4GB )
i7-860 ~480€ (2.8-3.46 Ghz 4GB)
i7-930 ~550€ (2.8-3.06 Ghz 6GB)

Bweh...doesn't make it easier.

 

I can't seem to find any retailers who sells the Titan Fenrir. I live in Denmark.

Any other CPU coolers worthy of my new i7 930? Didn't you recommend the Akasa earlier, or was that a fluke?

 

All three of these cpu's will do 4ghz with a good cooler and Motherboard. if your gaming and folding stay with the I7 and nvidia. Im not a gamer. just a folder. Some say the gpu does soo much more work and they do but are limmited in the type of work they do. A i7@4.0 smp and a gtx260 running 650/1540 is good for 25,000ppd run bigadv and the gtx-260 and your looking at over 30,000 a day. and use much less power

 

Thanks,

I'm not folding (IF then i'd be SETI'ing anyway) and I'm probably not overclocking (at least not overvolting) as I keep my systems active for about 8 years.
I'd have liked to go NnVidia again for some PhysX, but Fermi is just too hot (and expensive for not performing), and the GTX260 is just too old.
A HD5870 it is.