Hi, I've been slaving away at a solicitor's for some months with the sole intention of making my new build a real face-ripper. Since I'm trying to break with a tradition of solving computing problems by throwing hard-earned at them - I mean, I once sent my Vaio back to Sony for repair, for God's sake - I thought this time I'd dip into the Bit-Tech knowledge pool. That way, I can afford high-end bits without having to budget for useless tech support. Touch wood. I want a mental machine that makes the months of drudgery melt away. That, and I want to be future-proofed. Excluding unimportant optical drives and the like, I was recommended parts by Bit-Tech's own lists and by friend. This stuff is about to go on order, with either individual or pairs of GTX-280s or a 4870x2s to follow, as follows; Core: Intel Core i7 965 - c.£700-830 Asus P6T Deluxe - £247 Corsair 6GB Triple Channel DDR3 Dominator @ 1866MHz - £380 HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F1 320GB - £38 PSU: Corsair HX 1000W ATX2.2 Modular SLI - £185 Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 - £55 NZXT Sentry LX - £50 Case: Lian-Li PC V1000B + - £100 Questions, then; Should I be buying a lower-spec and therefore much cheaper i7 processor? I've never done overclocking before, and my pipe-dream phase-change rig is some-way off. If it's genuinely an advantage to be running the Extreme edition I'll go for it, but unnecessary expenditure does have limits and Intel seems to find them quite rapidly. Do I actually need a 1000w PSU? Even if a second 'card is added? I like the look and reputation of Corsair's PSU but if I don't need 250w of that then their 750-non-modular looks £80 more attractive. I'd like to drop to their 650w modular for neatness but am afraid that's not enough power. Can anyone suggest a ballpark draw for this system? Do I need the full-tower version (V2000B) of the case? I've seen it written that otherwise the SLi'd cards will turn into huge fireballs, my CPU will melt and Britain will be overwhelmed by economic migrants. Is the 1866mhz RAM going to be of any use? Seen on Corsair's own site that in some respect Intel's processors are capped at 1600mhz or some such witchcraft. ANY IDEAS WELCOMED! Especially any ones that don't tell me to save the money for the coming financial meltdown. Thanks in advance!
The 750W should be plenty for anything you can throw at it. For an £80 saving, go for it. As for the CPU it's probably more sensible to get a cheaper one tbh - the Extreme Editions tend to be overpriced for what their clock speeds. For £400 less, I'd probably go for the i940. The multiplier might not be unlocked, but it should be ok. If you can cope with a bigger case, I always think it's a good idea. Then again, I do like big cases. I'd be doubtful about the V1000 not being capable of cooling that lot.
Go for the i7 920, I personally don't think its worth the tripling on price to get the 965 when the 920 will overclock to 4Ghz. Also are you sure you don't need a bigger hard drive? if you go for the cheaper i7 920 you could throw some money at a couple of Rapters or an SSD which would give better performance. Have you considered waiting for the NVIDIA GTX 295 which should be coming out soon ish... It should be one monster of a card with two GTX 260 cores on one card. Another possibility is waiting to see the new Phenom II processors from AMD. The Phenom II 940 black edition has an unlocked multiplier making overclocking a piece of cake. Its been known to hit well over 4Ghz. That should cost around £250 and a decent 790FX SB750 mobo just £150. I know AMD chips aren't good ATM but it may be worth waiting a few weeks to see if we get a surprise like the 4870 cards were in june.
1) get the 920 or 940, give it a kick in the butt to 4GHz, and that's all you'll ever need 2) you don't need it really. However, an overclocked i7 is a hungry beast, and adding two 4870 X2s really could give a 750 some hard work. I'd go for it just to be on the safe side. 3) immigrants, yes, very dangerous. You are required to house at least two families in your PC by 2010, so it's best to plan ahead! Really though, read reviews, and see which you like. Cases are a very personal thing, proven by the modding community here. 4) The i7 already has such stupid amounts of memory bandwidth, you really will never ever put those to proper use in a real situation. The incompatibility thing is an overclocking thing, to do with the difference between the CPU and RAM voltages being maximum 0,5V. If that's too much jibba-jabba for you, google it, because i'm probably already wrong in one or two ways, and i dont want to make it worse. The best thing you can do is get a 1600 kit and pocket the extra cash. For storage, i REALLY suggest you look into using an SSD. From what i see, you are not needing massive amounts of storage, and the Intel X-25M will improve your user experience greatly.
