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Build Advice What should I buy instead of Sandy Bridge?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by microsoftPerson, 5 Feb 2011.

  1. microsoftPerson

    microsoftPerson What's a Dremel?

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    Update ! -

    Overwhelmed with the possibility of having a great case and PSU for the next three months waiting for SandyBridge I made an impulse buy and purchased the only motherboard I could find from a reputable USA dealer. So for the rest of you still looking to purchase SandyBridge in the USA - go ahead and buy the other 76 of them.

    Personally, I don't think these US companies are going to get their heads out of their asses and figure out that they can still sell these components in the meantime. I checked the p8p67 motherboard for my needs and I think it will do pretty well. And it has 4x 6Gb/Second ports and 2 3Gb/second ports... so that could be a benefit.
     
  2. murraynt

    murraynt Modder

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    Personally If I was doing it again I would avoid Asus. When the new boards are in stock I'm going to try swap it for a UD4.
     
  3. mucgoo

    mucgoo Minimodder

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    Its port 2-5 which are affected even if they are 6gb/s so try to only use port 0-1 in the meantime.
     
  4. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    I'd still build the SB rig, and simple switch out the motherboard when the time comes. I've put my SSD and HD on the 6Gb/s ports, and the rarely used optical on the "dodgy" 3Gb/s.

    Happy with my Gigabyte UD4 purchase. Now just trying to find a GTX 560 Ti that I like...
     
  5. Lord-Vale3

    Lord-Vale3 His Tremendousness

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    Um, YES!

    The ASUS board is a good one. (Besides of course the P67 itself) Enjoy your SB system. Just plug Windows and primary storage into 0-1 and DVD drive into 2-5 and your good to go.
     
  6. mucgoo

    mucgoo Minimodder

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    The $179 2500k may well be OEM which mean no stock fan or paste with it, but you should be getting after market anyway.
     
  7. microsoftPerson

    microsoftPerson What's a Dremel?

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    Actually it is the retail version. And yeah, I am going to get an after-market cooler to overclock this beast. I'm really impressed with the stock heatsink though. They really have come a long way since the Athlon XP 2100 I last purchased... five years ago it would have looked like an after-market cooler.

    I've read that it was the 3Gb/sec ports that were effected. Does everybody agree with this guy saying it's the port location and not type that matters?
     
  8. SimonStern

    SimonStern Registered Lurker

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    I second that emotion.

    And where might one procure a 2500k for such a price?
     
  9. chrismarkham1982

    chrismarkham1982 Multimodder

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    what he sais is true
    its the sata 2 ports (ports 2-5) that are affected, the sata 6gbps ports (0 and 1) are not affected, even then roughly only 1 in 20 boards have the micro bug that affects the sata2 ports.
     
  10. microsoftPerson

    microsoftPerson What's a Dremel?

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    I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ask you for the source of your information?

    I'm not trying to be disrespectful, I came here to ask for advice for a reason, but my motherboard has 8 ports: 4 x SATA II & 4 X SATA III. Everything I have read has said that it is SATA II ports that are affected. I read in a forum that I can no longer find, that the P8P67 board only has two ports that are affected of the total 8. This individual listed the manufacturer of each of the controllers and said that Intel was only responsible for two of the four SATA II ports. I'm not sure where I can get this information other than in the manual when the motherboard arrives...
     
  11. Ph4ZeD

    Ph4ZeD What's a Dremel?

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    I've not read the posts here, but to the OP - SandyBridge is still the best choice, unless you need a high end system NOW.
     
  12. microsoftPerson

    microsoftPerson What's a Dremel?

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    Apparently TigerDirect is not the same company it used to be. In spite of saying they had 77 of the item in their warehouse ready to ship within 24 hours - it turns out they don't actually ship things out of their warehouse anymore. They were referring to the ASUS warehouse which, of course, is not going to ship the motherboard. They also outsourced all of their customer support to some third world country. But why do they lie to you about where they are from when you ask?... especially when they can't pronounce the city name they are claiming to be located.

    Frustrating. I purchased the CPU already.

    Any suggestions? I guess I shouldn't really ask this on a European site though because I need it delivered to the USA.
     
  13. Synalar

    Synalar What's a Dremel?

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    Try smaller shops or use the power of google.
    Type the code of the Asus motherboard (Pro) version and go through the results.
     
  14. trig

    trig god's little mistake

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    probably microcenter. have to have a store nearby because their cpu prices are so low, they make you come in the store to purchase. you will pay tax, but it still ends up being cheaper than newegg...
     
  15. microsoftPerson

    microsoftPerson What's a Dremel?

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    Yeah - the 2500K was from MicroCenter. It was the full retail version and everything.

    My motherboard just arrived today, the P8P67 Pro. It looks like a really great board. The heatsinks surrounding the CPU socket look really cool in person too - not what I was expecting from the photographs where I thought they looked kind of tacky.

    For anyone who has purchased this particular board in the past? Does the actual ASUS box usually come sealed with something? Mine wasn't at all. It was well packaged and looks untouched but I was just curious how abnormal this may be.

    My case and PSU are taking a really long time to get here. It sounds like they will be here next week sometime. In your opinion is it worth it to set the computer up on the anti-static bag to see if all of the parts are working? For that matter, do you think/know if a Pentium 4 era CPU has the correct connectors for this motherboard? Do you think said old-arse PSU could safely post with just 1 stick of RAM, CPU, GPU, 1 SSD, & 1HDD on just 400-500W?

    Don't get me wrong, I don't want to run the computer like this for any length of time, but I would like to make sure all the individual components are in working order as they arrive. Probably would just let it post and check that an image appears on screen and that all drives are detected in the BIOS at the right capacity. If necessary I could replace the anti-static bag idea with old ugly case but I only have the one PSU with SATA power connectors to work with and like I said it is from the Pentium 4 era.
     
  16. b0ng0

    b0ng0 Reddomitlum

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    AFAIK, it's just an issue with the SATA 2.0 ports. If you use the SATA 3.0 then you should be good to go until they release a fix.

    I have a Gigabyte P67 UD3 board and it's fine so far. I've just plugged in my main HD to the SATA 3.0 and leave my other storage drives unplugged unless I have something i need to back up.
     
  17. jounkarry

    jounkarry What's a Dremel?

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    I would like to prefer to sandy bridge because ,Intel never quite reached 4GHz with the Pentium 4. Despite being on a dedicated quest for gigahertz the company stopped short and the best we ever got was 3.8GHz. Within a year the clock (no pun intended) was reset and we were all running Core 2 Duos at under 3GHz. With each subsequent generation Intel inched those clock speeds higher, but preferred to gain performance through efficiency rather than frequency.
    the Core i7-2600K will power gate three of its four cores and turbo the fourth core as high as 3.8GHz. Even with two cores active, the 32nm chip can run them both up to 3.7GHz. The only thing keeping us from 4GHz is a lack of competition to be honest. Relying on single-click motherboard auto-overclocking alone, the 2600K is easily at 4.4GHz. For those of you who want more, 4.6-4.8GHz is within reason. All on air, without any exotic cooling.
     

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