My Rig

TheOneFreeMan

TheOneFreeMan

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So at the moment I'm looking at these parts ...

Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Socket LGA1156 8MB L3 Cache
Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard [GA-P55-US3L]
ATI HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E
G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
Corsair 750W TX PSU - 120mm Fan, 80+% Efficiency, Single +12V Rail

Basically, since this is the first rig I've built, I'm wondering if this looks ok? Is there any blatantly obvious mistakes I've made with choosing my parts? Your input would be appreciated.
 
Great CPU. That's the one I just got. As for the performance index, I believe I got 7.2/7.9 On Windows 7 64 at stock settings. (Turbo Feature Disabled) (forgot I disabled it for testing)

Great RAM. I got similar. I believe my performance index is 7.5/7.9 on Windows 7 64 at stock speeds and timing. I don't have X.M.P. turned on, because I'm not really sure what it is yet (memory clock controller or something) So it could be even better

I got a similar G.Skill Ram, but mine has a little lower latency. If that site doesn't display latencies, then you could compare the RAM here

Yours:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277&Tpk=F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL

All:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2 40000147 1052129233&SpeTabStoreType=1

You can narrow the search down using the options in the left pane.

Ideally, you would get 7-7-7-xx at 1.5v. for ultimate DDR3 performance. I got (2x2GB) 8-8-8-21 at 1.5v for $69 (1333)

1.5v Cas Latency 7 search:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...528354 1259929232&name=1.5V&SpeTabStoreType=1

Couple G.Skill at the bottom known to be compatible with i5


When you get the CPU, make sure you unwrap the extra length of wire from around the edge of the fan! You can't leave it there like on some CPU fans. Also, the stock Heatsink already has thermal paste on it, just FYI. (Don't touch it)

Wear latex gloves when you build it so you don't put skin oils on everything and risk static electricity.



I don't know much about that Gigabyte board, it's probably great. Especially at that price.

I got an MSI P55-CD53, and love it. But the features are suited to me. I would recommend the AS Rock P55 also. Not including features, the main difference in performance between the two is that the MSI scored highest on productivity and efficiency, but lowest on HDD score; the AS Rock, lowest on productivity (productivity software benchmark) and lowest on efficiency (power consumption), but higher on HDD. But don't take my word for it, the benchmarks are here

Here's a comparison between 5 boards that fit that CPU:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/budget-p55-motherboard,2436-7.html

Not sure what page that's on.



MSI vs AS Rock:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/p55-motherboard-overclock,2460-9.html#

The MSI P55-CD53
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3655&p=4



Performance wise, they are all quite similar in real world use, so pick the one with the features and price you want.


The only thing that CPU doesn't have is HyperThreading. But if you want that, it will cost you about $500 for the next model up. (versus $200) I think it goes without saying the i5-750 is a steal.
 
I think that card is DX 10.1

I'd probably get a less expensive graphics card, then get a better one that supports DX11 when more widely available/cheaper. But maybe that's just me.


Save a little on the card by getting something less for now, and go all out on Triple Channel RAM MB & 3x2GB sticks for 6GB. Or you could save a ton with 3x1GB Triple channel if you plan to use a 32Bit OS. I'm not sure of the performance gain; it might not be much at all, dunno.
 
Yeah, I'd recommend just getting a 4850 for the time being, if you're just getting a DX10 card right now. Almost the same performance, but will save you a few bucks. Then upgrade when Nvidia releases its DX11 series (which should drop the prices of ATI's 5000 series cards.)
 
I must have assumed he would be using Windows 7, it depends what OS he's going to run. Maybe he likes Vista (lol)

I want to build another computer. Everything would go flawlessly this time.
 
Thanks for the advice. Going to be placing the parts on order soon. Thanks especially for the RAM advice.

The reason I'm going for a 4890 opposed to a 4850 for now is because when you push the 4890 hard, which I intend to do, it seems to hold up significantly better than the 4850, enough to warrant an extra splash in my book. Sure, it'll cost a little more, but it's within my budget for this machine so I figured ... why not?

(Oh, and yes ... this machine will have Windows 7 on it.)
 
i've seen a 5870 by gigabye for fairly cheap....least you get DirectX 11
 
Extra question, if you please ... how big an impact is there between CAS 7/8/9 when looking for RAM? Is there going to be a significant difference between having 4GB of RAM running at 8-8-8-24 and having the same size and brand running at 7-7-7-24?
 
You may notice a difference in benchmark tests, but in practical use, they're not different enough for me to usually care.
 
Um, to add to his question, what if you used the same but had another 4GB of RAM? Would that make any difference in performance?
 
15357 said:
Um, to add to his question, what if you used the same but had another 4GB of RAM? Would that make any difference in performance?
Click to expand...
Meaning you added another 4GB of RAM to make 8GB? That would most definitely make a difference.
 
That depends what kind of applications you run. Assuming you are not using Windows 32 bit, because you can't even use all of 4 GB ... then assuming you run 64 bit applications that are memory hungry... using an OS like Win 7 will use more memory than XP, obviously.

I mean, it depends on so much. But if you don't have enough RAM to do what it is you are doing, then it will be a massive improvement to increase the RAM. I can't really speak on video games, how they make use of RAM and how much they will use depends entirely on the game.


TOFM, The difference in latency, you'd have to search elsewhere. I just knew the lower the better. Supposedly - from what I read - the latency was more important than the RAM's clock speed, but that's word of mouth talk, so you'd definitely want to find out from an authority on the subject. If you find a good article on it, post it so I can take a look.

Also not sure on the benefits of Dual channel and Triple Channel RAM - from what I read, the performance increase is pretty small. Anyway, I believe the i5 processor you are looking at requires Dual Channel RAM (the i5 has the memory controller built in). If it's true that it requires Dual Channel, then I have no idea if you can use Triple Channel with it. Something to look into.

When all is said and done, however, your weak point will be Hard Drive performance... Overall, the system can only go as fast as it's weakest link. So when you get your build together, you can have something to look forward to: upgrading the HDD for best performance.
 
Ah, gotcha. I'm gonna have to take a look at those solid state drives or whatever they're called.
 
15357 said:
Ah, gotcha. I'm gonna have to take a look at those solid state drives or whatever they're called.
Click to expand...

Solid State drives are still pretty slow. I think their read speeds have gotten up to part with traditional drives, but their write speed is still a bit slower. You don't buy SSD for performance, you buy them for stability. For performance, you'd just want to get a 10,000 or 15,000 rpm regular hard drive.
 
I didn't know that, thanks.

On a side note, do they make awesome amounts of noise, those 15000 rpm drives?
 
3ssence said:
In the days of DDR and reasonably low clock speed, lower latency provided a healthy improvement in performance. Now with the rocketing clock speeds we are seeing it makes little difference:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/memory/2009/11/02/intel-lynnfield-memory-performance-analysis/1
Click to expand...

They say that the latency is only really a factor when multiprocessing. About 10% improvement. But isn't that why we buy multi-core processors? For multiprocessing? lol. Stupid. But that is generally only saving a few seconds here and there. nothing substantial.

Anyway, they do recommend to go with the cheapest DDR3 RAM, since the difference isn't great. That I can agree with.

While reading it, I kept thinking that I made a mistake by going with the lower latency 8, but then I remembered, I bought it because it was on sale. It was at least $40 cheaper than some of the others. And if it helps while multi-tasking, then great.

Also, picked up from that article, triple channel RAM is for the i7 processors.

On a side note, do they make awesome amounts of noise, those 15000 rpm drives?
Click to expand...
Yes.

The 1TB WD Black and the other newer drives are monumentally faster than the old hard drives from like 2005, so you can still pick up a lot of performance that way. (and a shit-ton of free space). The other improvement is the SATA configuration over the EIDE, if you are still using that.

Also, the new SATA 6/GBs is here now. However, I don't know if there are any HDD's or even anything on the horizon that will be able to use that much bandwidth. SATA is backwards compatible.
 
Heh, I've got the 1TB WD Black (32mb - 7200rpm). Not too bad, right? :E
 
Krynn72 said:
Solid State drives are still pretty slow.
Click to expand...
Yep.
Krynn72 said:
I think their read speeds have gotten up to part with traditional drives, but their write speed is still a bit slower.
Click to expand...
Sure.
Krynn72 said:
You don't buy SSD for performance, you buy them for stability.
Click to expand...
Not 'wear and tear' but there are some things.

Most people use SSDs for boot drives today. Fast boots and access. Trim support is a must. Limited data writes as the OS and apps stay on the PC for a long time usually.
 
Krynn72 said:
Solid State drives are still pretty slow. I think their read speeds have gotten up to part with traditional drives, but their write speed is still a bit slower. You don't buy SSD for performance, you buy them for stability. For performance, you'd just want to get a 10,000 or 15,000 rpm regular hard drive.
Click to expand...

uh....wut?

you make it sound like a SSD can be outdone by a stupid 10,000 RPM spindle drive.
please explain
 
Actually most 5400 rpm drives outdo SSD drives in terms of write speed. SSDs are good for booting up your PC and apps fast, but thats about it at the moment. I'd probably get them for laptops though, since they tend to be lighter, use less power (longer battery life on your laptop) and generate much less heat. But on a desktop, theres not much practical use that I've seen to warrant going with one of those over a much faster HDD with a much larger capacity. But then again, I do a lot of stuff that writes to hard drives, so I may be biased. Read speeds aren't as important to me, which good SSDs can beat out HDDs.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/flash-based-hard-drives-cometh,1666-11.html
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/ssd-vs-hdd-on-a-netbook-ocz-neutrino/

In those tests the 5400rpm drives are still a close match, so yeah, getting a 10k rpm drive is probably better.
 
VirusType2 said:
Anyway, they do recommend to go with the cheapest DDR3 RAM, since the difference isn't great. That I can agree with.
Click to expand...
True, but one thing I find retailers are sometimes really iffy on is voltages. This generation of CPUs are a lot more finnicky about minimum voltages than in the past (Phenom IIs like 1.5, i5/i7 are apparently very picky about whether or not it's 1.65). More expensive ram will generally have the voltage more under control, but (it seems) some retailers don't want you to know that. So while you may be spending $40 on 4 gigs of PC3-12800, it might a pair relatively inefficient 1.8v sticks. And for overclocking potential (and power consumption), lower voltages are key.
 
That's one more thing to love about newegg, because usually, all the information is there and accurate.

But, everything I've learned about RAM I learned in a couple of days crash course..

I've got the i5-750, and I went with 1.5v RAM. I thought that was better because: safer/more efficient/standard, even.

Maybe even longer lasting. I would assume that higher voltages would reduce the life expectancy, though they may have been designed to handle that.

In fact I thought that anything over 1.5 was expecting you to over-volt it - for overclockers.

Are these things even true? You tell me.

I don't know, I went into my bios and changed the timings to what was advertised, and the voltage is on auto at 1.5. So far so good. The memory is blistering fast, TBH. Yeah, the memory controller is on-die for the i5, and i7 as well, I'm pretty sure.
 
For anyone who's interested, I ended up ordering an Intel i5-750 with a Titan Fenrir, a GTX 260, an MSI P55-CD53 motherboard, 4GB of Corsair Dominator 1600mhz RAM (I wanted the G-Skill, but my dad who's going halves with me on the system insisted on the Corsair), a Corsair 750w PSU, and a Coolermaster 330 Elite to put it all in (plus a 500gb Samsung HDD and a cheap optical drive). Pretty happy with my decision, just need to wait and put it all together now when it arrives; fingers crossed.

As a sidenote, is thermal compound something I really should have ordered myself as well?
 
I usually end up with Corsair RAM myself. I had a pair of DDR 333 back in the day with extremely low timings. 2-2-2-5
Was able to keep that at 2-2-2-5 and run it at DDR 400 in my upgraded system back when I went dual core. I believe I went from Athlon XP 2800+ to Athlon X2 4600+. Didn't have to up the voltage or anything. They were just good chips.

You'll see if you need thermal compound or not. If the fan spins too fast on the cooler you have then maybe getting a better cooler and possibly thermal compound would be something you want. Some coolers come with thermal compound already on the bottom and some paste does as well and some better then AS5.

It isn't needed.
 
TheOneFreeMan said:
As a sidenote, is thermal compound something I really should have ordered myself as well?
Click to expand...

Don't know. I ordered some, but ended up not using it. It was already applied to the stock one.

I found a comment on a tech forum saying "Why would you replace the thermal paste that's already on the HS? You only need to use thermal paste if you remove the HS later (for upgrading the CPU or HS)" Seemed to make sense.

I have no idea if your aftermarket cooler will have it already on. I seriously doubt it, so you can either search for more information or you can order some so it can arrive in a few days.

You could also find out if your HS has been polished or is rough. Some of them are quite rough, and the paste fills in the gaps.
 
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