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I have a 3.2 ghz single core Dell xps with a geforce 9800 gtx and 3go of ram.

However, for the first time, it has really pissed me off as i can't run some games at the quality level i want.

so, i was looking to build a new computer. here are the important specs:

Gigabyte GA-EX58A-UD5 LGA1366
Intel Core i7 930 BOX LGA1366 (Quad Core 2.8 GHz / 8 MB)
6 GO of DDR3 ram
1.2 To of Hard drive
XFX Radeon HD 5850 1GB PCIE X2
A soundblaster card
2 DVD readers/writers 24x

Feedback is welcome

I recommend the i7 if you're going to pick it up past 3.0ghz. I recentely updated my 940 to 3.4 and I can REALLY feel the difference.

Good call on the video card, is the price jump to 5870 too much? I recommend it highly. It can compete with most current Dual GPU cards and you can easily crossfire another one down the line.

Not familiar with the motherboard but you may be able to skip the soundcard all together considering the quality of most onboard sound these days. Especially if you're going to only be using 2 desktop speakers. If you're going 5.0 or 7.0 I can see the point in the soundcard.

I never buy more than one DVD drive, as I have never burnt a CD since the creation of USB. I also tend to watch my movies on our TV and I download most games I own. (Buy then download, not pirate.)

It looks like a good build.

thanks for the feedback Shegs. Right now the setup costs around 1000 € without VAT (that i won't be paying)

the problem with 3.0/ I7 is it costs twice as much as the 2.8 i selected

Actually buying 2 5870 instead of 2 5850 would cost around 200€. So i'm not 100% sure yet. I'm also looking the 5970 2GB but this baby costs 500+ € (the price of 2 5850)

i like two have 2 drives for comfort even tho i also dload most of my games these days.

No, what I meant about the i7 940 is, that it comes factory clocked at 2.9. I had it overclocked to a very stable, and cool 3.4. At one point we stressed it to a 4.0 and it ran fine but that doesn't exactly scream "long life span". 3.4 is what I was comfortable/happy with clocking it.

Personally I went with one 5870 right now. Like I said, it can single-y do what most current double gpu cards do. No need to Crossfire a second one yet, unless you can afford/want to. I personally waited for a few months after release to start seeing some more bargain priced 5870s. The 5970 is also weaker than two 5870s so I wouldn't go with a double GPU card if I can help it (Learned my lesson from the GTX295). If you're not going to overclock your cards, the 5970 is the strongest card on the market, followed by 5870.

oh duly noted on the I7 940. I'll change that.

Right now, i have the possibility to buy through the company (21% less tax) so i have to buy everything now or pay more later. I guess i'll folllow your advice and go with 2 5870.

That setup should be my last gaming computer anyway and this config should take ages to go obsolete.

Two 5870s are just amazing on the current benchmarks out there, simply destroys anything in the market. They'll easily hold their own/still surpass whatever Nvidia finally decides to throw out (this coming from someone who was 100% Nvidia until this purchase). Again, if you go with any i7 under 3.0, I'd recommend a slight overclock into the 3.0-3.5 area. The i7s are extremely stable up into the 4.0-4.4 levels so the lower 3s are very reliable. Then again, you may not be as picky over 5fps as I am. I whine between the difference of 80fps and 85 *shrug*

You'll definitely want to let some of our senior computer experts chime in before making any purchases though, I know I've gotten alot of help from fellow forumites on my builds.

Lian Li PC-7FN
Corsair HX 750W
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
G.Skill Ripjaws Kit 3x2GB
Intel Core i7 940
Noctua NH-U12P SE2
Seagate Barracuda 7200 1TB
Sony Optriac AD-5240S X2
Club 3D Radeon HD 5870 X2
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCIe (Bulk)

that's the setup i could have by monday.

It costs a fucking arm tho

I tend more toward the "budget box now, screaming box later" method.

To that end, if you want to conserve some cash, you might consider going with a single 5870 card and then worry about getting a second one later (if you even need it). Just make sure it has at least 1GB video RAM on board. Take the money you would've spent on that second 5870 card and invest it or something. By the time you need to buy a second one, you'll have earned some interest and the price of another card will have come down enough to match whatever your savings would be through work.

Another thing to consider might be to go instead with the i7 860, which has the best price/performance ratio of any current CPU. It's priced about the same as the i7 920 but has clock speeds and performance similar to the i7 940. Yes, the memory is a little bit slower than the i7 since it is only dual channel (about 8 percent slower according to one test), but you probably won't notice the difference while gaming since it can actually turbo up faster than the 940. And you'll save a little money by only having to by 2 sticks of RAM instead of 3.

I agree that one DVD drive will be enough. Like my video argument above, you'll probably want to get a second one later, but you'll want it to be Blu-Ray or something, and it's going to take some time for the prices to come down on those.

Unless you plan on loading up on media, a 1TB drive should be sufficient for gaming (unless you like to keep all your games on your HDD for ever and ever and ever).

Sound is pretty much a given. Most mobos come with Realtek sound that's good enough (5.1) for pretty much anything you could need, unless you plan to use it to power a home theater system. Even then, built-in sound would be 'good enough.'

A good 1156 mobo to consider might be the GA-P55A-UD4P, though if you want to get totally ridiculous, you could blow all the money you've been saving on the other parts and go for the GA-P55A-UD7. Actually, that doesn't sound like that bad of an idea, if the board actually lives up to its specs. Ten years from now, either board might not be up to gaming any more, but they'd still make a great router or server or something.

--Patrick

It looks like a good build to me. Personally I'd go with Patrick's suggestions, but it's your box. Do what you think you would enjoy the most. Really the only thing I would highlight with his suggestion is going with dropping the sound card and one of the video cards. Try it out, and if you don't like the performance you are seeing pick them up later. They are easy installs after the initial build, and could save you a good chunk of cash.

My personal preference is always to buy the most motherboard that I can afford. It's the one part of the computer that pretty much requires a rebuild to replace, so I try to get the best one I can lay my hands on at the time I start buying parts. Strangely enough, it also seems to be the part that usually comes down the least in value over time, so it rarely breaks me to buy it first (for when I buy parts one-per-paycheck).

Keep in mind that I only ever give advice. No matter how much experience I might have or how much research I do, I always expect you'll conduct research of your own to make sure whatever I suggest truly meets your needs.

--Patrick

i only bought 1 video card and got a I7 930 instead of 940...

he only had one 5870 available right now. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE.

and tomorrow, i'll realize you were right and didn't even need it right now

That's great! The 930 seems to be just a refined 920 and at a decent price, too. Looks like some people have been able to get the 930 to overclock as high as 4.3GHz, so that chip seems to have some legs under it. Lookin' good...

--Patrick

yeaaaaaaaah, about that... I finally got 2 overclocked 5870 cards.

talk about overkill

I actually got the XFX 5870 XXX too. No reason not to it's an "overclocked" card with a lifetime warranty. Can't go wrong. It might be "overkill" now, but look at how well two GTX285s are still benchmarking today. It's a good "long term" investment in a "world where long-term normally doesn't exist".

Yeah. The 5870 is more likely to become obsolete first due to lack of some sort of upcoming feature (DX12 or whatever) than due to speed. I still do everything on a DX 9.0c GF6800, after all.

--Patrick

You guys seem to know your stuff. These years I have been barely keeping up with hardware information and I am starting to realize I am out of the loop enough that I don't trust making some of my old choices. Not to hyjack the thread or anything, but does anyone have suggestions on how to build a computer decent for gaming and digital design for maybe around $500? I am rather broke and need something good, I don't need anything bleeding edge but I need to have good processor speed and RAM. What brands should I be keeping my eye towards?

1) What do you plan to reuse (if anything)?
2) Do you want to be able to upgrade it later as funds recover?
3) What sort of games?
4) What level of detail/FPS are you willing to tolerate?

That should be good enough for the forum to give you some ideas.

the beast is alive weeeeeeeeeeeeeee

1) The graphics card is good enough to play what I want, so I don't plan to get rid of it. I also have a good monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I have plenty of hard drive space, so I don't need new hard drives either. The DVD-ROM I can probably transfer over too, I never use it.

2) I wouldn't be against that idea, but that will be a long time, so whatever I do make will probably have to last me another five years.

3) Anything really. The system I have now plays games like Fallout 3, BioShock, WoW, etc... all fine without any hiccups on medium to high settings. Really games have almost never been an issue for me, it's mostly the digital design that kills me right now.

4) Medium settings, no less then 30 fps.

Thanks for the help.

what the fuck, i have a noctua fan but it's really and i mean really hot. to the point where it's not confortable to keep my hand on the fan.

the top of the case is also getting hot due to the proc heating. Should i be afraid or is it acceptable?

right now, i put my huge summer fan behind the computer. just in case.

Get speed fan or some other temp monitor and check your temps that way. It's hard to tell without actual numbers. You do have 2 giant overclocked video cards pumping out a lot of heat, so it's gonna get hot.

Can you show us your current case and the size of your case fans?

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=n82e16811119160

Is what I went with, and with the setup I described, it's ice cold to the touch.

Good airflow is a must, especially in a high-performance computer. Do you mean the air coming out of the fan is hot, or that the fan itself is hot?
Airflow is generally supposed to come in through the bottom front of the computer and then be exhausted out the back. This all changes if you have your rear fan set to blow in, or you have a blowhole on the side/top of the case. You might want to see if you have two adjacent fans countering each other and not allowing fresh air to circulate.

Scythe, you don't say whether your GPU is AGP or PCIe (I'm going to assume PCIe). You also don't say whether it is ATI or NVIDIA (I'm going to assume NVIDIA). You also don't say how much memory you have installed or what kind it is (I'm going to assume 1 or 2 GB DDR2).
If you want room to grow and you're going to be gaming, you should concentrate your search just on motherboards that have 2 PCIe x16 slots (for eventual XFire/SLI).
If you plan to re-use your memory (to save money, and why not?), you are going to be limited to only boards which support DDR2. DDR2 means you won't be able to use the i3/i5/i7 series since they only support DDR3.

If you're limited to only spending $500, then you are REALLY limited, since just buying an OEM copy of Win7 x64 Pro (and I don't recommend purchasing any other OS at this point) will set you back about $150, leaving you with only $350 remaining for a new MLB, RAM and CPU. The cheapest i5 runs about $200, The cheapest decent Core 2 Duo (the E7600) runs about $150, so unless you can find a way to make up the difference, you're going to be very limited indeed.

You might be able to replace your core if you decide to go with an AMD processor (to preserve funds and your current DDR2 memory), the lowest priced ones are some of the dual-cores for around $65, but they will not be anywhere near the performance of even the slowest i5 processors.

My recommendation for now is to wait, sorry. The only other option I can think of would be to buy something from Dell that someone (like Microsoft) has subsidized but which has the core you want, and then rip it all out and move it to a case you like, but they usually have proprietary cooling systems or PSUs or something like that which will somehow keep you from doing so.

--Patrick

the fan itself is hot.

the botton front is blowing cold. the bottom rear is somewhat hot but nothing fancy but the top rear omfg.

i just did a test, launched the comp, was blowing ice cold, turned MW2 for 2 minutes, boom real hot. it scares me tbh

http://lian-li.com/v2/tw/flashpage/7fn/ this is my case

http://images.google.be/imgres?imgu...s?q=noctua+nh-u12p&um=1&hl=fr&sa=N&tbs=isch:1 this is my fan

i suppose there's a problem, it can't be healthy for the case itself to become hot in a couple minutes

From what I can tell, that case has little to no airflow. Might be the issue with those dual cards in there.

yeah, i opened a side and it's not that hot anymore.

did not realize those gfx cards were so hot, i actually burned my finger.

anyway to fix that? because i don't want to have to keep it open for it not to fry

For starters, you might want to crank up the power on the fans of each card (Through the Catalyst software), I'd also suggest cranking up the case fans. It'll be noiser, but you won't have a computer shaped hole melted into your floor either.

Seriously though, I think it's just a matter of airflow in the case.

Yes. Make sure you have a definite 'IN' and 'OUT' for your airflow. Everything in your case afterwards should either help move the air from IN to OUT, or if it doesn't help move the air in that direction it should be tied up and out of the way so as not to impede said airflow.

I just took a look at the case on NewEgg, looks like it's a BTX-style case (PSU on the bottom). What is probably happening is that the PSU is pulling air from directly beneath the case and then exhausting it out the back. This (warmer) air is then pulled in through the vented PCI covers where it gets heated up some more from your GPUs as they try to throw air out their secondary slot cooler.

My advice, make sure the fan in front of the HDD cages is pulling air INTO the case. Make sure the big fan at the back is pushing air OUT of the case. See if there's a way to keep the hot air coming out of the PSU from being sucked back into the case (easiest way is to close up the vented PCI slots). Then get yourself an 80mm or 120mm fan and mount it above (if there's room) or near (if there isn't room) and blowing gently onto the GPUs themselves (it doesn't need to be full blast, it just has to make sure the air around the GPUs isn't static). That will go a long ways towards keeping things cool.

--Patrick

The newegg case is mine, and it's the one that's ICE cold even while overclocking the MB and the Video Card. I also swapped the 120mm fans with 200s.