Finally need to build a new PC...

[sapperastro]

Hello all,

I am new here, though I have lurked, read and enjoyed Toms for 12 or so years now.

I have built all of my systems since the early 90's, but am a touch out of the loop. I tend to keep my systems for longer than the norm and have had only 4 systems in that time (not counting my Amiga systems and the C64 before that). Don't ask me how I last that long. Easy to please I guess.

My current warhorse is an Athlon 64 x 2 4800+ I built in '06. Wonderful performance, and has dealt with anything that has been thrown at it over the last 8 years, but I think it is high time to build a new rig.

Ok, first off, I already have a few parts that I can bring across. A 6 month old 23 inch Asus monitor, A Corsair 500w psu that is less than a year old, and a Toshiba DVDR, and perhaps my radeon 5670 1gb ddr5. The rest I need to finally put out to pasture I think. Even the floppy drive, though that hurts 😉

I have put together a few tentative builds with the knowledge I have gleaned by studying here at Toms, in magazines and other website across the internet. If any of the experts here could take a look and give some thoughts/opinions, I would greatly appreciate it.

Before I put them up; I use this desktop as my gaming/word processing/general duties PC. My budget is around the $700 mark (Australian). If I can save money with dropping something I don't need, I will. I prefer decent motherboards due to a) gentle overclocking and b) longevity of use. I usually go with lowish end GPU's and only replace them as required...with a newer low end GPU.

Game types I play are usually Wargames, RPGs, Strategy and Adventure. Sometimes a FPS from the bargain bin. I have a huge backlog of games to play, and the most demanding games I have in that backlog are: The Witcher 2, Fallout New Vegas, GTA IV, X3, Crusader Kings 2, MTW2 and a couple of the Stalker games. All of these are playable on my current rig, though not perfectly.

Last thing: I just about only use windows for gaming. All other business is done on a Linux distro.

Build 1: Standard AMD build. Nice power for the price.

CPU: AMD Fx 6300
Cooler: Coolermaster 212 EVO
MOBO: Asus M5A99FX PRO
Memory: 8gb (2x4) G skill ripjaws 1600 CL8 DDR3
HD: 2 x Western Digital caviar blue 1tb
GPU: Asus Radeon 7750 1gb DDR5
Case: Bitfenix Shinobi window
OS: Windows 8.1 retail

Build 2: AMD Budget build. Lower price.

CPU: AMD A10 6800k
Cooler: Coolermaster 212 EVO
MOBO: Gigabyte G1 Sniper A88X
Memory: 8gb (2x4) Kingston XMP predator 2400 CL11 DDR3
HD: 2 x Western Digital caviar blue 1tb
Case: Bitfenix Shinobi window
OS: Windows 8.1 retail

Build 3: Intel budget build.

CPU: i3 4130
Cooler: Coolermaster 212 EVO
MOBO: MSI Z87 G43
Memory: 8gb (2x4) G skill ripjaws 1600 CL8 DDR3
HD: 2 x Western Digital caviar blue 1tb
GPU: Asus Radeon 7750 1gb DDR5
Case: Bitfenix Shinobi window
OS: Windows 8.1 retail

My local shop is http://www.arc.com.au/pub.php and their prices are quite competitive in Australia, not to mention it is a lot easier to drive 15 minutes to their store instead of dealing with distant mail order shops, or driving a few hours in traffic.

Anyway, please let me know what you think, any changes you would make, and why you believe I should make them.

And thank you.

 

[DeathAndPain]

I do not see how getting an expensive mainboard would enhance longevity. I am in the business as long as you (also owned both C64 and Amiga) with quite a similar user profile (although I do not upgrade that rarely), and I keep buying cheap mainboards with good success. Perhaps this was different back in the early Pentium times, when ASUS boards were still good (unlike they are nowadays) and made a difference compared to, say, DFI and Biostar crap. But today pretty much all mainboards use solid capacitors, and I have been buying cheap Asrock for years and never had a failure. (The only thing worth mentioning is that I had to replace the northbridge cooler's thermal pad with thermal grease on 2 of my mainboards to get them rock-stable, but once I had done so they were.)

If I were you, I would go Intel, and if it only is for the lower power consumption and corresponding heat emission (Australia is not known for its cold temperatures, and you get those additional AMD watts blown into your room). You do not need that Z87 mainboard though. Z87 is the overclocker chipset, something you will probably never do (the i3 you selected does not even support overclocking). So save big money on the mainboard and get yourself a cheap B85 mainboard for hardly more than half the price. System performance will be the same. You can use the freed money on a higher CPU clock speed so your system will last longer performance-wise.

Also, consider getting yourself a current GPU. I am not talking about an expensive high-TDP-monster, I am talking about the current lineup of chips. The 7750 left production like one year ago. You may want to to get a Radeon R7 250 or something similar instead. Not more expensive (unless you plan on buying your 7750 used), but more modern.

Oh, and stay away from that overclocker RAM! Does not make any sense with the rest of your configuration. In fact, overclocker RAM never makes any sense IMHO, seeing that even if it works (which is not the case often enough), you gain like 1% performance. I remember someone complaining about his Ripjaws memory right here in this forum.

If you want memory that works and gives you no trouble, get Kingston Value RAM. Not spectacular in any way, but it does the job. Any saved money here can again go into a better Core i3 (perhaps even Core i5).

I would also like to know why you plan on getting two 1TB HDDs. Price-wise you pay the least price per GB when buying a 3TB drive. I suppose you plan on doing some RAID 0 or 1.Well, your decision, but before doing RAID 0, remember that you have twice the chance of data loss, and getting an SSD and a HDD will probably give your better performance than a RAID 0 of 2 HDDs. If you plan on doing RAID 1 for data security, okay, but that only saves you from HDD failures. Most data losses, however, originate from human errors (such as you deleting the wrong file in Windows explorer), and a RAID 1 is powerless to help you there, so you will need a decent backup strategy for your data either way. A RAID 1 does little to improve data security for you.

 

[sapperastro]

DeathAndPain;

You bring up some excellent points which has given me something to think about.

Indeed, I was under the impression that Asus was the best of the best for longevity. And I know exactly what you mean when you bring up the other nastys back in the day...so ASRock is really a decent brand? I have actually used MSI boards for my last two builds; 6 years from one, 8 years from another, and neither died during that time, just replaced. Just thought I would choose the 'ultimate' brand this time, Asus. As I said, I have been out of the loop for some time in this department.

As for cheaper boards overall, are the memory controllers up to snuff? No loss of performance? And just out of interest, how many years have you ran your mainboards?

Re 7750 and R7 250. I originally looked at the R7 250, but after seeing the 7750 killing it in benchmark tests, I dismissed it as a non entity and slotted in the 7750 as an extremely good low end performer for the watts. Have you seen something different? My other thought was possibly inching up to a 260, but I haven't seen any available nearby in Australia. The 270 heads up past the $200 mark, and up goes the tdp. I was also under the impression that the R series was merely a 7 series rebrand?

RAM: I actually picked that memory due to the lower latency, without any thought of whether it is overclockable or not. Never actually bothered to overclock memory before. Never found it necessary. I would like it to be dual memory though. Perhaps Kingston hyper X? https://www.arc.com.au/pub.php?gid=23434&pid=42396&p=product or even corsair value select? https://www.arc.com.au/pub.php?gid=23434&pid=55371&p=product

I liked the look of the i5 in the benchmarks I read, but thought they were a bit pricey. Are the low end i5 4440 good enough? Or would you advise going for the next tiers? There seem to be little between them in performance tests.

Yes, RAID 1 was my initial plan. I also have a 3tb external drive for HDD images that I backup from time to time, and USB sticks to hold important data (that is also held on the bulk external drive). I also make DVD backup copies of important data and pictures.

Perhaps RAID 1 is overkill.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I was also under the impression that the R series was merely a 7 series rebrand?

It is and Asus motherboards are OK, I've been running one for a couple of years now without issue.

 

[DeathAndPain]

DeathAndPain;
Indeed, I was under the impression that Asus was the best of the best for longevity. And I know exactly what you mean when you bring up the other nastys back in the day...so ASRock is really a decent brand?

Much has changed since the old days. Many mainboard brands have vanished from the market (Elitegroup, DFI, Epox, …) and others have changed their level of quality. Asrock, once founded as a daughter of ASUS for the market of cheap mainboards, has gained full independence long ago and is producing very nice mainboards. Meanwhile, I observed ASUS gradually extending their lineup (including notebooks, DVD-readers and the like) and at the same time also lowering their quality standards. For a very long time, ASUS also had the slowest-booting BIOSes of all manufacturers. The latter has somewhat improved lately, but still ASUS is nowhere near what they used to be.

MSI is probably the manufacturer whose profile has changed the least over the years. They have always been producing decent, albeit not breathtaking mainboards in large numbers for the mass market. In the old times they had great problems with BIOS updates, because they assigned the same MS-xxxx model number to mainboards that were not the same and required different BIOSes, causing people to flash their boards to death. These times are over though.

Right now I would say that Asrock and MSI have a pretty similar profile. What I have liked about Asrock boards during the last years was their simple, efficient BIOSes that also resulted in their boards booting seconds faster than all the competition (which has meanwhile caught up). IMHO Asrock and MSI are both valid choices today.

The fourth player in the game is Gigabyte. I have always hated that company, because they managed to maintain a way better reputation than the actual quality of their mainboards simply by disabling features in the BIOS. That way they ruled stability benchmarks when compared to the competition, but when you re-enabled those features, features like Cool'n'Quiet that are regular features of the hardware and supposed to be working, Gigabyte boards were the first to crash.

I have stayed away of those so consequently that I can hardly utter a solid opinion about their current lineup. My feelings about that company are still bad, although I have no recent facts to back it up. There is no need to go Gigabyte though, seeing that both Asrock and MSI are so nice alternatives.

As for cheaper boards overall, are the memory controllers up to snuff? No loss of performance?

Well, that is another detail where you have missed recent developments. Modern Intel CPUs have the memory controller integrated into the CPU itself. In fact, more and more functionality moves from the mainboard into the CPU, making the mainboard an increasingly unimportant piece of hardware. I believe that this is why so many mainboard manufacturers died away: There just is no more room for distinguishing themselves from the competition.

With the introduction of the latest Haswell CPUs (Core i5 or i7-4xxx) Intel has even included the voltage regulators into the CPU! Another critical piece of hardware gone from the mainboard.

So no, there is no loss of performance, because all performance-related pieces of hardware are inside the CPU. For Intel CPUs, you can choose from three different chipsets: B85, H87 and Z87. B85 is cheapest and offers all you need. H87 is more expensive and offers additional gimmicks you do not need (such as 6x SATA 3.0 instead of 4x SATA 3.0 +2x SATA 2.0. Or are you going to connect more than 4 internal hard disks?) The Z87 is the most expensive enthusiast chipset and usually comes on the mainboards that draw the most power. Intel has invented a nice marketing trick here.

You certainly remember the good old times when everyone could overclock his stuff and be fine (I am still proud that I got the multiplier of my i486DX4-100 to 2x50MHz instead of the usual 3x33MHz. This meant that I successfully drove my VESA Local Bus @50 MHz for better graphics and HDD performance! 😀 ). Then these re-labelled chips showed up. Criminals bought slow Intel CPUs, relabeled them as faster, and sold them for big profit. This hurt Intel twice: They sold less expensive chips and their reputation was hurt by allegedly unstable Intel CPUs. So Intel hit back by introducing locked multipliers, which put an end to overclocking (unless you overclocked the FSB. Again I am proud of having overclocked my Celeron 600 to a whopping 900 MHz whilst keeping the PCI bus within specifications! 😀 ).

I am confident you already know and remember all of the above yourself. But now comes Intel's latest move. Since modern CPUs report their exact identity to the software, there is no more danger of re-labelled CPUs, because the customers would see as early as the BIOS message that they have been scammed. From that perspective, it would be no problem to re-allow overclocking. But overclocking means getting a level of performance for free for which Intel regularly charges more money. Then again, there is demand for overclocking, people want to do it, and the competition (AMD) allows them to. So what can Intel do?

The solution is simple: Allow people to overclock, but make them pay extra for it!!! In order to facilitate this, Intel has defined that only mainboards with their most expensive Z87 chipset can use the overclocking features. In addition, you need a K-version of the Intel CPU you want to overclock, which is also slightly more expensive than their non-K-counterparts (and also have a few features disabled that are interesting only to professional users, making them less attractive in a business environment). This way people can overclock, and Intel earns money from them doing so.

A flaw in the plan was the recent development of a microcode flaw. I think Asrock discovered it, but I know for sure they exploited it. This flaw, exploited by a corresponding BIOS modification, allowed for a feature Asrock calls "Non-Z-overclocking"! 😀 Provided you have a K-type CPU you can overclock with a cheap B85 chipset just the same. Intel was furious about this and vowed to fix it in the next microcode update. Well, microcode updates come included in mainboard BIOSes, and nobody forces you to install a new BIOS version.

I am not a fan of overclocking modern Intel CPUs; there are too many drawbacks (like virtually all power-saving CPU features being disabled). I just explained the above to you to show you the current situation and how it came to be.

I suppose now you understand why I question your choice to go for a Z87 mainboard, especially since I believe that you never planned on overclocking your new CPU in the first place.

And just out of interest, how many years have you ran your mainboards?

Tbh I do not exactly remember. My previous CPU was a Phenom II X2-565, so that sure is a big leap to the Core i5-4670 I now have. However, I must admit that I replaced my mainboard once while owning the Phenom II. However, the reason was not that the old one had gone defective. It was in perfect working order when I replaced it. The reason was that I wanted the new peripheral technology that was introduced while I already owned the mainboard. Namely USB 3.0, which I wanted for my external backup HDD. I could have solved that by plugging in a USB 3.0 PCI-E card, but the other thing was that I bought myself an SSD. SSD's, however, require the OS using the TRIM command to inform them which memory areas are no longer being used. Running an SSD without TRIM will cripple its performance in the long run. The Windows 7 stock driver msahci.sys is capable of TRIM, but I obviously wanted to use the AMD southbridge driver for full performance. However, AMD defined that their driver supports TRIM only for 870 and higher chipsets, and my AM3 mainboard had only a 770 chipset. (This was also a political decision by AMD, since it is essentially the same driver, and TRIM is 100% a matter of the driver and has nothing to do with the hardware behind it).

So I solved both problems (USB 3.0 and TRIM) at once by getting myself an AM3+ mainboard with 970 chipset and onboard USB 3.0.

Yes, I admit I have probably never been using my mainboards as long as you have, but on the other hand I have probably used them longer than most other users here. I always only upgraded the bottlenecks I identified. Today the CPU, next year the GPU, and so on. And I was never let down hardware-wise by any of my mainboards.

Re 7750 and R7 250. I originally looked at the R7 250, but after seeing the 7750 killing it in benchmark tests, I dismissed it as a non entity and slotted in the 7750 as an extremely good low end performer for the watts.

Well, now that I give it a closer look, you appear to be right. Quite puzzling. That makes my 7770 an even better card, although it is already a year old. I suppose your 7750 is a valid choice. Then again, I believe the 7770 is hardly more expensive today and might yield even more value for your money.

My other thought was possibly inching up to a 260, but I haven't seen any available nearby in Australia.

Aren't there any internet vendors in Australia? I would never even consider walking to an expensive store when online dozens of shops compete to offer me the broadest variety at the lowest price.

I was also under the impression that the R series was merely a 7 series rebrand?

Nah. AMD used to rebrand some 6xxx chips to 7xxx, but the R series is a complete new line of GPUs. See here for details. (Well yes, R series is a rebrand of the OEM 8xxx series, but not of the 7xxx series.)

RAM: I actually picked that memory due to the lower latency, without any thought of whether it is overclockable or not. Never actually bothered to overclock memory before. Never found it necessary. I would like it to be dual memory though.

Dual-channel-mode sure makes sense, but that is no problem, seeing that today you can get practically any memory in kits of 2 modules.

Perhaps Kingston hyper X?

Kingston HyperX is what I am currently using, but only because I managed to get it from some weird startup vendor at a price even lower than what others charged for Kingston ValueRAM. (That vendor vanished from the price comparison portal I used soon afterwards. ) I would not have paid a higher price for it though, even though I must admit that the modules I got are awesome and allowed stable timings of 7-7-7 @1333 MHz and 9-9-9@1600MHz.

Kingston ValueRAM is sold in kits as well. It is not the cheapest RA M on the market, but easily the most reliable. If you have ever hunted random crashes on a machine, you know how much you hate yourself for having saved $8 on RAM quality.

But Ebay Australia does not show the ValueRAM kit you would need (Product number being KVR16N11S8K2/8 ) any cheaper than the HyperX kit from the store you linked me to, and with regard to the great quality of my HyperX pair, I cannot say anything against going for them (although my kit is the (discontinued) HyperX Black and yours is HyperX Blue. Don't ask me for the difference though.)

I liked the look of the i5 in the benchmarks I read, but thought they were a bit pricey. Are the low end i5 4440 good enough? Or would you advise going for the next tiers? There seem to be little between them in performance tests.

Well, sure is that even the slowest i5 are better than any i3, so if you can achieve the i5 level, then that is a gain. That being said, clock speed does count. If I were you I would simply go for the fastest my budget can afford.

Especially since you plan on using that CPU for a very long time. Look at it this way: Even if you spend an additional $100 on the CPU, then that is $20 per year over the course of 5 years, and hardly more than a buck per month in return for having a far faster CPU for all those five years. If you manage even to squeeze an extended life time out of the faster CPU (because the time when you need a faster one arrives later), then the calculation is even more in favor of the faster chip. I am not trying to sway you to a highly expensive performance monster, but if I were you I would not turn every dollar around twice before spending it on the CPU. Especially since pretty much all relevant Haswells have the same TDP.

 

[sapperastro]

Ah yes, the old days...

The tricks I used to spin with that ancient 387-16...

And you have me remembering the old RAM disk setups, boot disks, and various other ways of 'cutting to the metal' when it came to ripping every last bit of ability from a PC. Things got easier and easier moving forward into the mid and late 90s...the last Intel cpu I used was a P3 800...good grief, what a heater that thing was!

From reading here and other places, Intel is currently the topdog, so I guess I will save a few more coins and get one of those fancy i5's. Not sure whether to bother with the 4670, or just snap up the 4440. It isn't like I play the cutting edge, though I do enjoy the odd Flight/submarine/space sims which enjoy their CPU cycles for breakfast.

I will also simplify the build and try out one of the lower end Motherboards from MSI or ASRock along with some standard memory. I am fairly certain it will all still be a 1000% improvement on my current old bus.

Thanks a lot for the assistance, the details, the great memories and taking the time out to really give full replies to everything I wanted to know or queried DeathAndPain. Much appreciated mate.