I like this... http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-600W-ModXStr...91&sr=1-17

600W (more than enough, Zinga overclocks his Q6600 on 430W), 80+ efficiency.

It's a high end model, yet doesn't cost a fortune.

(This post was last modified: 17/08/2010 01:26 AM by Assassinator.)

(This post was last modified: 16/08/2010 06:04 PM by ProperBritish.)

(16/08/2010 06:02 PM)ProperBritish Wrote:  

(16/08/2010 05:29 PM)Assassinator Wrote:  I like this... http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-600W-ModXStr...91&sr=1-17

600W, 80+ efficiency.

i have the 700W version of this PSU

its modular too, for cable management

but beware, the cables that you do plug in are very stiff (especially the ATX power cable) due to braided shielding.

Haha, it's exactly like the Kingston/G.Skill thing... Corsair is extremely reputable when it comes to PSUs but both models have excellent reviews and feedback from users - except the OCZ is cheaper. The reason I chose the Corsair over the OCZ was because I didn't feel like 600W was necessary, especially after the PSU calculator. Hmm.

I'm wondering if I should look at a System SSD... no point installing 7 on the 1TB if I'm considering one. I'm pushing the budget a bit doing that though...

I would've personally dropped the monitor a bit (wee got a 23in Acer LCD for like AU$169 at the beginning of the year (after cashback)) and the CPU to an i5 760 to go for an SSD.
For all practical purposes, you're not going to notice the difference between an i5 760 and an i7 860, but you will notice a difference with an SSD (or at least in boot times, if you're crazy with RAM caching >_>).

(17/08/2010 02:26 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  I would've personally dropped the monitor a bit (wee got a 23in Acer LCD for like AU$169 at the beginning of the year (after cashback)) and the CPU to an i5 760 to go for an SSD.
For all practical purposes, you're not going to notice the difference between an i5 760 and an i7 860, but you will notice a difference with an SSD (or at least in boot times, if you're crazy with RAM caching >_>).

The only difference being Hyperthreading. Hmm, I'll have to put some thought to this one, but it does make money-sense to go with the i5. Thanks for the food for thought.

(17/08/2010 02:44 AM)S7* Wrote:  

(17/08/2010 02:26 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  I would've personally dropped the monitor a bit (wee got a 23in Acer LCD for like AU$169 at the beginning of the year (after cashback)) and the CPU to an i5 760 to go for an SSD.
For all practical purposes, you're not going to notice the difference between an i5 760 and an i7 860, but you will notice a difference with an SSD (or at least in boot times, if you're crazy with RAM caching >_>).

The only difference being Hyperthreading. Hmm, I'll have to put some thought to this one, but it does make money-sense to go with the i5. Thanks for the food for thought.

Ok... this thread is sort of doing the loop right now...

i7 920
|
V
i7 860

(21/05/2010 04:52 AM)S7* Wrote:  I'll take it the i7 860 is your recommendation then ^^'

|
V
i5 750

(21/05/2010 07:14 PM)Assassinator Wrote:  

(21/05/2010 04:32 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  But otherwise, I wouldn't go higher than an i7 860, though an i5 750 is like 65% of the price and only a tad bit slower (2.8GHz vs 2.66GHz, lacks turbo boost and hyper threading).

Turbo boost is useless if you're overclocking, and hyper-threading at most only gives ~20-25% performance, at the best of circumstances (x264 /w --threads auto, 12 threads).  Most of the time (any time your not using more than 4 threads) you probably won't get any performance increase at all with it.

|
V
PII 1055T

(30/05/2010 02:34 AM)Assassinator Wrote:  The 1055T should be much cheaper than the i7 930 (should be around the same price as a i5 750).

(30/05/2010 04:19 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  I'd personally go for an i7 860 over a 1090T.
For 1055T vs i5 750, that's more your choice, though probably side with the 1055T a little more since it includes Turbo Core.

|
V
i7 920 (because you wanted i7)
|
V
i7 860
|
V
Now i5 760






Know what... All in all... I believe there's a lot of truth in that...  Really.

(21/05/2010 04:32 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  In all honesty, even a basic Athlon II X4 CPU is more than powerful enough for the majority of people.

Especially if you're a "gamer".

(This post was last modified: 17/08/2010 04:21 AM by Assassinator.)

So as much as I'd like an i7 for the sake of having one it certainly seems like it would be an unnecessary waste of money and I would benefit more from an i5 + SSD rather than i7 + non-SSD.

On the subject of "enough".. lets look at it with the PassMark rankings.

The laptop I use at home uses the Athlon X2 QL-65 (2.1GHz, 2 Cores), which has a PassMark of 1084.. it does feel noticably sluggish now and I think there's too much stress on the HDDs too.

This comp at work uses the Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93GHz, 2 Cores), which has a PassMark of 2005, is slow with Premiere when I had to use it briefly, but I don't stress it as much as the laptop at home anyway so it's hard to tell how quick the machine is (the x264 benchmark gives a good idea encode-wise though)

The Core i5 760 (2.8GHz, 4 Cores) has a PassMark of 4604, and even without an overclock I realize that should be more than enough for me. The overclocking is just something I've wanted to have a go at for a long time now, so if I overclocked it (which I should be able to significantly with the Titan Fenrir) then I'm sure it'll be more than I ever need.

As far as 3D performance is concerned, I had to play Modern Warfare 2 on a low-res to play smoothly, AudioSurf on "Premium" graphics mode is laggy, CounterStrike Source is always jumpy when spoon goes down = I die more often than I should be - and this ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4530 has a G3D PassMark of 259.

The planned card is an XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 (though I did want Nvidia this card seems like the most reasonable one to get at the moment, especially at the price it's at right now) - with all the features I could possibly want and a G3D PassMark of 1567.. well.. I think that should be more than enough!

Seems like, then, I should go for the i5.

(This post was last modified: 17/08/2010 05:06 AM by S7*.)

Latest Specs:

Case: Coolermaster Elite 430 - £42*
Monitor: LG E2250V 22" LED - £147
CPU: Intel i5-760 2.80 GHz - £155*
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D - £93
Memory: Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2/4G (1600MHz, DDR3) - £82
Cooler: Titan Fenrir Xmas Edition - £37
Graphics: OcUK Value GeForce GTX 460 768MB - £150*
Storage HDD: Samsung HD103SJ 1 TB 32 MB 7200RPM SATA - £46
System SSD: OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB - £135*
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-B083L 8x BD-R & Lightscribe DVDRW/CDRW - £50

Prices from Amazon.co.uk - * Prices from Overclockers.co.uk

Total Price (as of 18th August): £937 (€1137) - Inc. VAT, Excl. Delivery

---

So, different screen, CPU and graphics card. Added the SSD, still need to decide on a PSU but it'll either be the OCZ or Corsair.

(17/08/2010 04:19 AM)Assassinator Wrote:  Know what... All in all... I believe there's a lot of truth in that...  Really.

(21/05/2010 04:32 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  In all honesty, even a basic Athlon II X4 CPU is more than powerful enough for the majority of people.

Especially if you're a "gamer".

Gamers are going to be GPU bottle necked.  Really... even the weakest Athlon2 x4 is a 2.6GHz quad core, which you can overclock to like 3.4-3.6GHz.  And like what game ever requires you to have a 3.4GHz quad?

AthlonII is like the best value CPU ever.... errr... maybe besides for the earlier line Phenom2 x2's, which you can unlock to make them quads, effectively giving you 2x the power (3x, after you overclock)!

---

Lol, I updated my old random build theory crafting...  All in Australian Dollars, and pretty much all using parts from MSY, because that's the shop I use (and probably the best prices in Australia).

Not saying you should follow these, since after all, they're tuned according to my requirements (especially the "encodebox" builds... who here encodes shit all day besides for me?), my ideology (efficiency, spending more money on parts that actually effect performance, not paying premiums for stuff that probably doesn't make any difference), the parts and prices I can get, and that I WILL overclock.

Also note that the $1600 builds probably won't do all that much better than the $1000 builds in terms of raw performance, nowhere near the 60% price increase in any case, not even 1/2 that.  By build style (performance prioritizing cost distribution.... errr... skimping out on the "other stuff"...) is mainly to blame for that, the more expensive builds are mostly catching up on the non-performance areas.

(This post was last modified: 18/08/2010 05:43 AM by Assassinator.)

Interesting specs. You certainly have a different taste in some parts. Planning to build any of those?