Later in the year, if everything carries on as it is now, I'm planning to build a machine that'll stay in my room.

I'd like to hear what suggestions you may have regarding a good value for money Core i7-based computer.

I'll want it to handle a couple of straining apps at a time.. for example video editing in Premiere and x264/mencoder [for PS3 Media Server] simultaneously without a hitch - should the time ever come that I need to do such a thing.

I'm willing to pay premium on the Motherboard and Cooling to enable high level stable overclocking... but mainly just wondering what the low-down on a decent i7 computer.

Thank ye!

(This post was last modified: 16/08/2010 07:42 AM by S7*.)

motherboard>>asus good overclocking abilities.

also if you got some spare $$ try and get a intel x25 SSD,. i have installed win7 x64 and runs perfect and fast! :)

for PS3 media server its prob best to use wired connection but i am not sure,. corei7 should be fast enough,.

I seriously doubt you'll ever need that functionality, and when you do, just set priority to low/idle and a basic CPU will do it fine (and even without that, I bet the difference won't be terribly noteworthy, as long as you don't go overboard on the encoding thread).

In all honesty, even a basic Athlon II X4 CPU is more than powerful enough for the majority of people.

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).

Otherwise, not much to say about a CPU.

(21/05/2010 04:24 AM)Vegetano1 Wrote:  motherboard>>asus good overclocking abilities.

That's what I've had in mind ^^

(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).

Otherwise, not much to say about a CPU.

I'll take it the i7 860 is your recommendation then ^^'

I personally prefer Gigabyte over ASUS cause I like the Pheonix BIOS better (more used to it), but both companies make very good motherboards.

LGA1156 doesn't have triple channel, but even if you do, it's pretty much useless.  I'd just get two RAM sticks unless you need more capacity - triple channel doesn't really increase performance (much).

(21/05/2010 08:12 AM)ProperBritish Wrote:  You'll need a 700-800W PSU to be comfortable, mine is by OCZ and is modular to save space.

PSU wattage is one of the most overrated things ever.  Pretty much nothing needs a 800W PSU, you'll be able to run it on something like a 500W just fine.

Don't waste the money getting some 800W PSU that costs almost as much as your CPU, those are for people with i7 980 extreme + 2x HD5870 crossfire setups.  Or dual Xeon workstation setups.

PSU calculator  ==> http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

(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.

(This post was last modified: 21/05/2010 07:24 PM by Assassinator.)

I was *very* concerned when Proper suggested a PSU with such a high wattage, thanks for the link Assassinator.

Hmm...

Intel Core i7 930 or AMD Phenom II X6 1055T?

I can't decide :7

(28/05/2010 05:54 AM)S7* Wrote:  Hmm...

Intel Core i7 930 or AMD Phenom II X6 1055T?

I can't decide :7

Do you mean the AMD 1090T (more comparable in price to the i7 930) instead of the 1055T?  


Read some reviews...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-...reviewed/1
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-...,2613.html


Also, if you're planning on getting a 930, you may as well get the socket 1156 version, save you money on the motherboard and RAM, for nearly no performance cost.