New computer

[Jarulf]

Hello,

Although not a computer forum, I have in the past got some nice answers regarding computers here so I thought I should give it a try. I will for various reasons soon buy a new computer and have realized I have no clue about what one should buy today and the differences between things.

First, regarding Windows, I understand that 64 bit is now quite common. If so does it have problems with running older non 64bit programs? Is there ANY reason not to go for 64 bit? Will it in any way affect what hardware I should buy?

Regarding the hardware, any suggestions for good and price worthy components? What I want is a computer that can last for a while and can also run modern games thus a very good but perhaps not the very best graphics card. Same for processor. I have really no clue on processor/motherboard when it comes to socket type.

I have so far the following list of components:

Case: Fractal Design XL
Processor/Motherboard: ? I have really liked Gigabyte in the past.
Graphic card: Asus GeForce GTX570 (Just picked a reasonable range or is it already “too old”?
Memory 6GB of some sort (depends on motherboard/processor?)
Power Supply: No idea
Hard Disc, DVD, Monitor and so on I will simply take from old computer, they are already quite new. I will not buy separate sound card.


Something else to consider that is important and that I missed or should think about?

[kandrathe]

Processor/Motherboard: ? I have really liked Gigabyte in the past.



Something else to consider that is important and that I missed or should think about?

I've sourced these parts locally with a 20% or more savings, so the following links are just for reference.

I am still looking into building a new system around the i7-950 quad;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6819115211

It is well reviewed, and has a good price/performance ratio.

Maybe with this Mobo;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813128423

Then, choose some good quality DDR3 2200 RAM, a good quality 800W to 1000W Power supply, and the fastest, good quality SATA drive you can afford.

Anyway... I usually start with the finding a good processor that I can afford. By good, I mean that its not flaky, doesn't overheat, and becomes a favorite of system builders.

Afterthought on that video card... Be careful about some of ASUS' latest cards. They are 3 slots wide and long as well. Some case designs won't fit such a monster card. If you need to install additional cards into the computer, you may be out of luck.

[LavCat]

First, regarding Windows, I understand that 64 bit is now quite common. If so does it have problems with running older non 64bit programs? Is there ANY reason not to go for 64 bit? Will it in any way affect what hardware I should buy?

64-bit Windows will not run 16-bit programs by design. I would still go with Windows 7 64, but it is sad to have so much stuff that will not run on it.

As to power supplies, I have only used PCP&C for the last twenty years. I have been pleased with them. I understand they are available for sale in Europe these days.

[kandrathe]

First, regarding Windows, I understand that 64 bit is now quite common. If so does it have problems with running older non 64bit programs? Is there ANY reason not to go for 64 bit? Will it in any way affect what hardware I should buy?

64-bit Windows will not run 16-bit programs by design. I would still go with Windows 7 64, but it is sad to have so much stuff that will not run on it.

As to power supplies, I have only used PCP&C for the last twenty years. I have been pleased with them. I understand they are available for sale in Europe these days.

Maybe the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 910 Power supply - 910 Watt?

[eppie]

Something else to consider that is important and that I missed or should think about?

Did you think about the color yet?

[Concillian]

Processors:

Intel offerings:
Socket 1366 - Processor designations i7-9xx
Socket 1156 - Processor designations i3 / i5 / i7 - yxx (where y is less than 9, 9 is reserved for Socket 1366)
Socket 1155 - Processor designations i3 / i5 / i7 - 2xxx (4 digits)

1366 offerings are fairly old (45nm). While they have superior "infrastructure" in triple channel memory and lots and lots of PCI-e lanes and such, it doesn't make up for the older architecture
1155 are newest offerings (32nm) and are basically an iteration of the 32nm offerings for socket 1156.

There is very little reason to consider anything other than Socket 1155 for a high-ish end gaming machine. AMD offerings are simply not competitive at the higher end. They compete okay at the lower end, but the high end there is simply no competition at this point in time.

Of the Socket 1155 models, I think the i5-2400 (no overclock) or i5-2500k (if doing any overclocking) are the highest value models.

Due to lack of competition at the high end, Intel is marketing these in ways to maximize profits. There are artificial limitations placed on these chips to help milk money from the consumers. It also happens to work to totally confuse people looking into this market. Perhaps this is part of their plan, to confuse people into buying more than they need.

- chips that end in 'k' are sort of "special edition" processors. They have an unlocked multiplier which gives ability to overclock (IF used with appropriate chipset, discussed later in this list). It is very, very common to be able to overclock a 2500k to 4.0GHz with plenty of margin. More "On the edge" overclocks are usually in the 4.4-4.8 GHz range.
- chips that do not end in 'k' are multiplier locked, but do have a turbo mode that will allow faster speeds if all cores are not needed. For example, if normal speed is 3.1 GHz, if only 3 cores are needed, it will raise speed to 3.2 Ghz... 2 cores / 3.3 GHz ... 1 core / 3.4 Ghz
- Chipsets are also identical silicon, but have artificial limitations in place to segment the market / price....
- H61 - basic chipset, no special support, can use the on-chip integrated graphics (something most gamers won't be using)
- H67 - middle chipset, adds 6gbps SATA support, needed only with high performance solid state drives. Adds PCI-e channels for full 16 lanes for graphics card (very small performance gain for most GPUs). Adds ability to overclock the on-chip integrated graphics (which isn't a useful feature if using a discrete graphics card.)
- P67 - "performance" chipset. Adds overclocking for k-series processors. Disabled on-chip integrated graphics, must use discrete graphics card
- Z68 - not released yet. Will allow use & overclocking of Integrated graphics and overclocking of CPU. Only chipset that will be able to use the IGP and overclock the CPU.

Confused yet? Yeah, this gen is kind of a mess and we all hope AMD can provide something competitive so Intel doesn't keep doing this garbage. H61 boards are like $60-100. H67 are like $90-130 and P67 are generally $130ish to well over $200 depending on features.

Most games are not terribly CPU bound and an i5-2400 will play them quite well. Blizzard games in particular very strongly prefer the Intel options for CPUs: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-s...-tested/20
Note how far ahead of the top end AMD CPUs the Intel CPUs are in the Starcraft II and WoW benchmarks. In many cases, the lower end i3-2100 outperforms a high end PhenomII.

i7-2600 / k is the "top of the line" for current performance, but the primary feature added over the i5-2xxx processors is hyper-threading, which is mostly a non-factor for games. 2500 / k is the highest you probably want to go given how much more the 2600 / k is (about 50% more expensive). 2400 is probably perfectly adequate to last for a while, and would be my recommendation.

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Motherboard

Buy based on features you want. There is VERY little else that makes a difference. If Gigabyte is your favorite, great. They probably have 2-5 boards for whatever chipset you decide is right for you. Pick the one that is the size, slot layout, and has the features you want. "hot" features will cost you more. Things like front panel USB3 ports will add $20-30 by themselves. But there is no appreciable performance difference between an H61 / H67 / P67 chipset board of any brand. Buy the layout that will work well with your case and has the ports and connectivity you're after.

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Video card market above about a GTX460 price range is pretty much you get what you pay for. AMD and nVidia compete fairly well at any given price point and there aren't the same marketing tricks played in the high end that you get in the budget area.

Previous gen video cards: 40nm tech
Current gen video cards: supposed to be 32nm tech, fabs cancelled 32nm node due to lack of committed orders and are skipping to 28nm... This generation ended up on the same 40nm tech, yielding only minor upgrades in performance at a given price point.
Next gen video cards: 28nm, I expect to see substantial gains in performance for $$$ and performance for a given power envelope.

You can probably get an adequate video card for now, then upgrade to a faster one in a year for the same total price that you'd buy a GTX570 for and have a spare / hand me down. That would be the only consideration. Otherwise, pick nVidia or AMD and a price point and get what you want. It's actually really close to +x% price = +x% performance.

PC Gaming tech, in general, is slowing down. Many developers are creating console versions and porting to the PC. Add higher resolution support and 4xAA / 16xAF and they call it a PC game. There is some stagnation, so a card now may last longer than you think. At least until the next gen consoles are due out.

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Good power supplies go on sale often here. Dunno about in your area. There is a fair amount of variation in power supply quality, but even the poorly built supplies don't really blow computer components anymore. However, there is a fair amount of false advertising, labeling a smaller supply design to a higher rated power output (that it can't actually support). People tend to overestimate power needs so this usually isn't a big deal, but it does happen. Brands that I know don't do this include Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, NZXT, Kingwin, Super Flower. I'm sure there are others, I'm just listing ones from memory.

Thermal design power for the GTX 570 is 220W, 1155 CPUs are 95W, add in 100W for motherboard, drives, etc... and you are looking at 420W max draw. In practice you will never really see that draw, because nothing really fully taxes the CPU when fully taxing the GPU, there is always some give and take there. 450W is probably enough, but a little headroom is good 500-550W is probably a good place to be. Buy something with dedicated PCI-e connectors to support your video card without adapters ... (2) 6-pin PCI-e power connectors. Many supplies will use a 6+2 configuration, and this is fine too.

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Memory for Socket 1155 is either 4GB or 8GB. For your type of build, I'd probably go 8GB. Speed is generally not too important and you end up paying lots for very little "real-world" improvement. DDR3-1600 CAS 9 is probably the best value right now. DDR3 market prices are rising from their historic lows around December / January.

[LavCat]

Maybe the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 910 Power supply - 910 Watt?

I have Silencers but I prefer the Turbo-Cool line. They are a different design. I have not checked the current (no pun intended) offerings.

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Something else to consider that is important and that I missed or should think about?

Did you think about the color yet?

My current WoW computer is blue. (I get my cases from PCP&C too.)

[Concillian]

PC P&C are just like other power supply brands... they contract manufacturing out to one of the companies who actually manufacture the supplies and then box and sell. They were one of the first who did this catering to the high end, 20 years ago, this was special, but now they're just another brand. No reason to limit yourself to just one (usually overpriced) brand when there are many quality brands now.

This review is on the older side, but shows a PCB built by Seasonic: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?nam...y4&reid=63
There is definitely nothing wrong with the design, or being manufactured by Seasonic, but the point is that they aren't as unique and special as they once were. There are at least half a dozen brands making PSUs of equal quality, many are reviewed on that site, which goes into pretty significant detail on PSU reviews, as that's their claim to fame.

And 910W is WAY overboard for any single CPU / single GPU system. He'll probably be drawing 250W or so playing a game, maybe less.

[LavCat]

PC P&C are just like other power supply brands... they contract manufacturing out to one of the companies who actually manufacture the supplies and then box and sell. They were one of the first who did this catering to the high end, 20 years ago, this was special, but now they're just another brand. No reason to limit yourself to just one (usually overpriced) brand when there are many quality brands now.

This review is on the older side, but shows a PCB built by Seasonic: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?nam...y4&reid=63
There is definitely nothing wrong with the design, or being manufactured by Seasonic, but the point is that they aren't as unique and special as they once were. There are at least half a dozen brands making PSUs of equal quality, many are reviewed on that site, which goes into pretty significant detail on PSU reviews, as that's their claim to fame.

And 910W is WAY overboard for any single CPU / single GPU system. He'll probably be drawing 250W or so playing a game, maybe less.

I have to disagree. The Silencer is a Seasonic design, but the Turbo-Cool is quite different. Compare the pictures of the internals in the link you posted to pictures of the internals of the Turbo-Cool:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2433/4

I have read who manufactures the Turbo-Cool, but I can't find the information at the moment. It is not Seasonic. I have also read that the Turbo-Cool is a PCP&C design, not something off the shelf.

PCP&C has been willing to customise supplys for me at a modest charge, I doubt most vendors would do this. They also test the higher end supplies individually and include the printout in the box.

As to contract manufacturing, I used to be president of a small PC peripheral manufacturer, so I have some idea how it usually goes. One large customer told us we would need to move our manufacturing to China to be competitive on price.

Another difference is the Turbo-Cool in the computer on which I am writing this has a 7 year warranty.

[kandrathe]

And 910W is WAY overboard for any single CPU / single GPU system. He'll probably be drawing 250W or so playing a game, maybe less.

Well, depending on what he does... 550W would be the minimum I'd consider. I tend to look at floating things a little higher just to accommodate possible future expansion.

Based on Peak draw on currently available equipment

Video Card -- up to 300W at load
CPU -- up to 200W at load
Drives -- 6-10 watts each
Sound -- ??

Generally, I'm willing to pay the price difference (60$ for most mfg from 550W to 900W) to defend against frying an expensive component due to under powering it.

[Concillian]

I have to disagree. The Silencer is a Seasonic design, but the Turbo-Cool is quite different. Compare the pictures of the internals in the link you posted to pictures of the internals of the Turbo-Cool:

What exactly are you disagreeing with and why?

Just because it's a Win-tact design instead of a Seasonic design, it's still just a company that sub-contracts out to another company to build the PSUs. Yes, PC P&C pays extra for an exclusivity agreement with Win-tact. Why, as a consumer, do I care? Important outputs like ripple, transient response, warrantee, lifetime, safety, component quality, etc... is plenty good with other (often less expensive) designs... it's still made in taiwan, it's just another PSU vendor.

I'm not saying, nor do I think that PC P&C are a bad company. Not at all. They just are no longer unique in the industry anymore. Corsair does this, Antec does this, most of the big name PSUs do this, just not with an exclusivity agreement, so they tend to be priced better.

When it was a niche market and PC P&C was the only one building high quality PSUs they were great. Now, it's another brand in a sea of excellent power supplies and unless you need something custom, like you apparently did, there's no reason to lock yourself out of considering all the other high quality power supplies in the market.

[Concillian]

And 910W is WAY overboard for any single CPU / single GPU system. He'll probably be drawing 250W or so playing a game, maybe less.

Well, depending on what he does... 550W would be the minimum I'd consider. I tend to look at floating things a little higher just to accommodate possible future expansion.

Video Card -- up to 300W at load
CPU -- up to 200W at load

Why does this depend on what he does?

Highest performance CPUs on the market are 95W TDP, and reviews show they're actually consuming less than this at full load. There are no 200W TDP CPUs. Intel and AMD top out around 140W. It takes a very, very serious overclock to pull 200W from a CPU.
Video card highest single slot solution is 375W TDP. What he suggested (GTX570) has a 220W TDP. He's looking at 350W in a worst case if he's paired with a 2500k. Worst case doesn't actually happen since programs that tax the GPU don't generally fully tax the CPU.

I've measured my own system doing various things. the max I can pull is about 220W from the wall. I've tried all kinds of combinations of CPU and GPU synthetic benchmarks, doing multiple benchmarks at once, etc... and Furmark alone was the max power draw I could get. Power draw would go down if I added Prime95 or Linpack on top of Furmark.

I have an 80+ gold PSU, and it should be around 87% efficient at that draw.... that's 190W... with a 4.4GHz overclocked CPU and about a 10% overclock on a 114W TDP GPU. In an actual game, it's more like 150W from the wall / 130W DC. Games don't put the same stress on both the CPU and GPU.

He's looking at a 220W TDP video card. So he'll probably see 200-250W in most games, this leaves him with plenty of headroom, even with a 550W supply, which is probably in the range of what I'd recommend as well (550-650W).

A 550W supply has plenty of headroom. I'm not pulling numbers from my butt, I actually measure the power draw of systems I build for people and it takes a VERY serious rig to max out a 550W PSU. As I said previously, people tend to overestimate their power needs. A good quality 550W PSU should be able to handle a 2500k + one of the 375W GPU monsters like a HD6690 or GTX590. Yes, that would essentially be maxing it out, but really who considers graphics cards that cost more than my whole computer? You think Jarulf would consider something like that?

I have headroom on my PSU too, so yes, I believe headroom is good. I have one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6817116010
Which I got on sale for $75 after tax. Mainly purchased for 80+ gold efficiency, I would have gotten a 550W if there was one cheaper, but in this case the 650W was cheaper since it was on sale.
This particular PSU is a high end Super Flower design. It's not the best ever, but it's quite good. Certainly good enough.

Some headroom is good, but there's a point at which it's just so much headroom that you'll never get there. 910W fits into that category, I think.

[kandrathe]

A good quality 550W PSU should be able to handle a 2500k + one of the 375W GPU monsters like a HD6690 or GTX590. Yes, that would essentially be maxing it out, but really who considers graphics cards that cost more than my whole computer? You think Jarulf would consider something like that?

If someone gives me a GTX590, with OC headroom I'll use it. He's got nicer friends than I do, so who knows!

Some headroom is good, but there's a point at which it's just so much headroom that you'll never get there. 910W fits into that category, I think.

If I can get a deal on a bigger one then I'd go with it, or if the price difference were around $30, I'd go with the bigger one. But, I tend to want to do things that other people don't do, such as running 3 or 4 LCD displays simultaneously. For my work, I always requires at least 2 LCD displays, which may or may not require 2 video cards depending on card features.

I really despise being constrained by upgrades, and I attempt to recycle parts from prior builds. I tend to drive my components until they fail.

[LavCat]

I have to disagree. The Silencer is a Seasonic design, but the Turbo-Cool is quite different. Compare the pictures of the internals in the link you posted to pictures of the internals of the Turbo-Cool:

What exactly are you disagreeing with and why?

Just because it's a Win-tact design instead of a Seasonic design, it's still just a company that sub-contracts out to another company to build the PSUs. Yes, PC P&C pays extra for an exclusivity agreement with Win-tact. Why, as a consumer, do I care? Important outputs like ripple, transient response, warrantee, lifetime, safety, component quality, etc... is plenty good with other (often less expensive) designs... it's still made in taiwan, it's just another PSU vendor.

I'm not saying, nor do I think that PC P&C are a bad company. Not at all. They just are no longer unique in the industry anymore. Corsair does this, Antec does this, most of the big name PSUs do this, just not with an exclusivity agreement, so they tend to be priced better.

When it was a niche market and PC P&C was the only one building high quality PSUs they were great. Now, it's another brand in a sea of excellent power supplies and unless you need something custom, like you apparently did, there's no reason to lock yourself out of considering all the other high quality power supplies in the market.

I thought you were saying PCP&C rebranded OEM designs, rather like grocery store brand cornflakes. If instead you are saying there are more brands of good power supplies available today than there were twenty years ago, then I agree with you.

There is nothing inherently wrong with contract manufacuring. Apple does not manufacture much of their own hardware, but many people would agree, if nothing else, that their products are unique.

It is Jarulf's fault for starting such a contoversial topic.

[Lissa]

I wouldn't count 1366 out just yet. It appears that Intel may be looking to release more i7s that use the 1366 socket. They have updated the extreme processor for 1366 recently and seems like they're preping non-extremes for the socket as well. So if you are interested in true x16/x16 SLI/XFire, you might want to wait a little bit and see what Intel does in the next month or two.

[Lissa]

I wouldn't count 1366 out just yet. It appears that Intel may be looking to release more i7s that use the 1366 socket. They have updated the extreme processor for 1366 recently and seems like they're preping non-extremes for the socket as well. So if you are interested in true x16/x16 SLI/XFire, you might want to wait a little bit and see what Intel does in the next month or two.

[Roland]

Everyone else has posted some very thorough, quality information, so I have little to add. I'll just throw my new computer out here for comparison, and to give you an idea of one end of the spectrum.

My latest rig:

Lian Li PC-60FN
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6811112251

Corsair Professional AX850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6817139015

Asus Rampage III Formula
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813131666

Intel Core i7-950
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6819115211

Noctua NH-C14 Cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6835608020

G.Skill 12GB DDR3 1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820231354

2x EVGA GTX460 Superclocked (SLI)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6814130568

OCZ Vertex II 120GB SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820227590

Hitachi Deskstar 2TB 7200 HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822145298

Lite-On iHBS212 Blu-Ray
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6827106348

Asus VE248H 24" LED Monitor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6824236102

Windows 7 x64 Professional
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6832116758

Peripherals:
Logitech G110 Keyboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...7&Tpk=g110

Logitech G9x Mouse
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6826104261

Corsair HS1 Headset
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6826816001

Logitech Z-2300 2.1 Speakers
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6836121122

Last rig I intend to build for a few years, minus graphical upgrades. I'm very pleased with it - it's surprisingly quiet, even under load.

Just thought I'd share my latest creation, being that it was LONG overdue. Best of luck on your new rig. Let us know how it comes out!

[Lissa]

Windows 7 x64 Professional
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6832116758

FYI, Professional is for Business, not for home use. Professional does not have a number of things that are used in gaming and multimedia, so either go with Home or Ultimate when dealing with a home system for Windows 7.

[Concillian]

I wouldn't count 1366 out just yet. It appears that Intel may be looking to release more i7s that use the 1366 socket. They have updated the extreme processor for 1366 recently and seems like they're preping non-extremes for the socket as well. So if you are interested in true x16/x16 SLI/XFire, you might want to wait a little bit and see what Intel does in the next month or two.

2500k outperforms the 990x in games. If buying for games, 1366 won't make sense, and hasn't made sense since the previous gen i5-750 (Socket 1156)

New processors comparable to 1366 will be released on a new socket 1356, supposedly late this year.

1366 is dead for gaming with 1155 being simultaneously faster, cheaper, and lower power consumption. The extra cores of a 990x are useful for certain applications, but very, very few games know what to do with more than 4 cores. A good portion don't know what to do with more than 2.

Socket 1356 might end up faster, but I'm willing to bet that a 2500k with mild overclock will hold it's own once the total cost is considered.

An i5-750 performed neck and neck with an i7-9xx at the same speed in games. Triple channel memory and hyperthreading sound great in theory, but the performance benefit is very, very small for games, and was never really worth the additional cost. Even the extra PCI-e lanes for true 16x / 16x dual GPU solutions was a minimal performance improvement over 8x / 8x.

Technically 1356 will probably be faster, but once price is considered, 1155 will still be a very viable choice.

Keep in mind this quote from Anand:

However, the vast majority of games today will be limited by whatever graphics card you have in your system. The performance [CPU] differences we talked about a earlier will all but disappear in these scenarios. [...] Any CPU near the high end, when faced with the same GPU bottleneck, will perform the same in game.

Getting the absolute fastest CPU is not absolutely critical. You can afford to get something that is a good value in the upper-midrange and expect it to be good for a while. Even people with mildly overclocked LGA755 dual core CPUs 3 generations old now are able to do pretty well in current games.

It's why most gamers will look at a 2600k vs a 2500k and choose a 2500k. $100 saved for very little performance loss is worth it to many in todays world. The 2600k is definitely faster, but when you can (very easily) overclock them to the same speed, the differences are so minor that the $100 is not worth it.

[Jim]

Everyone else has posted some very thorough, quality information, so I have little to add. I'll just throw my new computer out here for comparison, and to give you an idea of one end of the spectrum.

My latest rig:

The NH-C14 brings top-flow cooling to a new level by offering an exquisite, uniquely flexible 140mm dual fan setup: The two supplied NF-P14 premium fans can be installed on top and underneath the fin-stack to configure the cooler for maximum performance in dual fan mode and either lower profile (105mm) or maximum component clearance in single fan modes. Bundled with the award-winning NT-H1 thermal compound and Noctua’s SecuFirm2 multi-socket mounting system, the NH-C14 is a highly flexible, premium-class top-flow solution that further boosts the renowned quiet cooling performance of the much acclaimed NH-C12P series.

Hi,

Roland you built a Man eating MONSTER gaming rig.

Any heat problems since it has as far as I can see only 2 fans [140mm In, 120mm Out], I can't imagine what a HS with 2 140mm fans on it might create...maybe a Tornado?