BleepingComputer.com: Final build. Any suggestions?

I didn't feel like resurrecting my old thread. Sorry but that's just the way it is. I have little doubt in my mind that I'm not going to get it made by the end of the year. I have the money, I wanna spend it, SKYYYYYYYYRIIIIIIIIIIM, etc.

I'm just a bit undecided on the RAM and Hard Drive. It seems to me like the bigger the drive the more unstable it is, otherwise I'd go for a 1TB or more.

Case: COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Black Steel/ Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair V Formula AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Gaming Motherboard with 3-Way SLI/CrossFireX Support and UEFI BIOS

GPU: EVGA 015-P3-1580-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Power Supply (kinda overkill but I'm thinking of the future): CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX1200 (CMPSU-1200AX) 1200W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ12GX3M3A1600C9

CPU (I can't justify the huge added expense of an Intel model): AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Thuban 3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDE00ZFBGRBOX

What I want to do with it:
Gaming (lots of it)
3D Modeling
Video Editing

This post has been edited by VicVegas: 10 November 2011 - 05:36 PM

Are you using Cuda? If not, a XFX HD-697A-CNFC Radeon HD 6970 2GB would offer only a slight reduction in performance to just below that of a GTX 580 but above a 570, for a much lower price. Also, the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX is mostly the same but with a lower price tag.

^^ +1 to those suggeestions. You could pretty much get two 2GB HD 6950's for the price of one GTX 580, and the Crosshair V is overkill for pretty much anything.

With the significant savings you get from that, I'd suggest reconsidering a move to a Core i7 2600K/Z68 Board (TBH a 2600K + the excellent ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 would probably be the same price as an 1100T and Crosshair V). The Intel's are just that much faster and with rendering you'll really feel the difference.

Benchmarks of the 2600K vs the 1100T:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/203?vs=287&i=2.5.3.4.6.25.26.27.28.29.30.31.32.33.34.35.36.37.38.39.40.41.42.43.45.46.344.345.53.54.55.60.61.62.129.336.337.338.339.340.341.342.342.63.64.57.56.335

2 6950 is much better then single GTX580 and for gaming it is lethal. The Crosshair V is good for extreme overclocking in my opinion.

philo-sofa I understand where you are going with this, but I'd rather stick with strong single GPUs. I've seen dual GPU performance, I don't really like it. Sharp drops here and there and the additional heat and noise. Kinda hypocritical considering I'd hoped to add a second card in a year or so, but then with this board I'd be even less interested in doing that. Also, Cuda would be completely useless to me being as I'm a neanderthal without any need or knowledge to actually utilize it to it's purpose.

Y'know I simply cannot measure Processors by looking at their stats on newegg. To me the difference doesn't look that huge between the 1100T and the 2700K, heck the 2700K is a quad-core and the 1100T is a six-core! Clearly I'm still missing something.

Edit: K, so Cuda has Valid Purpose in video editing. I guess it may be up my alley, but not massively important.

This post has been edited by VicVegas: 11 November 2011 - 01:27 AM

The 2700K will rip the 1100T too aparts in raw performance although it has 2 less cores. But for gaming, AMD processor would do the trick since more games are GPU bound.

VicVegas, on 11 November 2011 - 01:16 AM, said:

From experience the current gen (6000) AMD cards crossfire very well, great scaling (performance gains from 2 cards) in terms of both avg and min FPS, no drops etc. As long as the motherboards has two spaces between the GPU slots, you'll incur little extra sound or high temps (it's when they're choked next to each other they suffer and let you know audibly!). Either way I wasn't suugesting mult card (quite), just that a GTX 580 is a rip - a GTX 570 or 6970 is just such better value - would never recommend people get the 'top card' as they tend to be hideously expensive for not much performanc gain over the next card down. Would really recommend the 6970 TBH.

Also my stats are not from newegg - I'd encourage you too look at the performance across multiple benchmarks Anandtech collate together for our viewing please as killer says a 2600K/2700K will rip apart even a Thuban (1100T) especially if you're looking for for rendering/transcoding performance

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/203?vs=287&i=2.5.3.4.6.25.26.27.28.29.30.31.32.33.34.35.36.37.38.39.40.41.42.43.45.46.344.345.53.54.55.60.61.62.129.336.337.338.339.340.341.342.342.63.64.57.56.335

This post has been edited by philo-sofa: 11 November 2011 - 11:05 AM

The 6000 series cards does scale very well in Crossfire, i have 2 6950 in crossfire and they give one hell of a performance in every single games at max settings. 2 6950 will smash the GTX580 but when a 6950/6970 competes against the GTX580, the GTX580 wins but not by a large margin.

I cannot seem to find any boards for the newer 1155 socket with dual x16 capabilities under $300, kind of a boon. It also seems pretty common for 6970 cards to get hot and loud as a single card, let alone Crossfire. I'm going off of buyer opinions that it gets hot and that when you turn on auto fan control it gets load.

Looking at the stats between a 2600K and 970, It's really unbelievable the 970 is still so expensive as it is.

I also encourage you not to place emphasis on synthetic benchmarks, go for real-world benchmarks from a multitude of sites to get a better picture of GPU or CPU performance. Sometimes, looking at performance gains between products, spending the extra money is often not needed to see great performance. It all has to do with what you are willing to spend.

Comparing the Phenom II and the Sandy Bridge designs, the Phenom II uses a much older architecture and Sandy Bridge is more efficient. Also, the proprietary HyperThreading technology Intel uses will give it a further boost over Phenom II's. AMD comes close with Bulldozer, but it cannot beat Sandy Bridge in programs most people use, perhaps later down the line after revisions and software that can actually use it.

From what I've seen the Radeon 6970 is about as loud, depending on the card, as the GTX 580. The 6970 has been out for a while and card makers have been able to redo the cooling system.

This post has been edited by DJBPace07: 11 November 2011 - 03:29 PM

It also depends on how good the aftermarket cooler used on the graphics card.

In terms of Crossfire, where AMD's design does fall down is when you place two cards right next to each-other like this:



Which chokes the upper card. If there's another slot inbetween like below they're no louder than two Nvidia cards:






In terms of single cards, from experience a 'reference design' HD 6970 like the ones pictured above is quite a lot quieter and cooler than a reference GTX 580:

@DJBPace07
The cards I looked at were XFX 6970s used without crossfire and still made allot of noise. The reviews were also recent meaning it's really a matter of luck whether or not you get one with the revised cooler. But that would pretty much be newegg's fault. They seem to be declining in these past years.

@philo-sofa
Kinda the reason I was looking at "overkill" boards. I'd like have full x16 power, but more importantly have plenty of spaced out slots to do it in. Then you have the cards with aftermarket coolers which take up even more space.

Also, as to the choking thing. I kinda gathered that would happen just thinking logically, but I'm now surprised you say that this is unique to AMD cards.

VicVegas, on 11 November 2011 - 06:38 PM, said:

Sandy-Bridge CPU's only give out 16 PCIe lanes, so unless you have an NF200 chip giving 'sorta' dual x16, you'll only find x8 boards. The performance difference is ~3% tho, so wouldn't be too bothered by it. Air 'choking' potentially affects all dual-cards but where Nvidia cards have a recessed fan (and therefore a gap to let air through) AMD cards are basically a solid brick so it affects them much more. The central point I wanted to make though is that the 6950/6970 don't run hotter or louder than GTX 580's/570's (unless you put them in side-by-side Crossfire), rather they're generally quieter and cooler.

Board wise a ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 has plenty of space and features (incl for separated multi-card if you want it in the future) and is quality - itshould give the same O/C results as the most expensive boards. The choice is uo to you but I've never seen the point in getting a board at double the cost, which actually has no extra capabilits vs the one half the price, especially when you could spend the $ on a CPU upgrade.

This post has been edited by philo-sofa: 12 November 2011 - 02:44 AM

Well... in terms of being economic I gotta agree with you guys. And sitting under 2K pleases me, seeing as how I've bought pre-made computers for this price and they all sucked. Which 6970 would you recommend though? I'm leaning towards the ASUS EAH6970, since as far as I can tell it comes pretty dang close to the GTX580 performance-wise.

Eh, wait I almost forgot the disc drive. Uh, since this is going to be in my living room with the TV I'd like Blu-Ray. Any comments on that?