Time for an upgrade..

[mikekim]

I thought it was about time to upgrade my current system, as my main pc is a lowly q6600 and starting to show signs of age..

so today i have ordered the following items to speed it up a bit:

Intel Core i7 980X 3.33GHz (Gulftown) Extreme Edition (Socket LGA1366)
Corsair Hydro H70 High-Performance CPU WaterCooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM3)
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit

OCZ RevoDrive 180GB PCI-Express Solid State Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE180G) ( I dont need a data drive, as I have a 6TB NAS)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599)

Dell U2711 27" IPS Monitor

these will be added to existing components i have:

Coolermaster Stacker 832 Tower Case
Enermax Galaxy EGX850EWL 850W Modular PSU
4x Akasa AK-191-SM Smoke Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan
Zalman ZM-MFC1 Plus Black Multi Fan Controller

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Toxic 2048MB GDDR5 Graphics Card

G.Skill Falcon 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (with WOW installed)
2x Pioneer DVR212BK 18x DVD±R/±RW (Black) SATA

Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Logitech G13 Gamepad
Logitech G5 Laser Mouse
SSeries Steelpad 5L Gaming Mat

Creative labs XFi Xtream Fatality Pro
Creative Labs 5.1 Speakers

with this machine I will probably look to run all five accounts from it and get rid of the other machines (and also reclaim some desk space back )

I will probably run one of the 22" screens from the old setup for web browsing. (the old machines will cleaned up and be given to family members to use - beats having to recycle them )

pics and performance to follow....

[MiRai]

Is this machine for multiboxing World of Warcraft only?

[Bollwerk]

Seems strange to spend so much on the i7 980X (aren't those nearly $1000?) and only have a 5850 for a graphics card. I'm surprised you don't upgrade to a GTX 580 also. =)

[mikekim]

responses to questions:

the machine will be used for Photo Editing and Graphic Design as well (photoshop CS5) which is why I chose an IPS screen

the 5850 is the current card I have in my system - it is the toxic 2Gb version, so is quite a bit quicker than a standard 5850. I will see how this performs before deciding whether to upgrade to a GTX580 (or similar)

[MiRai]

Well, unless you fall under one or more of the following:

A) Are positive you need and you'll be stressing 6 physical cores with what you're doing.

B) Have money to burn.

C) Are getting an Intel employee discount.

D) Just want to enlarge your e-peen. [I fall into this category]

Then I would not recommend spending $1000 on a 980X.

[Kekkerer]

Using a i7 920 I have noticed that my 5th wow application sometimes seems to lag a little more than the others but it is extremely difficult to see. Follow breaking more often and so on, it seems that using a 6 core system has advantages when 5boxing in my experience at least.

[mikekim]

Well, unless you fall under one or more of the following:

A) Are positive you need and you'll be stressing 6 physical cores with what you're doing.

 
B) Have money to burn.
 
C) Are getting an Intel employee discount.
 
D) Just want to enlarge your e-peen. [I fall into this category]

Then I would not recommend spending $1000 on a 980X.

the money is not an issue.. e-peen enlargement is something i think that all people who like computers have to deal with to some degree, so there is probably something there

I normally upgrade my main machine every 4 years, so when I purchase the system I want the best, or close to it, so the machine will be viable for the length of time I'm going to keep it.

The 580 will be the next upgrade on the list as soon as my supplier has the one I want in stock (EVGA GeForce GTX 580 SuperClocked)

As for the six cores, they will not go to waste, as I frequently have to play with multiple VM's and you never know having this machine might inspire me to move up to 10 boxing.

[mikekim]

UPDATE:

Decided to make some changes to the kit list:

Asus Rampage III (replacing the UDR3 which was supplied with faulty socket pins)
OCZ IBIS (replacing the Revo, which has gone end of life)
Asus GTX 580 (for the 5850 Toxic)

and added a set of Logitech Z5500's

behold.... its like all your christmases have arrived at once




installation was a breeze with the coolermaster case, as it has a removable motherboard tray. (the small card next to the 580 is the HDSL interface for the IBIS)




completed installation in case, prior to tidying cables



boots into windows is about 10 seconds from cold.

had a dabble with overcloking (well i picked the 4ghz option in the bios ) runs stable- will look on pushing it to around 4.5 in the next couple of weeks



performed a slight OC on the GTX580 up from 782/2004 to 950/2194 seems to be running stable with no issues.

as for the speed increase comparison to my previous system...

when I originally installed my old system (Q6600, 8MB, GTX260) i benchmarked it on Aquamark (after finding the patch to enable it to run on vista) and scored 81,000, which i thought was pretty good at the time.

I have just installed and run the same benchmark on my new system and scored 250,000.

haven't got around to trying wow yet, but cant see it being a problem running 5 instances from this machine with high details.

[thefunk]

Nice!

Isn't the 980 about £300 more than the 950? What's made you choose the 980 over it as money obviously wasn't one of the issues.

Also out of interest, what was the total damage as i'm looking at something similar.

[mikekim]

I chose the 980x for the 6 cores, as I will be using this machine for development and design work, as well as gaming. the x price was £50 more than the 970 and has far more overhead to overclock if needed.

The total cost of the upgrades was just under the £3,000 mark, I was given the Z5500's for nothing (add another £500 for the existing case, SSD, PSU, Soundblaster X-Fi & 2x DVDRW's)


If you are looking just for a high speed gaming rig, look at the new sandybridge chips and motherboards, some people have had very good results taking them up to 4.3ghz on air cooling.

one item to take note of... don't bother buying an OC'd version of the GTX580, as all of them will quite happily go to insane speeds using MSI Afterburner Beta (just up the standard voltage from 1025 to around 1138 once you pass 850mhz)