New Computer Build

[Claggy]

I've started getting components together to replace my overclocked C2D E8500, the intention is to reduce the power usage here, have a faster and more stable PC, while still having a PC with Mixed GPU's, and overclocked,
the C2D E8500 will end up back at my own home, and will be declocked, will have the 9800GTX+ fitted again, won't run 24/7, only weekends when i'm there.

I'm going to reuse the GTX460 and HD5770, I have a Corsair TX750 PSU already but that will be needed for the C2D E8500 medium term, so will get a new Better one for the new build, thinking about a Corsair HX850 or AX850,
While i was writng this I found an ex-Display AX850 at HX850 prices, so i've ordered it, will arrive next week,

The computer case arrived this afternoon, i went for a Fractal Design Define R3 that i got from QuietPC,

I'm thinking of a pre overclocked Bundle from Scan, eithier a i5 2500K or i7 2600K, with eithier a Asus P8P67 Pro or one of the Asus P8Z68 M/B's, wrapped up with 8Gig of DDR3 @ 1600MHz, or i could just get the components elsewhere, thoughts?

and i still need to get an OS, that will be Win 7 Home Premium, either OEM or a Retail Box (Edit: added a OEM Win 7/SP1 Premium 64bit Disc to my AX850 order)

Claggy

[Jason G]

PSU: AX-850 appears to be a Flextronics build, as opposed to seasonic, though a seasonic design.  I can vouch that's the better choice over the HX.  Corsair will replace it no questions asked if any problems, which would be highly unlikely (though always possible with anything) They run stone cold here , AX 750 & AX1200 that is.

The E8500 would not have been feeding both those cards at once at maximum, either i5 or i7 will have no problems there, especially with that much airflow.  I know this from trying to feed the 480 with my E8400 through FuturMark Benchmarks (3dMark Vantage & 3DMark11 in particular).

With the motherboard selection, I'd myself prefer  Gigabyte boards at this time, as they offer BIOS updates to support upcoming Ivy Bridge 22nM CPUs & PCIe 3.0 on the LGA 1155 boards, which for me stretching the longevity of the board would be a big selling point.

If you get the choice in whatever chosen bundle, go for lower latency RAM over capacity if you have the choice, for 2 cards, prefer 8 Gig 'decent 1600MHz should be fine'.  I see those bundles include Corsair Vengeance series, whereas if you could call them maybe they would upgrade to 'ultimate dominator' for a small difference, don;t know unless you ask .... Chances are they have some shop soilt sticks of that around too.

The Case: seems less important with the newer processors, so pick what you like I think.

I had some (expected) issues migrating XP32 to Win7x64 Home premium (Retail) , which did require acrobatics but can be solved... but if you aren't athletically inclined the choice of OEM or full retail shouldn't be a problem, the deciding factor being whether you want to upgrade a lot (dearer full retail can traverse more upgrades without having to speak to robots in India)

Jason

[Claggy]

I've bitten the bullet and ordered the rest of the Components, a Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA GREEN HD, a Corsair 60GB Force 3A SSD, a Samsung SH-S222AB DVD Drive,
and the Z68 EDGE Overclocked Bundle from Scan, But with 8 Gig of Corsair LP Memory, and a Corsair H80 Hydro Series cooler, Ook that all cost a lot,
Hopefully it'll be built by the end of the week, anything i've missed?

Claggy

[Jason G]

If you're putting the AX-850 with that, you should be good to go     I haven't tried the SSD+HD boost thingy on the Z68 mobo here, but everything with that chipset has gone smoothly here, so it'll be good to hear your Boottimes once you know the SSD has the OS cached etc.

I do recall there was some necessity to ensure the Force SSDs firmware & some certain mobos BIOSes were up to date, though I think that was with X58 mobos.

JAson

[Claggy]

My i7 2600K overclocked bundle has arrived along with the other components needed, just got to build it now. 

and so has Forza 4 

Claggy

[Mike]

Have fun Claggy.

And fingers crossed.

[Claggy]

Have fun Claggy.

And fingers crossed.

Thanks, i played Forza 4 all yesterday, then last night i assembled most of it, today i've fitted the Hard drives, and tonight i've just installed Win 7 x64 and all the drivers,
web access is next, and Windows Update, then Boinc, and Steam.

Claggy

[Jason G]

Muahahaha.  It's a bit of a jump from our (already) excellent Wolfdales to this breed.  The old lady's is chugging away nicely with never an issue.  My dev machine (E8400 OC'd) is getting a bit tired now by comparison. You should be able to have heaps of fun with that 

Jason

[Claggy]

Muahahaha.  It's a bit of a jump from our (already) excellent Wolfdales to this breed.  The old lady's is chugging away nicely with never an issue.  My dev machine (E8400 OC'd) is getting a bit tired now by comparison. You should be able to have heaps of fun with that 

Jason

O.K, it's up crunching at Einstein and Seti Beta, i found a copy of my E8500/GTX460/HD5770 win 7 client_state.xml, and used that (with a lot snipped out) to re-use it's Host ID's,
didn't work at LHC since my client_state.xml predates it's changes, and primegrid when i reattach will give me a new ID too, the reason i did this is i had quite a bit of work at Seti Main & Seti Beta,
I've been getting it resent at Beta, Seti Main will have too wait,

http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta/show_host_detail.php?hostid=45274

Claggy

[Claggy]

My Observations of the speed of the i7 2600K@4.7GHz/GTX460 with optimised Seti apps over what the E8500@4.14GHz/GTX460/HD5770 was doing are:

Astropulse r409: E8500 could do a Wu in ~23,500secs runtime, i7 2600K does them in ~27,000secs runtime, slowdown probably due to the i7's different cache arrangement,
MB SSSE3x Win64 Build 76: a speedup over the E8500, but no idea how much as the E8500 didn't normally do MB,
x-Series Cuda app: a small speedup, probably only a few seconds a Wu,
r521 OpenCL AP app: the E8500/GTX460 could do a AP Wu in ~50 minutes, the i7 2600K/GTX460 is doing them in 1 hour 15minutes (with the same settings),
-hp didn't seem to help, -no_gpu_lock made the desktop a bit laggy, higher fetch values did speed things up but made the desktop pause every now and again, more playing about required,
Stock 6.97 v7 Seti app with AVX is as fast as the r365/374 SSSE3 app was on the E8500, r365/374 is faster still on the i7 2600K, but not run on Seti Beta yet,

Claggy