Planning a full upgrade around August

[vitalym]

Is there anything completely new and crazy coming out around that timeframe that I should know about?

This is what I'm currently looking at getting:
ASUS P6X58D
Intel Core i7-930
OCZ Platinum 6GB DDR3 1600
Crucial C300 128GB SATA III

I already have a Corsair 850HX, LIAN LI PC-V1000BPlus II, and a GTX 295 that I'm keeping.

I'm sure in a few months the price will drop, but other than that is there anything on the horizon that would make it worthwhile for me to wait a few months past August?

 

[E4g1e]

One major problem and one minor problem:

1. Significantly overpriced motherboard. In fact, the onboard third-party SATA III controller (Marvell 9123) on that motherboard does not support RAID at all - and that's especially disappointing since many cheaper motherboards with both SATA III and USB 3.0 support onboard (including Asus' own P6X58D-E) use the newer Marvell 9128 SATA III controller that supports RAID 0 and RAID 1. Only worth the price if you're going to run a home server with it, IMHO due to its use of expensive heavier-duty components.

2. Slightly overpriced RAM. You're paying a small premium for tighter CAS latencies (CAS 7 instead of CAS 8 or CAS 9) - and outside of synthetic benchmarks tighter CAS latencies have been shown to provide virtually no real-world performance increase on an Intel i7 platform.

And there will be absolutely no price drops on most of the components (especially the motherboard) for the foreseeable future. As a result, the P6X58D Premium will remain very close to $300 by the time you get around to actually purchasing the parts. The only hope at this point is for Asus to bring out an updated v2 version of that board with the Marvell 9128 SATA III controller with RAID 0/1 support before Asus officially spins off Pegatron (its ODM/OEM manufacturing division) to another company that'll be owned by an Asus subsidiary.

 

[vitalym]

One major problem and one minor problem:

1. Significantly overpriced motherboard. In fact, the onboard third-party SATA III controller (Marvell 9123) on that motherboard does not support RAID at all - and that's especially disappointing since many cheaper motherboards with both SATA III and USB 3.0 support onboard (including Asus' own P6X58D-E) use the newer Marvell 9128 SATA III controller that supports RAID 0 and RAID 1. Only worth the price if you're going to run a home server with it, IMHO due to its use of expensive heavier-duty components.

You're saying that I can't raid with the SATA III ports...but would you honestly want to using a SSD drive? I can't imagine any speed boosts. However as I've stated I don't plan to upgrade till August and I'd imagine that they will have working drivers to allow it or a newer board that supports it.

Any suggestions for a better board?

2. Slightly overpriced RAM. You're paying a small premium for tighter CAS latencies (CAS 7 instead of CAS 8 or CAS 9) - and outside of synthetic benchmarks tighter CAS latencies have been shown to provide virtually no real-world performance increase on an Intel i7 platform.

How about these then?

 

[E4g1e]

You're saying that I can't raid with the SATA III ports...but would you honestly want to using a SSD drive? I can't imagine any speed boosts. However as I've stated I don't plan to upgrade till August and I'd imagine that they will have working drivers to allow it or a newer board that supports it.

Any suggestions for a better board?

It's not that it's a bad board; it's just that it's currently way overpriced for the features that it has. In this case, you're paying nearly the extra $100 just for a second LAN controller that could have been bought as a separate add-in PCI-e card for just $30. Simply put, I would not pay $300 for a motherboard for everyday home use. What's more, the P6X58D Premium is not as reliable as its $300 price tag implies; in fact, it is one of the more problematic LGA1366 motherboards at any price.

How about these then?

It might work with your system. However, I have had trouble with that kit when I first got my i7 system: Windows crashed even at stock CPU speed and stock DDR3-1066 speed (remember, the non-Extreme Edition i7-9xx series processors do not officially support DDR3 memory speeds above DDR3-1066) when I tried to do anything more intensive than simple Web surfing. And since that memory (at least the package I bought originally) lacked any XMP profiles, that RAM would only boot up at 1066 on auto. I went back to that store, and found that other OCZ Gold packages contained identical sticks to the one which gave me problems (and a closer inspection of their serial numbers indicated that they were all produced at nearly the same time in the same factory).

 

[engiNURD]

You're saying that I can't raid with the SATA III ports...but would you honestly want to using a SSD drive? I can't imagine any speed boosts. ...

SSD speed is the main reason SATA released 6gb/s. The easiest way to reach that limit is with RAID0. SSDs in RAID0 scale nearly linearly.
http://ssd.alphaq.org - check the links and my own tests.

 

[vitalym]

What about the 32nm CPUs coming in Q1 2011, are they worth waiting for?

 

[engiNURD]

That's totally up to you. If you need something now, then buy it now. If you're fine right now and don't need anything, then wait. Wait as long as you can, then buy when you can't wait any longer. Hindsight is always 20/20 and you can't predict the future, so buy for what you need when you need it.