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Been out a while..Catch me up?

T

TheToE!

[H] Brewmaster
Joined
May 17, 2005
Messages
9,579
Guys, need a little help here. I've been out of the hardware loop for a while(3 years). Last rig I built was a socket i775 w/ a C2D e6400 and ati 4870. I am looking to build up a new rig this year for gaming. Here's my questions :

Intel vs AMD : Has AMD made any strides to be competitive as far as price/performance for gaming? I like to OC.

Watercooling : Last WC setup I ran was an old swiftec apex kit with the storm block..Is WC'ing even necessary anymore from an OC standpoint with all these new air coolers ect? Whats popular in WC now?

So yeah, just looking to get caught up. Thanks in advance!
 
AMD CPUs are pretty good these days, but still not as powerful as Intel's offerings. For gaming, it's largely a wash, since any halfway decent CPU will be powerful enough that your main bottleneck will be the video card. If I had to pick, I'd probably go with an i7 2500K for gaming purposes if you have the budget for it.

Watercooling is not and has never been necessary. Whether or not it's beneficial depends on how much overclocking you want to do. Realistically, you won't see huge gains from watercooling. I personally don't think it's worth the investment from a practical standpoint, but many people like to use it anyway for various reasons. It's largely a matter of preference rather than one of necessity.
 
I like the cooler temps at lower noise levels that watercooling brings, especially with video cards. Other than that, watercooling is not really necessary unless attempting to achieve high overclocks, and leaving it at those high overclocks 24/7.

Edit: Plus, it is fun for me to do watercooling. It's a hobby.
 
Zero82z said:
AMD CPUs are pretty good these days, but still not as powerful as Intel's offerings. For gaming, it's largely a wash, since any halfway decent CPU will be powerful enough that your main bottleneck will be the video card. If I had to pick, I'd probably go with an i7 2600K for gaming purposes if you have the budget for it.

Watercooling is not and has never been necessary. Whether or not it's beneficial depends on how much overclocking you want to do. Realistically, you won't see huge gains from watercooling. I personally don't think it's worth the investment from a practical standpoint, but many people like to use it anyway for various reasons. It's largely a matter of preference rather than one of necessity.
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ninja edit
water cooling isnt a necesity but a good set up works well, air coolers are better than the h70 if you get the good ones amd will do fine for games in the most part but intel is more powerful, until the bulldozer plows through the sandy bridge
 
I'd also recommend an i5 2500k. You'll save about $100 from the 2600k, and you're pretty much guaranteed a 4.5 - 4.8 ghz overclock.
 
i5 2500k is where it's at right now. That and a P67 board, probably AMD GPU -- 6950 2GB unlocks to 6970 shaders and clocks 90+% of the time, and can be had in the ~$250-260 range AR. Nvidia can't compete price to performance right now. That'd do anything you like at 1920x1200 and below. If you move up to a 30" or an Eyefinity setup, you might look at Crossfire or wait for the 6990.

Zero reason to bother with watercooling given the kind of air cooling you can get anymore, save possibly with GPUs if fan noise really annoys you... and you aren't going to hear them most of the time, certainly never when idle.
 
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Guys, perfect explanation. Thanks for taking the time to help out!
 
Yeah agreed, as far as price per performance goes Sandy bridge is wiping the floor with the 1090T. A guy over at OCF got a stable clock of 5ghz on air alone with his 2600k. Plus, the time they can stay stable oc'd is just ridiculous.
 
Agree with everything said, AMD's only a decent value if you're building a very cheap rig... If you can swing a 2500K they're an amazing value tho (for the performance you're getting). They're a solid step up from the 1st gen Core i-series, which were themselves a noticeable step up from the old C2D/C2Q's, and they run cooler than the last gen of CPUs. I'm in the process of building my own SB rig w/CF 6950's (for Eyefinity)...

i5 2500K, MSI P67A-GD55, 2x 6950 2GB, 8GB G.Skill DDR3-1333 (2x4GB), Cogage TRUE Spirit (more than ya really need for a decent OC but it gets hot in PR and I wanna keep noise down)... All in for under a grand (closer to $900 after rebates), it'd be about $700 w/o the 2nd GPU. Personally I think that's a lot more machine for not much more $ than what I built almost two years ago (rig in sig).

The core components for the older rig were maybe $100 less in total, and at the time that C2Q was already overshadowed by the i7 920 whereas the 2500K is pretty beastly right now (and has more OC headroom too), plus it doesn't run much hotter. Probably just a lil' hotter but a lil' quieter at the same time, particularly at idle (taking into account the GPUs).

I'd only WC if you're gonna invest a decent amount in it and run a high end system w/blocks on your GPU(s), which typically run hotter than CPUs anyway (and way louder under load)... These cheap pre-built kits for CPUs seem nice but they don't run much quieter than the best air coolers out right now yet they're more expensive, what's the point? You can get some great heatsinks for $20-40 these days, the difference between those and the $50-70 coolers isn't much.
 
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Ideally I'd do a 2500, but there seems to be a mobo shortage. Am I right?
 
Shouldn't be for much longer, give it 2 weeks, 3 tops. The P67 chipset had a potential SATA performance degradation issue and Intel recalled them all, so it's just getting back to market.
 
silent-circuit said:
Shouldn't be for much longer, give it 2 weeks, 3 tops. The P67 chipset had a potential SATA performance degradation issue and Intel recalled them all, so it's just getting back to market.
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Sweet, I guess I'll just wait. Been waiting this long, whats another couple weeks?:(
 
Yeah, RMAs for all the boards sold between December and February are now shipping out (mine arrives Wednesday), shouldn't be long before they're caught up and retail channels are re-supplied.
 
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