IB mobo & RAM suggestions?

PTRMAN

PTRMAN

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 28, 2008
Messages
235
I've been accumulating pieces for my new IB build over the past few months but am looking for some advice on the last few pieces (mobo, RAM, and leaning towards i7-3770K).

Purpose: General use with an emphasis on gaming.

Have
Case: Corsair 500R
PSU: OCZ 1250
GPU: 2x EVGA GTX 680 (one regular/one SC)
CD/DVD: Samsung Blu-ray
Cooling: H100
SSD: Corsair Force Series 3 90GB
HDD: 2x 1T WD
Monitor: Dell U2711
Peripherals: SteelSeries KB, Logitech mouse, Klipsch 2.1 speakers
OS: Win7 Ultimate

Need:
mobo
CPU
RAM

Any suggestions?
 
cpu - get the i7-3770K if you don't mind spending an extra $100. otherwise get the i-5-3570K. it's like a i7-2600k vs i5-2500k in terms of performance difference.

mobo - you need sli i'm guessing, any other requirements? z75/77 if you want to overclock. if not, then you can probally be fine with the cheapest one that supports 2x pcie 3.0 x8

ram - native support for ddr 1600. if u got money, buy the lowest CAS latency. increasing freqency for ram gives little gain.
 
The Samsung low profile 30nm 2x4GB kits are great for the money and I have seen benchmarks of it working well with IB.

If you are into benchmarking the 3770k will get higher scores on many of the competitive benchmarks. I think the 3570k will be the best value like the 2500k is.
 
I'm in the same boat, looking for a mobo/ram combo to pair with a 3770k, so far I have shortlisted the Asus P8Z77-V Pro and 2 x 4Gb Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR3-1600 (CAS 8), should make for a nice upgrade from my Q9550 :)
 
lsun22 said:
ram - native support for ddr 1600. if u got money, buy the lowest CAS latency. increasing freqency for ram gives little gain.
Click to expand...

It was my understanding that this applied to past generations, but on sandy/ivy frequency boosts show better gains than latency improvements.

Can anybody confirm? This is the last thing that will affect my upgrade.
 
According to AIDA64, my 16gb CAS11 ram running at 2400 is the fastest of all the systems, in every RAM benchmark I run. Granted, my CPU is at 4.6G. I see a significant perfomance hit by running at CAS9 and 1600.

This is on my RIVE with 3930.
 
I'm leaning towards either the Asus P8Z77-V Pro or the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H, pending reviews in a few days, of course. As for teh CPU, I'll probably grab an i5-3570K, as I mostly just game and cruise the internet.

thesecond said:
It was my understanding that this applied to past generations, but on sandy/ivy frequency boosts show better gains than latency improvements.

Can anybody confirm? This is the last thing that will affect my upgrade.
Click to expand...

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20377

Memory speed and latency mean almost zero noticeable real-world differences on the 1155 platform. 0-2 FPS in every game tested. Get the highest capacity, lowest cost 1.5V DDR3 that your money can buy.
 
Cool, well that clears up the RAM question for me. I'll wait for more mobo announcements before deciding on one to see what company has what features.
 
I'm getting a bit anxious about getting this new build up and running. Given all the comments I've heard about people waiting for a second round of IB, which they believe will help iron out any kinks or quirks with the first round, I'm wondering if I can get a Z77 mobo and use a 2600K. I don't want to drop $600+ on an IB chip, mobo and ram if being an early adopter has such severe costs, and the idea of waiting another 4+ months for a second round isn't appealing either.

Will a 2600K work with a z77 board?
 
Since you are gaming, forget about wasting money on memory as memory bandwidth and latency does not have a meaningful impact on game performance (between DDR3-1600 CAS9 and DDR3-2300+ CAS8).

Personally, I just bought a Mushkin 4x4GB Blackline Frostbyte DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24 1.5V kit for $79.99CAD on sale. Thought about going 2x8GB but it was a 60-70% price premium and I figure 16GB is enough for years and years to come. I'm planning on the P8Z77-V Pro mobo as well, although Gigabyte UD5 and MSI's $180 board are pretty appealing price/features wise.
 
If you like to overclock your RIG don't buy any DDR3 without doing some research to find out what ram will over clock best with your system.

Some ram that is stable at slower CPU speeds will not run stable at higher CPU speeds.
 
SonDa5 said:
If you like to overclock your RIG don't buy any DDR3 without doing some research to find out what ram will over clock best with your system.

Some ram that is stable at slower CPU speeds will not run stable at higher CPU speeds.
Click to expand...

You overclock the CPU seperately from the RAM now - you don't mess with the FSB like you used to. So any DDR3-1600 will be fine.
 
I'm eyeing an Asus P8Z77-V Pro myself.
ASRock Z77 Professional looks nice too but I think I'm going to go with the Asus
 
Asus has really been on a roll with their Intel boards lately and the Asus P8Z77-V Pro really does look like a nice board, especially if you're going for higher memory clocks. I'm glad that they swapped out the bluetooth for a wireless card and the potential to add Thunderbolt to it (I think the Pro can? and not just the Deluxe) sounds pretty awesome.
 
IB can wait! Yeah, I know it will be out soon but there's the inevitable second and third step that'll take a few months to sort out.

Micro Center is having a sale on the 2600K - $199.99.
I'm going with the 2600K, the ASUS P8z77-V Pro, and 16GB Corsair DDR3-1600 for about $560 (I do have to drive 30 minutes each way to pick it up, but hey, I could have the build completely ready by late tomorrow!)

This should be a bit "future-proof" and I'll just add IB when it is out and the kinks are worked out/corrected.
 
Slammin said:
According to AIDA64, my 16gb CAS11 ram running at 2400 is the fastest of all the systems, in every RAM benchmark I run. Granted, my CPU is at 4.6G. I see a significant perfomance hit by running at CAS9 and 1600.

This is on my RIVE with 3930.
Click to expand...

If you insist on higher-speed (faster than DDR3-1600) RAM, then Z77 is your only choice (regardless of whether SB or IB) as Z77 makes better use of higher freqs than Z68.

If you need PCI-bus support, then your choice in Z77 is limited to mainstream or lower-end boards (for the simple reason that Z77 does not support the PCI bus natively, and higher-end Z77 boards often have no PCI slots at all - a trend we saw with some Z68-based mobos as well).

Z77 Premium - Fortunately, what premium there is for Z77 isn't as high as expected (at least at MicroCenter), and there is actually considerable overlap between the two chipsets in terms of price. Rather amusingly, they are still cheaper than their P67 competition.

Due to my non-need for tall overclocks (and decided need for PCI slots - my current sound card and TV tuner are both PCI, and both supported by Windows 8 Consumer Preview, which I run as sole OS), it knocked most higher-end Z68 motherboards from consideration (and does the same to their Z77 counterparts/replacements). The Z77 portion of the finals is once again down to ASUS and BIOSTAR.

ASUS - P8Z77 V-LX (replacing P8Z68 V-LX)
BIOSTAR - TZ77A (replacing TZ68A+RCH)

BIOSTAR's TZ77A (like the TZ68A+RCH) makes a compelling case for itself by having a lot of the same features as the ASUS counterparts for a lower price (in fact, after the $20 MIR, the TZ77A costs less than even the P8Z68 V-LX); amusingly, the biggest one is that it uses straight ATX power of the 24/4 sort (like the TZ68A+RCH) - EPS isn't even an option.

Neither supports DisplayPort (a non-issue, as my Acer H233H.bmid doesn't, either); however, both support D-sub/DVI/HDMI 1.4a (very nice for an upgrade for PCs with onboard/integrated graphics, such as desktops with G4x/G3x chipsets).

However, I don't recommend any hardware (or software) I won't use myself, so I'm looking hard at buying the TZ77A for myself first (for i5-2500k - not i5-3570k; especially if the heat issues are true).
 
^^ the Asus P8Z77-V Pro has Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H both have PCI slots, I'd consider them higher on the mid-range scale (one step below the Sabertooth/Deluxe/WS models for Asus). I need a PCI slot for my soundcard as well, decided I'm going with V Pro or UD5H.
 
PGHammer said:
If you insist on higher-speed (faster than DDR3-1600) RAM, then Z77 is your only choice (regardless of whether SB or IB) as Z77 makes better use of higher freqs than Z68.
Click to expand...

I'm quite curious to see a comparison of Z77 memory speed/latency scaling compared to Z68, but I can't find any reviews on the newer chipset. Do you know of any?

I've got a hunch that Maho Bay will be similarly miniscule at best, just like with Sugar bay given the already crazy efficient memory controller performance of the platform.
 
I'm running x79 w/quad channel memory. If I were to fire up several VM's, I'd imagine I'd realize a significant performance jump vs. dual or triple channel.
 
grambo said:
^^ the Asus P8Z77-V Pro has Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H both have PCI slots, I'd consider them higher on the mid-range scale (one step below the Sabertooth/Deluxe/WS models for Asus). I need a PCI slot for my soundcard as well, decided I'm going with V Pro or UD5H.
Click to expand...

CF support is an option (not a must-have) and I'd go without it if it were possible - however, that's a non-starter with either Z68 or Z77 in ATX. Anything above the V-LX (ASUS) or TZ-A (BIOSTAR) are thus overkill (too many features I can't or won't use).

4 GHz (with Turbo) is plenty of power (and far more than I have today), even with as much as 16 GB (4GB x4 of 9-9-9-24 CL9 MicroCenter/Crucial DDR3-1333), hence I can still go with basic air-cooling or CL water-cooling - putting the savings into a better GPU.
 
Right now Asrock Z77 Extreme4 is at the top of my list. Was going to go with Asus, but if you look at all the features, the Extreme4 has nearly everything for $135! Its cheaper than even the LX. It has features 3 boards up almost on parity with the Asus z77 Vanilla. Asrock even has the better ALC898 onboard sound found only on the Asus Deluxe up. Only thing is NIC on Asrock is Broadcom, which should at least be better than Realteks found on the Asus LE and below. The Asus Vanilla has Intel NIC which everyone drools over. I have a nice Tomato Asus router which does all the QoS so i should be ok without a fancy NIC. If you want all out the Gigabyte Sniper 3 looks to be the one to beat, its got KILLER NIC and Creative sound.

Asus mobo heirchy is LX, LK, LE, Vanilla, Pro, Sabertooth, Deluxe, WS, Premium, Formula
Price is basically starting at $140 and add 20% every step up.

As for memory I got a pair of Crucial 4x2 Kits for like $63 (16GB) when NE had the 15% sale. They are 1600 rated at 1.35v and has the nice D9PFJ micron chips. They are now back up to $50 for 8GB and still sold out! Should be able to hit 7-7-7-21 1T 1.5V though 2133 usually needs 1.65v on these chips. I'm not worried much as CPU clocks matter, ram does like 1% in gaming, so don't sweat the ram if you only care about FPS. Probably can't go wrong with Samsung, the price is really nice on those too.
 
MSI Z77A-GD65


I have good experience with MSI Z68A-GD65 and I would not hesitate to get the MSI Z77A-GD65.


Gskill for the ram is a safe pick for dependable high quality fast ram. The Samsung 30nm low profile/ low voltage sticks that every one raves about are nice sticks as well.
 
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