Some new build questions

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davet

n00b
Joined
Mar 13, 2012
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This is what I currently have:

LIAN LI Lancool PC-K7B
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR2 1066
XFX GTX 260 OC
WD SE16 7200 RPM SATA 640 GB
Samsung 1 TB Spinpoint 7200 RPM 32MB Cache (have two of them)
SAMSUNG 22X SATA DVD Burner
CORSAIR 750TX PSU
Win7x64
Samsung 20 inch LCD 1680x1050

I am looking to build something new, and understand ivy is coming around the corner, and technically I can wait, but not sure I want to, I mean I am sure there will be issues in the early adopters.

All i do is game with my PC.

I think my corsair 750tx psu can handle everything and don't have to replace it right? Will keep my case, and the 3 drives and maybe add an SSD drive.

I am looking at the i5 2500k is that right? Seems to be the most popular chip for the bang.

I am not big into overclocking. I have been out of the hardware scene for so long, not sure what to go with anymore.

My budget is about $1500 total and thinking of getting a new LCD that has native resolution 1980x1200 or 1920x1080 , maybe 23-25 inch?

Anyone have any recommendations?

Should I look at something over then 2500k?

Thanks
 
personally i'd say wait for ivy bridge, but not to buy it. when ivy bridge hits you'll more then likely see a lot of e-tailers/retailers try to offload what lga-1155 chips which means you can usually find some good deals.

if you aren't into overclocking then just get the standard i5 2500. if you do want to overclock then the 2500k is simple as heck to overclock. all it requires is a voltage bump and increasing the cpu multiplier. takes about a minute in the bios to do.

as far as the psu goes, yeah it should be fine unless you want to SLI 2 GTX 580's or 7970's then you might want to go a little higher but for everything else it will be more then enough. 1920x1080 displays are insanely cheaper then 1920x1200(annoying as hell since i want another 1920x1200 display to go with my current one).
 
Even with two 580s or 7970s, on an SB system, the 750TX will be more than adequate.

Do you have a microcenter nearby?

IB isn't really new, it's more of a refresh of SB. So I don't think you have to worry about early adopter problems here. If you really want to stay on the safe side, you can get an IB CPU with a Z68 board.
 
Yeah I'd say a TX750 is plenty. 2500k is a great choice, just change the multi to like 44, should do 4.4ghz without even touching anything else, plus more if you want. As far as video cards, you may want to wait until kepler is out or just go with a 7970. One will be plenty for a single 1920 screen.
 
If you have a microcenter near you I would def go with their 2500k combo deal where you get 50 off a motherboard. As for a new monitor you have some awesome choices in the displays forum and you can get into super high resolution for cheap right now (http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1675393). While you could wait for Ivy I ended up just jumping on a 2600k deal from microcenter because intel hasn't releases anything on when Ivy will come out, so I got impatient, that and intel chips don't normally go down in price until the end of their production run. As for the Video Card I would wait simply because nVidias Kepler will drive down prices and that "should" be released somewhat soon.
 
personally i'd say a 7870/gtx 570 or what ever kepler card is comparable to those two is more then enough for 1920x1200/1080p 7970 is a bit overkill for that resolution. though i'd lean more toward the 7870 just because its low power usage or see what kepler card is comparable and its power usage. but you could also get away with older cards like the 6870 or GTX 560TI. heck i'm still sporting 2 8800GT's at 1920x1200 and the only game i've found they couldn't play is BF3. :D
 
2500k is nice if you don't want to wait, but I would wait for IB since it is coming next couple month.
It should be able to fit within your price range.
 
I always answer peoples questions with what *I would personally do* with that setup. YMMV.

So here it goes, If I had your budget and current system that is perfect for the following:

27" LED 2560x1440 res from Korea $400
2500K (wait for a good used one on the FS forums, they go for like $190-200)
Hyper 212 ($25) (easy 4.5Ghz on air)
Asus P8P67 Pro $75 geeks.com refurb (great boards, love mine)
Gskill or Corsair 2x4GB DDR3 1600 ($40)
120GB SSD (bought a Sata2 for $90 recently AR, S3s get closet to $1/GB on sale)
Radeon 7870 - $550

Then use your old parts for the rest of it. Should run around $1400 but that system will blow a Core2Duo age system completely out of the water. BF3 Ultra @ 2560 on that build would be amazing.

As a gamer, I'm hard pressed to think IB is really going to matter that much, SB is soo fast already when OC'd, I don't think the value will be there except for those wanting that extra couple percent. And all the PCI 3.0 mumbo jumbo, sheesh has anyone seen the benchmarks? PCI 2 running at 4X is enough bandwidth for most cards... and is exactly what I run each GPU at on my rig (5970x2 on 8x8 means each GPU is running @ 4x). So for a single card rig, having a 16x slot is more than sufficient with the latest cards. And don't get me started on P67 vs Z68, simply use P67 with SB, no real benefit to Z68 IMNSHO.

What matters, as a gamer, is a sufficient CPU and a good GPU. You really can't beat a 7970 at this point. 2048 stream processing units? WIN! Or go Nvidia, but I only kept my GTX 590 for a day...
 
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