Your Chance to Decide System Specs!

[CustomModAddict]

Alright HardForum members, here is your chance to voice your feedback on a build....

System is for my 14 year old son, who want a gaming rig, like the one I modded for myself a few years back. And since he lives 1000 miles away, maintenance and ease of operation is important. Also I want something that will last a few years, before I need to upgrade anything. I am water cooling and doing a pretty intense detailed mod from the case to water cooling look. I intend to pay attention to fine detail, no visible wiring, etc.

So here is what I was originally gonna go with:

Intel i7 930
Asus P6X58D premium mother board
EVGA GTX 470
6GB DDR3 Ram
Corsair HX 850W PS
(2) 1TB 7200 RPM HDD

Now in another catagory, where I was asking about data storage, it was brought up by a member about using the following instead:

dropping the i7 930 and using a i5760 savings? + $80.00
Dropping the GTX 470 and installing (2) GTX 460 SLI savings? + $10.00
Motherboard switch to 1156 socket savings? + $210.00
bumping up ram to 8gb? -$65.00

Total savings ? $235.00

Now is this system going to get him through 2-3 years?

How much performance difference is the CPU's?

Is the SLI better for gaming over a single card?

IS the performance difference in those two settings worth the $235.00 difference?


Would like suggestions, advice, feedback?

Thanks !

 

[Dangman]

- Yes.
- The Core i7 930 only provides about a 2 to 5FPS difference as shown in this review:
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/gaming_the_core_debate,1.html

Additional proof: The $1040 Core i7 975 Extreme Edition CPU is only 15% to 30% faster with only a specific set of games and video cards:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpus-and-games-2010.html

So considering the the i7 975 is faster than the i7 930 and yet only provides 15% to 30% under ideal conditions, the Core i7 930 is definitely not gonna be that much faster than the i5 750.

- Yea the GTX 460 1GB SLI will outperform a single GTX 470.
- That Core i7 setup is not worth $235.

What socket LGA 1156 motherboard were you looking at?

 

[CustomModAddict]

-

What socket LGA 1156 motherboard were you looking at?

Thats a good question Danny!

I am looking at the motherboards, and it seems with the 1156 boards, there just might be some pci slot issues with the 1156 chip. But I havent gone through them all yet. But they done seem to have PCI x16 for both GPU's. they all seem to be x16 and x8?

How about these:

MSI P55A Fuzion LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

ASUS P7P55D-E Deluxe LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Any recommendations, what should I be looking at. I know its stupid but prefer a blue colored or black mobo, goes with the design. Stupid I know.

Still looking

EDIT: and I am assuming the 1156 boards dont support 3 channel memory??? hmmm. makes you wonder?

 

[Dangman]

I am looking at the motherboards, and it seems with the 1156 boards, there just might be some pci slot issues with the 1156 chip. But I havent gone through them all yet. But they done seem to have PCI x16 for both GPU's. they all seem to be x16 and x8?

Don't worry about the PCI-E x16 and x8 thing: It doesn't matter. Even with the GTX 480 in a PCI-E x4 config, there was barely any difference between PCI-E x4 and PCi-E x16.

MSI P55A Fuzion LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

ASUS P7P55D-E Deluxe LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Any recommendations, what should I be looking at. I know its stupid but prefer a blue colored or black mobo, goes with the design. Stupid I know.

I recommend this mobo instead:
$140 - Asus P7P55D Pro Intel P55 ATX Motherboard

I highly doubt that there is any features or quality differences on that Asus Deluxe mobo to justify the extra $90. With that said, between the two mobos you selected, I'd go with the Asus.

EDIT: and I am assuming the 1156 boards dont support 3 channel memory??? hmmm. makes you wonder?

You're correct in that 1156 motherboards do not support Triple channel. However they still have support for three sticks of RAM with something called Flex Channel. Basically it operates the first two sticks as dual channel and then the last as a single combining the two. You can use a triple channel RAM set in a LGA 1156 motherboard just fine. It'll just run in Flex mode.

 

[E4g1e]

Don't worry about the PCI-E x16 and x8 thing: It doesn't matter. Even with the GTX 480 in a PCI-E x4 config, there was barely any difference between PCI-E x4 and PCi-E x16.

Actually, some P55 motherboards that have two PCI-e x16-length slots run that second slot off of the P55's PCH, which artificially restricts the PCI-e 2.0 bus to PCI-e 1.0 spec. Thus, the second card effectively runs at only x2 bandwidth, not x4.

And the Asus motherboard that you recommend runs in x8/x8 mode with two graphics cards installed.