19 replies to this topic

[1Sascha]

I've been out of the hardware-loop for a bit, so I'm not quite sure what to get. I just did a quick virtual shopping spree on the web, and here's what I've come up with. Like I said: I'm not really up to current trends/must-haves, so I'm totally open to suggestions.

I'll start with the things I want to keep from my old system.

GPU:
Gigabyte GTX 460, 1GB DDR5 (for now .. will have to upgrade this sometime later)

CPU heatsink:
Alpenföhn "Brocken". Huge lump of metal with huge fan attached, according to its manual, it should fit i5/7 CPUs and boards.

PSU:
bequiet! Dark Power Pro P7 650W

Here's where I'm getting uncertain. I had to upgrade to this PSU about 2 years ago when the old one went "ping" on me. It was pretty expensive (over €100 IIRC), so I'm hoping I can re-use it. Problem is: I don't know if its connections are still up to snuff with more modern equipment. Here's what it has (from the manual):

4x fan
1x P8
1x EPS 6 pin
1x P4
2x PCIe
4x Molex/SATA

Mass storage:
Samsung HD 103SJ (fairly new, 1TB)
WDC WD5000 (500 GB, oooold drive, but still ok)
Case: CoolerMaster Centurion 534 (midi-tower) with front, side and back fans


And here's the stuff I was thinking of buying:

CPU:
Intel Core i5 4670K Cost: €225 (or should I take the i7 4770s for €280?)


MoBo:
Asus Gryphon Z87 (been using Asus boards for ages now and they never let me down) Cost: €140

RAM:
2x4GB of Corsair - CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 (is 1600 DDR3 the way to go here?) Cost: €94

SSD:
Samsung - SSD 840 Pro, 256 GB (is this big enough as an OS-drive? Not sure if this is the desktop- or laptop-version, was listed under SSD S-ATA III 600) Cost: €225

OS:
Win7/8 64 Home Premium: Cost: ~€80-100
I have Win 8 on my laptop and I don't care much for it and its lack of a true desktop out of the box. Should I stick with Win 7 Home? No idea ...

Might also upgrade my DVD-Burner to a BD/DVDR-combo-one, but I'm not sure about that since I don't even own a BD-player.. Cost: ~€60


Thoughts? Suggestions? Did I miss anything?


Thanks for your input!


S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 05 August 2013 - 03:08 AM.

[Fuerchtegott]

In 2013 have you ever even touched a DvD? I mean you play a onlinegame.

btw, it may be a bit nooblike, but decent orientationcould be the (i will go to hell for this) gamestar.de pc einkaufsführer.
At least better than tipps in a forum in most cases.

[1Sascha]

Gamestar? Nee lass mal.. wenn schon dann PCGH.. in dem Laden hab ich mal gearbeitet, und kenne wenigstens noch einige der Leute, die die Artikel schreiben ...

Oder besser gleich Hartware.net.

Wurscht.. ich hol mir halt gerne Inspiration in Foren. Und da ich derzeit außerdem (wie erwähnt) nicht wirklich auf dem Laufenden bin, hätte ich gerne jemanden, der mir meine Konfig auf eventuelle Fehler checkt.



S.

[Fuerchtegott]

Für's aktuelle MWO wird's locker reichen.
Und die 650W der PSU ebenso, der I5 zieht ja nicht viel.
Und entsprechend, wie Du vermutest, DDR3 1600
Die SSD ist mehr als großzügig nur für ein Win 7.
Da kannst locker 200 gig für progs und games abzwacken.
Wobei mehr Ram vermutlich nicht schadet, ne SSD mag ja
flink sein, aber ein RAM-Drive, das ist schnell.
Das wäre so meine wirkliche highperformance suggestion.
Ein rsync nachm boot ins ramdrive und was immer schnell sein soll wird schnell sein.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

Your PSU is fine so long as you stick to a 1 GPU setup.

Also, I'd recommend you take the money you were going to spend on the SSD and upgrade your GPU instead. You can easily afford a GTX 660Ti or GTX760.

[Bloodshed Romance]

a 60GB SSD is fine for a "boot" drive..
I would suggest going for a bigger GPU now rather than wait.. the SSD is nice but better graphics is worth waiting a few seconds for.. as long as your using a 7200RPM drive..

[MrPils]

What cpu and memory do you currently have? If its anything quad core or better then forget upgrading the cpu and board and spend the money on upgrading your graphics instead, you'll get much more benefit from that. All you need for 50+ fps in mwo at max detail/1080p is a quad core cpu, 4gb ram and a decent graphics card. The older AMD (Athlon) quads may be borderline for an upgrade, but that GTX460 is most likely your weakest link. Shame as the GTX470 will do around 50fps (and pretty solid too) on an old Q6600 with the only reduction from max detail being medium shadows and PostAA disabled...the 460 just doesn't quite have the power needed (mostly 40fps+, but down to 15 or so in fierce battles and near random pieces of terrain).

[1Sascha]

Quote

What cpu and memory do you currently have? I

I've put this thing together around... errr... 2009/10 I believe. The GFX-card already is an upgrade.. used to have a 295 (IIRC, that power-hungry thing with the huuuge "vacuum-cleaner" cooler on it).

Current setup:
Asus P5Q-E
Core2Quad 9300 (2.5 GHz --> 2.74 GHz, Socket 775, Yorkfield)
2x 2GB OCZ PC26400 DDR2
Gigabyte GTX460 (1 GB DDR5, came mildly OCed to 715 MHz as stock)
2x regular SATA drives, 1.5 TB altogether
Vista Home Premium 64 <- another reason why I want to upgrade. I *do* wanna get rid of Vista, and if I'm gonna go through the hassle of re-installing/upgrading to a new OS, I might as well do it on a brand new system..

I just called bequiet's tech-support and they said that even though my generation of PSU is not on their "Haswell-ready list" (current generation is P10, mine's P7 and everything from P8 up *is* Haswell-ready ), all I'd need to do to keep using it was to disable that new ultra-low power consumption thing in the BIOS. *shrug*

Having read up on the Haswell-line, I *might* also consider going for the "older" 1155-option. Seems that ATM the differences in performance are not *that* huge between the two different sockets.. arrgh.. this is getting more complicated by the minute..

S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 06 August 2013 - 12:02 AM.

[F lan Ker]

S!

I am using a 80Gb SSD as my boot/OS drive and has been more than enough. I have a separate SSD for my games and stuff so I do not lose them if I have to re-install Windows or something. Winfows 7 64-bit is the way to go at the moment, not a single complaint on that. Also far and beyond the Vista fiasco, so much faster and better. I did not like Win8 either even it was fast and light. But games do not work 100% on it, especially if having older games you like to play.

Intel's 1155 socket is not bad and you can get those CPU's for a bargain now when all tech nerds race to buy the Haswell Yet to see any of the "old" 1155 sockets struggling in games. Go figure. You save money for something else by getting the older socket and a good mobo for it

Your PSU should be able to handle it as new Intels consume so little power and SSDs next to nothing. Your GPU is not a hog either. As reference I am using a 650W Corsair TX on my rig with FX8350, 7970HD etc. just fine and sure draws more power than any Intel rig I wonder what tech mumbojumbo they are feeding on the PSU to you. IT does not care if you use an Intel or AMD of any mark. Just needs to have the connectors for the Mobo and that's it My opinion of course.

See ya in the battlefield

[1Sascha]

Quote

I wonder what tech mumbojumbo they are feeding on the PSU to you.

It's supposed to be some kind of new function of the Haswell to minimize power consumption at idle to almost zero. From what I've read it needs to be supported by the PSU in order to work. If the PSU doesn't support that function/power mode, you have to disable the power saving mode in your BIOS.

Quote

[color=#FFFFFF]PRESS | be quiet! power supplies are Haswell ready[/color]

be quiet!, market leader for power supplies in Germany for seven years in a row, confirms that all of it's current PSU models do support Intel's fourth generation of Core processors (Codename Haswell).
Intels upcoming Haswell CPUs impose stricter requirements on the power supply regarding energy saving features. To lower the power consumption of current computers even more, the new processors feature new sleep states called C6 and C7. In these states, the processor is nearly shut off completely, bringing down the power consumption near to zero.
It depends on your power supply if you can use this new deep sleep state . It must run under very low loads below 0.05 Amps. All current be quiet! power supply series, starting with the entry-level Pure Power L8 up to the high-end Dark Power Pro 10, are able to deliver smoothly the above mentioned low loads. The overview below shows which current and older be quiet! PSU series are Haswell ready:

Edited by 1Sascha, 06 August 2013 - 02:53 AM.

[Byzan]

if I were you I would just upgrade to windows 8 and get a new Graphics card, something like a GTX760 or an older GTX670 (great card)

In terms of gaming the rest of your kit is fine. Quad Core and high end DDR2, 4GB is enough unless you multitask a lot. I have 32GB ram in my notebook and most of the time I wouldn't be using more than 4GB of it. Win8 will probably be better on HDD and RAM footprint than Vista is. Vista is the worst OS ever. Maybe pickup some more DDR2 if you can. Easy upgrade if your MB has 4 DIMM slots.

[v4skunk]

1Sascha, on 05 August 2013 - 02:48 AM, said:

I've been out of the hardware-loop for a bit, so I'm not quite sure what to get. I just did a quick virtual shopping spree on the web, and here's what I've come up with. Like I said: I'm not really up to current trends/must-haves, so I'm totally open to suggestions.

I'll start with the things I want to keep from my old system.

GPU:
Gigabyte GTX 460, 1GB DDR5 (for now .. will have to upgrade this sometime later)

CPU heatsink:
Alpenföhn "Brocken". Huge lump of metal with huge fan attached, according to its manual, it should fit i5/7 CPUs and boards.

PSU:
bequiet! Dark Power Pro P7 650W

Here's where I'm getting uncertain. I had to upgrade to this PSU about 2 years ago when the old one went "ping" on me. It was pretty expensive (over €100 IIRC), so I'm hoping I can re-use it. Problem is: I don't know if its connections are still up to snuff with more modern equipment. Here's what it has (from the manual):

4x fan
1x P8
1x EPS 6 pin
1x P4
2x PCIe
4x Molex/SATA

Mass storage:
Samsung HD 103SJ (fairly new, 1TB)
WDC WD5000 (500 GB, oooold drive, but still ok)
Case: CoolerMaster Centurion 534 (midi-tower) with front, side and back fans


And here's the stuff I was thinking of buying:

CPU:
Intel Core i5 4670K Cost: €225 (or should I take the i7 4770s for €280?)


MoBo:
Asus Gryphon Z87 (been using Asus boards for ages now and they never let me down) Cost: €140

RAM:
2x4GB of Corsair - CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 (is 1600 DDR3 the way to go here?) Cost: €94

SSD:
Samsung - SSD 840 Pro, 256 GB (is this big enough as an OS-drive? Not sure if this is the desktop- or laptop-version, was listed under SSD S-ATA III 600) Cost: €225

OS:
Win7/8 64 Home Premium: Cost: ~€80-100
I have Win 8 on my laptop and I don't care much for it and its lack of a true desktop out of the box. Should I stick with Win 7 Home? No idea ...

Might also upgrade my DVD-Burner to a BD/DVDR-combo-one, but I'm not sure about that since I don't even own a BD-player.. Cost: ~€60


Thoughts? Suggestions? Did I miss anything?


Thanks for your input!


S.

Stick with Windows7 and get the I7 CPU to future proof your system.
When the next gen consoles arrive many more games will start to use more than 4 threads(cores).....I7 has hyper threading so it will see a big jump in performance over I5 CPU.

[1Sascha]

Thanks for that "sales-pitch" on TS last night, Flanker.. much appreciated..

Ok.. here's what I've settled with. I figure I will go Haswell, since I don't want to go ultra-highend and nothing but that would make sense if I bought an 1155-system. What are the odds I'll be able to find a 1155 CPU out there if I intend to upgrade in 2 years or so?

And like I said: I usually never spend crazy money on my systems, but try to hit the sweet spot in the lower to mid high-end range. Hence I'm ignoring the €300+ i7-CPUs.

Anyway, here's my list:





I also decided to ditch the idea of re-using my video-card. Wanted to go with a GTX660, but this store offers a GTX660 ti for almost €30 less than all the other stores I've checked. If it's a typo, no biggie andI'll take the Gigabyte 660 OC (non-ti) for €170... or decide to spend more €€€s on the spot and take something bigger.. we'll see..


Thoughts?

S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 07 August 2013 - 05:41 AM.

[MrPils]

The Q9300 isn't a great cpu unfortunately...even with that said its enough for mwo. Seriously just pick yourself up a new graphics card, that's all you need. Even a dual core Intel G640 can hit 40fps steady with an AMD 7970 (my mate played on my mining pc when he came round), you seriously don't need an uber cpu. I would be tempted to pick up a nice new graphics card (Nvidia GTX760 or AMD 7950/7970) and try it. If you're not happy with it after that then look into upgrading the cpu/motherboard/memory as well. No sense in dropping literally hundreds when you probably wont get any noticeable gain (anything above 60fps is pretty much wasted anyway).

[1Sascha]

Pils, I appreciate what you're saying, but:

This is an aging system that needs an upgrade/replacing anyway. The last update I did on it was the GTX460, back in 2010/early 2011. And even back then the PC wasn't really cutting edge anymore.

I've tried finding DDR2-RAM that matches the RAM in my rig. Even if you can find them these days, they're ludicrously expensive when compared to DDR3. And why would I want to spend money on age-old components that I won't even be able to use once I *do* upgrade? That's like putting a €2000 GPS/HiFi into a 20 year old POS car that'll prolly rust out from under you within the next year.

Plus: I really want to get rid of Vista, and I don't intend of going through the hassle of installing a new OS on an old PC. Gotta be worth it.
Plus: I don't really think that dumping a state-of-the-art GPU in that old thing will do much good. I'm guessing that the CPU will be the bottleneck then and the GPU will just sit there waiting for the CPU to catch up.

Oh, and yes: MWONL isn't the only game I play, nor will it be the only game I play in the future.. and I'm not looking for Über-FPS-numbers or anything. As it is now after the patch, the game has become almost unplayable for me, even on med/high settings. I don't care if my games run at 50, 60 or 70 FPS.. I just want them to run smoothly and consistently.


S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 07 August 2013 - 08:06 AM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

When your on a tight budget of 700 Euros, that SSD should be the last thing on your mind, as well as that motherboard, there are less expensive options see the Gigabyte boards or Asrock.

The savings will beef up your GPU into the 670/7950 range 7970 if you can find a good sale.

Add the SSD later on.

[1Sascha]

Ok.. it is done. Order placed and payed for.

After a lenghty and pretty productive discussion with the excellent customer-hotline of the shop I chose (caseking.de), and considering some of the suggestions from this thread, I finally decided on this:



Decided to downgrade the MoBo a bit, but I stuck with Asus (call it blind brand loyalty ).
I also decided against the 660 ti, since all the comparisons I could find suggested that it's not worth the extra cash over the standard 660.

And I decided to buy a fresh 1TB drive to do a clean OS-install in conjunction with the SSD. After that, I'll just install and hook up my two old SATA HDDs to get access to my old files. That'll give me 2.5 TB plus 120 GB on the SSD - which should be plently of space for now.

And yes.. the tech guy on the phone convinced me of going with Win 8. Since the price is the same, I figured he was honest when he gave me his personal opinion of going with the newer OS. Plus when I found out that my favourite game-oldie supposedly still runs under Win8 (Jagged Alliance 2), I was sold.

Order should arrive on saturday (I hope), so I'll post some kind of "post-assembly-AAR" with benchmark results and MWONL-FPS-numbers over the weekend, if anyone is interested.




S.


P.S.: A lot of my old stuff (CPU, Mobo, RAM, GFX-card and a practically never used Scythe Shuriken B CPU-cooler) is going to get sold, so if anyone needs any of this stuff, just let me know before I put it up on ebay.

S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 08 August 2013 - 02:38 AM.

[MrPils]

I'm sure you'll be very happy with it, and I can wholeheartedly understand wanting a new computer just because the old one is old. "Because I want a new one" is always the best reason to get something!

[1Sascha]

Quote

"Because I want a new one" is always the best reason to get something!

Gotta admit that that was part of the decision-making process as well...

Plus I just love putting together a PC. At least the hardware-part of it.
That's why I also decided to go with a Corsair H55 water-cooler, when I found out today (after placing the order, argh!) that my current Alpenföhn is compatible with i5/i7 processors, but sadly not with 1155/1150 boards. Or rather the revision I have of it doesn't include the mounting brackets required to fit it on a 1150/55.

Hmm.. maybe I'll just ask a local HW-dealer if they sell the mounting parts required for the 115x before I dish out another €50 for a cooler..



S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 08 August 2013 - 01:49 PM.

[1Sascha]

Just a quick heads-up with a warning for Germans/Euro-guys (plus I really need to get this off my chest ): If you're going to mail-order, whatever you do, don't select GLS as the carrier.

Placed my order around noon on thursday, vendor managed to process and get it out the door by 7:00 pm the same day (as promised). Silly me picked the GLS-option instead of DHL ("hey, it's €1 more, so it must be quicker/better").
In theory, that should've meant I would've gotten the package the next working day (friday). I live in central Munich and the vendor is in Berlin. So we're not talking about poor coverage due to rural areas here.

Sure enough, the tracking-thing showed the package's status as "data transmitted from client, package not yet picked up/received" shortly after 7:00 pm. And that status hasn't changed as I'm writing this (sunday morning).

Then I did some googling on GLS (yup, should've done this before ordering) and found a *ton* of negative customer reviews. Packages running for more than a week within Germany, delivery guys not bothering to actually ring the doorbell, but automatically dropping a notification into the mailbox. Some of the stuff was downright criminal, with a customer expecting a new cell phone and when he opened his package he found a *stone* in there. To top it all off, I found a comparison-review by German PC-mag "ComputerBild" where they tested four or five different carriers. DHL won, GLS came dead last.

Anyway: Called their (non-free) support line friday around noon, to find out why the status wasn't updated - the vendor had told me that the package had left their office already.. so where *was* the package? A pretty unfriendly lady told me "oh yeah.. that thing won't arrive before monday". When I asked if they didn't deliver on saturdays (which DHL for example does), I got a slightly irritated laugh from her followed by "(oh, please) .. nobody around here works on *saturdays*".

Ok.. rant-mode off... sorry bout that.


S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 11 August 2013 - 12:35 AM.