Opinion on a Rig upgrade

[Abs0lutZero]

So in roughly a month or so I'm planning on buying a few new parts to upgrade my existing system,

I've done my homework on this but having been out of the scene,[same old gaming rig for about four years] some opinions would be welcome.

Setup I have planned is as follows:

Mobo:ASRock Z77 Extreme4 R1547
CPU:I5 3570K R2311
RAM:G.SKill F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL R551
GPU:EVGA GTX660 Ti 2Gb(02G-P4-3660-KR) R3399

As you can see my budget is around 7800 Rand and the rig is intended for Gaming and virtualization on the side but that's not important for now.

 

[avid-dreamer]

You have a good idea of what you want and i know the Asrock is about the best value for money board regarding features it offers as compared to competitor boards in the same price range, however consumer support for these boards should be limited as Asrock is not quite established in SA when compared to the likes of Gigabyte, MSI, Asus etc. So if I were you I'd look around for a more established brand of mobo especially if you plan on making this machine a long term investment, Gskill memory? I'd go for corsair vengeance and as for the 660ti well that 192bit memory bus is abit scary if you're a enthusiast gamer especially if this machine is a long term investment for you future games mite not sit too well with a 192 bit bus. So you could get all the other components and rough it out with intergrated graphics until u can save up alil more to get a gtx670 or a radeon 7950 is not a bad option either with regards to future proofing ur rig given the fact it has 3gb memory and a healthy 384bit memory bus . Well that's my 2 cents , all the luck on the build buddy.

 

[Macethy]

You have a good idea of what you want and i know the Asrock is about the best value for money board regarding features it offers as compared to competitor boards in the same price range, however consumer support for these boards should be limited as Asrock is not quite established in SA when compared to the likes of Gigabyte, MSI, Asus etc. So if I were you I'd look around for a more established brand of mobo especially if you plan on making this machine a long term investment, Gskill memory? I'd go for corsair vengeance and as for the 660ti well that 192bit memory bus is abit scary if you're a enthusiast gamer especially if this machine is a long term investment for you future games mite not sit too well with a 192 bit bus. So you could get all the other components and rough it out with intergrated graphics until u can save up alil more to get a gtx670 or a radeon 7950 is not a bad option either with regards to future proofing ur rig given the fact it has 3gb memory and a healthy 384bit memory bus . Well that's my 2 cents , all the luck on the build buddy.

Some good advice there but the performance benchmarks between the 660 and 670 aren't that major, if he has to buy all components in one go, then the 660 is well worth it. although if i could make a recommendation, is try get a Gigabyte or Asus version of the graphics card, they are usually clocked higher and perform better overall.

Well that's my 2 cents worth anyways

 

[Macethy]

Some good advice there but the performance benchmarks between the 660 and 670 aren't that major, if he has to buy all components in one go, then the 660 is well worth it. although if i could make a recommendation, is try get a Gigabyte or Asus version of the graphics card, they are usually clocked higher and perform better overall.

Well that's my 2 cents worth anyways

Oh and the Gigabyte cards come with a free copy of Borderlands 2

 

[avid-dreamer]

I agree with that , the benchmarks are pretty close I've looked at almost every benchmark regarding the 660ti and the 670, because im looking for a card for my rig aswell evrything is built i just need to slap in a gpu infact i started building from july collecting evry cent to go to my rig part by part so i do understand the money factor regarding the price difference between the two cards . However please bare in mind the gk104 gpu chips found in the 680 and 670 are factory binned meaning they are spefically selected according to their optimal performance specs, the chips used in the 660ti are the underperforming gk104 chips that were put aside in the binning process so instead of the underperforming chips going to waste nvidia has put them in the 660 ti , so evrything mite be all hunky dory for now but remember these cards true potential will only be realised in future game releases as developers are stepping up the eye candy by epic proportions for the future so the 660 is abit touch and go according to me and by the way in certain games the 670 pulls away from the 660 just look for the linus or ncix tech tips video on the 660 ti power edition it performs well no doubt but u can see the 670 pull away

 

[Pada]

What kind of virtualization are you going to do?

For running virtual machines I'd recommend upgrading the RAM to 16GB and getting the i7 3770k, but that would increase the overall price by like R1500!

Lastly, you're missing a couple of critical and potentially expensive components:
1) HDD,
2) Case
3) PSU
4) Operating System

 

[avid-dreamer]

What kind of virtualization are you going to do?

For running virtual machines I'd recommend upgrading the RAM to 16GB and getting the i7 3770k, but that would increase the overall price by like R1500!

Lastly, you're missing a couple of critical and potentially expensive components:
1) HDD,
2) Case
3) PSU
4) Operating System

Lets not scare the oke he did say virtualization on the side so thats not a priority at the moment for the OP. If its not too heavy I'm sure he can get away with the I5. But I have to agree the cost factors in proportion to your needs can be a pain sometimes, I had a 7k budget for my rig , ended up spending 10k without a gpu yet.

 

[Pada]

+1 to what you said there avid-dreamer.

If you just want to run like 1 VM that is basically going to idle, then an i5 with 8GB of RAM should suffice.

I recently had to upgrade my RAM from 12GB to 16GB since I ran out of RAM when running multiple VM's.
I would still love to benchmark our new server with 2x Intel Xeon 8 Core CPU's (with hyperthreading = 32 CPU threads) and 64GB of RAM

 

[Macethy]

What kind of virtualization are you going to do?

For running virtual machines I'd recommend upgrading the RAM to 16GB and getting the i7 3770k, but that would increase the overall price by like R1500!

Lastly, you're missing a couple of critical and potentially expensive components:
1) HDD,
2) Case
3) PSU
4) Operating System

He can get away with keeping the HDD, Operating system and possible the case, but upgrading the PSU to about atleast 600W would be a must if he has anything lower.

 

[Abs0lutZero]

Thanks for the input so far guys, I reconsidered going for the 670 or 7950. Something about those 384bit and 3gb memory tags as got a hold of me.

What kind of virtualization are you going to do?

For running virtual machines I'd recommend upgrading the RAM to 16GB and getting the i7 3770k, but that would increase the overall price by like R1500!

Lastly, you're missing a couple of critical and potentially expensive components:
1) HDD,
2) Case
3) PSU
4) Operating System

I have the rest of the components already, got a pretty decent CoolerMaster 650Watt PSU and also a CM Gladiator 600.

The case might not seem like much but I prefer plain simple style over green and red monsters

The virtualization I'd be doing is for my classes, I'm doing my SQL and SharePoint specialization right now, so no extreme requirements there.

Oh jeah and one more thing, I've been scratching my head over what RAM brand to choose. My friend swears on G.Skill and others are faithful to Corsair and then some are with Kingston Hyper-X series..how would I find the most suitable brand for me?

 

[avid-dreamer]

Thanks for the input so far guys, I reconsidered going for the 670 or 7950. Something about those 384bit and 3gb memory tags as got a hold of me.



I have the rest of the components already, got a pretty decent CoolerMaster 650Watt PSU and also a CM Gladiator 600.

The case might not seem like much but I prefer plain simple style over green and red monsters

The virtualization I'd be doing is for my classes, I'm doing my SQL and SharePoint specialization right now, so no extreme requirements there.

Oh jeah and one more thing, I've been scratching my head over what RAM brand to choose. My friend swears on G.Skill and others are faithful to Corsair and then some are with Kingston Hyper-X series..how would I find the most suitable brand for me?

Most G skill RAM modules are dedicated gaming RAM Latencies and timing more optimized for gaming only Corsair vengeance is a great all rounder regarding general purpose computing and gaming . Cant comment much on kingston hyper x .

 

[CataclysmZA]

Oh jeah and one more thing, I've been scratching my head over what RAM brand to choose. My friend swears on G.Skill and others are faithful to Corsair and then some are with Kingston Hyper-X series..how would I find the most suitable brand for me?

Go for whichever's cheapest. Timings and latencies don't mean much these days, unless you're overclocking and want the better scores, or if you run an AMD APU. Brand-wise go for what suits your pocket the most. Corsair kits run on almost any board out there. Personally, TEAM's re-entry back into the country is great because their kits are better value for money.

Also, Kingston's made some quality jumps with their RAM recently. The Hyper-X Blue series started off the current price war, although they're a little overpriced these days. The only decent offering in their lineup is the DDR3-1866 modules, more useful for AMD guys or Intel overclockers.

 

[Inn3rs3lf]

Would have to agree with Wesley on this one. I am also an avid fan of G Skill ever since I have been using it in my server.

Don't fuss too much over timings and latency.

 

[Pada]

I've used Team-Extreme, G.Skill and Corsair DD3 1600MHz modules and mixed and matched them as well.

So +1 to what Wesley said: buy whichever is the cheapest DDR3 1600MHz 1.5V.

 

[Abs0lutZero]

Thanks a lot for the help guys