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When using this resource, please read FragKrag's opening post. The Tech Support forum regulars have helped create countless of desktop systems without any compensation. The least you can do is provide all of the information required for them to help you properly. |
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Thanks for the quick response again skyR Updated it, Can't wait to order it soon (:
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Hi, i am buying parts for a new computer tomorrow. I have approximately $230 to spend on a motherboard. Main purpose is gaming, i will be using an intel i5 2500K and 8gigs of ddr3 ram so im going to overclock. Could someone please suggest a good p67 motherboard for this build, i have no need for a z68 (from what i understand they dont offer much benefit for gaming compared to p67).
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Well, I seem to have another problem now, this one much more important.
Yesterday I was messing around with my disk management utility on my computer and when I right clicked my SSD with my Win7 there was an aption to 'mark partition as active', and I figured my primary disk should be marked as active, which is also what it recommended after looking around a bit. I set it to active and everything was fine. Shut down my computer last night, and I went to turn it on this morning and it says it can't find the boot manager now. Any idea what the hell just happened and if it's possible to fix without reformating?
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Fraggle -
Yeah, you should save the $100 and get the i5-2500k for your brother. I mean, unless he does some serious photoshopping or does things that really scale well with more cores, there's no real point in an i7 over an i5.
Regarding your mobo selection, is there a reason you decided to go with a mobo that has no reviews vs the others that are available and out there? The Z68 chipset just launched and it's supposed to have everything the P67 chipset offers, plus the ability to actually use the onboard graphics card on the CPU and something called SSD caching (which he arguably may not need since you're getting a 120GB SSD anyway :D).
The rest looks good. I might recommend to wait for a deal on a Crucial C300 SSD instead of the ocz simply based on reputation and ocz's reputed affinity for SSD failure, but that's really a matter of personal preference. they've been on sale lately for around $200 at lots of places, so that would make it cheaper for you too.
Regarding price / performance, if you live near a microcenter, you can look for one of their deals of the day if you're willing to wait. Just picked my friend up an i5-2500k + a Gigabyte P67 UD3 for about $260 (after tax even!) the other day as a bundle. And before that, they had the i5-2500k + ASUS P8P67 for about $320 (after tax) as a bundle. So if you can wait, that definitely saves you money.
And newegg constantly has sales on memory if you can wait. I'd say it's definitely possible and within raeson to only pay $70 if you keep looking around. Hell, just yesterday they had some corsair (not vengeance) 2x4 sticks for 8 GB for like $68 after rebates.
Regarding power supply, I'll defer to the experts around here for that. I'm sure they're gonna tell you that 750W is overkill though and that you can get a lower wattage power supply for much cheaper.
But on the off chance they don't, why don't you get this instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139022 It's the same brand (corsair), more wattage (850 vs 750) and it's cheaper. What more could you ask for? :D
I'm sure you'll be told that a 500W power supply is more than enough for your needs though hehe. It's a common theme in most people's build critiques. 
Good luck good luck!
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@Grobyc:
I've never seen this before, but it looks like you told Windows where the boot loader was incorrectly, so now it can't find it. You'll probably want to boot into a recovery disc, the installation disc, or some utility, and then revert the setting.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Mark-a-partition-as-active
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html
@Fisiks:
If you're concerned about gaming performance and don't want to go SLI/Crossfire, the cheaper options like Gigabyte P67-UD3, AsRock Pro3, etc. are going to be just as good for you as the $230 motherboards. If you need multi-GPU support, Gigabyte P67X-UD3, AsRock Extreme4, MSI GD5x, etc. would all work.
@Fraggle:
Just so others aren't confused, you're buying in Norway in which shop? So we don't try to find newegg deals for you. 
Pretty much every part is more expensive than it needs to be. I'd suggest either saving the money or blowing it on things that make much more of a difference like monitors, peripherals, speakers/headphones, etc.
There is practically no benefit from getting a motherboard that has more features unless you know you're going to use them. Unless you can say what you need on the P67 Deluxe, you're better off with something like ~$130 Gigabyte UD3, AsRock P67 Pro3, Asus P67, or related Z68 variants.
As mentioned earlier, i7-2600k is only useful if you're taking full use of the hyperthreading all day long (i.e. not playing the games or any normal computer usage) and want to pay $100 more for maybe a 25% performance boost in those specific situations.
Actually, graphics card is fine. You could redirect more money to the graphics card, but at the moment no game will require more than a GTX 560 Ti or HD 6950 anyway, unless you are gaming across a resolution higher than 1920x1200. The cards more expensive than this are worse price/performance than these options too. You might as well save money now and just upgrade to a different single card later.
1600 MHz RAM makes a pretty small difference over 1333 MHz RAM. Brand doesn't matter much. If it's not that much more expensive and you're overclocking, 1600 MHz isn't that bad an idea, but a cheaper 1333 MHz kit will not hold you back at all in most applications and will have a small impact in others.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20377
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/sandy-bridge-ddr3.html
The build as is would run on comfortably on a good 450W unit even if you overclock everything. I'm not going to suggest an alternative unless I know what the prices/options are that you're looking at though. Bad "500W" units would definitely not work.
Case is way overkill and huge. Get whatever looks good to you though, if you don't mind the cost. If you like how the HAF X looks, maybe a HAF 922 or HAF 912 variant (Plus, Advanced?) would be pretty much the same for you, unless you really need a huge space inside to work with and maybe want to improve temperatures by a few degrees.
DVD drive -- they're mostly the same.
Given pricing, I suspect the Corsair Force 3 is similar to other mid-end 2nd gen SandForce drives. If there's no review on the Force 3, it's probably similar to the OCZ Agility 3. Anandtech has a review. At the moment it's unclear if this generation's SandForce-based drives have had more reliable firmware, better validation and testing, etc. It may have better performance than some last-gen drives, but I doubt you'll need the performance unless you write large files to the SSD all the time and need it to be really fast. Most other last-gen and current-gen drives will be similar in other areas of performance. Intel 320 Series is probably the most reliable, if you want to be safe.
WD Caviar Black is okay, but I don't think you need a higher-performance HDD if most of your accesses are going to the SSD. You don't need 4ms better response time to begin loading a 4GB movie. A low-rpm drive would be quieter and would have sufficient sequential speeds.
edit: one place you're way underkill is if you're using the stock Intel heatsink for overclocking. There are decent coolers in the 20-30 Euros range that will overclock a i5-2500k very high with good temperatures.
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Thanks for the tips! I convinced him to buy the i5 2500k instead, To clear up any confusions as to where I am buying from, it is "www.Komplett.no" "www.Komplett.ie" Has similar prices I believe. unfortunately I can't order from abroad sites without getting lots of VAT on it :p I used newegg to link the components as that was probably easier for you english speaking users. He already has a good monitor peripherals and all that, so the pc is the only thing new he needs.
Anyways regarding the components you two suggested:
Motherboard: Yeah as I mentioned I had not researched too much into this, so I simply thoguht a safe bet would be something in the middle price range, but it seems like I will be just as well served with a less expensive p8p67 board like this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131706 I thought i was reading something like the EVO being easier to eventually overclock or better something else :p but i may have been hallucinating.
Processor: Yeah we're going with a i5 2500k, From what I read and what you say the performance rate between the two is too small to spend an extra 80 or so dollars if you just use it for normal nerd use.
Graphics Card: I researched quite a bit on this and it was either going to be a cheaper card like the radeon hd 6850, or shelling out a bit more for a better graphics card like the 6950/70 and i ended up on the 6950 as it seemed to me the best performance and price wise.
RAM: The vengeance has a sale now at the store im looking so it is pretty much one of the cheapest 8gb sets I can get that is 1600 mhz.
Case: Yeah it is probably a bit big, but it isn't my pc so it's not my decision. But I guess we could go for a bit cheaper case, but as you said,just whatever looks good
PSU: :O I am a bit surprised about the 450W I thought such a powerful pc would require more power, and it would be safer in the long term to have rather too much wattage than being on the limit. Especially if looking to overclock. I guess I rather went for a safe 750w instead of checking all the different prices and how much W the pc actually needs.
HD: I just went with the fastest and cheapest HD I could find, personally I am not a "noise freak" though so I don't care if it makes a bit more noise. This hd is currently very cheap where I'm looking so that's one of the reasons i picked this, I just thought it would be nice if his second hd also was pretty fast :p
SSD: This is one of the things i am really fussing about cause the numbers are so different, an intel ssd 320 120 gb is on sale now and is 50 dollars or so cheaper than the corsair but looking at the raw numbers they're so different.
Intel ssd 320: Sequential Access - Read: Up to 270 MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: Up to 130 MB/s
Corsair 2.5:
Sequential Access - Read: up to 285MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: up to 275MB/s
And then there's the new corsair 3 you mentioned thats only 20 dollars more expensive than the 2.5 that has these numbers:
Sequential Access - Read:
Up to 550 MB/s
Sequential Access - Write:
Up to 510 MB/s
I know that it's just not the numbers you look at but these differences seems huge to me the intel series is reliable you say, and it is pretty cheap now so i may spring for that but just looking at the numbers f.ex the corsair 3 or any other similar new ssd seems to be the better deal. It's really hard to decide on this for me :S
Edit: about custom cooler for processor yeah that's one of the things definitely probably would be very cost efficient in the long run. I though the stock cooler was good enough if you were going to just let it be on stock settings, and maybe just do some mild overclocking. I believed it was only necessary to buy a cooler for the processor if you were going to do some pretty heavy overclocking? But if I do decide to go for a custom cooler, what would be a good one to buy for the i5, and as far as i remember i need to get some thermal paste and apply it myself.
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There are certain less expensive motherboards that you want to avoid, one of them being the ASUS P8P67 LE. It's overclocking potential is disappointing and it's priced terribly as well. Overclocking on the core i5 2500k is easy and the process is universal throughout every motherboard, just with a different UI.
The core i5 2500k uses around 60w ( http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i5-2500-2400-2300_10.html#sect0 ) and the 6950 uses around 160w ( http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/powercolor-hd6950-1gb_3.html ), both under full load. Add in your other components and an overclock for 100w, you're sitting at 320w. Keep in mind that during a gaming scenario, the processor will never be at 100% load. A quality ~500w unit will be capable of handling such a configuration.
If you're looking for reliability in SSDs than it is definitely Intel as they offer a five year warranty (as opposed to three from everyone else). If you're looking for raw performance, that will probably be a Vertex 3.
A Western Digital Caviar Blue or Green should be less expensive than the Black. The Blue offers similar performance to the Black except it has a shorter warranty (three years as opposed to five). The Green is meant for storing photos, documents, music, video, etc.
For an aftermarket heatsink, something like a Coolermaster Hyper 212+ will easily keep the processor cool for a 4.5GHz - 5GHz overclock. All aftermarket heatsinks (at least the good ones) will include thermal paste which is quite good so you don't have to buy separate thermal paste.
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How often do you write or read huge files on your SSD (particularly write)? Most large files you would tend to store on the mechanical device, so sequential speeds aren't as important. Loading the OS or most programs involves a lot of small scattered reads, at which the other SSDs are comparable. For the SandForce drives like the Corsair Force 3, max sequential speeds are high because they use real-time data compression. If they are not working with data that can be compressed much, speeds will be significantly slower, like a little less than half the max.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4346/ocz-agility-3-240gb-review/6
In terms of real world use:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4346/ocz-agility-3-240gb-review/3
Mechanical drives get about 40MB/s in that test IIRC. Larger-capacity SSDs will do better than smaller-capacity SSDs that are otherwise identical.
How often would the computer be at full load? A reasonably overclocked i5-2500k would use no more than 100W, a HD 6950 uses more like 170W under full load at stock clocks, and everything else in the computer will be maybe 50W combined. High-performance parts have gotten more efficient. High-quality components in a good PSU generally have no trouble operating close to the PSU's rated wattage. With lower-quality capacitors, transistors, etc. maybe you want a little more headroom.
Looking at the selection on Komplett, maybe the HX750 is not a bad option after all if you want to pay extra for something of top quality and reliability. Some of the other non-Corsair units listed are definitely more than serviceable, but you wouldn't expect them to last almost a decade like the HX750. They do not seem to be priced much better. Just keep in mind you don't need half the wattage of the HX750. If you don't need something modular, Corsair TX650 V2 is also very good. The CX V2 seem to be not in stock except the 600W version, but that's not worth the price difference with the TX V2, since the TX V2 is considerably better.
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So I'm doing some motherboard research right now and I'm not too knowledgeable about them. What's the advantage of a Z68 board over a P67? It doesn't seem like it's much to me. Let's assume right now I plan on overclocking an i5 2500k if that makes a difference.
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Z68 allows you to use the integrated graphics provided by the processor, the use of Quick Sync, and SSD caching. All of which aren't that big of a deal for the average consumer.
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On June 02 2011 08:44 Uhh Negative wrote:
So I'm doing some motherboard research right now and I'm not too knowledgeable about them. What's the advantage of a Z68 board over a P67? It doesn't seem like it's much to me. Let's assume right now I plan on overclocking an i5 2500k if that makes a difference.
+ Show Spoiler +
Bloody ninja...
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Ah cool, I burned a copy of Acronis 2011 at work to take home and booted up from that, which let me change practically everything. Works fine now, thanks <3
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Thanks! Like I said, most of that was just kind of placeholder to get an idea on prices. Updating my build now. I'm not going to actually order for another month probably so I'm just kind of doing a rolling build, updating here and there where prices get lower or there are deals, etc.
edit: Wow now I'm looking at about $800. It's funny because I think I had that exact CPU/Motherboard combo deal in my cart at some point a few days ago.
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Holy moly! Lee, Myrmidon and Skyr you guys are heroes ! Thanks so much for the detailed explanations and suggestions. I am mostly going with the build i detailed above, I searched around a bit on the hardware sites that's available to me and the slightly cheaper versions aren't really that much cheaper its something minimal like 10 dollars or the like.
SSD: I tried to get him to buy an intel ssd that was on sale but he rather wanted a better one, he was originally set on the corsair 2.5 but I image it will be worth it to pay 20dollars more and get one of the new SSD's that's been released being the OCZ Agiliy 120gb. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227726&cm_re=Ocz_agility_3-_-20-227-726-_-Product
HD: It's pretty much the same price for a black and green now with the black being 5 dollars or so more expensive so i am going for the black.
PSU: The corsair TX 650W V2 was 30 dollars cheaper so I'm going for that over the HX750. The HX750 being modular means that i can remove or add power cables to the psu right? As long as the TXv2 has all the power cables i require and is reliable that's good enough for me.
Case: I'll try and persuade him to get one of the cheaper models thanks for the tips!
Motherboard: P8P67 Pro or Evo? the pro is 20 dollars or so cheaper from what i gathered the main aesthetic difference is that the evo has onbord reset and turn on buttons on the MB, and an extra network connection. And the evo has more heatpipes and a bit more accessories. And there's the P8P67-M that's 20-30 dollars cheaper but I don't really know why. :S
At the moment I think i'll go for the p8p67 Pro as its only 10 dollars more than the normal and I can't see anything the evo has that the pro doesn't that would actually matter. Even though its something as small as 20 dollars between the two.
Processor cooler: He said that he's not interested in overclocking at the moment so he said he wasn't interested in buying one  With that in mind though I'll probably buy one soon for my own processor(my old stock fan is wearing down) though, so thanks for the tip regarding that.
So components now are:
Motherboard: P8P67 Pro
Processor: i5 2500k
GPU: Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Ram: Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB 1600mhz
SSD: OCZ Agility 3 120GB
HD: Caviar Black 1TB
PSU: TX 650W V2
Case: One of the cheaper ones you mentioned not looked at them yet ( I will though)
Thank you again guys, you've been of great help 
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The only differences between the P8P67 Pro and Evo are the differences you have already spotted. They both offer the same amount of connectivity (aside from the extra ethernet port provided by the Evo) and have the same amount of phases. The P8P67-M is a mATX board so it'll have less connectivity and phases.Why not just get the regular P8P67 for $10 less? =\ The P8P67 Pro only offers an Intel NIC (as opposed to the Realtek found on the regular P8P67), SLI capabilities, and an Advanced RMA option over the regular P8P67.
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EPT
