Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[PlasbianX]

Welp.. seriously considering building a gaming PC. Looking for all the parts for the pc itself, minus the hard drive (have that). Before the cost of the case, hoping to not spend more than $500. Halp!?

[Warsaw]

Plas:

• CPU - Core i5-3350P
• Motherboard - ASRock Extreme 4, though since I'm counting rebates, the ASUS P8Z77-V LK is an alternative
• GPU - EVGA GeForce 650 Ti, at $140 after rebate
• RAM - 8GB DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance
  

All said and done, it's $493. You can grab a better GPU if you drop down to a Core i3 CPU, which might actually work to your benefit, but after running with a weak CPU and strong CPU for years with my first rig I figure it's better to spend a little more now on the CPU so that you can get a stronger GPU later when the need arises and not be bottlenecked to oblivion. Four cores is also starting to matter these days.

...

Like what?

Eight RAM slots for quad-channel memory, dual-socket CPU support, full-width PCI-Express lanes...

You can say those are gimmicks, but that doesn't invalidate the point. LGA 2011 is more capable than LGA 1155 ever could be.

Besides, the cost difference of a quality 1155 setup versus a quality 2011 setup is negligible (like, $10) and at the time I was researching a build (Sandy Bridge era) it was marginally less expensive to do LGA2011 than LGA1155. The i7-3820 was the same price as the i7-2700K, the board was $220 versus $250 for the same tier board with the closest possible features, and dropping to a 2011 board that was still quality but with more mainstream 1155 parity would have saved me an additional $20 (but then what would be the point of going LGA 2011?). And, to boot, my computer is also a workstation...just not workstation enough to warrant a Quattro or FireGL.

Second, evolutionary dead end is the same thing as obsolete in the world of computers. While I'll be able to upgrade to a modern CPU and new GPUs a year from now and still support everything they can throw at my board, those with LGA1155 platforms will have to be building completely new computers. And this is going to be an issue if the new consoles actually are coming out this holiday season.

[Btcc22]

LGA 2011 is more capable than LGA 1155 ever could be.

I would hope that a newer and more expensive technology would be more capable, even if most of the additions are of no use to the majority of users.

The i7-3820 was the same price as the i7-2700K, the board was $220 versus $250 for the same tier board with the closest possible features

Your cost comparisons are quite unfair. The 2700k carried a premium for nothing more than a shot at reaching slightly higher overclocks, although the evidence I've seen indicates that it was a complete waste of money, offering zero benefit over the 2600k. Not really a surprise since they're the same chip.

On top of that, some of the K series CPUs will achieve better performance after overclocking. If you're not going to overclock it, you may as well have gone for the cheaper models.

Besides, the cost difference of a quality 1155 setup versus a quality 2011 setup is negligible

You priced up the most expensive LGA1155 build you could put together against probably the cheapest LGA2011 build and convinced yourself that you were getting value. You could have put together an LGA1155 build for a much lower price with very little performance loss. Once you reach the high-end, you pay a massive premium for negligible performance gains.

those with LGA1155 platforms will have to be building completely new computers

Doubt it. I think LGA1155 will continue to serve well for quite a while yet.

[Patrickssj6]

I want a new case for my old ATX rig. I want the case to be simple and silent (no side window and fan, not many LEDs etc.). I took a look at the NZXT H2 and loved all aspects of it but it seems to be getting a lot of bad reviews (e.g. for having unlabeled cables etc.).

Can anyone confirm or recommend a different case?

[Cortexian]

Mid tower? Full tower?

[Patrickssj6]

Ah sry Mid-Tower...fuck I knew I forgot an important aspect xD

[Warsaw]

If you are after the NZXT H2 for its sleekness as well as its sound-dampening qualities, I'd recommend the Fractal Design R3. It's not as good at sound dampening, but it is much better built than any NZXT case.

@Btcc22: Wrong on all counts. I did not use the least expensive LGA 2011 board, and nor does attempting to reach feature parity with an LGA 1155 build require you to use the most expensive boards available. For both X79 and Z68/Z77, the most expensive boards go for above $400. What I did was set a price point of no more than $250 and look for boards that offered the maximum bang for the buck. ASRock ended up being the best brand for both platforms, and the real deciding factor ended up being the number of full PCI-E lanes. X79 is bigger, I have dual 7970s, and Z68 would have bottlenecked them.

I also do, in fact, overclock my CPUs (and my GPUs, actually). I just haven't done it for this PC yet since I haven't seen much of a need to outside of improving physics processing for Metro 2033. At the time, the i7-2600K and i7-2700K were the same price, too.

So all and all, my comparison is completely fair.

[Btcc22]

have dual 7970s, and Z68 would have bottlenecked them.

Hardly. You'd probably see a tiny performance decrease that you'd barely notice on benchmarks let alone through actual use but that's about it. My Z68 board would run both those cards in PCI-E 3.0 x8 (or x16 for a single card) with an IB CPU which is the same amount of bandwidth per card as a PCI 2.0 x16 would provide. Still, no point worrying about that when on the whole there's negligible difference between a 7970 on PCI-E 2.0 x8 and x16.

7970 benchmarks:

[Warsaw]

Wrong again. I would have been using PCI-E 2.0 x8/x8 on a Z68 motherboard at the time. Building a computer only running at 96% even for a single card is asinine when I can build one running at 100% for the same price or less.

Here are some more pertinent graphs, since my rig is using the related ASRock Extreme6 and two 7970s:



Oh, and that's with a full x16/x16. Z68 did not go higher than x8/x8.

In the end, building a computer for me is all about maximizing the headroom per dollar once I've decided on the performance requirements. All I have to do in the foreseeable future is upgrade a CPU. By the time games on the new consoles start becoming notable more demanding than the best games on the previous consoles, people on 1155 will be building whole new computers. I won't. Why? Because mine has the ability move more data, faster. Plain and simple.

[Btcc22]

I'm not wrong when you pretty much repeat what I already posted.

The Dirt 3 result is strange and seems unique to AMD cards so I'd probably discount it without further testing. However, other benchmarks show zero difference between PCI-E 3.0 x8 and x16 with Dirt 3 so you could have found a number of suitable LGA1155 boards anyway, if you actually cared about getting a few more wasted frames in Dirt 3 that is. I suspect you don't.

Oh, and that's with a full x16/x16. Z68 did not go higher than x8/x8.

Higher than x8/x8 PCI-E 3.0 which is the same amount of bandwidth as x16/x16 PCI-E 2.0 plus better latency, yes. This is assuming you're using IB, although the article and benchmarks I posted show that there's no real difference between PCI-E 2.0 x8/x8 and x16/x16 anyway.

Going by release dates on your parts you built that machine either after the release of Ivy Bridge or incredibly close to it. I'm still willing to bet that you could have built a far cheaper 6 series platform (Z is a waste, as you mentioned earlier) platform without sacrificing much, if any, performance. Even if you went down the SB route and couldn't take advantage of the board's PCI-E 3.0 bandwidth, then you could have opted for boards with NF200 chips.

Anyway, to sum it up lest we do another loop, none of that really matters and we're just nitpicking. I just felt you were overhyping LGA2011 and being slightly unfair about LGA1155 when really, there's nothing wrong with it and it's still the better choice for building a machine that can come close to or match the 2011's perfomance but with a cheaper tag, unless you convince yourself about needing features that you'll likely never use.