New Intel CPUs - anyone had much experience with them?

[BigPete33]

No worries, gave me something to do tonight

But now I've made more work for myself, cos the motherboard(s) I had in mind won't support SATA 6Gb/s and the one that does that I think will be ok uses a different socket configuration for the CPU.

Subject to me checking them out more closely, either of these CPU's look like they would do and are close to the i7-950 in speed. See end of this post for suitable motherboards.

http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=41315,48499,


I reckon 650W is on the slim side for the power supply, but that's your call. Having said that it's not so much the wattage but the efficiency (or lack of leakage/wastage) that matters. A 650W PSU that rates highly is better than an 850W PSU that rates poorly, as long as it's meeting it's basic power requirements to start with.


If you wish to go for the WD Caviar Green series then I'd recommend the WD20EADS if it's used only as storage and has no real performance requirements to speak of, other than not being crap


For the motherboards, prob best to let you wade through these yourself, a lot of them are similar but be sure to check the specs and make sure has at least 1 x SATA 6Gb/s on board and more than 2 x SATA 3Gb/s on board. USB 3.0 ports are the other thing to check for, HD stuff looks pretty good across the range.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/#Intel ... /Intel_P55


If you end up not bothering with anything requiring SATA 6Gb/s hard drives then it's back to the i7-950 CPU and Intel Socket 1366 motherboards.


Aaaaaand I'm spent.

[bennymacca]

the gigabyte motherboard i am looking at has 8x3GB/s sata, and 2x6GB/s sata connectors, and a 1366 pin socket

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... id=3449#sp

reckon that will do nicely - i reckon ill get a 1TB get a sata 3 for the boot drive and then just 2x 2tb drives for the storage drives.

might drop down to 6GB of ram too - i really dont need it, and it will save me $100.

when i decide to purchase everything ill list it here.

I reckon 650W is on the slim side for the power supply, but that's your call. Having said that it's not so much the wattage but the efficiency (or lack of leakage/wastage) that matters. A 650W PSU that rates highly is better than an 850W PSU that rates poorly, as long as it's meeting it's basic power requirements to start with.

im pretty sure 650 watts is enough - the efficiency isn't that great with that power supply, but that just means it costs me more to run, nothing to do with the actual performance of the computer

[mr_smooth81]

Just on hard drives, I have used seagate hard drives corporately for 10 years, I've never had one fail at all (in that time I've built somewhere between 1000-1500 pc's), infact in my home pc, one of the 7hdd's I have is atleast 7-8 years old, still running strong

Win7 64 bit is awesome, my machine runs 12gb, it's flawless.

I7 are pretty rock solid too

Toms hardware guide will give you a good idea of what's good or not

[bennymacca]

Thanks rob. Anything else you think I should add from the above?

[BigPete33]

Agree with Rob, nothing wrong with Seagate, very good reputation.

Tom's hardware is aimed more at gamers but there's a lot of basic theory that applies to everything and it's well worth a look.

Found an article on Tom's about bottlenecks when using SATA 6Gb/s hard drives and USB 3.0 that might be interesting for you benny the cunt....

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb ... ,2583.html

[David]

Nothing wrong with most drives these days.
All have some that fail, and 99% don't.

Personally, I always err on the side of WD but that's just a preference.

[bennymacca]

i have been reading a bit on the differences between the 1366 pin chipset and the 1155 pin and now i am confused.

it seems like there are more options for the 1155 pin configuration, and the Intel Core i7-2600 1155pin is slightly cheaper than the Intel Core i7 960 3.20Ghz LGA1366 CPU and has a slightly higher clock frequency (although i know that clock frequency is not the be all and end all)

so now i am confused. does anyone know what the differences between the two socket configurations are?

[BigPete33]

I haven't gone into it much lately, but the 1156 is newer.

What I can tell you with certainty is for the 1336pin CPU's you want either the top of the range (mega $) or the i7-950 (best bang for buck and overclocks well) I looked into that long and hard before buying my new pc recently.

What I did notice last night while having a look for you is that for ASUS at least the 1336 socket motherboards don't seem to support SATA 6Gb/s but do support USB 3.0

You are probably better off going with an 1156 socket motherboard, and making sure it's one that makes best use of SATA 6Gb/s along with USB 3.0 otherwise you're essentially short changing yourself, IMO.

The 1156 CPU's I linked for you are about all I think you'll need based on what you use your pc for, and are simply a quick comparison to the i7-950

FWIW I run the 1336pin i7-950 myself and it's fine for gaming, therefore fine for most everything else. I currently do not overclock it.

[bennymacca]

been having a chat with my boss who recently bought a new PC as well, and she thinks the 1366 pin with the core i-7 960 is the way to go, and i tend to agree with her, especially because i can spec it up to 12 gig of ram.

What I did notice last night while having a look for you is that for ASUS at least the 1336 socket motherboards don't seem to support SATA 6Gb/s but do support USB 3.0

the gigabyte motherboard i am looking at seems to support both, so i think i am good to go with that.


thanks a lot for you help pete and others, appreciate it.

[bennymacca]

i think the main difference is that the 1366 chipsets allow for triple channel RAM and the 1155 only allow for dual channel