Upgrading need help=]

[SAPRIDE]

Hey guys

Currently I am in a bit of a dilemma. Been saving for a upgrade and now its time =]
I have roughly Around $3000 AU for the upgrade.
Current Specs :

Q6600 @ 3ghz
GTX275 inno3D
4gig corsair
700 watt kingswin
HDD 250&500 gig sata II
ASUS Striker Forumla 2
3 fan 120mm Rad (Swiftech MCR320-QP Radiator)
D-TEK fuzion v2 / Swiftech MCP655-B 12V Pump
Micro Rev2 Reservoir
Antec 1200


Looking at going i7, SSD (for OS), Another GTX275 INNO3D (For SLI), Full Waterblocks for both GFX cards, Another 2 fan rad (for CPU), Also new PSU. Anything else I will need?
Or what do you recommended for me?

[SoulsCollective]

What's this system for? Just gaming?

If so, I'd avoid i7. Prices here are ridiculous for Nehalem but not so much so for Phenom II, and unless you're doing a lot of heavy encoding work or virtual machine stuff you'll see no benefit, certainly no in-game benefit, from Nehalem compared to PhII. Depending on which state you're in, a PhII 955BE will run you around $320-30. Complement that with a nice set of low-latency DDR3 - a decent 4GB kit of DDR3-1600 CAS-7 will run you about $250, again depending on which state - and a high-end 790FX board, which again depending on state will run you around $280-300, which will run you a total of around $900 including shipping.

PSU I'd look at replacing, not because you're going to need more power but because those Kingswin units aren't exactly top-notch. If we go top-notch, an HX-1000 will run you around $350 and will be strong and silent for years to come.

That leaves us with, what, $1,800 or thereabouts? First thing I'd look at upgrading out of that would be storage subsystem. A total of 750GB over two HDDs with no redundancy is not great, even if you're not storing much. Unless you have backups you're not telling us about, if either of those drives dies you're going to lose everything. I'd get a decent but cheap hardware RAID controller, something like an Adaptec 3405, which can be found down here for around $500, and four 1TB drives (around $120ea) and run them in RAID-1, which will give you around 2TB worth of storage space but with complete redundancy (meaning any two drives could fail and you wouldn't lose any data), as well as significantly faster speeds than your current drives. If you want more space, you could run those four drives in RAID-5 instead, which would give you around 3TB total space, but less redundancy, as only one drive could fail before you'd be at risk of data loss. RAID-5 would also be slower.

Assuming that leaves us with around $800 left, I'd definitely look into getting a SSD for your OS drive. However, the SSD market is going to change dramatically in the coming months, with Intel launching their refresh generation of their X25 drives - which will be faster and cheaper. I'd hold off getting any drives until those filter down here - no point buying just yet.

Also, I'd fill in your location field or at least make it a bit more obvious in your post that we're talking $AU here, not $USD

[zanzabar]

if he wants sli then he has to go i7, and the i7 cpus need atleast a 3 fan rad if u want to oc better than air

[SoulsCollective]

Read the OP -no SLi setup here, just considering one, and they have an MCR320 on the CPU loop

And no, they don't "have to go" i7 - there are indeed nVidia boards supporting AM2+ and AM3 - for example, the Asus M4N series - although I don't yet know of any AM3 DDR3 nVidia chipset boards.

[zanzabar]

*cough*

Looking at going i7, SSD (for OS), Another GTX275 INNO3D (For SLI), Full Waterblocks for both GFX cards, Another 2 fan rad (for CPU), Also new PSU. Anything else I will need?
Or what do you recommended for me?

the NV chipsets are weak on amd, but they dont die like the 775 ones so i guess thats an improvement, but the only real choice for sli is i7. and there wont be an NV ddr3 board there were some scheduled for q4 but looks like they arnt going to be out. if there is no sli then the 790fx and a 955be is a better choice IMO they run cooler and u can do a single gpu + 955 on an mcr320

[SAPRIDE]

What's this system for? Just gaming?

If so, I'd avoid i7. Prices here are ridiculous for Nehalem but not so much so for Phenom II, and unless you're doing a lot of heavy encoding work or virtual machine stuff you'll see no benefit, certainly no in-game benefit, from Nehalem compared to PhII. Depending on which state you're in, a PhII 955BE will run you around $320-30. Complement that with a nice set of low-latency DDR3 - a decent 4GB kit of DDR3-1600 CAS-7 will run you about $250, again depending on which state - and a high-end 790FX board, which again depending on state will run you around $280-300, which will run you a total of around $900 including shipping.

PSU I'd look at replacing, not because you're going to need more power but because those Kingswin units aren't exactly top-notch. If we go top-notch, an HX-1000 will run you around $350 and will be strong and silent for years to come.

That leaves us with, what, $1,800 or thereabouts? First thing I'd look at upgrading out of that would be storage subsystem. A total of 750GB over two HDDs with no redundancy is not great, even if you're not storing much. Unless you have backups you're not telling us about, if either of those drives dies you're going to lose everything. I'd get a decent but cheap hardware RAID controller, something like an Adaptec 3405, which can be found down here for around $500, and four 1TB drives (around $120ea) and run them in RAID-1, which will give you around 2TB worth of storage space but with complete redundancy (meaning any two drives could fail and you wouldn't lose any data), as well as significantly faster speeds than your current drives. If you want more space, you could run those four drives in RAID-5 instead, which would give you around 3TB total space, but less redundancy, as only one drive could fail before you'd be at risk of data loss. RAID-5 would also be slower.

Assuming that leaves us with around $800 left, I'd definitely look into getting a SSD for your OS drive. However, the SSD market is going to change dramatically in the coming months, with Intel launching their refresh generation of their X25 drives - which will be faster and cheaper. I'd hold off getting any drives until those filter down here - no point buying just yet.

Also, I'd fill in your location field or at least make it a bit more obvious in your post that we're talking $AU here, not $USD

Thank you for that wonderful post.
I have a media center which I store all my movies and data on also, and another external Hard drive which has most/all of my important things.
I do not need that much space in my "gaming Pc" Thought I would do a pretty G upgrade with full water cooling.

STATE : QLD

Something along these lines : (just a quick/ rough demonstration of what I would like to get)
---------------------------------------
EVGA X58 SLI LE Motherboard

Price: $375.00

Intel Core i7 920

Price: $429.00

G.Skill Falcon 64GB SSD

Price: $249.00

Western Digital Green 1TB WD10EADS

Price: $119.00

Corsair TR3X6G1600C7D 6GB (3x 2GB) DDR3

Price: $249.00

Antec TruePower Quattro 850W

Price: $275.00

Swiftech MCR220-QP Radiator

Price: $99.00

EK-FC275 GTX PCB Acetal

Price: $134.90
EK-FC275 GTX PCB Acetal

Price: $134.90

nno3D Gtx275 896Mb, 633/2268Mhz (N275-1DDN-H3IY)

$299.20 inc GST
------------------------------------------------

What do you guys reckon?

[zanzabar]

what are your other choices for the psu the quatro is kinda lame, and u will need 2 3 fan rads IMO or some beast 3k rpm fans. if ur looking at the WD green get the samsung f1 its all round better and uses less power and makes less noise. and last i would wait for the 80GB intel 25-m gen 2 to come back it will be well worth it over the indilinx bassed drives.

[SAPRIDE]

Like I said in the post just a rough list....
means anything can be changed.
Just an idea for the forum members helping me.

[SAPRIDE]

.....

[SAPRIDE]

Bump__

[SoulsCollective]

*cough*

Looking at going i7, SSD (for OS), Another GTX275 INNO3D (For SLI), Full Waterblocks for both GFX cards, Another 2 fan rad (for CPU), Also new PSU. Anything else I will need?
Or what do you recommended for me?

But this is quibbling.

and u will need 2 3 fan rads IMO or some beast 3k rpm fans.

This is just for the GPU loop, remember - the OP already has a perfectly decent CPU loop.

if ur looking at the WD green get the samsung f1 its all round better and uses less power and makes less noise. and last i would wait for the 80GB intel 25-m gen 2 to come back it will be well worth it over the indilinx bassed drives.

Truth for both statements, although I'm not so sure about power consumption.

Thank you for that wonderful post.
I have a media center which I store all my movies and data on also, and another external Hard drive which has most/all of my important things.
I do not need that much space in my "gaming Pc" Thought I would do a pretty G upgrade with full water cooling.

No worries mate, allright, that means more money for gaming grunt

STATE : QLD

Something along these lines : (just a quick/ rough demonstration of what I would like to get)
*snip*

What do you guys reckon?

Looks good, but I'd change a couple of things. Firstly, as recommended, I'd go with the Samsung F1 drives instead of the WD Greens - they're faster, and not much more expensive (I believe PCCG does the best price on them at $125ea). Next, the HX-1000 is definitely worth the extra investment for only $75 more.

On the cooling front, you'd definitely be better off with two separate loops than just adding in another radiator, so that means you're going to need another pump. Secondly, the FuZion, while a great block back in the day, fares poorly on the new i7 chips - to get the best temps, you're going to want to replace that with a new block, preferably the Heatkiller 3.0 (again, PCCG is the only Australian company I know of with stock), and you might want to consider replacing that MCR220 with a TFC Xchanger - better temps for only about $10 more.

Finally, again as mentioned above, there's literally no point buying SSDs at the moment. Prices are going to drop significantly and significantly faster drives will be available in only a few months - much better to wait for new tech to make it's way down here before dropping large wads of cash.

Edit: Mate, bumping your thread twice in the space of half an hour is considered slightly bad form on XS - just a friendly note before a mod drops in

Second edit: You do know about StaticICE, right? Add state:qld to the end of your searches to restrict results to local shops - helps save on shipping.

[SAPRIDE]

Thank you.

Well I been to all Pc shops in my area, all in which cost ALOT. Just roughly i7 920 costs around 500 to 650. Most of the things are over 100-200 dollars than on the net. So paying extra for postage still is the cheaper Option.
Also PSU what about the ULTRA X3 1000W PSU?
What do you recommend for RAM. 1600mhz?

[zanzabar]

the new ultra 1000W arnt that great for the premo price that they have, can u get somehting from corsair, ocz or enermax. and 1600mhz cas 7 ram is good


edit look at the enermax 1050
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=11341

[SAPRIDE]

the new ultra 1000W arnt that great for the premo price that they have, can u get somehting from corsair, ocz or enermax. and 1600mhz cas 7 ram is good


edit look at the enermax 1050
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=11341

I have heard they pretty good?
Any ram u recommend?

[SoulsCollective]

Either the Corsair HX1000 or the Enermax Revolution will do you well.

As for RAM, really any kits at 1600 or above speed, and with no more than CAS-8 timings, will do fine. Whichever is most available and cheapest where you are (although be aware of warranty differences - I'd try and go with Corsair Dominators due to lifetime warranty).

[iboomalot]

why not upgrade to a 9650 and a better video card??

save the extra money for when P55 and the new 32nm intels mature around Jan- March of 2010

going from 3 ghz to 4 ghz will help alot and a fast VC would help in gaming.

Just an idea


oh ya and a nice intel G2 for more speed