Building a compootah

[L[0ne]R]

Well, I decided to get a 570 for now, and then should the need arise - get another 570 and SLI them. For PSU I decided to go with the Rosewill Xtreme Series RX850-S-B 850W after all, since it's on a huge discount and is SLI-ready.

As for CPU - I doubt I'll have enough patience to wait a whole another week, and I doubt that Intel will drop their prices enough to be worth the wait. <_< You got me curious about the Bulldoser CPUs though, so I'll keep an eye out on them and see how it develops.

[Eagles_Arrows]

As for CPU - I doubt I'll have enough patience to wait a whole another week, and I doubt that Intel will drop their prices enough to be worth the wait. <_< You got me curious about the Bulldoser CPUs though, so I'll keep an eye out on them and see how it develops.

This is funny because AMD's new CPUs turned out to be an utter disappointment, and Intel's current processors are still the best for gaming.  Good decision, and happy building.

EDIT: Not trying to bash AMD here, but it really is sad that their new CPU's didn't live up to the hype.  Unless they get their shit together, they'll never be able to break Intel's already huge grasp on the market.

[ds dude]

I've been keeping up with the intel/amd debate on the EA Battlefield 3 forums and apparently some guy was able to get his amd bulldozer to 4.73 GHz.

http://www.overclock.net/amd-general/1142239-amd-fx-8120-overclocking-benchmarking.html


I find that very impressive considering for most people their game would crash if they OC'ed at 4.6 Ghz or higher.

[Clawbug]

Not really related but just saying, AMD broke the world record by overclocking their Bulldozer x86 CPU to 8.4 GHz about a month ago.

[ds dude]

Not really related but just saying, AMD broke the world record by overclocking their Bulldozer x86 CPU to 8.4 GHz about a month ago.

Yeah I heard about that too, I think that's pretty tight. Also, there are rumors that says someone overclocked their bulldozer to 6.5 Ghz. I don't know if its true though.

[Blacksheepboy]

the built-in sound cards suffice for everyday needs. Don't bother with a pro one unless you will actually need quality for recording music and such.

Got one to replace mobo line-in/out, to give you an idea.

[L[0ne]R]

Well, this is the final build that I've already ordered, so it should be here in a week or two. Can't wait. <3
Btw, thanks for the tips.

MoBo: ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500k
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 570ti
PSU: COUGAR SX850
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X DDR3 1600 (2x 4GB)
HDD: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB
DVD: ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS
Case: Corsair 400R



btw, yeah, I read the reviews on the new Bulldosers, and they were kind of a disappointment. :/ Somehow I kind of expected this, but I was still hoping for at least more or less noticeable breakthrough.. though overclocking capabilities seem kinda interesting, so who knows..

[ds dude]

I'm assuming you'll be overclocking that i5, right? The turbo boost doesn't seem to be enticing at all.

[dnmr]

Not really related but just saying, AMD broke the world record by overclocking their Bulldozer x86 CPU to 8.4 GHz about a month ago.

liquid nitrogen, ye?

[Clawbug]

Not really related but just saying, AMD broke the world record by overclocking their Bulldozer x86 CPU to 8.4 GHz about a month ago.

Yeah I heard about that too, I think that's pretty tight. Also, there are rumors that says someone overclocked their bulldozer to 6.5 Ghz. I don't know if its true though.

Sure people have reached 6.5 GHz, that's not anything uncommon for a nice pot of dry ice. I doubt anything past 5 GHz for stable 24/7 use even with a top notch (chilled)water cooling setup at least for now until GloFo get their 32 nm process to a bit more mature state. Perhaps in a few months we'll start seeing better and better overclocks with lower voltages.

Not really related but just saying, AMD broke the world record by overclocking their Bulldozer x86 CPU to 8.4 GHz about a month ago.

liquid nitrogen, ye?

Nope, liquid helium. LHe is approx -268 C while liquid nitrogen is appox -196 C and dry ice is approx -69 C.

[L[0ne]R]

I'm assuming you'll be overclocking that i5, right? The turbo boost doesn't seem to be enticing at all.

I'll probably stick with stock clocks for now, since that should be enough to run most modern games on max settings. I might overclock it at some point when games will start becoming more demanding.

[RafiPZ]

Yeah I'm doing the same, stock clocks so as to not wear out the cpu then overclock later on when i need to

[Clawbug]

Yeah I'm doing the same, stock clocks so as to not wear out the cpu then overclock later on when i need to

Overclocking doesn't wear out the CPU any more than a higher clocked CPU would wear out. CPU failures are extremely rare these days anyway, it's practically impossible to kill your CPU with any mainstream motherboard(because they won't allow you to set such high voltages which would potentially damage the CPU). It's also nearly impossible to "burn" your CPU due to high temperatures because CPUs tend to shut down, or crash before reaching dangerous temperatures(which are somewhere around 120 C in practice, although the manufacturers set their own recommendations for the max operating temperature somewhere around 80-90 C).

RAM chips suffer far moe from a phenomenon called electromigration, which shortens their lifetime drastically with higher voltages, frequencies and temperatures. Actually this applies to any integrated circuits, including CPU and GPU, though in them it is far less serious due to the way of manufacturing and way they operate.

[ds dude]

hell yeah plus if you really want to squeeze out the maximum performance of your pc, you should oc.