Hey I was clueless up until a few years ago when I built my first PC! I’ve just kept up with the latest and greatest tech since and tried to find the unbiased reviews and articles to be aware of the cons.
hey guys thanks for the input.
As it looks right now I’m getting an powercolor 6950 and hope I can flash it.
No problem. I would suggest that 800w is overkill for the PSU. You shouldn’t need anymore than 650w unless you are planning to have two 580’s or 5970’s in there!
I swapped it to a 750 modular from corsair.
Someone said in another thread that a 6950 is hackable into a 6970 with a BIOS flash, maybe you’ll get lucky.
Look on page 1. GuitarJim was the one who mentioned it before and he also mentioned it here.
There is a tutorial on that on techpowerup.
I am aware that you can do that, even said so in a previous post.
A few things:
-6950 is a much better value than a 6970, and crossfired its amazing
-i5 750/760 (if the latter is around the same price) is the OC’able gaming processor to get right now, but this may change with the new Sandy Bridge lineup and the upcoming Bulldozer architecture from AMD. If you want to stick with AMD, the 955 BE performs around the same as any thuban 6 core since most games take advantage of under 4 cores
-ASRock has some high-quality motherboards for very good prices. I would recommend the 890FX Deluxe4 for a high-end AMD build, the 870 extreme3 for a cheaper AMD build, and the ASRock P55 pro for an LGA 1156 build.
-As was said previously, unless you work heavily in photoshop and CAD, 16gb is an IMMENSE waste. Buy two 2gb ripjaws chips at 1600 cl9 with an i5 750 and overclock the hell out of it
-Good choice switching to the corsair PSU, 700w should be enough for your system unless you plan on crossfiring a 6950/6970 ever. With the latter you need a 900w PSU, and with the former a good 800w should do, at minimum.
-The Lancool is a good case, if you’re looking for the Lian-Li feel. Personally I don’t care for their cases, and feel that for the price the NZXT Phantom delivers superb value, plus it often goes on sale at $99 and its a full tower.
-The H50 is a good low-profile CPU cooler, but if you want to cut down on cost and have a case with a lot of room the Hyper 212+ would perform very well. Even if you aren’t overclocking I suggest replacing the stock cooler, it will make the processor run under safer temperatures, obviously, and will cut down on noise significantly
Why some of your choices aren’t so good:
-The MSI motherboard you have has had some nasty cases of VRMs burning a hole in your computer. While this is rare, its not a good idea to run power-hungry Phenom IIs on a motherboard with no cooling on the VRMs. The 870 extreme3 I mentioned does have a heatsink on them, plus it has x8 x8 crossfire rather than x16 x16 which will help at ultra-high resolutions, like in Eyefinity.
-The crossfire 6850s offer great performance, but the PCS+ is a poor choice. The voltage regulator on it is cheap and does not allow software overvolting, if you’re planning on overclocking (which is what the PCS+ is technically designed for). Buy some ASUS 6850s, or a single 6950 for now and crossfire soon after. The 2gb framebuffer on the 69xx series will come in handy soon enough.
-The insane amount of RAM and the other stuff explained above and in other posts
Before you order you might want to take a gander at this review of the new Sandybridge line up:
https://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=1057
Interesting, well Im gonna wait and see if I can get my hands on one off these new SB chips.
What do you think the i5 2500k or i7 2600k?
Unless you need the hyperthreading for things like video editing, the i5 2500k offers an AMAZING value and will probably be part of my next build, unless Bulldozer is even better.
After looking at motherboard reviews on a few sites I think the i5-2500K with the Asus P8P67 PRO motherboard and 4gb of DDR3 ram is now on my wishlist!
Does anybody know if the socket 1156 is significantly different to socket 1155 in terms of slots for aftermarket cooling? My cooler of choice at the moment has to be the Coolermaster Hyper 212 plus but obviously I can’t recommend this one anymore due to socket type.
EDIT - Nevermind, lol a quick google shows the 1155 mounting holes to be the same as the 1156 so the CH212+ should fit. I should really stop thinking outloud in posts!
Just have to add that I retract any statement I may have made recommending the i5 750/760 or Phenom II x4 955. If you need an extreme budget build, the PII x3 for $75 is a great value, but if you’re willing to shell out for the x4 955 or i5 750, you might as well go the extra distance and go i5 2500k or wait for the Bulldozer processors to come out.
Omg I’ve never seen someone writing the same stuff I think of. Russilker, I love you.
just fulfillin my humble duty as a bms forum member