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The PC-building/hardware knowledge thread
bicostp:
Quite frankly, Sandy Bridge is handing AMD its butt on performance per clock and power efficiency. Even the lowly 65w i3 2100 is competitive with the 125w Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition [link]. It can also hold its own with the quad-core Fusion A8-3850 on CPU-based tasks, but the Fusion's integrated graphics core is much better than Intel's. On the really low end of the spectrum, the Pentium G620 benches better than the Phenom II X2 565 and it's actually $30 cheaper. Go with an AMD Fusion if you care about gaming but don't want to buy a video card, otherwise go with Intel.
Right now the most popular Intel chips seem to be the i3 2100, i5 2500k, and i7 2600k. (Based on my completely un-scientific "sort all LGA1155 CPUs by number of reviews on NewEgg" research.) The K series allow for overclocking on motherboards with that functionality, and can top 4ghz easily. The i5 and i7 CPUs also have turbo boost, which basically overclocks individual cores on an as-needed basis to maximize performance for single-threaded applications.
As for the motherboards, you want to go wtih H67, P67, or Z68. To the best of my knowledge:
H67 cannot overclock but it can use onboard graphics.
P67 can overclock but not use onboard graphics.
Z68 can both overclock and use onboard graphics.
e: Here's a diagram (shamelessly stolen from SH/SC on Something Awful) that explains it better:
*Z68 supports IG but some board models do not include it.
If you read anything about SATA problems on the Intel 6 series chipsets, don't worry about it. That was a design flaw which was caught fairly early in the retail cycle, and it has long since been taken care of.
LTK:
Man, that's the last time I return an item before doing a proper google search on the problem I'm having. My new RAM was giving me blue screens so I returned it to the webshop, which ran a few tests (ones I could have run myself) and they found no errors. Because of that I'm being charged a research fee. The cost is not extravagant, but it still sucks that I didn't avoid this by investigating it myself more thoroughly.
jwhouk:
I'm actually proud of myself of doing something relatively simple: a brand new wireless router that will allow my wife to use her laptop outside of the office.
Thrudd:
My old reliable workhorse PC that I put together almost 5 years ago, if not more, is no more thanks to a catastrophic fail of the Video card that took out the Main board and who knows what else.
It was a dual core with an 8500GTS overclock and a raid controller.
I went with the AMD Phenom II x6 just because I was able to get it at a much better price that any comparable intel chip. Add a higher midline Video card [ 460 ] and 8gb ram and latter, when I had more cash a 60GB SSD for my new C drive. Win 7 64 says 7.4 before tweaking so I'm reasonably happy.
Unfortunately I have had some shutdown/bluescreen/startup issues with the SSD running the show when the weather and the room the comp is in got a bit warm. I am thinking that I will have to knuckle down and clean up the rats nest of cables and power cords and wires enough to close the back of the case. Then I will have to start adding some fans and work on the airflow through the system for decent cooling.
I am so-so-so tempted to put in a liquid cooling system but what I have seen on the market as yet has left me feeling "MEH" ....
bicostp:
Does your SSD use a Sandforce controller? From what I've read they tend to go haywire more easily than others, but have much better transfer rates.
Is your RAID card okay?
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