Advice on my purchase?

Hello everyone, i am looking to upgrade my machine and i thought i would start with the motherboard, possessor, power supply and ram; this is what i have on my shopping cart right now, im new to building/upgrading computers so i dont really know what works good with what so im hoping that someone can point me in the right direction, im planning on putting my my current graphics card on witch is a NVIDIA Geforce 9500 GT, hopefully i can upgrade itlater on, im looking to build a very upgradable computer hence the extreme motherboard, so.. hope you all can help ^^

Well, as far as upgradability is concerned, this is not the way to go. Intel's next CPUs will use different sockets - 2011 and 1155 pins - and since the current sockets have been around for a while, there's not likely to be any new CPUs for them, better than what's available now.
Given that, you have a few choices. You can wait and see what's new. Or, if you want to upgrade now, I would suggest you save a bit of money (to put towards a better graphics card), by getting an i5-760 CPU and an appropriate socket 1156 motherboard. For most apps, and games in particular, the i5-760 (or 750) performs nearly identically to the i7-930 - especially considering price vs performance.

Or, if you want to retain a measure of upgradability, you could go with an AMD AM3 socket CPU. The upcoming Bulldozer CPUs should be compatable with an AM3 motherboard using the new AMD 890 chipsets.

Generally speaking though, given the rapid change in sockets, RAM types, USB & SATA versions, etc., you can pretty much expect to need/want to upgrade the CPU + motherboard + RAM, and often, the PSU as well, anytime in the future.

I agree with Quaker, get a cheaper mobo with an i5 750/760 and save yourself enough cash to actually buy a better video card right now. Really, you could get a video card that is MUCH better than a 9500 gt with the money that you would save, and your gaming performance will increase dramatically.

I understand that i will need to upgrade in the future, but im hoping this set up will last me a fair amount of years, my current set up is only two years old and i am already looking to upgrade :/ unfortunately the motherboard only takes up to 4gb of ddr2 ram and that points me to a new motherboard, i want to be able to add more ram to the new motherboard without having to buy a a new one, im not saying i want this computer to last me 10 years, im saying i would like to have it a good 3-5 year at least, thanks for your replay

Edit: Ok so i5 760 it is, could you point me to the motherboard you are referring to and the graphics card

He wants to upgrade now and the current/ soon to be "old" intel hardware will be fine for several more years. I can still surf, etc, and play gw on a 6 year old athlon box.

I completely agree with going with i5 because of the bang for the buck. Spend the cash saved on a better video card or towards one in the future. At this level your old vid card will be the bottleneck for gaming. Don't go amd to save money unless it's a lot of money and you are more worried about that than performance.

Is money a concern? Cuz your expensive parts are for gaming build, but you plan to use your old video card. That really doesn't make sense. Better to buy more inexpensive parts and get a better video card.

Ok so basics for building a gaming computer and what I ask 1st is what resolution will your monitor be running? Then what kind of games. Lastly how do you use your computer. Do you multitask a lot? Do video editing, use photoshop etc?
What operating system? I need the rez for video card type. The other information for how much cpu you need and OS mostly for how much ram you can take. 64bit OS's can run more than 4 gigs. 32bit OS only needs 4 gigs. 8 gigs will be great in a win7 or some 64bit OS.

The way I build systems is getting the most bang for my buck at the time I need it. Prices generally go down, but if I know I will need something and a smoking deal comes along, I buy it. I wait for sales and almost never pay full retail. If you are located in the US or even canada, go to slickdeals or fatwallet (google em) and search for parts in the hot deals forums. Try to be flexible on the Mobo and ram. Gskill ram has been very popular lately. Newegg is great, but lately microcenter has been having the best prices on intel processors. They even have some combo sales with a mobo.

So figure it out in this order.
Proc and Mobo and Ram.
Video Card
Powersupply

I'd go with i5 and research mobos for something stable.
Mobo is the trickiest part since you have to account for how many cards, drives, etc you will be running. Do you plan to overclock? I see you are looking at a triple SLI mobo. Do you plan to sli/use 3 video cards? I doubt it unless you are a hardcore gamer and play FPS. I am pretty sure that motherboard is overkill and it would be better to get something that cost less and put it towards a better video card. After you figure out all the parts you will use (cpu/mobo/video card/hard drives/other cards), then figure out how much power you need. Try johnnyguru for powersupply info and they have links to calculate how much you need. If you are only running one card with a couple hardrives, most decent 500+ watt ps will be fine.

Do you have a nice wide screen running 1920 x 1200+ or an older lcd running 1280 x 1080 or something in between. Are you planning on upgrading monitors to something bigger? The higher the rez, the more power you need to push it. What games do you play. If you only play gw/gw2, you don't need to get too crazy on video card(s). So it's a great idea to plug your old card into your new i5 build until you need your new card. But look for sales on them and grab one if you see a great deal. Now that they are moving to dx11 cards, you might want specifically wait for a deal on a faster video card that supports it.

When it comes to money i don't want to go over $1,000 (i know its probably over that with the items i have selected) i will be running Dual monitors one at 1920x1080 and the other at 1600x1200 (currently what i have, don't plan to upgrade monitors yet) i plan to mostly play guild wars/gw2 on it but i do video/picture editing on it, i do multitask a lot photo shop is for sure, My OS will be W7 64bit, i am located in the us ^^ i don't plan to overclock at first, maybe later on if i see the need for it. Thanks again :P

hmmm, you can get allot of PC for $1000 Do you have a case and the OS already? IF so, what case do you have?

I have a couple actually :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811144102
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811148030

I have these two, one is what i currently have and the other is an old one witch i use as a server to stream movies throughout the house, i was thinking of getting an other case but i am not sure what to go with, also i do have the OS ready for installation.

Consider this combo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboB...t=Combo.475889

Not bad for under $700 and it's going to be relatively "future proof" with USB 3.0 & SATA 6GBps. SLI Compatability too. Add in a $20 DVD drive and then spend as much of the $300 left in your budget as you want on a video card. Personally I'd suggest you get at least a HD 5770 to runs games at your resolution.

Don't get the Corsair TX750, it's a rather average PSU, unless you're going to SLI GTX 470's or something, you won't be needing a 750w, a good 550w or so will be able to handle anything up to a GTX 480 in terms of power consumption.

You gonna overclock?

P.S: You should get either get i7 870/P55 or i7 950/X58 as 4 Cores/8 Threads is better than 4 Cores and 4 Threads for ''future proofing''

OK i don't want the combo because i don't need the HDD, want a different case and i would like a bit more ram, however i did pick the things i liked from it, how does this look? once again thanks for all the amazing help.

Here you go:

Awesome so what Undead Cheese posted is exactly what i have on my shopping cart, should i hit the checkout button or does anyone else have any input on this matter ^_^

that should be all the PC you need for a few years if you go SLI later on. Go for it.

If you haven't already ordered, I recommend a RAM switch, but otherwise, what Undead Cheese posted is perfect.

Here's the RAM I would order:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231303

It's ultra low latency, rock solid stable, and very fast. I've managed insane bandwidth on not just my gaming rig, but several (read: 9) other PCs I've built for various friends and family in the last 6 months.

I think he want's 8GB, and I figured 2x4GB sticks would be better than 4x2GB.

No i havent ordered yet and yes i do want 2x4GB; isnt it the same brand as i currently have on my shopping cart? G.SKILL

You don't say why you want more RAM, but unless you have a particular need for it (such as some RAM intensive app(s)), your general system configuration is a bit skewed. But let me explain what I mean.

Games are usually very GPU dependant. You say your current system is only 2 years old and you have 4 gigs of RAM, but only a 9500GT for a video card. The main thing, therefore, that limits your game performance is the relatively weak video card. If you took your current system and simply added a GTX460 (and a power supply, if needed), you would see a hugh improvement in game performance.

As far as RAM goes, my current system has 4gigs. When monitoring RAM usage - while playing GW1 maxed, plus Firefox, plus Ventrilo, plus all the background tasks for my G19 keyboard, plus Win7 64-bit - my total RAM usuage is still less than 50% (2gigs).

You originally wanted to upgrade to an i7-930 with 8gigs of RAM and still gimp the system with the 9500GT. Then you were looking at an HD5770, which is a good card, but not up to the performance level of the rest of the system. Now at least, you are talking an i5-760 with a GTX460 - a much better balance for gaming, although the 8gig is still overkill.

So bottom line (TL;DR) is - games are more GPU intensive than CPU/RAM intensive. For a game machine you need to strike a good balance between CPU and GPU.

Indeed, you'd be wasting your money on 8GBs of RAM, especially considering how RAM efficient Windows7 is. Win7 isn't Vista, so 4GB is more than enough unless you're running scientific applications. My workstation currently has 16GB of RAM, and even with the RAM intensive programs I run, I've only seen it peak at 6-7GB, unless there's a memory leak.

The applications I use do particle impact simulations, write to massive database constantly, and do huge amounts of linear algebraic expressions. Quite simply, I don't see any user on these forums using more than 4GB of RAM.

Like i said at the start, im pretty new to this, hence me asking for help :P, with my current system i can easily play guild wars without a problem, however i can notice my computer slowing down when i open too many windows at once such as Firefox and such, and for some reason my photoshop cs2 is very laggy, so i not only want to make my gaming experience better, i want to have a very fast machine something that will boot up and shut down fast, open program and run them the same way, i have no idea what i need to achieve this but i thought increasing the ram would help.

Do you think that i should only invest in a new graphics card and power supply if needed? and if that doesnt work should i order the rest of the computer, i dont know what i should go with hehe

Edit: heres what i got out of CPU-Z maybe it can help you help he

Edit: I would definitely go for a new system. That CPU would bottleneck a card like a GTX 460, and your Motherboard is kind of a dead end and not really that upgradable, nor is it very overclockable if at all.

Thats what i thought aswell, i would still use this to run a second account of guild wars or as a server or something, i am checking the ram usage at the moment is it is using 1.42 GB and all i have opened is firefox.

Windows uses a base amount of RAM based on available RAM, but I have yet to see a game that uses more than 1.5GB of system RAM. Windows will typically consume ~15-20% of your available RAM; Windows 7 leans towards the 15% number for often, and it's very efficient at recovering memory when needed. My Windows7 barely uses any pagefile, and system wide my programs + Windows are currently consuming 35% of my RAM. I can push it to about 75-80% if I go out of my way to try....

Here's the great thing about owning an nVidia card though! CUDA applications for CPU and RAM intensive applications are becoming ever more popular these days. For example, for playing HD movies on my PC, I use CoreAVC Pro (which has CUDA acceleration and vRAM offloading) with Media Player Classic. It's flawless, period.

For encoding video (FRAPS, etc) you can use a program like Badaboom or Nero MoveIt! which are both CUDA accelerated encoders and are insanely fast at 720p and 1080p encodes. You sacrifice a bit of quality with Badaboom, but for things like YouTube uploads, it's ungodly fast. I encoded a video for a friend the other day using my workstation (GTX 285 paired with dual Quadro 5000s) on Nero MoveIt! in under 10 minutes, where the CPU alone would have taken over 2 hours!

Almost all modern games are designed with a system memory clamp, and then rely on vRAM for graphics. Poorly coded games are the exception to this rule, but then... why play those

4GBs is more than enough, and compared to your current system, you will see a massive performance increase with the new system.

So I should go with the new rig and keep it @ 4gb for now?

In my last post, I was sort of guessing that your current system was a Core 2 Quad like a Q6600, but it's not.
The Phenom 9600 is in about the same performance range as the average Core 2 Duo (even though it has 4 cores). That's not all that bad, and you could probably boost your system performance by doing a fresh install of Windows 7.
However, I think, overall, you will be happiest by doing a full upgrade. Overall, I would suggest an i5-760 (and appropriate motherboard), 4 gigs of DDR3-1333 value RAM, a GTX 460 or HD 5850, and a new power supply (if needed).

Speaking of RAM usage btw, it's worth noting that CPUs keep including more and more internal cache RAM and that, therefore, more of the software can run in the cache without needing to access the main RAM as often. That is the main reason why going to faster RAM has only a small affect on overall system performance.

Whats a good HD 5850 brand? What will give me the most bang for the buck.

Just stick with the GTX 460 1GB.

Agreed. Or, if you feel like spending more, take advantage of the US deal of the month, this monster:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.455049


^ That's $299.99 for a GTX 470, which is already a great deal. But... add to it that you get THREE (3) FREE games (Resident Evil 5, Mafia 2, and Just Cause 2) and a $20 mail-in-rebate... it's unbeatable at that price.

So, basically, for another 40 bucks, you get a lot more GPU power, and three $40-$50 dollar games for absolutely free. Yeh...

Yeah, that is a heck of a deal there, I've looked at it myself and thought about pulling the trigger on it. :s

Cool i will be getting that, just one last thing, should i be getting any cables or does everything pretty much come ready to be assembled?

It will come with everything that is required for you to build it and make it work, yes.

Awesome well its been ordered, thanks again for all the help guys

No problem, let us know how it all turns out!

Hey guys just letting you know that i built my rig and it works amazingly, a couple things are bothering me tho, seems like when i plug in the reset cable into the motherboard (from the front panel of the case) the computer gets stuck in a never ending rebooting loop; the only way i found around this was not plugging that one part in, why is this happening?

The other thing that is bugging me is when i go into the computer basic information (by right clicking on my computer and going to properties) My system rating is 5.9 (i think 7.9 is max) because it is taking the lowest rating and using that, my question is: why is
the disk data transfer so low? everything else is 7.5-7.6 and what can i do to bring it up? here is an image to help you understand.

Almost all mechanical HDDs score a 5.4-5.9 in Windows. Only the Velociraptor drives from Western Digital can break into the 6.0+ territory for mechanical HDDs, and only good SSDs can hit 7.0+.

Looks like everything else is screaming! Glad you got it working, and I certainly hope it provides some amazing performance for the next 3-4 years.

Looks good, congratulations on the build.