Doing Partial Upgrade of my Rig - hopefully this lot is on the Money

Krazeyivan

Hi Guys

Had this rig a while - its been swapped around since I started it many moon ago!
but I'm typing away on the following :-

Abit IP35-Pro - Motherboard (This is my tank never ever failed or had a single issue!)
QuadCore Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, @ 3400 MHz (9 x 378)
Cooler Master GeminII CPU Cooler
OCZ XTC Platinum OCZ2P8008GQ -- 4 x 2GB DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM
AMD Radeon HD 6870 (upgraded from 4870 as it was not cutting it anymore)
Creative SB X-Fi XtremeMusic/Platinum Sound Card (losing this as its as old as time and will instead run from onboard sound)
Many HDDs (currently no SSDs)
Enermax Galaxy 850W EGA850EWL PSU (Upgrading due to lack of 8 pin GFX and not as modular as I wish)
Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced Case (got this when I got the 6870)

Bought so far

Gigabtye Z77X-3DH Motherboard
Corsair 16GB 1600MHz CL10 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Kit
NZXT Havik 140 CPU Cooler
Seasonic X-Series 750w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply
Various Pro sleeved cables to make the case sparkle :-)


Next Week I shall pull the trigger on the following too

i3570K CPU
Samsung 830 SSD (256Gb) for OS (got plenty of storage from normal HDDs)


As you can see its a partial upgrade maybe in 2014 I'll do a complete new rig but I do like upgrades in house.....

Gaming wise I like to keep up to date on games and run them at high levels - e.g. Far Cry 3, L4D2, Diablo 3, -- Modern PC titles
I have felt the CPU and most probably the DDR2 memory is hampering me at the moment as its about at its limit now
Other work that should see a boost is encoding and general PC production software - my GFX should get new legs too.

I've not used an SSD yet so I should be in for a fun upgrade over new year - I have already been putting my important stuff safe (4TB external) and upgrade steps on paper for a clean SSD install, upgrading the SSD firmware before Windows 7 fresh install - doing 4k aligns etc etc

I might take some pics when I do and post if anyone likes, it could be dusty in there so I am using a leaf blower on the case for its "winter" clean when its stripped! haha

Any comments or tips feel free to add!

Straight_Man

One thiing, older IDE HDs may not work on what you have new for mobo unless you get an IDE card to put in upgraded unit. So, a SATA HD might be in your near future as cheapest option most probably if you have older IDE HDs unless you want to invest in adapter for each drive. SATA HD will be faster than IDE also.

Krazeyivan

Fortunately this board has SATA II Standard and I'm using SATA everything at the moment including the DVD-RW drive - its not the new standard 6Gbps but 2006/2007 was when we no longer needed IDE! :P

Krazeyivan

Errrr I might be off with my SATA standard there lol

Straight_Man

Ok, cool, I started upgrading my last rig in um, 2003..... Well, have a bunch of old IDE drives still.

And two new rigs. So thought I would mention it.

RootWyrm

IP35 Pro did not have IDE boot support. P35+ICH9R with IDE on ancillary PCI. (I would know, given I've got quite a few IP35's.)

Honest advice? Skip the Samsung 830 and go with an Intel 335 or Mushkin Chronos/Chronos Deluxe. You should be able to find either one of those cheaper generally speaking, and the performance is equal or better across the board. (The Chronos Deluxe is the destroyer of benchmarks still, but tends to be more expensive - ~$180-200 for the 240GB.)

Krazeyivan

Thanks for the comments RootWyrm

The only problem I have is that it seems that SSD is sandforce based - that chipset has had loads of issues - the Samsung 830 is all samsung and has a great track record (from my research) - someone did a endurance test of it and that drive wrote over 8Pb of data and is still going strong. The other issue is its not that easy to pickup the Mushkin here in the UK - most e-tailers supply OCZ and the like.

Thrax

Yep, as of Sept/Oct, the SF-2281 in the Mushkin Chronos (and many others) was still notoriously unreliable, receiving a flood of firmware updates, broken AES256 (uncorrectable), random BSODs and poor random 4k performance.

RootWyrm

Krazeyivan said:

Thanks for the comments RootWyrm

The only problem I have is that it seems that SSD is sandforce based - that chipset has had loads of issues - the Samsung 830 is all samsung and has a great track record (from my research) - someone did a endurance test of it and that drive wrote over 8Pb of data and is still going strong. The other issue is its not that easy to pickup the Mushkin here in the UK - most e-tailers supply OCZ and the like.

Nope.. most of the issues are isolated to companies who haven't been doing proper QA/QC despite their insistence to the contrary. Namely, OCZ.
I know over a dozen Mushkin Chronos Deluxe owners who hammer their drives nearly as hard as I would. (Mind, a single 240GB? Can push >75K IOPS sustained at 4K.) Exactly ZERO problems. None whatsoever. Crucial M4? Same deal - and that's not counting the several hundred P400e's. Oh, and Crucial doesn't use the SF2881 and never has - anyone saying otherwise? Has no idea what they're talking about. Crucial M4's powered by the Marvell 9174. Period. Crucial/Micron has not used the SF2881 in the M4 family ever.

The SF2881's which are proven to be defective and dangerous? All OCZ Agility 4's. Not 3's which are SF2881 as well. Almost exclusively the Agility 4. So nope. Go take a look at the reviews for yourself on the Mushkin Chronos Deluxe and Crucial M4. Just make sure you buy Crucial direct - there's a huge number of forgeries turning up in the channel - link for UK here!

Krazeyivan

Toys have arrived! The weather is not playing ball - its rained for 48 hours cannot get outside to clean the current rig - still no matter I need to backup all my stuff first!

RootWyrm

Mmmmm... Seasonic X Series. RootWyrm and JonnyGuru approved.