If your mother refuses a system that performs better for a better price I will personally fly to her location and slap her with an old Athlon 64 I have upstairs.

You should tell your mother ATI and AMD are now the same company, and thus she was accepting an AMD made chip in her GPU anyway. You should also tell her that she was buying a dead platform in the 775 socket. DDR3 or not, that socket is dead and gone. Its fucking buried. You should then explain to both your parents that Ghz isn't everything. They're getting a fast quad core that has an unlocked OC multiplier for a very nice price.

I mean honestly Vrael, I'm willing to speak with them on the phone. I'm passionate about what I do. I will not allow them to ignorantly waste money on a dead socket and a bad system. I simply will not have it.

God damn, your build kicks the shit out of mine. If I had been looking/trying AMD stuff I might have been able to come up with something like this. I'm going to probably have to do some talking-to to my mom, this is an obvious difference in price/performance.

How come the PSU you recommend is only 500W? Shouldn't we go higher, like 650, considering the graphics card alone requires a 500W supply?

I'd be careful about planning on overclocked system if you want it to last, overclocking may get a faster performance, but it'll take years off a processor, if you're going for a long-lasting system you're going to want to keep the temperatures down, the cooler you can keep it the longer it'll last.

The GFX alone does not use 500w of power, that would be silly. It recommends a 500w PSU minimum to keep up with the GFX along with the rest of the systems demands.

Will 500w do the job? Yes.
Will it have a lot of extra room for upgrades and the like? No.
Might it have a small chance not to be enough if the PC is put through an absolutely grueling 100% CPU and GPU load for an extended period? Yes.
So do I NEED more? No.
Could I get more to air on the safe side and have room for upgrades? Yes.

Your ball.

Also in response to Falk, Black Editions are designed to handle overclocking. I don't think Vrael is going to be going for benchmark type gains but if he wants to squeeze another 100-300mhz out of it safely I'm going to have to say he can without risking any noticeable lifetime.

I know that 100% CPU usage doesn't mean the processor is 100% occupied internally (play StarCraft without CPU throttle and you'll realize what I mean) and thus isn't necessarily eating as much current, but there are applications and even games that come pretty close to fully use them. So when it's possibly a problem when I hit the 100% why is it recommended to use the 500W?
And won't the problems start even earlier when you get to 110% using the overclocking you advertised?

I didn't mean once it touches 100%, I was talking about a benchmark style 100% CPU and GPU pin for an extended period of time. Something you might not be aware of is that there are benchmarks that tax both areas more than any game ever could, they are specifically engineered to generate as much input at possible. The power issue has to do with PSU ripple, 12v rail efficiency and output (AKA things you have demonstrated you know nothing about.), these things don't matter when touching 500w, but when being pinned at it for extended periods. And I was saying it is easy to overclock, not that he has to, nor did I say it was factored in to my PSU expectations. I highly doubt this silly machine for his parents will ever encounter a task it cannot complete with extreme ease.

wtf? I said I know that 100% doesn't mean 100% internally unless you run a program specifically designed for stress test (e.g. benchmark). But I also said that there are applications and games that come close to it.

So you're saying even those stressful applications/games have "breaks" where they don't demand the full power of the chip and that that is enough for the PSU to handle the situation for hours? If so, can you give an estimate in % in what borders the power demand is for the most stressful applications? (just out of curiosity)

Are you saying that the 500W system wouldn't (fully) support overclocking? Or am I misunderstanding?

1. No, there is nothing nearly as CPU intensive as Linpack. Nothing. At all. Ever.

2. I'd say this build can handle normal operation with the normal stress of playing games and doing normal things. If you're going to start overclocking it and pinning it down in benchmarks it MIGHT run into a PSU limit. When a chip is running 100% on a game, that isn't 100% total power. That's 100% of dedication to the stream the game can provide. Synthetic tests and benchmarks can put through more information per percentage than a game or program that wasn't specifically designed to stress test. When my CPU hits 100% playing RE5, it is nowhere near the strain of when I am running 100% with Prime95. I don't think you understand the grave difference, you underestimate the inefficient method in the way most things are coded and designed.

Note a lot of this is estimation and intuition. I could be completely correct in my assumption that 500w will be enough, or he could get a bad PSU that wasn't manufac'd so well, because those things do happen, and it might not handle the strain very well.

He could risk it, and he could be fine, or he could not. I don't have the system in front of me to test.

3. The 500w system might reach an overclocking limit in power before another area. However since we're talking about a stock air CPU cooler, higher but not pro tier ram, and a higher but not pro tier motherboard, I doubt that would be the first limitation. I actually think Vrael's OCing knowledge would be the first barrier.

Edit: Did a PSU calc with this http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
Got about 481w when I factored in a bunch of USB devices and all the fans and things at peak load, peak TDP, with 25% capacitor aging. So if at absolute maximum its going to drive 481w, I say you're okay. If you want to grab a 550w or 600w, I'll understand.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 27 2009, 10:34 am by Excalibur.

That may well be. I know there is a difference, but I expected it to be around 10% for stressful applications.
The way you are talking it seems more like 40%.

The average lifespan of a cpu is 10 years. Heavy overclocking may take off 4-5 years. If you are overclocking, typically you're not going to stick with a cpu for 4-5 years, rather, upgrade every 3-4. If you're not overclocking, you're probably going to want to keep it for a while, as it was meant to be.

Also, second on the 5770. It's as good as a 4870, but with much less power, and DX11. As for socket 775, it's a dead socket. However, if you're not going to upgrade the computer, there's no sense in ruling it out. The E8400 is a beast of a processor, but so is any of the comparable $167 AMDs, and AMD finally has processors which match their power (it only took them a year). The i5 is currently the best buy for intel, but it's $200 plus a royalty for the brand new motherboard socket, making it not really that worthwhile, and by Ex's standards, completely useless since it can't use triple channel. IMO the e8400 is overkill for anything but some serious gaming. I bet a Regor would do just fine. Here's a combo for $181 which comes complete with a not quite top of the line case or power supply, with excellent µATX motherboard and decent cpu, and decent enough ram (4 GB of ddr2 gskill). IMO, this is a ridiculous deal.

cm 690 - $74 SECC and ABS Plastic
PC-K7B - $60 SECC and Aluminum

Hey, look, I found a better case. Zero ricer, and no plastic!

The 5770 has GPU performance equivalent to the 4890 (with more features than the 4890), but is limited by lower memory bandwidth (128-bit on 5770 vs 256-bit on 4870 or 4890). On average, it is about as fast as the 4870. It is sometimes faster because of the GPU, but sometimes slower because of the memory. They could have had a card that was basically a 4890 with the 5000 series features and lower power consumption if it supported 256-bit for the memory. If you could overclock a 5770 to having twice the memory clock of the 4890, the performance would be roughly the same as it.

Some possible arguments for using an AMD CPU could include the following: (not listed in any particular order)

1) If a 64-bit OS is used, by getting an AMD CPU you are getting a CPU from the creator of the architecture the OS was designed for. AMD created x86-64, not Intel. In this case, Intel's is the clone and not AMD's.

2) Having a motherboard chipset, CPU, and GPU from the same maker is probably less likely to have any compatibility issues than mixing products from different companies. I'm not sure whether this is something that really matters, but I suppose it could.

3) Also, compared to 775, AM3 is probably not a dead-end platform.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 28 2009, 7:50 pm by ShadowFlare.

They're calling this the "Dragon" platform, or something like that. Maybe it's fusion. In any case, it's not a bad idea.

That's sort of what I thought about my AM2 motherboard. AMD did a terrible job ensuring backwards compatibility, but hopefully the AM3 will be followed by the AM4, which will also work with the AM3 socket. They may move over to the opteron/775/i# type socket though, completely ruining any compatibility.

Except for power requirements, as far as I know, isn't that just from the motherboard maker not providing updates to support new processors?

Perhaps many motherboard makers are lazy, but I do know it's pretty hard to get any am2 board (bought new when it came out) to work with an am3 (or at least I haven't seen anything that says you can do it). My motherboard made by DFI has terrible support. Great product, but the response to people wanting am2+ support is terrible. They say they can't fix it, and yet many other motherboards can run Phenom II (AM2+).

Well the system has been purchased. I wish I had purchased it immediately following the discussion with excalibur, because the next day a couple of the mail-in rebates dissapeared, and the 640GB caviar black at $49.99 went out of stock, got the $80 750GB version instead. Basically went with the AM3 build Ex delineated. Even my mom couldn't refuse when I explained the price/performance differential to her. We went with a different PSU though, my dad wanted more power to be on the safe side.

Smart choice. May I ask which one?

If you have any problems/questions/concerns during the building process, please let me know.

Edit: I just noticed I didn't include a DVD drive in my earlier AM3 setup. Did you notice? Because I just did. :X

Edit2: There are a lot of things I don't like about that Lian Li you keep pushing rocks, so stop it.
Less fan options by far. We're talking NO door/side fans, no top fans, nada. Top mounted PSU, bottom mounted is becoming bigger and bigger because its better for both thermals, cable management, and keeping the unit secure.

That case does not beat a 690, and it never will.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2009, 2:39 am by Excalibur.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371015
Same one from the build I listed earlier.
Will do about the building. Should be easy though, right? Mostly fitting the parts together, as far as I know and screwing everything into the right place. Not 100% sure where the thermal compound goes, on the processor itself?

Yes.
When you build you'll need a screwdriver, coffee filters, and rubbing alcohol. Screwdriver is obvious. Coffee filters and alcohol is for cleaning both CPU and heatsink contact surfaces, place single rice grain sized drop of thermal compound on center of CPU after its in the socket, and apply/secure heatsink/fan setup.

Oh, and thanks for the help Ex (and others).

You may as well just use one giant fan. More fans mean more places for dust to enter. Top mounted PSU actually lets you put your PSU fan to good use, rather than sticking it on the bottom where it just cools itself, rather than the rest of the case. I don't know what these two "thermals" are that you are talking about. Convection maybe, but radiation and conduction have nothing to do with PSU placement. Cable management and I assume you mean lowering the center of gravity are both viable.