Its soon time to join the upgrade brigade

[WalkinTarget]

Well, as many of you know, I had a bad ATV accident and was forcibly removed from the sport that I quickly grew to love. I really do need something to keep me busy, so until things settle down I am back to working on and upgrading PCs. Its been about 3 years since I last upgraded, and that's an eternity if you know how much I used to be into computers. So rather than dole out advice, I am here to seek it from some of the vets who know the new gear more than I do.

Basically, I am retaining my case, PSU and HD from my current build, and upgrading the board/CPU to a new Sandy Bridge build. With the newest Z68 chipset available, it looks like the best bet for my needs. With SRT, and the ability to use the integrated Intel GPU for encoding, its a serious beast of a chipset.

Here's my nomination for the board for this build:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128505

Whoa, you say ... a board with an integrated SSD ?? Oh my ...
Ya, my sentiments as well. Its quite a nice piece, but the ONLY thing it lacks that really do want is UEFI. That's the replacement for the good old fashioned BIOS that we know and ... err ... deal with.

CPU choice is the current hot chip, the I5 2500k:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115072

Next up, we need some cooling for this setup, and I wanted to go water on this build, but nothing fancy, so I went right to the 'Corsair' tab and tried to find the venerable H70 .. but .. its discontinued. Well, fine, here's its newer replacement:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835181016

I just picked up an 8gb Patriot DDR3 kit for this build and plan on using my existing GTX280 for the time being. The GTX may be getting a bit long in the tooth, but I can't drop $200 on a card seeing as how the total bill for this build is already at $700 (I'm picking up a 21.5" LCD for my workbench as well) its not in the budget for now.

The above parts replace my current Q6700@3.5 ghz/eVGA 750i FTW SLI board, so I can sell that and the 4gb OCZ DDR2 as well as a pair of 8800GTS 640mb cards for around $300 to defray the costs of the upgrade. As always, suggestions are welcome on the parts list. The settlement check for the totaled ATV amounts to $3650, so I have plenty of wiggle room to make it all happen.

[Duke{CLR}]

Welcome back, I'm sorry that it took you near death experience for it to happen though.

Isn't there a version of that MB that has the Mini SSD slot that comes empty and could be filled with a mini SSD?

Now if you will be gaming with us I would suggest a heavier video card, theses Sandy bridge chips OC well on air and you could save a few $$ on the cooler and throw in a pair or GTX 460s for around $200.00. The single 460 my son has performs great.

I can't wait to see how the SSD works out, that feature is the one thing that gives me a slight itch to change from my x58 MB.

Don't forget the pics.

[WalkinTarget]

Awww, thanks, Dukester !! I never really left, I just hung out in the dark corners of the Lair, biding my time, waiting to pounce.

Here's a review of the board, and the SSD, altho small, adds quite a bit of punch to the benchmark scores:

http://www.techspot.com/review/415-g...68xp-ud3-issd/

I agree to an extent on the video card upgrade, but if you realized that my 'gaming' lately consists of Company of Heroes and Plants Vs Zombies, the card upgrade doesn't help me much. Hell, NONE of this helps me out much at that rate, but I need ... to do ... something ... to get my mind off of where I was.
Ohh, and I have been trying for 5+ years to try AMD for a GPU, but even now, it seems they just don't have the best bang for the buck card. And my current HSF is driving me nuts ... I really want t o cut back on noise, so no more air cooling for me (yes, I realize the H80 has a radiator cooled by fans, but they sure do beat that big 120mm air cooler).

This build is essentially a way to check out BF3 if it turns out to be worth my time. I may wait til it comes out to upgrade the GPU just so I know what I need to shoot for.

I still can't believe that my mighty GTX280 is now an antique. Somebody link me up a comparo between the GTX280, the NV 460 and the AMD 6850.

[Duke{CLR}]

Here is the thread I posted when i first read about this thing, I don't know if there is anything new in it for you.

Cain's Lair Forums

The sticky up at the top has some good linkage in it, here is one of them, it provides an estimated benchmark as well at the specs for whatever card you want, just plug it in at the top.

GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare

[TheSilentAssassin]

I have an extra PSU is you want it. I got itfor free but I can sell it to you if you want. Its brand new and never been used.

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-CMPSU-.../dp/B0029F21LA

[WalkinTarget]

Silent, you still haven't found what to do with that extra PSU yet ?? I will be re-using my PC P&C 750w for this build, so no need for one yet.
One thing that ALWAYS gets cut when guys do a parts list is the PSU quality, so I learned a while back that both a quality case and high end PSU can be carried over on an upgrade, so by paying more initially you can skip an upgrade on that component over the next build and just re-use it.

I may go ahead and order the Hanns-G 21.5" LCD for $109 that is a Newegg special for today, as the 17" LCD on my workbench is driving me nuts. I need more screen size, and that is the best deal on a 20+" LCD that I have found lately.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo

[Donziboy2]

If your having issues with Air Cooled HSF then you own the wrong one lol. My last 2 builds have used 120 mm fan's pushing down onto the HS from above and they were totally silent.

And if your that board start doing case mods or something lol.

[Dead...Again]

I have the H70 in my latest build and it is great.

Another option is one of the new coolers by Antec. As I understand it, the company that was building the water coolers for Corsair is building the Antec ones now, and Corsair is using someone else.

Antec KUHLER H2O 920 Liquid Cooling System

Also, I would recommend getting a Mobo with UEFI. Both MSI and ASUS use EFI for their motherboards now. I have an MSI board, and I have been happy with it (although some people I believe are having problems with MSI boards).

Most Z68 boards should have the mini SSD slot, so you could get a different board and buy your own mini SSD. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any on Newegg.

[K PhaNTOM]

I just sent my H70 back to Newegg for a refund. What a piece of crap. Not only did it raise my temps by 4 degrees compared to my CM V8 but it did so while sounding like a jet turbine. Do not know what the issue was but thank God I'm done with it.

Get a V8. You will not regret it.

Also, I forgot to mention that it also raised my graphics card temp by at least 6 degrees due to it releasing heat so close to the back of it. Bad design.

[WalkinTarget]

Dead, I really, REALLY want to go UEFI on this build, so if you find any board offering both UEFI and an onboard (hopefully populated) mSATA slot then that would be my first choice.

Considering its a $100 price increase over the same board without that 20gb mSATA SSD, I wonder why it costs so much more when I could just as easily buy a 96gb Kingston SSD and increase my boot drive from 20gb to 96 for the same price.


Phantom, what kind of a case are you using ?? It almost sounds like you had something mounted wrong to get higher temps than an air cooled setup. The H70 is the older model, so I cant imagine it would do worse than my current Zerotherm Nirvana NV120.

I ordered the Hanns-G 21.5" LCD from the 'Egg last night for $120 (extended 2 yr warranty) so I am piecing this together bit by bit, as I haven't found the combo deals to offer exactly what I want.

[K PhaNTOM]

I have a HAF 932. Which is wonderful and there is no way it could have caused that crappy cooler to malfunction in any way. And forget about the temps. I can promise you it sounds like your neigbor is mowing the grass outside. You will need 2 120mm fans from a different source because what they offer, for $105, is pure and utter uselessness. I even rearranged the little contact plate 3 different times and it's still the same temp. They even come with a little "speed limiter" for those fans and it made them noiseless however they ran at 600RPM, which surprisingly gave me the exact same cooling power.

[TheSilentAssassin]

Silent, you still haven't found what to do with that extra PSU yet ?? I will be re-using my PC P&C 750w for this build, so no need for one yet.

Nope still have it. Lookin to sell it so I can get some more RAM for my computer

[Dead...Again]

I have a HAF 932. Which is wonderful and there is no way it could have caused that crappy cooler to malfunction in any way. And forget about the temps. I can promise you it sounds like your neigbor is mowing the grass outside. You will need 2 120mm fans from a different source because what they offer, for $105, is pure and utter uselessness. I even rearranged the little contact plate 3 different times and it's still the same temp. They even come with a little "speed limiter" for those fans and it made them noiseless however they ran at 600RPM, which surprisingly gave me the exact same cooling power.

I have an H70 in my new rig, and it works great. I don't really notice the sound...

[{CLR} Cobalt]

I still got the first generation H50 and I cant even hear it. CPU runs less than 65c under load test so in gaming it doesnt even make that. Phan, I dont know why you had trouble. Course I have a full tower with lots of room for airflow. If you have a mini tower or mid, it might be airflow but unless I seen it it would be hard to tell. Seems like the H70 would be good.

ps: do you still run that old 480 that had heat problems to begin with.

[Dead...Again]

Dead, I really, REALLY want to go UEFI on this build, so if you find any board offering both UEFI and an onboard (hopefully populated) mSATA slot then that would be my first choice.

Considering its a $100 price increase over the same board without that 20gb mSATA SSD, I wonder why it costs so much more when I could just as easily buy a 96gb Kingston SSD and increase my boot drive from 20gb to 96 for the same price.


Phantom, what kind of a case are you using ?? It almost sounds like you had something mounted wrong to get higher temps than an air cooled setup. The H70 is the older model, so I cant imagine it would do worse than my current Zerotherm Nirvana NV120.

I ordered the Hanns-G 21.5" LCD from the 'Egg last night for $120 (extended 2 yr warranty) so I am piecing this together bit by bit, as I haven't found the combo deals to offer exactly what I want.

I did some research, and this technology is called "Intel? Smart Response Technology". It looks like all Z68 mobos support this, but from what I can tell most don't have the special mini-SSD connector on the board. Instead you would connect the SSD to one of the SATA6 ports.

Fortunately, Intel makes the SSD in both form factors:
Intel 311 SSds

So it looks like the easy (and maybe cheaper) route is to buy the Gigabyte board that already has the SSD installed. But I always prefer flexibility