New AM3+ based system any recomendations?

[Schitzoflink]

EDIT Final Build? almost buying anything I'm missing? (Also I used Toms Hardware form on this just cuz it's pretty clean)

Approximate Purchase Date: Somewhere around the end of next week (May 7th)

Budget Range: $1200ish trying to keep it under that

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Streaming, Surfing

Parts Not Required: Monitor, Case, Optical, Mouse, Keyboard

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg

Country of Origin: USA

Parts Preferences: none really

Overclocking: Yes but probably just the OCG me on the MSI mobo

SLI or Crossfire: no

Monitor Resolution: 1080p (HDTV)


So far here is the build, I have a couple questions

First should I hold off on the P67 Mobo since the z68 is looking so close? I want to have this done by the second week in may (friend is coming into town and I'm giving him my old guts)

Second, I will be using a SSD for my boot drive. I currently have a 500Gb Samsung that I will use for storage. How big do I need? I've seen anywhere from 60-120. I will be installing whatever game I am currently playing on the SSD. Starting out this will be Oblivion with mods, lots of mods

Finally, I have a SB 7.1 card in this mix, I would like to use a seperate sound card but is the $30 going to make a difference? should I drop another 50 and go with a better card? I'm not an audiophile and this is only going through the TV speakers right now. The main reason for the SC is to take work off the CPU.

BUILD
Mobo: MSI P67

CPU: i5 2500K

GPU: Radeon 6950 (want to flash BIOS to 6970)

SSD: OCZ Vertex 2 120GB

RAM: G.SKILL 8GB (2x4)

PSU: Corsair 750W

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212

120mm Fans: Scythe "Ultra Kaze" (5 of these to replace both case fans and the fan on the CPU Cooler)

[AParsh335i]

I dont know if you have read reviews of Sandy Bridge but at this point it doesn't seem too smart to go with a amd 6core. The top of the line 6core is teh 1100t and take a look at the graphs - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_7.html#sect0
The Sandy bridge i5-2500k is so much faster in FPS performance it is ridiculous. In some cases FPS is twice as much...ive never seen a CPU make such a drastic difference in gaming performance - usually its the GPU.
You can grab an i5-2500k for $180 at micro center, a p67 motherboard for $125, and then overclock the i5-2500k to 4.2ghz on air without changing any voltage. Pretty amazing.
I googled HD5960 and could not find anything. Are you sure you meant that? Did you mean 6950 and bios update to 6970?
Other than that id recommend looking into Vertex 3 for your SSD or consider looking into the Revodrive 50GB PCIe 4x based SSD which is also amazingly fast. Ram is a whatever...seems 2200 and 2000mhz are pretty popular for the newer boards but 1600 is a lot less expensive.

[Syllabub]

The i5-2400 seems to only be just a hair behind the i5-2500k on the FPS counts. I know it isn't an unlocked part and cannot be overclocked but if the price is right it begs consideration IMHO. If you want to OC then definitely go with a 'k' series part otherwise you have options to consider.

[Schitzoflink]

@AParsh335i I have heard good things about bulldozer though, and that is my main reason for looking into this build. I'll read up on the i5. As for the SSD is 50GB enough for a boot drive? I've seen that most people recommend at least 64GB with a win7 install. (and yes I did mean 6950 haha) And plus if I went with your suggestion I could stop waiting lol

[AParsh335i]

50GB really should be enough for OS install and some programs here and there, but really not big enough if you want to install a lot of games onto it as well. I personally am the type of guy that plays only 1 game at a time mostly, so i would probably put that 1 game on the ssd also.

I've heard good things about bulldozer too - but i also have not heard an official release date. But there is one thing i feel confident about, it is not going to be that much faster than the new sandy bridge chips $ for $ and sandy bridge is right now.

You are right - the i5-2400 can be a better deal. In fact, micro center has it for $149.99. If you are going 2400 then you don't need a p67 motherboard either because you cant overclock 2400. You can get a cheap H61 motherboard for less than $60! (http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0359807) so youre probably only spending about $220 between the 2 parts that will destroy games.

Edit: I should rephrase what i said about the i5-2400. The i5-2400 is not necessarily a BETTER deal if you are willing to overclock. $30 extra for i5-2500k yields a 4.2ghz quad core without touching voltage, all you do is simply change the multiplier, it's that simple. The i5-2400 is a better deal if you dont want to overclock.

[Syllabub]

50GB really should be enough for OS install and some programs here and there, but really not big enough if you want to install a lot of games onto it as well. I personally am the type of guy that plays only 1 game at a time mostly, so i would probably put that 1 game on the ssd also.

I've heard good things about bulldozer too - but i also have not heard an official release date. But there is one thing i feel confident about, it is not going to be that much faster than the new sandy bridge chips $ for $ and sandy bridge is right now.

You are right - the i5-2400 can be a better deal. In fact, micro center has it for $149.99. If you are going 2400 then you don't need a p67 motherboard either because you cant overclock 2400. You can get a cheap H61 motherboard for less than $60! (http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0359807) so youre probably only spending about $220 between the 2 parts that will destroy games.

Edit: I should rephrase what i said about the i5-2400. The i5-2400 is not necessarily a BETTER deal if you are willing to overclock. $30 extra for i5-2500k yields a 4.2ghz quad core without touching voltage, all you do is simply change the multiplier, it's that simple. The i5-2400 is a better deal if you dont want to overclock.

Would the H67 chipset be a safer choice than the H61? From what I can gather the major differences between the two appear to be that the H67 supports RAID plus it has 8 PCIe lanes rather than the 6 PCIe lanes that H61 has; both operate at 5GT/s.

My other beef with the lower end chipsets and associated motherboards is that they seem to always end up on boards that seem to skimp on the cooling solutions for the Mosfets and Northbridge/Southbridge. The longevity of a board like that gives me a bit of concern.

[Macabre215]

I dont know if you have read reviews of Sandy Bridge but at this point it doesn't seem too smart to go with a amd 6core. The top of the line 6core is teh 1100t and take a look at the graphs - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_7.html#sect0
The Sandy bridge i5-2500k is so much faster in FPS performance it is ridiculous. In some cases FPS is twice as much...ive never seen a CPU make such a drastic difference in gaming performance - usually its the GPU.
You can grab an i5-2500k for $180 at micro center, a p67 motherboard for $125, and then overclock the i5-2500k to 4.2ghz on air without changing any voltage. Pretty amazing.
I googled HD5960 and could not find anything. Are you sure you meant that? Did you mean 6950 and bios update to 6970?
Other than that id recommend looking into Vertex 3 for your SSD or consider looking into the Revodrive 50GB PCIe 4x based SSD which is also amazingly fast. Ram is a whatever...seems 2200 and 2000mhz are pretty popular for the newer boards but 1600 is a lot less expensive.

I question whether a $125 motherboard will have the right amount of power phases and MOSFET cooling to be a long term overclocker. I guess if you can stay at stock voltages it will be fine. Also, I would go for a Z68 motherboard since you come out ahead (price wise) by using SSD caching.

[Poci]

There is no garuntee that a card will be stable after unlocking a 6950s shaders to that of 6970.

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/159

Scroll to bottom and look at submited card results.
And Im still positive that not all those supposedly working cards are not 100% stable. I have an Asus reference which supposedly according to techpowerup submissions are getting 39/40 succesfully unlocked. Yeah thats a real high ratio, but I would love to see if they are truly stable. Cause I happened to get my hands on a reference 6950 and it seems stabled unlocked.... but I know its not stable cause its producing memtestcl errors and they are not false positives. In fact memtestcl has en algorithm which does indeed test everything on your card not just only video memory but also the shaders. I would love to see more info on this.