How Good Is This PC Setup?

I'm looking to build a new PC to get off this horrid Dell Laptop I'm on currently. It will be used for FFXI, Photoshop, Blender 3D modeling/animating/rendering, music editing, Microsoft Office programs, etc etc etc. I have 2 setups I'm looking at, would rather spend the least amount of money as I can.

Setup 1:
-Asus P8Z77-V PRO Intel Socket 1155 ATX Motherboard, Intel Z77 Chipset, Support Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs, Dual Channel DDR3, SATA RAID, PCI-E 3.0, USB 3.0, Gigabit LAN, Wi-Fi, 8ch Audio
-Intel Core i7-2700K 3.5GHz 32nm
-16GB DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9B
-1TB SATA 3.5in OEM Western Digital HDD
-Zalman CNPS10X Extreme CPU Cooler
-Cool Power CP-G1080 Gamer Series 1080W Power Supply
-Cooler Master HAF X Tower
-Plus some extra fans and generic Optical Drive
$1189.84

Setup 2:
-Asus P8H67-M PRO REV 3.0 Socket 1155 uATX Motherboard, Intel H67 (B3) Chipset, Supports Sandy Bridge Core i7/i5/i3 CPUs, Dual DDR3 1333, SATA 6.0Gb/s, USB 3.0
-Intel Core i7-2700K 3.5GHz 32nm
-8GM DDR3 1333 Corsair Dominator
-1TB SATA 3.5in OEM Western Digital HDD
-Zalman CNPS10X Extreme CPU Cooler
-Cool Power CP-G1080 Gamer Series 1080W Power Supply
-Cooler Master HAF X Tower
-Plus some extra rans and generic Optical Drive
$1014.87

I understand Setup 1 would be far superior to Setup 2, but for what I stated, would Setup 2 suffice? I'm also going with a GeForce GTX 560 Ti GPU but that's going to come later. I'm going to have to deal with LolIntel HD3000 Graphics until I can save up enough to get it the GTX.

Any suggested improvements? I'm looking to save money too, so top end $9k graphics card etc etc are out of the question. I love the case so that's not changing, and I'd prefer to have a blue theme inside (yea...I know...so sue me).

Thoughts???

Looks to me that you'd have no problems with option 2. I'd see about getting a 100~gb SSD though. Won't make or break it but they are pretty damn speedy.

Yea I was looking at that for a small upgrade later. 90GB are like $100 so maybe with what I'll save on option 2 I'll throw in a SSD.

I'm not very familiar with MoBos, so other than the RAM, what makes option 1 so much better/more expensive? Is the performance difference that noticeable? What would be a reason to say "Ok yea you need option 1"?

Thanks for the input by the way! :D

Random other question...before I go out and buy it, is anyone familiar with either of the boards and CPU cooler? I want to make sure it will fit before buying it >.<

You can change the heatsink to a cooler master hyper 212 evo.

Also, get a new power supply. I'm sure some fanboy will tell you which brand to get accompanied by a horror story of another brand. In reality, almost anything from Corsair, Seasonic, Antec and even XFX would work fine but a $60 1k watt psu that doesn't even have an 80plus certification on it is not a smart buy.

I'd go with setup1. You sacrifice so much with setup2 for under $200.

PM me if you want to know more, etc.

With both setup 1 and 2, what size PSU would you recommend? I was told by one person that 500W would work for what is in there now, but 800W would last me a bit longer through a couple upgrades.

So... mmm, you need a 1k watt powersupply? You planning on running a 3 or 4 video card setup?

a 500-600 watt PSU would be more then enough, and probably quite a bit cheaper

yeah, PSU's don't 'degrade' or anything. Seriously, unless you're planning to go super balls out with video cards, like SUPER balls out, a 500 will be more then fine

Well I was told by a friend that 800W would be sufficient to last me a moderate amount of time without needing to upgrade that particular component much. Plus I found a 1080W for like $60 but I'm going to take Yarly's advice and go with an 80 Plus certified. I'm assuming 630W would be about right?

Anyways, heading to bed, keep discussing!! Always open for new ideas (or deals if you can find any)!!

Thanks again! <3

I like how setup 1 looks but 2 is almost 200 cheaper. Perhaps for 3d rendering you might need 16gb, for gaming 8 is fine. The CPU is nice but I doubt you would notice much difference between 2600k and 2700k if you wanted to save more clink clink. I'm going to question that psu though 1k seems like way overkill, is it worth it to make your power bill go up 15 bucks a month lol, and yeas atleast gold rated psu.. I would get a different brand, I don't trust cheap psu's, Im afraid they will short and fry the hardware. it does have dual 12v rails which is nice but the amps seem low, I really like corsair psu, lifetime warranty, 60 amp on my 12v rail for super clean power, good psu is also important if your planning to do some heavy OCing and definitely get that case I <3 my mid haf. And that's my 2 cents happy building :P

you're really only sacrificing ram, which 8gb is plenty unless you're trying to run like two newer games at once for some reason.

the psu should be upgraded.

Personally I'd get a Q77 or z68 socket 1155, just due to chipset features.

however the z77 is better than the h67.

also how are you "building" this? from a website? or you looking up the parts individually?

also you could use a freeware/open source office suite over msoffice that will suffice for most things, short of doing homework in certain classes (as they require 3rd party software that only works with M$)

I like the 1155 socket, while it's not the best high end, it's the most economical to build a medium system and upgrade in the future, imo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_

edit: since you're doing 3d, more ram is best but you should be able to get away with 8 for now, you can always add more as long as you don't fill up your slots with lower capacity, for rendering though you'll need great graphics, the really good ones for that are very expensive...

you do realize that the "1k" is max, and that the computer will only pull the amount it needs, right?

but you'd want one that's energy certified.

Any of those psu bands that Yarly listed are excellent, also cooler master makes good psu, just shop around find one you like. And I do also want to add that case you want is HUGE, you could get the mid and save a little bit more, just saying because your getting just the necessary hardware, not running raid or multiple gpu, 5 dvd burner ect., antec makes nice sturdy cases too. If your going to sli full tower is best, sli would be a tight squeeze in my mid but it can be done.

doubt it, fanboy.

Have any links to some good boards with those chipsets?

Buying the parts individually. Originally started after seeing this deal: http://www.directron.com/sumsaver2.html
My other half's company had him buy 2 of those plus other stuff and put them together for them. I helped him and decided I wanted a new comp lol

Got that taken care of

That's what I was looking for. Not really going for the best of the best of the best, just a decent upgrade (which doesn't take much from where I am right now...) that can be upgraded further in the future but can last decently now.

Actually, the graphics card is really only useful for the interface and during live modeling, while the cpu is used for actual rendering. But your point still stands, for the high-poly/large scenes, you will certainly need those expensive cards :(

you US?

newegg, tigerdirect.

have very nice search functions, you can find ones you like then check amazon/ebay for cheaper parts if you'd like.

I'd stick to Asus or Gigabyte or maybe 2-3 others for a board though.

ah didn't know those programs were cpu intensive for that, interesting.

Like others have said that PSU is highly suspicious. I think I paid $20 more for a 700 watt Corsair that was on sale.

The extra RAM will really only come into play during 3D rendering in blender, and maybe PS if you have lots of high res images with lots of layers. Your video card will only affect your viewport in blender. Gaming cards aren't especially efficient in this arena so the difference between a 550 and a 690 would be significantly less than you might expect. Rendering is entirely up to the CPU and RAM.

You asked what the advantages of the more expensive board are, and while I'm not perfectly familiar with both boards, the first one is obviously much newer. With it you get support for up to 4 way SLI (I don't expect you'd actually use this), but more importantly PCI-E 3.0 which is supported by Nvidia Geforce 6XX series cards (not sure about AMD) and doubles the bandwidth of 2.0. You also get 4 SATA 6Gb/s connections instead of 2, and 4 USB 3.0 connections instead of 2. Both of those are used almost exclusively for storage devices so the advantage might be null. I'm not sure whether it has much impact on HDDs, but if you do end up getting a SSD you absolutely want to attach it with SATA 6Gb/s. The other relevant upgrade I noticed was support for higher speed DDR3 on the newer board. I'm sure there are various other minor advantages in the software and what not, but that seemed to be most of it.

Importantly, both boards support new ivy bridge processors which are obviously faster and use less power if you'd be interested in those. They also have better integrated graphics which might be relevant depending on how long you plan to go without a video card.

Oh, lastly, any sort of CPU cooler is mostly superfluous unless you intend to overclock. The stock heatsink and fan are perfectly fine if you're running at stock voltage.

yeah I was thinking the development cards, not gaming cards.

(tbh my knowledge of that field is only that this category exists on newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=449&name=Professional-Graphics-Cards)

although I will need to learn it if I'm going to con my gf into letting me build her a desktop for design.

on another note: if you need Adobe master collection, give me a PM.
(I wouldn't use it for anything you might be selling but for toying/education it should suffice, just to keep you from getting caught etc.)

I only mentioned the thing about video cards because they used to be much more similar (between gaming and professional cards), but nVidia began to notice people simply didn't need to buy their professional cards. The 8800GT was famously identical to a quadro contemporary such that you only had to switch the drivers and you had a $2000 pro card. Lately they've been sabotaging gaming cards at a hardware level from working well in professional environments to keep professionals buying quadros. Can't say I blame them, but it's rather annoying.

they should just make one and be done with it...

obviously if they can profit from the one, there's no reason they can't profit off the other, since they were apparently the same physically.

You're on the right path, my friend.

Also, Intel Ivybridge processors came out recently. Make sure to look those up too.

While I may agree for $200 they are good CPU's but they are horrible heavy usage CPU's in my experiences. I've owned AMD three times and each time I tell myself "never again!" and I'll just give another $50-100 for Intel. My 2 PC's at home, one has a Core 2 Duo that came out in 2006 and it still runs at 4.0GHz and maxes all windows internal benchmarks. My other is an AMD FX 6-core that came out last year and it scores a 5.2 on Windows Benchmark for the CPU. As I said, never again and I hope I listen this time!

For the record, this page is the anti-christ for AMD fanboys too but they are one of the major authorities on the net for CPU and GPU testing.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html


The AMD 8-core FX-8150 scores a 8249 @ $200

Intel Core i7 2600K which is about 2 years old scores 9085 (just over 9000! ... sorry I had to). This is one of the best overclocking chips out currently, very stable with minimal voltage increases up to 4.5GHz. I have mine running at 4.2Ghz and temps never go above 60C air cooled.

Core i7-3770K is 10401 @ $325 via newegg.

Intel's new CPU's are just hitting the market and I'd expect the Sandy Bridge CPU's to slowly come down eventually (meaning the 2600K).

lol, just like how the 9800 was pretty much a re-labeled 8800, even if they did change something there wasn't much signifigant of a change.

I really want to build a new desktop, but I can't afford it right now...

Or maybe... you should invest in one of these bad boys.

Eww, Macs.

I had a G3 in my backseat for awhile, the powerpc cpu was great for it's time, but macs are worthless since they use the same cpu now.

so now:

was a joke man.