# [SOLVED] New Mid Range Computer Choices

## paulj

If you have seen https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-808849-highlight-.html, you will know I am after some new hardware. I am looking at the following setup, and would be interested in your views:

Intel Core i5 750, S 1156, Lynnfield, Quad Core, 2.66GHz, DMI 2.5 GT/s, 8MB Cache, 95W

Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2, Intel P55 Express, S1156, DDR3 2200, SATA 3Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX

 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3, PC3-12800 (1600), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP

512MB Asus GTS 250, 2200MHz GDDR3, GPU 738 MHz, Shader 1836 MHz, 128 Cores

320 GB Hitachi 0A38018 Deskstar 7K1000.B, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ

Corsair H50-1 Hydro Series High-performance CPU Watercooler, LGA775/1156/1366, AM2/2+/AM3

I am open minded about the motherboard choice (in other words, I am not up to speed on which represents the best buy at the moment!). I may also be off the mark with the memory selection, and matching the motherboard transfer rates.

 I understand this doesn't represent the leading edge, but should give me a system at a reasonable price which doesn't need to be upgraded for a few years. 

What do you think?Last edited by paulj on Sat Jan 30, 2010 12:41 pm; edited 2 times in total

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## NeddySeagoon

paulj,

Shop around for bundles ... you can often get a deal on a CPU/Motherboard/RAM bundle.

This page lists a few intel bundles. They also have AMD bundles.

One thing to be careful of with bundles is expandability - do check that if the motherboard has 4 RAM sockets they are not full when you buy, so you can expand if you want to.  Look out for cheap motherboards with on board shared memory graphics.

Earlier this year, I bought a M4A78T-E because I like AMD. It comes with an embedded AMD (read ATI) graphics card with its own RAM (not shared manin RAM)

I also fitted an nVidia graphics card.  It was one of the few DDR-3 motherboards around at the time.

Like you, I wanted something that would last and could be upgraded, so I only have a 3 core CPU ... there were very few socket AM3 CPUs to choose from and I knew they would come down, so thats an update planned for the next year or so.

I'm not reccomending novatech in particular - I have dealt with them with no problems and one time, they were close enough that banging on the door was no problem.

I've also dealt with yoyotech successfully on a couple of occasions.

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## paulj

Thanks NeddySeagoon - I will check out the bundles you have linked. I normally shop at scan.co.uk, as they are based in Preston (not too far from here), and are helpful in the event of problems. They do bundles as well, so I will have a good look there. Previously I have always gone for AMD, but if I read the reviews, it appears that currently they are a bit behind. It's a tough call for me, as I do not spend enough time following the progress of AMD and Intel, except when looking for new hardware.

The same applies to the graphics cards. I have always gone for Nvidia as the drivers have always been available. It looked like the GTS250 based card is a good performance level without attracting the high end price some of the quicker cards have.

I'm looking forward to getting Gentoo up again on 64bit with some processing power. Updating KDE4 with my AthlonXP 2400+ was a drag, to say the least!

Have a Happy New Year!

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## Mad Merlin

Is there a reason you're going for watercooling? It's expensive and probably not useful unless you're going for a massive overclock on the CPU. There's also the issue of noise, but the video card, case and PSU fans will likely be louder than the CPU fan anyways.

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## paulj

 *Mad Merlin wrote:*   

> Is there a reason you're going for watercooling? It's expensive and probably not useful unless you're going for a massive overclock on the CPU. There's also the issue of noise, but the video card, case and PSU fans will likely be louder than the CPU fan anyways.

 

No particular reason. The unit in question is self contained, and is easy to fit - doesn't require any plumbing or anything. In my current setup I have a Zalman flower, and would happily use something like that again.

I have also done some more study into the intel chip range, and I am not so sure anymore that the i5 is the best option. Possibly at the i5 performance level, the AMD Phenom II X4 965 may be better, if I have read the reviews properly!

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## DaggyStyle

 *paulj wrote:*   

>  *Mad Merlin wrote:*   Is there a reason you're going for watercooling? It's expensive and probably not useful unless you're going for a massive overclock on the CPU. There's also the issue of noise, but the video card, case and PSU fans will likely be louder than the CPU fan anyways. 
> 
> No particular reason. The unit in question is self contained, and is easy to fit - doesn't require any plumbing or anything. In my current setup I have a Zalman flower, and would happily use something like that again.
> 
> I have also done some more study into the intel chip range, and I am not so sure anymore that the i5 is the best option. Possibly at the i5 performance level, the AMD Phenom II X4 965 may be better, if I have read the reviews properly!

 

the 965 is a factory mildly oced 955 with higher price range, if you do decide to go amd, get the 955 and oc it by 200mhz

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## paulj

 *DaggyStyle wrote:*   

>  *paulj wrote:*   
> 
> I have also done some more study into the intel chip range, and I am not so sure anymore that the i5 is the best option. Possibly at the i5 performance level, the AMD Phenom II X4 965 may be better, if I have read the reviews properly! 
> 
> the 965 is a factory mildly oced 955 with higher price range, if you do decide to go amd, get the 955 and oc it by 200mhz

 

Good tip - thanks. 

I have priced up the systems based on the Phenom II x4, i5-750, the i7-860 and the i7-920. Phoronix carried out comparative reviews of the Intel range and the AMD Phenom II x3 back in September. They referred to a problem with the Lynnfield chips under Linux with troublesome operation of the Turbo Boost. This is picked up  in a separate article, and blamed on the BIOS, but the only information provided is from Intel directly. Since September, no articles or benchmark studies have been completed (or at least are not easy to find on Google)!  I would be interested to understand if anyone here can report problems with the Lynnfield range under Linux. With the lack of other information on Google, I believe this is probably a non issue now, but I don't want to find out otherwise having spent the money on a new system!   :Embarassed: 

I am tempted to go for the i7-860 at the moment, but if there are problems with Lynnfield under Linux, I may go for the i7-920. Anyone here have experience of the i7-860 or i7-920?

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## DaggyStyle

 *paulj wrote:*   

>  *DaggyStyle wrote:*    *paulj wrote:*   
> 
> I have also done some more study into the intel chip range, and I am not so sure anymore that the i5 is the best option. Possibly at the i5 performance level, the AMD Phenom II X4 965 may be better, if I have read the reviews properly! 
> 
> the 965 is a factory mildly oced 955 with higher price range, if you do decide to go amd, get the 955 and oc it by 200mhz 
> ...

 

there is a post about it, my recommendation, go for the beast, e.g. 920.

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## Mad Merlin

 *paulj wrote:*   

>  *DaggyStyle wrote:*    *paulj wrote:*   
> 
> I have also done some more study into the intel chip range, and I am not so sure anymore that the i5 is the best option. Possibly at the i5 performance level, the AMD Phenom II X4 965 may be better, if I have read the reviews properly! 
> 
> the 965 is a factory mildly oced 955 with higher price range, if you do decide to go amd, get the 955 and oc it by 200mhz 
> ...

 

I just put together an i7 920 system (powered on yesterday). What's important to know is that the 9xx and 8xx i7s are totally different beasts. 9xx uses socket 1366 and has QPI and requires the X58 chipset on the motherboard (which supports VT-d), and mobos will normally have 6 slots for RAM. 8xx uses socket 1166 and does NOT have QPI, and requires the P55 chipset (which does not support VT-d), and mobos will only have 4 slots for RAM. However, the 8xx range has beefier turbo boost, it can clock a single core up as much as 5 bins (= 5x133 MHz), whereas the 9xx can only clock up a maximum of 2 bins.

FWIW, turbo boost doesn't seem to be working for me yet, but I haven't tried too hard there. Also, this CPU is insanely fast! For example, going from my old X2 4200+ (939) to this i7 920, compiling boost went from:

```

     Sat Nov 21 00:18:19 2009 >>> dev-libs/boost-1.35.0-r5

       merge time: 31 minutes.

```

to this:

```

     Sat Jan  2 04:39:25 2010 >>> dev-libs/boost-1.35.0-r5

       merge time: 5 minutes and 46 seconds.

```

If you don't care about VT-d (which is NOT the same as VT) or the extra RAM possible with the 9xx, I'd opt for a Phenom 2, you'll get about the same performance for significantly less $$$. Personally, I wanted VT-d and the extra RAM (I threw in 12G), so I went for the i7 920.

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## paulj

You know, I hadn't really looked at those issues Mad Merlin! Previously I had always had Windows as an alternative boot - I had never considered virtualisation as the current hardware would be painful. I will look into VT-d and QFI a bit more before making my final decision.

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## cst

If you want to save some money you can buy Phenom x2 550 BE, it is half the price of quadcores, and you can most likely unlock it to have 4 cores, I`ve seen these run at 4x4GHz, so this is probably the best performance for your money

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## paulj

Well, I went for the i7 920...

Would I be right in selecting the AMD64 disk for the i7?

Tomorrow is build day, so I need to download the correct disk!

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## Mad Merlin

 *paulj wrote:*   

> Well, I went for the i7 920...
> 
> Would I be right in selecting the AMD64 disk for the i7?
> 
> Tomorrow is build day, so I need to download the correct disk!

 

Yes. (ia64 is Itanium.)

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## paulj

Built, and up and running! Boy is this fast   :Very Happy: 

I'll post more details after the weekend - unfortunately I am away until Sunday evening...  :Sad: 

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## paulj

[/list]Issues encountered during installation

I selected nomultilib configuration, but then had a problem with grub installation. emerge identified I had to install grub-static, which I tried to do, but failed. I subsequently found I had made a mistake in the CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS setting which gave problems compiling. Once that was fixed, I didn't have any more issues. By then I had changed to the desktop configuration. Not sure if it makes much difference, so I'll stick with it for the moment.

I managed to create a /boot directory with the boot drive unmounted. Caused a bit of confusion, but once I had identified what I had done wrong I could sort it out. I then rebooted and had a problem with accessing the boot drive. It was set up as an ext2 drive, but I had left ext2 out of the kernel! So although I could recompile the kernel with ext2, I wouldn't be able to mount the boot partition to save the new kernel to allow future access. Mmm....! Compiled ext2 as a module, loaded the module, mounted the drive, made a new kernel with ext2 included and saved it to the drive. How I love Linux!

I still struggle with the configuration of xorg without an xorg.conf, but with hardware rendering on the nvidia card. In the end I created a configuration file with "xorg -configure". Works - but need to spend more time studying the ins and outs of xorg configuration.

Quakelive - I have never played, but wanted to try it! Struggled to load the extension, until I loaded "/libx11-libs/libXxf86dga". The everything worked OK.

To do:

Virtual environment for windows. I don't use it, but I want to see how to do it!

Over clocking. Again, for the sake of furthering my knowledge. Currently this system is insanely fast, but I want to understand the issues around over clocking more clearly in the future.

Optimising the speed. While compiling the normal load on the system doesn't exceed about 35% of processor capacity. This may have been due to a bottleneck with text delivery to the screen, but I have since got the nvidia driver working. More investigation required!

Understand the mechanics of portage more clearly. Particularly the --oneshot option.

Clearly going to be busy for some time!

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