Good timing for a build?

C

caycep

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
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Sort of feeling the itch to build again. Technically my computing stock is fine. The office has an old Antec P150 box running a Sandy 2500k / P65 /GTX 560ti platform and it is still pretty good at what it does. But it's large and occasionally stutters. I don't know why and I suspect it's the stupid business software's network connections. But anyway...

I have 2 NCase M1 v2's sitting around and have half an idea to a) replace the office box, and b) maybe make a linux server there for some image processing projects. The question is, technologically, does that make sense? My general gist is that we are in a lull between Haswell and Broadwell, and it's unclear how much more single core performance there will be with the latter over the former. GPU tech is probably going to be relatively stable; although maybe it would be worth seeing what Nvidia releases on the heels of Titan X.

But, I figure, an mITX Haswell/SSD or PCIe/Maxwell box built around now should be competent and last quite a long time?
 
Hm, that's coming out this year? I suppose that settles that question...
 
Honestly, I would wait for Pascal.

It's going to do HUGE things for SFF builders.
 
darksable said:
Honestly, I would wait for Pascal.

It's going to do HUGE things for SFF builders.
Click to expand...

In the PC industry, it never makes sense to wait unless it's less than 2 months away, especially if the build is going to serve a purpose. There is always something around the corner, be it GPU, or CPU.

There is no such thing as future-proofing if the buyer hungers for the newest tech, and there is absolute future-proofing if the buyer cares just about the performance. To open up that second part, look at 3 year old GPUs and CPUs, and see that they are still chugging along just fine :)

An i7-4790K and GTX 980 build now would be a great build now to last 3 years without actually feeling lousy.
 
darksable said:
Honestly, I would wait for Pascal.

It's going to do HUGE things for SFF builders.
Click to expand...

Personally, I'd wait for nuclear computing. It's coming really soon now. :rolleyes: Basically what Gryphon said, get something that works now. If you build on the bleeding edge, you might end up with a 1.0 board that's flaky or CPU with a weird glitch.
 
I'd say one thing here: If you don't need high details fullHD in your gaming and dedicated gpu then you could wait a little till the desktop broadwell cpu's get shipped.

Looks like all of them will get Iris Pro 6200 gpu which could be something close to performance of GT830M/GT840M.

This would be enough to play some games and you could fit it inside smallest cases with no card slots.
 
None of the SFX PSUs from silverstone perform as quiet as ATX PSUs so i'm holding out for one that is not going to be noisy/annoying.

And widely available enough that I can purchase in Australia (don't think any of the other SFX/L brands will sell here).
 
Broadwell desktop CPUs: June, around Computex. Will only be 2 models, 3.3 GHz highest. 0-5% higher IPC compared to Haswell. 65W TDP. A bit better integrated graphics.

SkyLake desktop CPUs: Fall, probably before the holidays.

One good reason to wait for SkyLake would be the new motherboards and the new PCIe era of SSDs that will be better supported by that platform. SATA is on the way out. However, doesn't matter too much.

I would say it's more valid to wait for things like displays, which can cost a fortune, and which you might want to keep for many years. There are new IPS 144 Hz displays coming now in April and forward.

Welcome to the waiting game.
 
theGryphon said:
In the PC industry, it never makes sense to wait unless it's less than 2 months away, especially if the build is going to serve a purpose. There is always something around the corner, be it GPU, or CPU.

There is no such thing as future-proofing if the buyer hungers for the newest tech, and there is absolute future-proofing if the buyer cares just about the performance. To open up that second part, look at 3 year old GPUs and CPUs, and see that they are still chugging along just fine :)

An i7-4790K and GTX 980 build now would be a great build now to last 3 years without actually feeling lousy.
Click to expand...

Trust me, I absolutely understand how future-proofing is a foolish thing - I help out on Tom's Harware a lot and explain that exact issue a lot. That's not even remotely what I was saying.

I wasn't recommending waiting for Pascal to try to future proof anything, nor because of the gains in performance it would give.

I was recommending it simply because when Pascal hits, graphics cards are going to be a third of the size they are now... and since this was a question in the small form factor forums, I figured that's somewhat of a huge deal.
 
caycep said:
Sort of feeling the itch to build again.
Click to expand...

Plenty of arguments either way. I say if the itch is great enough and you are able to without impacting your lifestyle, scratch it. Use it as an excuse to downsize, or reduce power draw, or make some other fundamental change.

What do you use it for? GTX 560 Ti is an older card. Games? Compute? You only mention "work."
 
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