Recommend me a Motherboard/Processor...

[TechLarry]

I'm a little behind on the tech right now, but I want to re-fit my main workstation this weekend. I'll probably go to MicroCenter to grab the goodies.

It's time to upgrade my i7 920 system. It's been getting a bit flakey over the last few months, plus it's a couple years old now and it's just time.

What I plan on re-using:

Corsair 650D Case.
PCP&C Silencer 910 Power Supply.
2 Corsair CM3X2G1333C9 Ram (For Now)
2 Corsair CM3X1G1333C9 RAM (For Now)
That would give me 6GB RAM which is ok for now.
Two 300GB Velociraptors (In RAID 0)
AMD HD4870 Video Card
2 internal Lite-On 20X DVD (I may not even install them - May put one in an external USB case and that's all).
Corsair A70 Cooler
Intel Pro/1000 PCIe NIC

What I want new:

Motherboard, with the following features:

• I am more after features than overclocking prowess. I'll take whatever automatic overclocking the board has (like the ASUS boards), but don't plan on going faster. Features, such as USB ports, SATA ports, Sound, PCIe ports and arrangement, maybe even WiFi are what I'm after.
• Absolute, 100% stability and reliability. This is a workstation and I want it fast but absolutely reliable.
• I think my current RAM will be ok. It's 1.5v RAM which I believe is fine for the current Intel chipsets.
• I want the "Sweet Spot" processor. Not sure I need a "K" model. I want the fastest one at the sweet spot price. There always is one, I just don't know what it is right now.
• Board must have solid RAID 0 capability for my Velociraptors.
• LOTS of SATA ports.
• LOTS of USB ports.

That should get things started

Thanks!

 

[Skripka]

A) What are you doing on this system?

B) Why is it "just time"? This is somewhat rhetorical.

Unless you're overclocking you won't see that much of a bump in performance while spending a great deal of coin in the process. The big notable benefit of a Z68/Z77 system is that it will run much cooler. I came from an i7-950 to the Xeon equivalent of an i7-2600, mainly because I got the gear crazy cheap....no way I woulda paid retail for the crossgrade.

 

[TechLarry]

A) What are you doing on this system?

B) Why is it "just time"? This is somewhat rhetorical.

Unless you're overclocking you won't see that much of a bump in performance while spending a great deal of coin in the process. The big notable benefit of a Z68/Z77 system is that it will run much cooler. I came from an i7-950 to the Xeon equivalent of an i7-2600, mainly because I got the gear crazy cheap....no way I woulda paid retail for the crossgrade.

I upgrade generally once a year. I'm late this time. I just wanna.

As indicated, it's a general workstation. I expect a lot of speed out of my daily apps. Just getting by doesn't cut it for me. I'm very impatient.

What's the deal with LGA-1155 and LGA-2011. What's the difference?

 

[Skripka]

I upgrade generally once a year. I'm late this time. I just wanna.

As indicated, it's a general workstation. I expect a lot of speed out of my daily apps. Just getting by doesn't cut it for me. I'm very impatient.

What's the deal with LGA-1155 and LGA-2011. What's the difference?

Do you need an obscenely large memory pool? If not, there's minimal reason to bother with LGA2011...because honestly the platform (both CPU and motherboard) is stupid expensive for what you get. The 1155 boards are 1/2 the price, and the top 1155 procs are only as expensive as the lowest end 2011 procs. Most enthusiast types have stuck with LGA1155 2500K or 2600K or 3770K, as it is a nice price/performance area.

How much is "lots of" SATA and USB?

Most of the top-shelf 1155 boards are "limited" to 8x onboard SATA. Some like Asrocks' Extreme9 and Gigabyte's G1Sniper have 10x IIRC.

 

[TechLarry]

8 SATA ports is fine as long as at least half of them are SATA 6.

No, I don't need the 2011 then. I was just curious what the difference was.

Right now I'm sniffing the Asus P8Z77 - Deluxe. The Premium is ridiculous at over $200 more expensive. And just for Thunderbolt and that tiny little SSD ?

 

[TechLarry]

Maybe I would be better served performance wise to upgrade to an SSD instead.

Would I see much improvement over my 2 drive 300GB Velociraptor RAID 0 ?

Would this give me an overall better performance improvement than installing a Z77/3770K ?

 

[grambo]

8 SATA ports is fine as long as at least half of them are SATA 6.

No, I don't need the 2011 then. I was just curious what the difference was.

Right now I'm sniffing the Asus P8Z77 - Deluxe. The Premium is ridiculous at over $200 more expensive. And just for Thunderbolt and that tiny little SSD ?

I think the Premium has 4x PCI-e 3.0 slots doesn't it?

The Deluxe is probably what you want. I went with the Pro as I didn't need the extra features on the Deluxe this time around (dual LAN). Deluxe has 6x Intel SATA ports (2x SATA3, 4x SATA2) plus 2x Marvell (SATA3) plus 2x ASMedia eSATA (SATA3) so lots of options there. I've heard the onboard sound is quite adequate with it as well.

What kind of work are you doing with your PC? 3570K is the sweet spot CPU you are looking for, but if you have highly threaded workloads, the 3770K has hyper threading (8 threads 4 cores).

SSD is a massive performance increase, and will blow away Raptors in RAID 0 in terms of 4K random I/O performance (which is what matters for boot time, app loading, general feel of the computer). Sequential read/writes will also be faster (~500MB/s on a SATA3 SSD, I'm guessing your array is around 300?). With prices falling through the floor, why not? High speed 256GB SSDs are under $200 now (Mushkin Chronos Deluxe, Samsung 830, Crucial M4 etc).

 

[TechLarry]

The 3770k was such a little price jump, I figured why not go all the way. The days of there being $800 price differences between the fastest and second fastest appear to be, mostly, over

Just a clarification... I would not be going RAID 0 with the SSD. Just a single SSD. Unless I hear otherwise I'll assume your comments about the VR vs. SSD still apply. I just ran CrystalDisk on my VR RAID and it came back 167/210. The numbers I saw in the Crucial Test HOCP did were vastly higher than that.

 

[TechLarry]

For $200, tht Mushkin looks like a really great deal:


Product Features and Technical Details
Product Features
Max Sequential Read Up to 560MB/s and Max Sequential Write Up to 520MB/s
Up to 90,000 IOPS Random 4KB Write
SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) interface (backwards compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s)
TRIM support (OS/driver support required)
3.5" desktop adapter bracket included
Access Time <0.1ms
Built-in BCH ECC (Up to 55 bits correctable per 512 byte sector)
High speed MLC NAND
Technical Details
Brand Name: Mushkin
Model: MKNSSDCR240GB-DX
Warranty: 3-year warranty
Form Factor: 2.5-Inch

 

[TechLarry]

Holy CRAP! That Mushkin obliterates my Velociraptor RAID-0.

For $199, especially considering the HD performance is the only thing on this machine that's not at least 7.6 on the Windows index already, THIS is my upgrade. I think I will get the most out of it for 1/3 the money.

Ordering from Amazon for delivery tomorrow