CplMOFO

I'd say, if you can find a etailer that offers PRICEMATCHING online, it's the best thing. You look for the best price from the deals "search engines" (shopbot.com, amazon and others), you find the best price and you pricematch it with the etailer that offers to match the price...(or you buy directly, from the guy that sells for cheap, it's good and bad, sometimes you'll pay more in shipping fees if you buy separate)..also, look for a place that doesn't charge sales taxes (or less of it) The stores that offer pricematching often have those requirements: -The item has to be in stock -The price has to be the price they would sell online to people not some sort of "cash price" -price doesn't take into account MAIL-IN rebates.... -The lower price has to be in the same currency, and the etailer located in the same country... Newegg.com is often competitive, same for microcenter, the rest I don't know cause I'm in Canada and we have different stores... Compusa and Tigerdirect I DISPISE..............overpricing bast4rdos!!!!!!

LOL the clock XRay! I replaced the 2 Noctua 120mm fans for 2 coolermaster R4 120mm I had spared and it reduced the temps by another 2-3 degrees celsius...so 4.7GHz / 1.38 / 70Degrees max Not bad for a $200 CPU! Passmark CPU at 4.7GHz = 9266 pts...

Bama: This is a spare EVGA GTX260 Core 216 card...Monday or Tuesday, I'll receive my GTX590. Because the GTX590 is nVIDIA (of course), I didn't want to reinstall my Radeon 5870 and load CCC drivers on my new win7 install... LOL, I'm running the same settings!...4.6GHz, 1.36V, staying below 70 degrees Cel. I can get to 4.8 easy, but at 1.4V and the temps are at around 75 a little high IMHO It's pretty easy and nice to deal with that new EFI (BIOS replacement)...

Nice pics? What's that gfx card? A Powercolor 5870? My build is good to go too...haven't fiddled too much with cable management yet... My old setup... God loves motherboard trays...easy to build... My new setup....got a 4.2GHz overclock I don't know why or how, I haven't looked into it yet...LOLZ I think that's an auto OC setting...lol In the case, with some cable clutter....I'll be working on that when the GTx590 with show up to my door...now the old GTX260 back on duty!!!

Thanks a really nice setup you got there indeed!!! You'll be happy, I'm sure... for the Thermaltake cooler, it's a good one, but apparently it's a little bit of a pain to install, if you take your time you'll be fine. I'll start building this morning, so I'll be offline for the day I guess...crossing fingers!!!!!!!!

LOL...you know what? Those "close-up" pics are deceiving...if I measure from mobo to top of cooler, it's 7" thick...so many 8"-wide gaming cases are good to go... The right one is mine... Coolermaster ATCS840 full tower...besides, it's my former Antec 300 (which a pretty good cheap gaming case BTW). Now my daughter uses it... That little spoiled brat will get my Q9550/4GB/HD5870 once my Sandy rig is all set... That Antec 300 could fit my Radeon HD5870 with a 1/4" before it touches the hard-drive cage...pretty good, those Radeons are a little long (11 inches). Of course, the 300 is a little old and there is some nicer alternatives, like the coolermaster Haf 912 ($60 US at newegg.com) and stuff...but something to keep in mind! It all depends on what kind and how many videocards you want to be able to fit inside...

First few pics...I started building. My RAM is REALLY close to the heatsink!!! About 2mm or 1/16"... Also, the Noctua NH-U12P is pretty easy to install..nice little guide... Tomorrow, I'll "secure-erase" my OCZ Vertex 120 GB SSD, to get it ready for Win7 64 install...then I'll swap...if everything goes according to plan, tomorrow, I'll be testing my new platform...I'll install my old gtx260 (just to install an nVIDIA card) and to NOT corrupt the driver install with ATI drivers (that's why I won't put my HD5870 in there for a 2-3 days, until my GTX590 shows up)

As I ordered at night, it hadn't shipped that night...so I assume that might ship tonight, but Purolator doesn't deliver during the week-end...so Monday or Tuesday...it's coming from the next province over... I will have time to build my rig and will install an ol GTX260 for a day or two...then I'll be ready for the card when it comes... So Turkey, what did you order exactly?

You might want to check this out to find equivalent RAM modules or use as a reference, then try to find the same at your local retailer... IMHO, I would buy ONLINE, it's cheaper...the brick and mortar stores are notorious for OVERPRICING the RAM!!!! http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory.aspx for the videocard, I second WIZID on the HD5770 (runs pretty much like a GTX 260 core 216, but with lower power consumption, size AND has a HDMI port+ DX11 support)...I got one in my daughter's rig...she plays BC2, COD, and L4D2 on it no issues...nice little card really. You can also look for cheap GTX460s like the MSI Twin frozr II model at 129$ after mail-in rebate...at newegg.com the 460 is better than the HD5770...

Yes it will be really nice, but I have the strong feeling that I'll be keeping this new rig for a long long time (not by choice).That's why I went a little "extreme"... after this rig, I think next time I speak "computer upgrades" with my old lady, she's gonna "assassinate" me...lol my life is in dangerz Also, it's one of the reasons why I picked a 2500K instead of the 2600K...I saved a much appreciated $100 that I put towards the graphics...at least that's how I seen it... Reviewers are using Intel 980X and 990x CPUs for benchtesting their hardware, but Sandy bridge ( with an high-average overclock) offers almost the same CPU power for much less...that 2500K is the most bang for the buck gaming CPU in a long time...if not of all time..even the 2600K+hyperthreading is CHEAP compared to a $999 i7 extreme 980X... I seen a video of the gTX590, where the guy mention the famous "SOURCE" games...(L4D, TF2 and all those) and the GTX590 is so fast in those, it's not even worth it to benchmark using those games... (cause there too easy for today's cards to run) In this day and age of "console ports", like Black ops, this 590 should be good enough until the launch of COD ALL-STARS 50th anniversary (joke)... At least I'll be ready for Battlefield 3 with it's "frostbite 2" demolition engine, Doom 4 (iD software,on the production line), Rage (also from Id Software)

I will keep you guys updated for sure....the revised Asus Boards are apparently coming with the latest BIOS, so it's good to know...almost all the "kinks" are already worked out! and I just ordered my Graphics card....CALL ME AN XTREME IDIOT!!!! FOR YOUR INFO, you don't want to manually overclock a card like that... Good thing EVGA offers lifetime warranty!!!!!!!!!! Yea...I know...crazy... The classified is a factory Overclocked card with dual GTX580 chips onboard, linked together by an nVIDIA NF-200 PCI-E bridge chip. NF-200 (SLI bridging interface) It comes with: -The custom EVGA backplate (pretty sexy IMHO) -EVGA GTX590 t-shirt -EVGA high quality mouse pad/ gaming surface (seems like the Razor Destructor mouse pad I estimate a $40 value) -A FREE full copy of 3DMARKS11 -LIFETIME WARRANTY!!!! I know a little overkill...BUT those cards are drawing LESS wattage than dual GTX570 SLI...but you have GTX580 chips (abeit a little downclocked) to keep power within reason...good thing I got an XFX 850 Watts Black edition 71Amps single-rail (made by Seasonic).. the color is a little weird, but it's upside down in my case I'll keep this updated!!! I'll wait for the card to show up to build, that way, I won't install ATI drivers on the fresh install...I'll start nVIDIA from the get go...

Well, Intel is out for our money, and they're masters at market segmentation...they're bad at it...right now, for 2X 16X on Sandy, the boards are selling for $300+...or you can go backwards and grab a socket 1366 boards...or wait for Ivy Bridge (socket 2011)... AMD always offers a little more, especially bandwidth...mostly for Crossfire boards tho...SLI certification on AMD boards is less common (they have to pay royalties to nVIDIA to get the certification/permission and they change 5$ to $10 a board to the mobo makers) Intel did bad when: -You want to OC = Unlocked cpu (K-series+P67 board) -You want to benefit from onboard video (imbedded in Sandy's CPU core) you NEED a H67 board which don't OC...lol Z68 chipset will offer both Overclocking AND the use of the SB graphics...

Bama, LOL I could go all out, grab a HD6990 (can be found for $680) and benefit from that 16X slot! GTX590 comes out tomorrow morning also...dual 580s downclocked to 600mhz... BUT, The PCI-E bandwidth on P67 brings something new compared to 8x/8x PCI-E 2.0 The CPU itself provides 16 dedicated lanes and the chipset an additional 8 lanes. On my board, there is also a PLX chips that adds "legacy" PCI support aside, without taking bandwidth from actual chipset... Also, this new bandwidth thingy below, taken from anandtech's review... The other major (and welcome) change is the move to PCIe 2.0 lanes running at 5GT/s. Currently, Intel chipsets support PCIe 2.0 but they only run at 2.5GT/s, which limits them to a maximum of 250MB/s per direction per lane. This is a problem with high bandwidth USB 3.0 and 6Gbps SATA interfaces connected over PCIe x1 slots. With the move to 5GT/s, Intel is at feature parity with AMD’s chipsets and more importantly the bandwidth limits are a lot higher. A single PCIe x1 slot on a P67 motherboard can support up to 500MB/s of bandwidth in each direction (1GB/s bidirectional bandwidth). so all high-bandwidth device will benefit form extra bandwidth at 500 MB/s both ways per lane... The analysis from Techpowerup shows that there is a 2% loss from going 8x/8x instead of 16x/16x on a GTX480...2% difference is not noticeable...also, the price of dual 16X/16X enthusiasts boards is a good $90 to $100 more...for a 2 to 4 % gain...and that was with the older p55 PCi-E slots at 2.5GT/s... ME WANTZ TEH SLIzzzzz

Finally got my first order in! As you can see, the noctua cooler is huge compared to the tiny CPU box... Also, notice the "New P67 B3 REVISION" notice at two different locations on the Asus motherboard box... It means it's the new version...it HAS to be a B3 (all brands would show either a B3 or REV 3 notice if they're the OK ones). For reference, the B3 means: new batch with corrected P67 chipset that doesn't have the SATA2 port degradation issue... Also, the Gskill Ripjaws X Ram modules are somewhat low in height, so no issues with the cooler's fans & fins...it's also 1.5Volts, for the best Sandy Bridge compatibility. actually, that rAM shows on the motherboard's QVL list (qualified RAM for this product)....

I have to order in two shots...I did the first one (cpu/mobo/ram/cooler). Now, I'll wait for Wednesday's sale (March 23th) to order my graphics...in case some good sale comes up...and after all the 590 comes out on the 24th...might as well wait and see. Not dead set on what to grab yet...the gigabyte HD6990 can be found for $680 (3-year warranty), but it's LOUD! I'd rather go XFX for the lifetime warranty...Also, for the same price, you can grab 2 x Hd6970s which would give you an extra 8% perf, while maybe been not as loud...the HD6990 EXHAUSTs inside the case too (and against the airflow on top of that!

Just received a "your order has been shipped" notice! For: -CPU/RAM/MOBO/Cooler... Looks like if everything is fine, I'll have a Sandy-Biatch in my case by the week-end...

I feel your pain about RMA...my etailer offers EXPRESS RMA for 30 days...it's costing about 5% of the purchase price...fast turnaround, they send you shipping labels and stuff, possibility of "crosshipping" I got free shipping labels from EVGA a couple times....

On the new cards coming up, or just out: Radeon Hd6990 (dual 6970 on a single card) is selling for $750 and is LOUD AS HELL GeFORCE GTX590 is coming out on the 24th, but there will be a very limited run, possibly only by EVGA and ASUS...a total of 1000 units (rumor)...it will be two GTX580 cores, but downclocked to 600-some mhz to stay with thermal limits...too expensive.... So, the best GTX570 is the ASUS DirectCu II version, because it has a custom PCB (circuit board), but beefed up voltage regulators, (the gray cubes...6 for GPU and 2 for memory) only drawback IT'S BIG and uses one 8pin + one 6pin PCI-E... VERSUS a STOCK GTX570 PCB (only 4 power regulators (with R125 markings)...look there is two missing (the GTX580 has the full 6) the cards are supposedly fine if you NEVER touch the voltage or try to disable the Over Current Protection (OCP) LOOK at what a ASUS dual 570 or 580 DirectCuII cards look like in SLI... GEEK PORN!!!!!!!!!

Man, the stuff hasn't shipped yet...parts were a little scattered between the NCIX warehouses (my etailer)..they should be shipped tonight...I need my stuff for next week-end...I'll post pictures... Now I'm looking at GFX cards....about ready to order... Issues: -One GTX580 is $500... BUT 2 X GTX560Ti are $500, BUT are going faster... GTX570s are $340 and I want two...but there is issues with their design....the "power stages", AKA VRMs are a little lacking...I guess it's fine if you keep the cards at stock and buy from PNY, EVGA or ZOTAC (lifetime warranties)... Radeons are less POWER hungry...HD6950s are selling for $269 each, Crossfire great...seemsl iek an option, although crossfire is a little finicky.... Dunno...I need to buy max graphics powa, as it's gonna be my last rig for quite a bit, wifey kinda feels like I could start putting my money elsewhere lolz...

Nice avatar Xring... You're already golden if you're running X58...obviously you don't need an upgrade. BTW, my actual rig is fine! I just got the upgrade itch after getting some extra cash...and BF3 seems promising!!! Gotta be ready for that!

Overclocking overrated? Pretty much like an already fast Mustang V8 can be souped-up with custom parts (supercharger or some other good stuff) to go even faster... Of course Overclocking void most CPU's warranty. My take...if you KNOW that you reach an easy 500mhz+ jump...It's worth it...you'll benefit...Most Intel can take an extra 800 mhz to 1GHz above specs, while staying within reason (thermals and voltages).. common sense... On the K-series sandy, Intel states that they offer no warranty on the end-result...but they are sold UNLOCKED especially for the enthusiast... The truth...high-end graphics cards REALLY appreciate a "push" from a 4.0GHz CPU...it removes a possible bottleneck...anything above 4.0GHz is gravy. Anything above regular clock speed is FREE. The CPU makers are playing with us, and the CPUs are actually perfectly capable to run above spec, especially true for Intel CPUs. On the AMD side, the Phenom II X4 and X6 are good overclockers...some oldie AMD CPUs have almost no leeway tho..keep that in mind... I own an Intel C2D E6420 (stock clock 2.13GHZ (NEVER ran at stock)OCed since 2007 (ran it at 3.2GHz until I upgraded, then passed it on to my daughter, clocked at 2.8GHZ). My actual Intel C2Q Q9550 (stock 2.83GHz) runs at 3.825GHz since day one (18 months ago) huge benefit if you NEED to feed a powerful graphics card. Your mileage may vary...but the fun, the potential and the parts are there!!! look at this guy....extreme yes, but he's running a "phase-change" mini-fridge compressor system in his case!!! now THAT is too much money versus benefit...but I can't judge him...he's probably a happy camper

That soundcard that LARSIN pointed too can be found for really cheap, especially if your reseller offers pricematching... The nicething about that Asus soundcard is that it has built-in AMPLIFIER... don't get me wrong, the old days of "you NEED a sound card to offload CPU cycles" are over, but I find that my onboard chips is decent but doesn't drive the headphones loud enough... The zonar Dx can be found for as cheap as $25...I might grab one...

5.0GHZ is...SEXY, but you need a pretty stable 24/7 overclock, not a "suicide run" overclock on nitrous...that blows a gasket down the road...so 4.6 is my realistic (and easy to reach) overclock on this... Well, yes those Sandy bridge CPUs, while OCed are reaching the same performance level as the Intel Extreme edition 6-cores 980-X CPUs worth $999... More on SandyBridge RAM: We are used to pay a lot more for good overclocking RAM...it's a reflex. But, SandyBridge Overclocking DOESN'T INVOLVE running the RAM at higher specs... Sandy Overclocking is done by increasing the CPU multiplier, NOT by increasing the FSB (front side bus) speed...so we don't need memory that can "ride the lightning" on an overclocked FSB...SANDY BCLK (base clock) is set to 100mhz and SHOULN'T BE TOUCHED...all attemps to increase BCLK on Sandy will probably lead to a lot of issues... Why? Because the base clock is used as a reference for a lot of components on this CPU...but it's also a good thing....you OC just by increasing the CPU multiplier (sandy's multi is UNLOCKED) Interesting article from TECHREPORT on "how much RAM speed affects SandyBridge performance" http://techreport.com/articles.x/20377/1 In gaming, Metro 2033 is the most demanding FPS today, even more demanding than Crysis was (on high settings). you can clearly see that the RAM speed doesn't affect FPS... With SandyBridge, you have to be careful about the RAM HEIGHT...the RAM slots are a little closer to the CPU socket...so COOLER fins/fans clearance in relation with RAM heatsink HEIGHT has to match... The Gskill Ripjaws X is not too tall (42mm I thing).. The Corsair Vengeance, on the other hand, is a lot taller...so careful when you choose the heatsink and the ram...some Cooler have height-adjustable fans (Noctua does), so you can slide it up a tad to gain that little extra you need

For Nightmare question: I picked the somewhat cheap 1333 kit, because I seen several benchmarks that are showing that different RAM kits on SB are not display a lot of "real life" difference...anyway, there is about 1 fps difference in most benches between high-end(1600 and up) and plain jane 1333.. Blackbart: I picked the 2500K after thinking about it quite a bit. My reasoning: I paid $249 for BOTH the CPU and the cooler... I bought from NCIX canada, but you can also buy as an american citizen...there is an american version of the site. www.ncixus.com Pretty reliable I'm buying parts from them since 2004...NEVER had issues... So awesome deal really hard to pass...also, apparently, it's a little easier to reach higher overclocks with a CPU without HT (hyperthreading)...temperatures while OCed are also a little lower. Also, in GAMES benchmarks, the difference between 2600K and 2500K are non-existent in most cases...the 2600K is better in video encoding benches and some professional applications and BENCHMARKS...so the extra $$$ are hard to justify for a gamer... Money-wize, you'd rather put a little extra money on graphics cards than CPUs ( a good balance is needed, but it this case it's a non-issue), because in games, at same clock speed, both chips will perform pretty much the same. On the HD5870 topic, this is the card I actually own right now...pretty good. The Crossfire scaling is known to be even better with the new Hd69**-series...the 2GB of RAM on the HD69**s also helps future-proofing a little bit...it's also better in high anti-aliasing scenarios... but yes, I'm pretty sure, I go back to old faithful nVIDIA in SLI... I'm eyeing the EVGA GTX570s that I can pricematch down to $340 each...this what I want...the wife thinks different LOLZ.. I'll try to keep my card's price to $600 all included (sale's tax+ shipping)...i might have to wait a little more for price drops...or I might settle for 560Tis...but I NEED 570's...this time, I got some slack from the ol lady, it is my intent to use that "window of opportunity" to the MAX. UKILDME, that DELUXE will give you extra LAST STAND/SECOND CHANCE options...lol

Howdy, Finally pulled the trigger on new parts! I will keep you posted with the info, results and a few pics, just trying to be informative and even be helpful for some if needed. Parts ordered: -Intel Sandybridge 2500K (This K means UNLOCKED, so it overclocks...the non-K are going up two speed bins only) Overclockable CPUs are overclockable only on P67-series motherboards... -ASUS P8P67 DELUXE B3 REV. (The B3 means revised P67 chipset, without the SATA2 controller bug) -2 X 4GB kit of Gskill RIPJAWZ X 1333mhz 1.5V (good and cheap, 1.5V is prefered for SandyBridge's imbedded memory controller) -Noctua NH-U12P Dual 120 mm CPU Aftermarket cooler Goal: -A Stable 4.6GHz overclock. I'll test the ground, see how high it can go (luck of the draw). Apparently the B1 Stepping chips are overclocking better/reaching higher clocks...I mean you're golden if you get a 5.0GHz-capable chip (stable, temps in check and without using insanely high voltages) -Most SB "K-series" processors will reach a "walk-in-the-park" 4.2GHZ to 4.4GHZ -A strong % of chips will get up to 4.4GHz to 4.7GHz -About 5% or chips are "golden" and will reach the Mythical 5.0GHz clock speed... -I'm planning to stop before reaching 1.4V Vcore and 70 Celsius... find the highest stable clock without mentioned limits...then back down one step, to stay "comfy"... Updates will follow as I go...I'm planning to grab one or two GFX cards to ride along with that OCed CPU... Looking at Dual GTX560Ti, Dual HD6950 or dual GTX570, or a single GTX580...