any computer guru's here?

[Recty]

You'll need a motherboard that supports the RAM speed for the most part.

I read some stuff about the Bloomfield only natively supporting 1033Mhz RAM whereas the Lynnfield is 1333 and 1600 or whatever the numbers are that are similar to that.

I was reading quite a bit about Lynnfield vs Bloomfield today, I'm thinking about building a new PC is why I'm following this thread close and the Lynnfield sure seems to be the chip I want to go with. That turbo feature sounds amazing, plus the extra memory channels the Bloomfield offers only really seem to matter with multiple GPU setups.

 

[fatrip]

ok yea i'm looking at the extreme bloomfield...srry...that supports 1600 stock. but the bloomfield in general models has larger bandwidth connection to the RAM than the lynnfield. Also since it is open it will do almost 4gigs and run ram at 2000. with lynnfield you can't up clock but can up Ram to 2133 but still at a slower bandwidth than the bloomfield. Any who with the way the lynnfield combines the north and south bridge to make the single GPU communication faster there is really no significant gain unless you are playing high end graphic games with a single GPU. You won't see a difference editing in CS5. Plus with you guys using the ram more than the GPU for photo processing (At the moment) the bloomfield communicates with the North bridge at 26.6gb/s vs the lynnfields 2gb/s. Now for gaming with one card lynnfields got my vote, but for non-gaming the bloomfield will do more intermother board procedures faster.

If you are building a new PC recty, personally I would build around the 1366 socket if you will be thinking about upgrading in the future. Intel is running with the 1366 on the new Westmere 6 cores. Build around the 1366 socket and in a year or 2 you will be able to put the 6 core in for probability what these i7's cost now. No word I have seen yet that they are uping the cores on the 1156 socket. Just some food for thought.

 

[fatrip]

Maybe I could do away with the SATA 6 HD's and get a better video card instaed...or I can just stop the craziness, up the budget and take the plunge. Gonna do a mock build this weekend and price it out. I'll probably end up closer to 2K but so be it.

Unless you are going to be playing Fall out 3 , working with Pro/E or creating with Cinema4D your never going to use either Video cards to there fullest extent. I would stick with the faster read write HD and if wanted in the future up the GPU or get one you can SLI later.

 

[Recty]

I did read that about the Bloomfield using the same socket as the new 6 cores are going to... I was tempted to buy because of that but it wasnt a deal maker for me.

I wish I could find the article I read about lynnfield vs bloomfield today at work, I'll have to look through my history Monday when I get back to work. It was very clear about who would get the most out of lynnfield and who would with bloomfield. It sounded to me very clear that most programs will see more oomph out of the lynnfield because of it's turbo mode, whereas high graphics processor users with SLI systems will see more out of the bloomfield.

From what I was reading, it sounded pretty clear that the lynnfield was the better choice for people who use photoshop, one application that it can overclock itself automatically to run.

However, if you're wanting to overclock (IPT stated he doesnt) then the bloomfield is probably the way to go, or if you use SLI.

When it comes down to it, the benchmarks I saw made them look very similar. My biggest reason for choosing the Lynnfield is the 1156 motherboards are cheap, you can get a nice one for $100-$125, whereas a good 1336 (or whatever, it's late) motherboard for the Bloomfield is easily over $200.

Anyway, it isnt a big deal but saving $100 is saving $100...

 

[IPT]

I'm thinking about building a new PC is why I'm following this thread close.

DUDE - thought you were upgrading the camera? You've upped the ante aye?

 

[fatrip]

i was more talking the oc for you since you seem to know about comps and it is fairly easy to get way more out of the chip for a 40 dollar cooling system.

ASrock has a 09 recommended buy board for 165.00 that will run OC DDR3 to 2000.

also please do post the article i would like to read it. thanks

 

[fatrip]

Then again, a Vid card is always easy to upgrade. Get a satisfactory one now and then in a year I will actually have something to upgrade too instead of having to do an entire build. Also, by then there will likely be even better cards and the killer ones today will be middle of the line. Food for thought.

You could get a decent one and SLI it in a year or just upgrade to the newest. Also on that line of thought I'd go with the 1366 socket because you won't be able to upgrade with the 1156 platform. If you put the money in now to get a good MB, RAM, and power supply everything else will be upgradeable in 2 years and you can just replace rather than doing an entire build again. Just a thought.

 

[Recty]

DUDE - thought you were upgrading the camera? You've upped the ante aye?

Well, I actually bought a 7D and returned it. I just wasnt happy with the high ISO performance. It doesnt seem any better, possibly even worse than my 50D. One thing I realized is working with the videos it takes is CRAZY hard for my computer. Rendering one minute of video took about 15 minutes and that was just getting it down to 720x480 for YouTube videos. If I had wanted to render full HD video I cant imagine how ridiculous it would be.

Here's a little sample, and this took me about 15 minutes to render.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS_PaHqv6MM

Plus, I'm going through the same thing you are, I'm working with lots of pictures that I really need to organize and it's taking forever because my computer is slow, so I figure it's about time to get a new PC.

I'm really not sure what I'm doing at this point, to be honest I've got three different options. I'd like to buy a 5DmkII. I'd like to build a new computer. I'd like to just buy an HD camcorder and keep my 50D...

Out of those three, I think I'll get the most use out of a new computer and it's going to cost me only about half what a 5DmkII does.

 

[Recty]

Ya know IPT, I think I would go with the Bloomfield as well...

The Lynnfield will overclock ONE core on it's own if that's all that is being used, but it looks like the 2.8Ghz processor will only overclock to about 3.4Ghz or 3.6Ghz... and you can EASILY overclock the Bloomfield so that all four cores are working at 3.8Ghz. Pretty much everyone is reporting that with a $30 3rd party CPU cooler you can have all 4 cores running at 3.8Ghz, more performance than the Lynnfield will do with one core.

Anyway, I'd get the bloomfield for that reason alone PLUS you can keep that motherboard later to upgrade to the 6 cores when they come out.

 

[Recty]

This is what I built from parts off Amazon... looks pretty good.

Antec Truepower 23754 TP-750 BLUE LED 750-Watt PSU NVIDIA SLI Certified 80 Plus Bronze Advanced Hybrid Cable Management Power Supply $109.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound $7.88

EVGA nVidia GeForce GTS 250 1 GB DDR3 2DVI/HDTV PCI-Express Video Card 01G-P3-1158-TR $168.99

Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D Dominator 6 GB 3 x 2 GB PC3-12800 1600MHz 240-Pin DDR3 Core i7 Memory Kit $229.99

ASUS LGA 1366 - Intel X58 - True USB 3.0 & SATA 6Gb/s - ATX Motherboard P6X58D-E $239.99

Zalman CNPS9900LED Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler $63.21

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit System Builder 1pk $99.99

Intel Core i7 Processor i7-930 2.80GHz 8 MB LGA1366 CPU, Retail BX80601930 $289.99

$1210 total, no hard drives included and it's assuming you're providing a case, monitors, optical drives and keyboard/mouse, which I believe you already are.

I would plan on overclocking this to around 3.6-4.0, which should be EASILY doable. If you really really really are opposed to overclocking, you can drop the Zalman cooler and the price goes down to $1150.

I think this would be a pretty killer PS/LR machine. The only thing you might want to change is going to 12GB of RAM, but from what I've been seeing looking around 6GB is plenty.

 

[IPT]

Yeah, from what I have read, and seen of your images the 50D is a good rig. Also from what I have read, getting a camera with focus spot on can be an issue and with your
50D it looks spot on even with the 100-400 and that may not be all that common. It's amazing how fast images pile up, aye?!

You guys have me reading about overclocking and I haven't even done a build yet. Though, it does seem do-able and likely something for me to tinker with one day.

That build looks good. I might take some of it. I do have the stuff you thought I did except since I am going to keep this a dedicated imaging machine I will need a new case. Here is what I was leaning toward - from Newegg -

CPU -Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz $290
Mobo - GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA Motherboard 6bg/s triple channel $209
Video Card - XFX Core Edition GS250XZSL4 GeForce GTS 250 1GB 256 $134
RAM - G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (get 2 sets for 12GB RAM) timing of 8-8-8-21 $160 per set
PSU - CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V $110
Case : AZZA Solano 1000 Black $99 or ENERMAX Uber Chakra ECA5001B Black Aluminum
$115
FAn - COOLER MASTER Intel Core i7 compatible Hyper 92mm (cooler) $39

Up in the air about the HD's. Seem to be getting taked out of the Velociraptor for the main HD. Maybe a Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" with a 64MB cache ($96) for the images.

Then 2 of these for the OS and Scratch, working files: Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb $75 x 2 = $150).

Phew, that puts me at roughly $1464.00. Of course because of where we live iot will cost like $500 to be shipped (but I'll look at Amazon and see if I can gett he free shipping deal).

Thoughts on these components/this build?

opps - forgot WIndows 7 64bit - $99 .... so much for the budget .

 

[fatrip]

Are you going to use the 6bg/s for image storage??? I don't see any benifit of getting 6gb/s than. If anything you'll want the os and main running programs on the faster responding HDD. You'll want to run the programs faster not find an image to open faster. JMO.

 

[Recty]

Oh, I forgot to mention... I looked up all those parts I listed on Newegg because it's easier to find stuff, then made sure it was all buyable through Amazon with Super Saver Shipping, which means you pay $0.00 to ship it.

That entire build I listed is found on Amazon, qualifies for free shipping and would get to you with 5-10 business days.

Bestbuy here locally has the Antec 900 Two for $130, it's what I would buy if I went with this setup.

Overclocking is very easy, you just change some variables in the BIOS. The hardest part of it is you'll need to run a program called Prime once you're in Windows. It stresses your CPU to the max and you watch with another program (cant remember the name off the top of my head) the temperature of the CPU. If it gets above 70C or so, then you're running too hot and you'll need to back down.

There is more to it than that, but that is the basics.

 

[fatrip]

I Like OCCT for stress testing the comp. It does a great job and I have found it to be easier to use than Prime. I have used speedfan for temp monitor but not sure if i had used it on a quad core. I know realtemp will do quad core temp monitoring tho and it is easy to use.

 

[IPT]

for 40$ more I could get these for the OS and scratch (Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive). Is that wise investment of $40? I was actually trying to find something cheeper and smaller since surely I do not need a 1TB drive for the OS and scratch. This is like the only option for the SATA 6 that's reasonable. The only other (at least WD that has a good rep) is the 10,000 RPM one so considerably more $$.

I'll have to look at that power supply. If Amazon is shipping free than it might not matter. Newegg to ship would probably negate the price savings due to the weight.

So in general the build I proposed seems like a good match for my planned use?

 

[Recty]

It does seem good.

I would try to find everything on Amazon if you can, it's amazing. I was pricing out the build I listed above and by switching everything to Amazon, I saved about $40 in actual item costs, then with not having to pay $120 shipping to Alaska... that's enough to buy another component

 

[fatrip]

for 40$ more I could get these for the OS and scratch (Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive). Is that wise investment of $40? I was actually trying to find something cheeper and smaller since surely I do not need a 1TB drive for the OS and scratch. This is like the only option for the SATA 6 that's reasonable. The only other (at least WD that has a good rep) is the 10,000 RPM one so considerably more $$.

I'll have to look at that power supply. If Amazon is shipping free than it might not matter. Newegg to ship would probably negate the price savings due to the weight.

So in general the build I proposed seems like a good match for my planned use?

Probibly not at 7200rpm. I would say if your not going to go with the 6gb/s @ 10000rpm than go with a 160-250gig HDD that has a low latency and seek/write times with sata3gb/s @ 7200. you said you had external HDD for storage right? so if you wanted to you could get a TB drive for storage as well.

Does the free shipping on new egg apply to you guys?

 

[IPT]

Highly doubt NE would free ship up here. What HD's do you recommend with a low latency seek/srite if I do not go the 6GB/s 10,000 RPM route? Of course if all my OS stuff is on it reliability is concern.

and, yes, I do have a few 1TB external HDs for my backup storage.

 

[fatrip]

I don't get any other HDD's than western digital. They have always been reliable and when I have strayed the HDD's I had gotten have been louder and some have died. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320 this one seems really nice, faster trans rate than the older 3gb/s raptor HDD. no free shipping looked and there are additional fees to AK.

 

[IPT]

Okay you builders - talk to me about cases ... on some other boards there were some recommendations that I could get more bang for my buck. Never having done a build before this is new territory for me. Need some input on if any of these have advatages over my original choice. They seem to be mostly mid tower - but they all appear larger than the Full tower I had choosen.

Here is what I was going to use (might still use) AZZA solano 1000 -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811517004&Tpk=AZZA%20Solano%201000%20Black

Here are some others recommended as being more bang for the buck...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119194&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-RSSDailyDeals-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3891137&SID=194r0

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112154&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-RSSDailyDeals-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3891137&SID=194r0

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119197&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-RSSDailyDeals-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3891137&SID=194r0

http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-RC-922M-KKN1-GP-Tower-Black/dp/B0026FCI2U/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1273830648&sr=1-4&tag=atmlinr-20