Hugh Johnston Posted June 17, 2010 Share Posted June 17, 2010 He Guy's, I have decided to give myself an upgrade. I'm think i7930 at the moment and then overclock. Not sure what motherboard as I don't know much about them. Minimum of 8gb's of ram for my photoshop files. Was also thinking a new 470gtx and a 750watt power source. I have a case and hard drives. The hard drives can wait a little while unless you think otherwise. I am also thinking an aftermarket cooler for the cpu? What are your thoughts. Cheers Hugh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Casey Posted June 17, 2010 Share Posted June 17, 2010 G'day Hugh, I recently upgraded from a Q6600 to the i7930 & coupled it with the following parts. Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R (waited for this board to become available as the previous model X58-UD3R does not have the extra ram slots, USB 3.0 plus a couple of other features I can't remember at the moment). My son has the UD4 which is no longer available & I was quite impressed with it so moved from ASUS to Gigabyte for the first time in ages. Reviews I read on this board were pretty impressive & it is quite reasonably priced. Cooler: I have been using a Zalman 9700LED cooler since my Q6600 build which I was quite happy with so purchased a bracket enabling me to run it on the new board. I have the CPU running at 4.2Gz & my idle temps (using Core-Temp) are between 38C - 43c & under load in FSx I see them reaching into the 60's. Ram: I'm using 1600 Patriot Gamer. I was wanting G.Skill Trident however there wasn't any in stock at the time I purchased so went with the Patriot. Seems to be working fine although I've never been one to OC my RAM. Video Card: After my re build I was still using my Nvidia 9800GTX+ however upgraded that for a GTX470 a couple of weeks ago. This card has certainly made a differenc to my FS experience allowing me to run higher settings in areas like YBBN with little to no frame rate loss. Particularly when selecting the level of autogen. Very impressive piece of kit & despite all the hoo-ha about the 400 series cards being hot & noisy I can say Iv'e only heard the fan really kick in high once & I was playing COD Modern Warefare 2 @ the time. It does run warm, idling around 47C & get's up to 80+C during play but I believe these units are designed to run at these temps anyway. Case: I know you have a case but thought I'd mention this anyway. I have a Thermaltake Armor case with a 120mm fan @ front & rear plus a monstorous 200mm+? fan on the side (not sure of it's size atm) & it seems to keep things running at reasonable temps. Also excellent design for keeping cables out of the air flow. Power Supply: I was a bit concerned here as I am running a 600 Watt unit & wasn't sure how it would handle the GTX470 however to date it appears to fine. 750 Watt should be no problem. In all I'm pretty happy with this rig & am seeing some excellent FS moments. Did a flight from YWLM to YSCB on the weekend in the PMDG JS41 using ASE with 5 layers of cloud selected & my frames never shifted from 30 (FPS limiter setting) & all the clouds never caused a bit of stuttering. Looked great! Hope this is of help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Johnston Posted June 18, 2010 Author Share Posted June 18, 2010 Thanks Ross. Very helpful indeed. I've got a 600w psu at the moment so if I don't have to upgrade then that's great but I will see how it goes. Can always buy that later. I could also save some money by buying a new bracket for my cpu cooler instead of a new one. I will look into it. I'll also have a look at that motherboard. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spirit Flyer_old Posted June 18, 2010 Share Posted June 18, 2010 That is a good plan Hugh, and excellent advise Ross. It is great when some things are clear like an i7 and a 400 series card. I just ordered Mushkin 1600 mhz ram with a 6 cas rating to replace my Hyper X - It's a speed thing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Casey Posted June 18, 2010 Share Posted June 18, 2010 Re the bracket Hugh, I had to scout around on the internet to find one for the Zalman. A number of retailers stocked units for other brands however for some reason none were for the Zalman 9700. I believe the mob I ended up ordering from were in Sydney so it only took a couple of days to process & get it to me in Brissie anyway. Gday Steve, Have been following your posts re your vidio card upgrades with interest & commend you on the effort you put in to provide the detail you did. Following your posts it helped me decide to upgrade to the GTX470 & have also downloaded & am using MSI Afterburner to monitor what the beast is up to. Might even have a play around with overclocking it although I havn't done that with a video card for some years. I found at that time it made very little difference. Interested to see if tweaking of your new ram makes much difference. I have been OCing my CPU's for as long as I can remember however always thought playing around with RAM a bit of a "black art" & never really took the time to delve into it. No doubt you will be posting your results which I will look at with interest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Johnston Posted June 26, 2010 Author Share Posted June 26, 2010 Well finally ordered my new parts. Here's what I got. Intel S1366 Core i7 930 2.88GHz Quad Core CPU $329 Gigabyte 1280MB GTX 470 PCIe Video Card GTX470 $449 Gigabyte S1366 GA-X58A-UD3R Motherboard $279 DDR3 12GB Corsair 1600MHz RAM Triple Channel Kit $458 Thermalright LGA 1366 Bolt-Thru-Kit(from USA) $25 Total: $1555 Hopefully will put together when I get back in 2 weeks from my holiday Thanks for the help guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skooby Posted June 26, 2010 Share Posted June 26, 2010 Looks like a nice build. Let us know how it goes. Skooby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Casey Posted June 26, 2010 Share Posted June 26, 2010 Nice Hugh, When you want to OC (if you do) let me know & I'll send you a PDF file put together by some guy from Gigabyte using a 920/ UD7 combination if your'e interested. He shows how to clock to 4.0 Gz. I've used it as a basis to clock to 4.2 with minor adjustments to compensate for the CPU & RAM (he has slower ram). Works pretty well so far with no problems to date. Just did a flight from YSCB to YBBN using the LVLD767, real weather, scenery @ very dense & Autogen dense. Lowes frame rate I saw on approach was 20FPS. Average about 24FPS up to limited 30fps. I'm really stoked with the performance I'm getting out of this set up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Johnston Posted June 26, 2010 Author Share Posted June 26, 2010 Thanks Ross. I will certainly be overclocking it. That PDF will be handy thanks. I ordered the bracket for my cpu cooler. I had to get it from the USA because no one had it in Oz. Looking forward to getting home and putting it to the limits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Harris Posted June 26, 2010 Share Posted June 26, 2010 Your going to love this PC Hugh! going from a E8400, first thing you will be shocked by is the decreased loading time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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