Computer Upgrading

Urial asked me what I was looking at for upgrades when I mentioned it on facebook, so I figured I would post it here.

My main thing was getting a new motherboard (damaged from overheating issue I previously had). Well, if I'm upgrading my mobo, I might as well get a new CPU. If I'm going to get a new CPU, then I can get away from the 775 sockets. So that opened up the road to upgrading my RAM at the same time to DDR3 as well as adding more.

Motherboard:
ASUS P8P67 (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

CPU:
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52500K

RAM:
CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B

(I'm still look at RAM. There was a sale on the 1800 of that brand last week, but mobo options were slim that didn't require overclocking.)

Any feeback and alternate suggestions are welcome. Total price of this right now, including thermal paste, is $486.95 with free shipping.

(the RAM comes with a lol8GB thumbdrive as well)

Real good stuff enjoy

Add an SSD HDD and you are golden : )

As of now SSD's are very difficult if not totally impossible to completely erase. The way they store data is different from traditional hdds so if you want to retire a drive make sure you physically break the drive.

For the whole computer or just the three componente mentioned?
I'm going to have to start looking into a new computer too if it's that cheap now.

SSD and HDD are two different things, though I understand what you're saying. A HDD is a Hard Disk Drive, meaning there's literally a disc it writes info on. SSD uses microchips and no disc, therefore a SSD is not a form of HDD.

I was recently in the same boat as well when my mobo died. left me with a 775 chip and DDR2 ram and with no good options for 775 mobos so I was forced to upgrade.

From what I've been seeing, mobos don't play that much into your OC as they did with 775. the sandy bridge chips OC by changing the multi as there is no QPI or FSB.

As far as RAM suggestions go, anything above 1600, at this point, is a waste, outside of benchmarks, plus, you might be able to OC the 1600 RAM to 1800.

I have never heard of this. Can you elaborate?

sure: this is the article I read
Flash-based solid-state drives nearly impossible to erase

I may have been a little over simplistic, as it's been a while since I read the article. Completely erasing a drive is sort of unknown. It's done by deleting a key and making the ssd gibberish, but this article suggests that researchers don't know of the key area is still accessible. But you have to specifically make sure you have an encrypted drive to make use of this functionality.

Single file erasure is nearly impossible because of the way ssds store data and balance the load to maintain disk life expectancy.

Just what I have listed. I recently bought a fan/heatsink and new case. My video card is still considered high end (not top 10, but still high end). My power supply is still going like a champ, though I may upgrade it sometime in the future just to make sure the new hardware has plenty of breathing room with power.

(these total $355.96 without a HD or PSU in the number)

Case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146068

Fan/heatsink:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134

Video card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125333

Oh, and I also have a 500GB SATA HD (7200 RPM) for the OS / local data partitions. I have 2 1TB external HDs I use for storage.


Those SSHDs are expensive. Not worth it right now, imo.

I'm really impressed by the Sandy Bridge technology and the new Intel infrastructure as a whole. I was doing quite a bit of research to justify the i5 to myself.

Another article by the same author on sandy bridges: Intel pulls a fast one in Sandy Bridge fiasco

apparently intel built a bug into sandybridges that wreck sata2 after a period of time. I don't know if they've released the new revision yet.

this might be relevant if you are planning on raiding. most of your sata ports are sata 3 though. Author says that intel is unclear on exactly how these faulty chips are being handled. You may want to read the article before you make a final decision.

Interesting. I've been considering adding a few more drives and doing RAID, but I just don't think it's necessary. I don't see a real benefit to it for a gaming rig. On the flip side, HDs are pretty cheap these days.

Looks like what they did was pull the data from the individual NAND chips, Drive encryption will take care of that.


It's a very nice architecture. They OC very well, almost to the point that they are too powerful. Coupled with the 32 nM litho, they run very cool.

It wasn't an intentional bug. The SATA 2 controller degraded over time causing poor performance from the drives. B3 revisions, which are pretty much the only boards available, fixed this issue.

And if you're anything like me, you have about 10 good ones laying around the house..

Hell somewhere up in that attic I have an HDD from like the late 80's to early 90's that has a storage capacity eclipsed by most flash drives.. (can't remember what it is off the top of my head, somewhere between 500MB and a few GB).

I actually recently trashed my older HDs. The only 'extras' I have right now are still inside the towers as data drives in case I need to pull old stuff. They're probably 250GB each though I don't touch them often. Actually, the one in the gaming rig doesn't have the cable attached right now.

I almost never throw away old technology.. I still have mice with balls, and I even have my first gaming GPU up there, Radeon X1950 PRO Extreme ugly *** card lol.. It's not even any good, but I keep it anyways lol.

Have a bunch of 56k modems up there too..

Although recently I've been stripping old/dead technology for their components, the resistors and transistors and such..

I actually like soldering (or desoldering in this case) so I just do it for fun.

I kept a lot of still useful cables, but I trashed quite a bit as well. Stuff that I would never use again for one reason or another. I'm a bit of a packrat, so it was good for me.

I'm a pack rat too, but only with electronics.. I've always been a tinkerer, never know when I might need something off it.

Plus, saving them all up gives me options in case something happens.. Like the other day when I built that PC outta scrap PCs that weren't worth fixing.. I managed to actually put together a decent system.

When something is wrong with my computer(s) I can rarely afford to go out and get a replacement part for it.. The PC I had before the last one was having some serious issues, a lot like heat problems, but that wasn't it.. It'd freeze up after about 10 minutes of being on and you'd have to hard kill it..

I put up with that PC for months until our tax refund was in so I could get a new one.

With TRIM SSD, no problem with erase now