Markfw900...
I like this thread - read some of the posts and have a comment or 2 but first...
I have 3 MC's that are within 25 miles of me, including 1 that is in an economic depressed zone so the the tax rate for that one is 3.75%. I have been intriged by this whole SB business so I decided to take up MC's offer of a reduced-priced cpu and went out shopping on the 9th. Below is what I picked up.
- 1 SandyBridge i7-2600K CPU
- Gigabyte LGA 1155 p67A-UD3P mobo (there was an UD4P but not interested in doing SLI)
- 2 4gb Corsair XMS3 1333 Mem (9-9-9-24 1.5 volt ver 8.11) for a total of 8 gigs
- Windows 7 64bit Ultimate OEM
- Corsair HX650w Power Supply
- Crucial 128gb SSD RealSSD C300
- Seagate 500gb barracuda sata hard drive
- LG internal BlueRay player/ DVD burner Sata Drive
Already have on hand an Antec 900 Midtower which used to house an intel 478 mobo that has been running for over 8 years 24/7 until noticed a couple of caps starting to swell up. The monitor for this set-up is already attached to an Q6600 box so will attached to the DVI input of the HP 2710 27" 16:9 monitor. The Q6600 is attached via hdmi cable from the EVGA 460 card in that box which is doing Folding @ Home for Team Anandtech!
I will probably dump an 8800gt evga card I have laying about into this new setup for now and am thinking of getting a Zalman cooler for the CPU (either an 9500 or the 9700) since I have these in my other boxes and am quite happy with them.
Now, as to some of the posts, expecially those relating to SB cpu's dying within a week of installation - I generally do not overclock but was thinking of doing so based on the Anandtech's recent article on SandyBridge but I am going to approach this overclock business very conservative if at all. I was shocked to read that on the ASUS boards that what voltage you input will be supersceeded if you also select maximum overclock which changed one person's 1.65 voltage selection to over 1.9 voltes!!! What a minefield that is.
For now, the new box will be Folding and will try to do that bigadv(?) that has been mentioned in the Distributed Computing group. After a couple of weeks I will get the 8800gt video card to also run F@H and see if Sandy can do Bigadv AND GPU folding. If so, then I probably go out and get at least a 460 EVGA card and let her rip...
Wishing you and the rest of you SandyBridgers all the best!
TurtleBlue