Good mobo for i5-2500k?

[Ashmada]

So, yeah, some time ago, I was planning on making a Phenom II/Crosshair IV Formula 'bang for your buck" build. Then I decided to wait for Sandy Bridge & Bulldozer.

Sandy Bridge came and delivered and I can't afford to wait for Bulldozer anymore (current machine starting to fall apart).

Questions:

1. As the title says: what's a good mobo for the i5-2500k? Price range 200-300€ (roughly 200-300$, 1€=1.41$, but things also tend to be ~1.5 times more expensive over here)

2. RAM, was thinking of: Corsair Dominator 2*2GB DDR3 1600 (CL9 latency) ~70€

More than 4GB is apparently completely pointless, but is going for CL8 instead worth it? (not that much more expensive, but I've heard the difference is tiny)


3. Graphics, was planning on: Radeon HD6950 (unlocked/overclocked into a full 6970) ~220€ (1 GB) to ~260€ (2GB)

Any better suggestion? Benchmarks i've seen seem to place it slightly ahead of the equivalent GeForce, but would it be better to Crossfire 2 HD6850s (~130€*2=260€ as well)?


4. What's a good PSU for the above build? Am I right in assuming it'd need 700-750W?

This is obviously dependent on the answers to the previous questions.

5. New mobos supposedly have much better onboard sound these days, should I bother with a sound card at all? If so, which?

[Artemicon]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ge,2837-2.html

I think all of those motherboards will give you fantastic overclocking potential and even have room to grow with PCIE 16x/0x or 8x/8x for SLI.

Memory you'll get better frame rates in games with a slower speed faster latency memory like a set of 1333mhz 7cas latency dimms.

I personally am going with the Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3 But I've been a fan of Gigabyte since one of their old boards OCed a Q6600 .6 ghz stable with no voltage increase for me. That aside If I wasn't a giga fan that new ASRock P67 Extreme 4 is bad ass.

[Xcrunner]

I personally have the P8P67 Pro and it works great. Haven't had any problems getting it to work. 750w should be fine for a psu

[Ashmada]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ge,2837-2.html

I think all of those motherboards will give you fantastic overclocking potential and even have room to grow with PCIE 16x/0x or 8x/8x for SLI.

Memory you'll get better frame rates in games with a slower speed faster latency memory like a set of 1333mhz 7cas latency dimms.

I personally am going with the Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3 But I've been a fan of Gigabyte since one of their old boards OCed a Q6600 .6 ghz stable with no voltage increase for me. That aside If I wasn't a giga fan that new ASRock P67 Extreme 4 is bad ass.

Thanks.

Read the article, going to go for either a P8P67 PRO (Asus) or P67 Extreme4 (AsRock)... or even a vanilla P8P67, depending on graphics card (vanilla only supports Crossfire, PRO supports both Crossfire and SLI).
The Gigabyte option is noticeably pricier (here, at least) and doesn't seem to deliver better results, so no point.


RAM is such a headache these days. I've read everything and its opposite regarding capacity ("anything over 4 is a waste!" or "anything under 8 is extremely short-sighted") and frequency/latency ("high frequency high latency is better" or "low frequency low latency is best" or "neither makes that much of a difference, get the cheapest") and so on.
This data seems to support high frequency over low latency (the 2133 CL9 outperforms the 1333 CL7 and 1600 CL7) but also shows the differences to be quite small.

Anyway, shop availlability is to consider... can't seem to get anything under CL8 'round here.
The Corsair site advises 1866 CL9 or 1600 CL8 for those mobos, and I can find those.

Any advice on whether to go for a single HD6950 or Crossfire HD6850s? As I said above, I can get 2 6850s for the price of a 6950, but I don't know which solution would produce better results.
I'm leaning towards the 6950 atm because it has a cheaper upgrade path (adding another) than the Crossfire setup (replacing both).


tl;dr, probably going to go for:
CPU: i5-2500k
Mobo: Asus P8P67/P8P67 PRO
GPU: HD6950
RAM: Corsair 2*4 GB 1600MHz CL8 (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C8)
HDD: WD Caviar Black 1TO (already have an external for storage)
Case: Antec twelve hundred
PSU: Corsair 750W (CMPSU-750TXV2EU)

[Artemicon]

The difference between 1333mhz and 1600mhz is negligible although favoring the 1333 c7 but its only by like 1-2 fps so not worth it just get what ever is cheaper. The Difference between 2133 and 1333/1600 may be a little more I was just comparing those two because I doubted you going up to 2133.

Now as far as a graphic card if dead set on a 6950 by all means get a reference card. They can be unlocked to 6970 specs giving you basically free awesome performance. In case you don't know what a reference card is, its a card made by AMD/NVIDIA so on the HD6950 just make sure it says AMD near the gold contacts at the bottom.

If you plan on overclocking AND getting another 6950 to crossfire later then I recommend getting atleast an 850w PSU(not so much for the OCing but the extra GPU).

The rest of your system looks good.

[Ashmada]

They can be unlocked to 6970 specs giving you basically free awesome performance.

I know, I said that earlier . And yeah, don't worry, it's reference.

Indeed, I wasn't planning to go up to 2133MHz RAM, it was just included in that linked test.
And yes, I suppose 750W would be a bit tight for overclocking + Crossfire down the line.

Again, thanks for the help.

[Amastacia]

Gigabyte hasn't released a full EFI BIOS yet, combine that with ASUS typically showing a minute lead, and I think P8P67 is the way to go.

The two upsides to the Pro over the vanilla are then Intel gigabit NIC (much better than the Realtek NIC), and the ability to run 2 PCIe cards in 8x/8x mode for CrossFire/SLI. The vanilla will only run 16x/1x mode.

If you don't plan on going Crossfire, the vanilla is the much better buy from a value perspective.

Memory controller and CPU logic in Sandy Bridge is so good that real-world differences between RAM are almost nil. There is a minute difference between CAS9/CAS8 DDR3-1600, and it's minutely better than DDR3-1333 CAS7, and slightly more than minutely better in some benchmarks than CAS8+ DDR3-1333. But the differences are so small that going for whatever is the cheapest (while still being a decent brand/using decent ICs) is the way to go.

Single card is always preferable to multi card if the playing field is mostly even. CrossFire 6850s are great, and a great value. But not all games really benefit well from CrossFire scaling. And any game not running fullscreen won't use CrossFire at all (e.g. most MMOs... how many people run windowed?). I'd probably go with the 6950, try to unlock, and hope for the best, unless you're running a large, high-resolution display where you're going to see a tangible benefit in some situations to CrossFire.

For a single card, 550-650W is plenty, if you want additional buffer to permit SLI/CrossFire, you should be fine with 750 (no one needs 1k+ PSUs unless they're going for 3+ GPU configs, running peltiers, or doing other off-the-wall power-hungry stuff). Seasonic X series is one of the best PSU platforms out there right now. Whether you grab one as a Corsair AX series or a Seasonic X series, they have excellent efficiency, full modularity, great voltage regulation, and can generally run fanless under low-load situations for a quieter system.

[Ashmada]

The two upsides to the Pro over the vanilla are then Intel gigabit NIC (much better than the Realtek NIC), and the ability to run 2 PCIe cards in 8x/8x mode for CrossFire/SLI. The vanilla will only run 16x/1x mode.

Ah. The chart I'd read didn't make it very explicit Crossfire wasn't 8x/8x on the vanilla board:http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revi.../feature15.jpg
I was rather decided on vanilla until you mentionned that .

Oh, well, I'll see. These benchmarks seem to show a 4 to 6 FPS difference in Crossfire between vanilla P8P67 (16x/4x) and PRO/EVO/DELUXE (8x/8x). So, yeah, I'll decide if 4 to 6 FPS for an eventual Crossfire down the line is worth the 25€ (35$) difference or not (probably not).

PSU-wise, I was just going by the Asus calculator. Never considered 1k+, just 750/800/850 .
This and this are pretty much the same price, so it's a non-issue.
They're non-modular, unlike the AX series,... but also 50€/60€ (70$/85$) cheaper than their respective modular equivalents.


Anyway, thanks for the precisions.