$600 ATX Intel Gaming Critique

[Czaran]

I purposly left out the gpu, I'm buying one later and I have a 3470 to hold its place.
Just looking for critique and stuff.

Power Supply (Silencer Mk III Series 600W 80PLUS Bronze High Performance Power Supply)
= $90

Motherboard (Gigabyte GA-P75-D3)
= $80

CPU (Intel Core i5-3450 Quad-Core Socket 1155, 3.1Ghz, 6MB)
= $190

RAM (Mushkin Enhanced Silverline DDR3-1333 (2x4GB)
= $45

Case (Antec ONE Gaming Series Mid-ATX Case)
= $35

HDD (SATA3 6.0Gb/s 500GB 16MB Cache Seagate)
= $80

All of the above include rebates
Prices based on Canada Computers

Subtotal = $520.8
Total (+tax) = $588.5

One thing I want clarified is
* The PCI Express x16 slot supports up to PCI Express 2.0 standard when an Intel 32nm (Sandy Bridge) CPU is installed.
Does this mean my Ivy Bridge 22nm i5-3450 makes the PCI Express x16 slot support 3.0 standard?

The motherboard is debatable, partially chosen due to price. The only mobos I found capable of crossfiring 2 gpu's at 16X/16X each (at 2.0 standard(what I originally wanted in a mobo)) were over 180$, and I'm on a budget, probably a good enough budget since I'm not buying a high end gpu right now.

Thanks in advance for your...criticisms.

 

[PP Mguire]

That board is terrible, and the only 16x slot on there is the first one. The second slot runs at 4x electrically.

To the PCI-E 3 question, the answer for this particular board is no. The only time IB gives PCI-E 3 is when the board itself also supports it. So if the board says it supports PCI-E 3 then when you have a SB CPU like the 2500k the slots will run in 2.0 and with an IB CPU like the 3770k they will run in 3.0 mode.

 

[Czaran]

That board is terrible, and the only 16x slot on there is the first one. The second slot runs at 4x electrically.

To the PCI-E 3 question, the answer for this particular board is no. The only time IB gives PCI-E 3 is when the board itself also supports it. So if the board says it supports PCI-E 3 then when you have a SB CPU like the 2500k the slots will run in 2.0 and with an IB CPU like the 3770k they will run in 3.0 mode.

Yeah I know its bad, I guess I'll get something a bit better.
But even if I had a board with 2 x PCI Express 2.0 16X ports, the board wouldn't have the bandwidth to operate both simoutaniously so both would be reduced to 8X, making crossfiring pointless.
To solve that I would get a board with 2 x PCI Express 3.0 16X ports, but those are to expensive At least the ones I've seen.
Thats why I decided to just get a 1 x PCI Express 16X board. I don't know if the board itself is just cheap in general or poorly made, but I could probably find a better one.

Edit:
Alright so if I switched to this motherboard, using the i5-3450 (Ivy Bridge), I could crossfire 2 near high end gpus at full speed each.
Right?

 

[PP Mguire]

Yeah I know its bad, I guess I'll get something a bit better.
But even if I had a board with 2 x PCI Express 2.0 16X ports, the board wouldn't have the bandwidth to operate both simoutaniously so both would be reduced to 8X, making crossfiring pointless.
To solve that I would get a board with 2 x PCI Express 3.0 16X ports, but those are to expensive At least the ones I've seen.
Thats why I decided to just get a 1 x PCI Express 16X board. I don't know if the board itself is just cheap in general or poorly made, but I could probably find a better one.

Edit:
Alright so if I switched to this motherboard, using the i5-3450 (Ivy Bridge), I could crossfire 2 near high end gpus at full speed each.
Right?

You are not exactly getting the point. If you put 2 video cards on that board the first slot would turn to 8x and the second slot would only give a maximum of 4x. If you only occupied the single slot it would give a total of 16x PCI-E 2.
In order to have PCI-E 3 you need an IB CPU, a board capable of PCI-E 3, and 2 PCI-E 3 graphics cards. You cannot use PCI-E3 without those 3 things. Having a PCI-E 3 board running PCI-E 2 hardware will not change the slot configuration of downing to 8x because on 1155 platform because the CPU only has a certain amount of PCI-E lanes to grant each device. The higher end boards that can do tri-sli or tri-fire have an extra chip to give more PCI-E lanes, but those are limited to PCI-E 2 as of right now.
So basically what I'm saying, even if you bought the 3450, and a board with 2 16x slots, they will still drop to dual 8x which wont be a problem anyways unless you want to Crossfire dual 7970 cards. With a limited budget like this, any card you put in a dual 8x configuration on PCI-E 2 will not be bottlenecked at all.

 

[Czaran]

You are not exactly getting the point. If you put 2 video cards on that board the first slot would turn to 8x and the second slot would only give a maximum of 4x. If you only occupied the single slot it would give a total of 16x PCI-E 2.

Oh, ok

So might actually downgrade to the i5-2500 SB, just to save a few bucks then.
And get 2 x 8GB DDR3 1600mhz ram.
Then I'll still have a computer capable of handling a higher end card and being upgradable easily for future games/hardware. Sorta.

What motherboard do you or anyone else recommend? Between $80-130 ish. Something that will survive the future and generally be of use in the future.

 

[PP Mguire]

No point in 16GB really.

Bangin board for the price and will do dual 8x slots so you can Crossfire later if you want.

Newegg.com - ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Edit: I just noticed your brand of PSU. That is a no no. You want Corsair, Antec, Seasonic, or Thermaltake. Never skimp out on your PSU.

 

[Czaran]

No point in 16GB really.

Bangin board for the price and will do dual 8x slots so you can Crossfire later if you want.

Newegg.com - ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Edit: I just noticed your brand of PSU. That is a no no. You want Corsair, Antec, Seasonic, or Thermaltake. Never skimp out on your PSU.

That was actually a typo on my part, meant to say 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600mhz. But yeah.

Power supply I can easily change to this, corsair power supplies seem to be the most recommended and reliable anyways.

Motherboard is fine, but I might end up downgrading CPU to the i5-2400 SB like I said before, since apparently upgrading mobos is a hassle and this one doesn't support Ivy Bridge processors without an update.
The board supports PCI-E 3.0 with an IB, but the only graphic cards I've seen that support 3.0 are really far out of my price range.
Also the RAM compatibility listings on the mobo is giving me a headache. I would prefer everything to work for sure but I might just get some ram not listed there.

And regarding crossfiring
Lets say I bought the GTX 550 TI card, a card on the high end of mid range cards, and also a bit of a budget card.
I install one in the board. It operates at 16X, or full speed.
I install another. It operates at 8X due to the bandwidth of the socket 1155s (or something) and since crossfired cards operate at the speed of the slowest ones, both operate at 8X.
Doesn't that mean that installing 2 gpus just ends up running at the same speed as one? (of a specific model)
Unless I get the IB cpu and a PCI-E 3.0 gpu, thats the way I see whats happening, but I might be wrong.
I'll probably downgrade the processor to the i5 2400 to save a bit and then get the GTX 550 Ti or Sapphire HD 6870 later in the summer.

 

[PP Mguire]

That was actually a typo on my part, meant to say 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600mhz. But yeah.

Power supply I can easily change to this, corsair power supplies seem to be the most recommended and reliable anyways.

Motherboard is fine, but I might end up downgrading CPU to the i5-2400 SB like I said before, since apparently upgrading mobos is a hassle and this one doesn't support Ivy Bridge processors without an update.
The board supports PCI-E 3.0 with an IB, but the only graphic cards I've seen that support 3.0 are really far out of my price range.
Also the RAM compatibility listings on the mobo is giving me a headache. I would prefer everything to work for sure but I might just get some ram not listed there.

And regarding crossfiring
Lets say I bought the GTX 550 TI card, a card on the high end of mid range cards, and also a bit of a budget card.
I install one in the board. It operates at 16X, or full speed.
I install another. It operates at 8X due to the bandwidth of the socket 1155s (or something) and since crossfired cards operate at the speed of the slowest ones, both operate at 8X.
Doesn't that mean that installing 2 gpus just ends up running at the same speed as one? (of a specific model)
Unless I get the IB cpu and a PCI-E 3.0 gpu, thats the way I see whats happening, but I might be wrong.
I'll probably downgrade the processor to the i5 2400 to save a bit and then get the GTX 550 Ti or Sapphire HD 6870 later in the summer.

That PSU will be fine.

You are already saving about 100 dollars with going with a 2500k, so why would you need to get a slower 2400 just to have a 130 dollar board?
In regards to compatibility, that will board will run any SB or IB CPU and probably any RAM you put in it. The compatibility list for RAM is simply what they have tested at their labs, which doesn't even touch 1/4 of the amount of kits that are for sale these days. 8GB of of 1600 any brand RAM will run fine in that board, so will a 2500k, so will a 3570k or other IB CPU.

To clarify, Crossfire is for 2 AMD cards, and SLI is for 2 Nvidia cards. To SLI you will need another 550ti card or else it wont work.
If you put a card in the 16x slot it will run at 16x 2.0, if you put another card in the second slot (SLI or not) they will both drop to 8x which is fine. A 550ti wont even take up the bandwidth of 8x PCI-E 2.0.
I don't see what the big deal is over the PCI-E slot bandwidth as I think you are just confusing yourself a bit on it. I'm trying to simplify it as much as possible. Lets put it this way.
In order to run any PCI-E 3 at all you will need IB 3*** CPU, a 7970/680, and a PCI-E 3 compatible motherboard. You need all these of these items to run PCI-E 3. If any of these items aren't PCI-E 3, then it will run in 2.0. For instance, even if you bought one of the boards I listed and a 3770k, if you put the 550ti in there it will run in 2.0 16x. To put the bandwidth into perspective, there are only 4 cards in existence right now that will be bottlenecked by an 8x 2.0 slot. Those are the 680, the 7970, 690, and 7970x2. All of which are highly expensive. Any other card will run fine in a 16x or 8x 2.0 slot.

 

[Czaran]

Well regarding the CPU, the prices have been confusing the crap out of me.
i5-3470 = $235 = 3.4Ghz
i5-2500(k?) = $210 = 3.3Ghz
i5-3450 = $200 = 3.1Ghz
i5-2400 = $195 = 3.1Ghz
I can see the speed is greater in the i5-2500 but the fact that they don't seem to be better the higher the model number is throws me off. I can see that the 2xxx signifies 2nd Gen, and the xYYY signifies...I don't even know, being better.
This is what incited me to pick the i5-3450 though, and it rated pretty solid for gaming.

As for the PCI-E thing, yes that clarified that a lot. I was under the misled impression that every GPU used all 16 lanes of a port.
How do you tell how many lanes a gpu uses, or the lane/bandwidth specs of a motherboard? Or should I just assume I'm not going to run into that using 2 gpus and a PCI wireless card.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well regarding the CPU, the prices have been confusing the crap out of me.
i5-3470 = $235 = 3.4Ghz
i5-2500(k?) = $210 = 3.3Ghz
i5-3450 = $200 = 3.1Ghz
i5-2400 = $195 = 3.1Ghz
I can see the speed is greater in the i5-2500 but the fact that they don't seem to be better the higher the model number is throws me off. I can see that the 2xxx signifies 2nd Gen, and the xYYY signifies...I don't even know, being better.
This is what incited me to pick the i5-3450 though, and it rated pretty solid for gaming.

As for the PCI-E thing, yes that clarified that a lot. I was under the misled impression that every GPU used all 16 lanes of a port.
How do you tell how many lanes a gpu uses, or the lane/bandwidth specs of a motherboard? Or should I just assume I'm not going to run into that using 2 gpus and a PCI wireless card.

i5 2500k is the top of the line i5 for Sandy Bridge or second gen Core i5. 3570k is the top of the line Core i5 for Ivy Bridge 3rd gen. The 2500k is better because the K moniker means it has an unlocked multiplier for overclocking later.

A GPU will associate itself with all the lanes it can get, but less powerful GPUs simply don't take up the bandwidth. For instance, the 680 will take up all the bandwidth of a 16x 2.0 slot but a 550ti wont even use that much. PCI-E 3 16x is double the theoretical bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0 16x, so therefor 3.0 8x = 2.0 16x. Thing is, to get that like I explained earlier you need all 3 pieces. That's why for SLI 680s or Crossfire 7970s we recommend an IB CPU and Z77 board for full PCI-E 3 bandwidth.
To simplify further take a look at SATA and SSDs. Lets say we put a SATA 2 SSD (285MB/s read/write max) in a SATA 3 port (up to 550MB/s read/write max). It will run it's full potential but there will still be bandwidth left over much like if you put the 550ti in a PCI-E 2 16x slot.

If the wireless card isn't PCI-E then it wont use any PCI-E lanes from the CPU. Usually they are only 1x and wont effect your GPU speed at all. Newegg.com shows how many slots and the bandwidth the occupy in the details tab.