Hiya I am going to upgrade my PC to Core i7. I am getting the core i7 920 (d0 stepping), Gigabyte EX58-UD3R and either a Noctua NH-U12P Special Edition or a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme 1336RT. I know that there are better motherboards out there but I have to think about how much this is going to cost. Here is my current system. I am using a 400w corsair psu and i was wondering if that is adequate power for the system i am planning to upgrade to.
The core i7 860 is cheaper and faster on the cpu side of things. What video card are you going to use because your current card will not work on the new mobo? Your hard drive could use an upgrade to. It will work but its going to hold back the performance a bit. Your using SATA I hard drives. SATA III just came out but SATA II is still the primary choice of system builders for the moment. SATAI, like you have is limited to 1.5Gbits per second, SATA II is 3 Gbps, twice as fast, and SATA III is 6 Gbps but its not widely supported yet on both the mobo or hard drive end. Sounds to me like your best bet is pretty much to gut the case, or get a new case, and start from scratch. And I would say based on what you have said alone, a 400 watt might just get the job done, but id look to a ~500 watt Corsair if I were you. Give your self a little head room.
But the core i7 860 is a lynnfield and doesn't have d0 stepping. I didn't realise that my video card isn't supported that's a bummer, this is gonna end up costing more than i first thought, especially as i might need a new psu as well
And? Its still faster, and cheaper when you consider you only need 2 sticks of ram vs 3, and the mobo will be cheaper. Thats about $100 savings last time I checked. That can get you a 550 Watt Corsair PSU, if you can settle for a non modular PSU, and still have a tiny bit left over towards a GPU. That cover over half of the cost of a 5750 GPU.
Yeah your right that does make more sense really. Just wondering though is the overclocking potential still as good with the 860?
If I am not mistaken, they OC about the same. The 920 is a great chip but it comes down to what you need. If you need greater memory bandwidth, crossfire/SLI, or the ability to jump to a Core i9, then the 920 is good for you. If you dont care about that stuff, then the 860 is for you, and the 860 benchmarks higher to top it off and for a cheaper price. The 1156 mobos will support full 16x/16/x corssfire/sli soon, just not yet, but I dont really see much point in corssfire or SLI anyways.
