[quote name='JBaz']Well then, you only heard half the story because Ivy Bridge was originally slated for Q1/Q2 2012 release, then 6 months ago, it got down to the March/April time frame. Then the unofficial April 8th date became the official launch date. Then what you heard was back in early/mid February when PR reports came from intel that Ivy Bridge was delayed to Early/Mid summer for mass shipments.
What is in fact true is that Desktop chips of Ivy Bridge will in fact be released on time on April 8th, which was later confirmed by Intel. What is not known is the volume that Intel will ship out on launch.
Intel's PR meant to say was that they were delaying the release of their low voltage chips (including mobile and low power desktop variants) so that vendors (mainly oem laptop builders) would have extra time to sell off their SB inventory. With not much stiff competition from AMD, Intel just held off. This was later reported on every tech news blog/media outlet last month since it was a bit confusing. (
link)
If you are talking about the tech demo, there's still no real benchmark numbers to go by and really see how well it compares against current gen stuff. While it was a good demo of the level of tech/graphics abilities we should see in the next year or so; still no numbers to go off of.
If you can wait a month or two, its going to be pointless to build a list right now, but here's something to look at (and no, its not internet ninja kitty... or boobs (look left))
This is just a basis idea to go off of, but this will change once ivy bridge hits the market and the 7850 that should be within you price range (250ish). I would have included the 6950 2gb, but all of the 6900 series cards are discontinued and completely out of stock everywhere. Also, just to mention, Newegg has the EVGA GTX 480 on sale for $210; A fast card, but its also loud and eats power like no tomorrow, but it a great buy right now considering the fact that the GTX 570's (same performance of the 480) is still in the $300-400 range. A good bit more powerful and capable than the 560 ti's for the same price.
CPU and mobo will change, but the good thing about the z68 asrock board is that it's Ivy Bridge ready with 3.0 pcie 16x slots and capable of dual card SLI/xFire solutions. One of the best performing and best budget mobo's on the market right now. You could always grab a cheap $100 i3 2100 chip into the build, rock that for a month, then buy the new ivy bridge i5 and toss the i3 on ebay if you are really looking to game right now.
The CM EVO cpu cooler is by far one of the best price/performing cooler on the market right now. For a budget build, this and the cheaper, but older CM 212+ would be great choices with a lot of overclocking capabilities.
I threw in any cheap set of decent 1600 speed, cas9 1.5v 8gb ram set, a decent 700w ocz power supply, a cheap dvd burner and a copy of win7 home premium to finish the build. You have about $80 leftover, but I would use that towards a better gpu once new mid range cards hit the market in a month or two.
Power supplies? so many to list, almost easier to list what to avoid. I do have to say that I'm one of the few that just hate Rosewill units. I had 5, 3 burned out within 6 months; wasn't even worth it to send them back so I just replaced them with proper quality units from the bigger names. People always say good things about them, but I just kept getting bad ones even though I love newegg and rosewill do make some decent other products.
And besides, you don't have to break the bank to get a quality name brand unit to fit your build. Look at Corsair, Antec, OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, Silverstone and Seasonic as the name brands to look at first. Even Cooler master, XFX and Thermaltake makes some good stuff for a good value. There are quite a bit of other new comers to look at, but they usually are a bit more expensive, hit a product niche (explains their price), or usually a re-branded unit with the same components as some other good quality makers. FSP, Kingwin and Enermax fit that category, but they are very expensive for the price and offer crazy high 80+ gold or platinum efficiency at various wattages. I'd just stick with the 1st or 2nd tier brands with at least an 80+ bronze rating for your budget.
Also just to note, PC Power & Cooling was bought by OCZ in 2007. So their engineers also build OCZ power supplies, which is why they are a tremendous value with good features and great performers. For the price, you really can't beat them. And I've used their stuff for years. Not one has died.
I have their 500, 600, 700 modx as well as their new z series 850w; all work just perfect. The older modx are actually only 80+ cert but because this was before they branched it off into today's colors (bronze, silver, gold, platinum), but they still work great. All of the modx's are actually very efficient, above 85% until you get about to 80% load and then it dips off significantly to 80-81% ; barely enough to meet their 80+ standard.
The new ZS, Z and ZX series aren't like that. They are very level throughout and actually under rated. My 850 can peak to 940 and still be 80+ gold efficient; its just not recommended. I have powered my i7 and 3x 570's with it, eating up 900w from the wall for months doing folding @home with no ill effects. Just can't praise it enough.
You can actually go on 80plus.org (the official 80+ cert website) to see how any psu that passed perform. Its not as detailed as proper review sights like hardware secrets or johnny guru, but its a good basis since their tests are standardized for normal home/office settings.
RAM? I threw in the cheapest name brand you can get, but anything here would work really. Just stick with 1600, cas9 or lower timings and 1.5v rating. You can find 1.65v modules for a bit cheaper, but they are indicative of being cheap chips and overclocked to hit the 1600 speed. I'd say stay away from wintec, transcend and pareema, but they are oem modules and should just work the same; I prefer corsair, crucial, g.skill, kingston and patriot in that order.
Now, you can also look at the incredible cheap
Samsung 30nm 4gb 1600 modules. At stock settings, they seem underwhelming, but once you manually set your speed, timings and voltage; they are a different breed. When most modules are still running older and larger 40nm or even 60nm chips, Samsung uses their own and new 30nm tech and thus gives it a big improvement and hits higher speeds without much effort. They have been known to hit 9-9-9 timings at 2000 speed @ 1.55v or 9-11-10 @ 2133 with 1.6v. Not too shabby for $24 each. Read more about the ram at
Techpower up and
Overclockers.
Honestly, RAM speed is actually pretty overrated and you'll barely see any real world improvement from 1600 to 2133 speeds. Maybe, and I stress this, MAYBE 1-5% increase in apps that would use the ram heavily. Hard to justify almost $25 extra over some decent standard ddr3 1600 speed ram modules. I'd recommend looking at the
G.Skill Sniper series 1600 cas9 1.25v 8gb (2x4gb) set for $50 @ newegg. More than fast enough, hits a good price point and its 1.25v to boot! It won't overclock like the Samsung does, but if you don't want to fiddle around with ram settings and see what would be stable for your system, then just grab those. You can also grab any $40 pair of 1.5v version and still be just fine, just using a little more wattage.
Motherboard? Stick with the big four (which is actually three since Asus owns Asrock, its their value oriented brand): Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte and Msi. There are the cheap Zotac, Biostar and ECS boards you can use, but I'd only recommend those for uber cheap builds that you have no plans on overclocking. Their power distro components aren't as good or the design set for it; plus they tend to lack features that you'd probably like like SLI/xFire.
I do tend to favor Asus/Asrock more since that's what I run on my most current machines, but I have built PC's for people on Gigabyte and MSi with no issues. I actually like Gigabyte the best as their CS is better than the other two. Asus CS is the worst in the business; if you think Home Del CS is bad, just wait till you have to deal with Asus with anything. And I have so many Asus products too! lol.
But don't be dismayed about Asus/Asrock because their shit rarely breaks down and they have a decent amount of FAQ's/ support info on their website to figure shit out if you are good at reading, following directions and troubleshoot.
And with everything listed here, do your do diligence; follow up on tech forums, news sights and review sights to really dig deep on the products that are you getting to see what you are paying for. HardOCP, Maximum PC, Overclockers.net and Techpower up are all great forums to pick people's minds about tech specific questions; even help troubleshoot shit.[/QUOTE]
i can totally wait for Ivy Bridge i don't need to game now but i'm glad to see that the wait isn't too long and after seeing the improvements its worth the wait.
nice thanks for the parts listed and that's around my budget range too. i hope i can get a cheap ssd during a sale as well from now till Ivy Bridge.
to be quite honest i was looking at that card earlier and does seem to be a great card for the price but sadly it sold out during the sale. hopefully it will get restocked.
i am aiming to get 16 gb of ram and i saw Fry's has a set of Corsair for around $72 but $52 after MIR so not bad for the price but the those G.Skill sniper look mighty fine as well.
for the mobo i was thinking about the ASUS Saber tooth and it is Ivy Bridge ready so it seems a little pricey but i think a little bit more cash into the mobo wouldn't hurt,it be nice if they would have a combo with it.
thanks again for all the info and insight,ill definitely do my research on the following sites you've posted and ill keep you informed on my build.
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Ivy Bridge at that price point then. I was assuming anyone who was looking to build right now were buying this at an online retailer at close to MSRP since most people don't live near a MC as its a very small chain store and most of their deals are B&M only.