I have focused on the i5-750 as it offers nearly the performance of an i7-920 with much lowr power consumption. Overclocking, if any, will be 20% or less.
mobo: Gigabyte GA-55PM-UD2, inexpensive mATX and blessed by Anandtech.
Case: Antec NSK3480, well known around here. I like the small size and separate power supply chamber.
8 Gigs G Skill 1600 ddr3 ram, one of the few on the approved list for the mobo that I could find.
Samsung F3 HD502HJ, seems to be he hot number in a 5oo Gig drive these days.
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus cpu cooler. Probably a knock off of the Xigmatec HDT-S1283. Its supposed to fit the mobo & cas.
Powercolor passive Radeon 4670 video card. Kind of a tough choice, but its passive out of the box, and only $80 before a $10 rebate. I don't play action games. Its a tough choice as two video card makers don't seem very concerned with performance per watt. Perhaps something better will come along next year. Hopefully this combination will not overstress the 380 watt PSU in the NSK3480.
Sony Optiarc DVD burner, heir to the NEC legacy.
The machine will be used for photo editing, mostly with an obscure application, Nikon Capture NX that runs slow on anything but the latest hardware. Photoshop will also be used.
Any thoughts?
Likely i5-750 mATX Build
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swivelguy2
- Posts: 404
- Joined: Sun Jul 04, 2004 9:18 pm
- Location: Illinois, USA
I guess you mean GA-P55M-UD2. This looks like a great board and the i5-750 is a nice price-to-performance winner.
If you're not going to play games at all or use 3D apps, you don't need the HD 4670. You can go down as far as an HD4350 which won't have a giant heatsink hanging off the card and will save you ~$40.
The 380W PSU will be plenty.
If you're not going to play games at all or use 3D apps, you don't need the HD 4670. You can go down as far as an HD4350 which won't have a giant heatsink hanging off the card and will save you ~$40.
The 380W PSU will be plenty.
I wen ahead and ordered the stuf. It turns out the Powercolor passive cooled 4670 is not available and thre is no definite ship date so I punted ordered a Sapphire 4670 with the modified Accelero L2 cooler. Newegg was out of the Hyper 212 Plus and did not have the 1156 mounting kit in stock for the Xigmateec HDT-1283, but I found it at Amazon on low stock. Lets see what happens next week when all this cargo shows up.
The packages arrived and I built the machine. The Tri-Cool fan that Antec provided with the case was too loud, so it was replaced with a Scythe S-Flex 800 RPM fan. The fan shipped with the cooler was decent, but the Gigabyte software needed to control the PWM was not. It kept causing UAC prompts in Win 7 and none of the usual strategies (compatibility, scheduler) for dealing with this problem worked. I replaced that with another Scythe fan, one of the new series with the small center hub, 800 RPM spec, 900 RPM actual.
The system is OC'ed to 3.36 Ghz and runs nicely at stock voltage. Memory runs @ 1600 MHz using only the XMP profile. All temps are good. The Hyper 212 fits, but it would not be compatible with a VGA card that has a passive cooler has parts of the cooler hanging off the back of the card.
The fan on the VGA is quiet.
As it stands now, the PSU is the loudest component, but its not bad at all. A fan mod is possible, but replacement is not in the cards, unless it fails.
Oh yeah, this box is blazing fast for photo editing.
The system is OC'ed to 3.36 Ghz and runs nicely at stock voltage. Memory runs @ 1600 MHz using only the XMP profile. All temps are good. The Hyper 212 fits, but it would not be compatible with a VGA card that has a passive cooler has parts of the cooler hanging off the back of the card.
The fan on the VGA is quiet.
As it stands now, the PSU is the loudest component, but its not bad at all. A fan mod is possible, but replacement is not in the cards, unless it fails.
Oh yeah, this box is blazing fast for photo editing.