Should I buy this motherboard?

[Mike_Yates]

I was thinking about getting this MSI X58 motherboard as an upgrade to my "value" ASUS P6T SE X58. I have a Core i7 930, as well as a 6GB DDR3 1333 MHz tri-channel memory kit. Is it worth the $300? It comes with a free sound card, and the motherboard is made from very high quality military grade components. Sounds very reliable and should last a long time before it begins to die. I'm not sure about my ASUS P6T SE X58, since it is a "budget" X58 board, and I am not very sure about it's quality and reliability.

My computer is not yet fully assembled. I still need to buy my operating system, anti-virus software, and graphics card.

I have approximately $2,000 to spend on those things. The graphics card is $700, the OS is $150, the AV is $50, and the PC store construction is $70. so that's $970. This motherboard costs $300, so it's $1,270.

The MSI "big bang" is "the best X58 motherboard money can buy, even better than the EVGA X58 Classified" and it is "the holy grail of X58 motherboards" some people have said in reviews. The only con is a junk sound card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

My current system setup is the following.

Core i7 930
ASUS P6T SE X58 (may be replaced by a better motherboard)
6GB DDR3 1333 MHz tri-channel
CM HAF 932 full tower case
Corsair TX850 850W PSU
ZALMAN CNPS9900 CPU cooler
DVD-ROM
Radeon HD 5970 (not yet purchased)
Windows 7 HP 64-bit (not yet purchased)
NAV 2010 (not yet purchased)

Off-topic, but is my 850W PSU enough for a single HD 5970 at stock clocks? Is a 1KW PSU absolutely necessary?

 

[Liar]

Off-topic, but is my 850W PSU enough for a single HD 5970 at stock clocks?

Should be. The Core i7 is no major power hog. I have the same CPU as you and a Radeon HD 5870 on a 500 W box at work, with margin to spare.

I still suggest a good SSD. Yes, it defrags on bit level after a while. That's what's being called performance degradation. So you wipe, reformat and re-install on a yearly basis. Something you should do anyway. But overall, they last longer, with much higher MTBF than any reguar disc. The old and crappy ones didn't, but any new one is far better.

As for the motherboard, I never pay much attention to those, as long as they have the chipset and other stuff I want. Can't help you there.

 

[Mike_Yates]

Should be. The Core i7 is no major power hog. I have the same CPU as you and a Radeon HD 5870 on a 500 W box at work, with margin to spare.

I still suggest a good SSD. Yes, it defrags on bit level after a while. That's what's being called performance degradation. So you wipe, reformat and re-install on a yearly basis. Something you should do anyway. But overall, they last longer, with much higher MTBF than any reguar disc. The old and crappy ones didn't, but any new one is far better.

As for the motherboard, I never pay much attention to those, as long as they have the chipset and other stuff I want. Can't help you there.

The HD 5970 consumes just below 300W at 100% load. The Core i7 930 consumes about 130W at 100% load. With the rest of the system like the hard drive, RAM, optical drive, fans, is probably about another 120W or so. So my PSU should be able to handle my PC running at full bore. The most power-hungry part of my PC is the graphics card.

I just want to play Crysis and Crysis Warhead on "very high" and "enthusiast" detail at decent resolutions, and still have a playable frame rate. The HD 5970 (currently the fastest GPU available) should do the job.

I'd love to get an SSD, as they will provide lightning fast load times in games, but they are extremely costly and have much less storage capacity than a traditional HDD.

I wonder what Nvidia will have to counter the HD 5970.

You sound like you've done your PC hardware homework, do you work within the computer field?

 

[Shagly]

I was thinking about getting this MSI X58 motherboard as an upgrade to my "value" ASUS P6T SE X58. I have a Core i7 930, as well as a 6GB DDR3 1333 MHz tri-channel memory kit. Is it worth the $300? It comes with a free sound card, and the motherboard is made from very high quality military grade components. Sounds very reliable and should last a long time before it begins to die. I'm not sure about my ASUS P6T SE X58, since it is a "budget" X58 board, and I am not very sure about it's quality and reliability.

My computer is not yet fully assembled. I still need to buy my operating system, anti-virus software, and graphics card.

I have approximately $2,000 to spend on those things. The graphics card is $700, the OS is $150, the AV is $50, and the PC store construction is $70. so that's $970. This motherboard costs $300, so it's $1,270.

The MSI "big bang" is "the best X58 motherboard money can buy, even better than the EVGA X58 Classified" and it is "the holy grail of X58 motherboards" some people have said in reviews. The only con is a junk sound card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

My current system setup is the following.

Core i7 930
ASUS P6T SE X58 (may be replaced by a better motherboard)
6GB DDR3 1333 MHz tri-channel
CM HAF 932 full tower case
Corsair TX850 850W PSU
ZALMAN CNPS9900 CPU cooler
DVD-ROM
Radeon HD 5970 (not yet purchased)
Windows 7 HP 64-bit (not yet purchased)
NAV 2010 (not yet purchased)

Off-topic, but is my 850W PSU enough for a single HD 5970 at stock clocks? Is a 1KW PSU absolutely necessary?

I went with a Asus Rampage II GENE mATX mainboard in Feb. and a Intel I7 processor 965, the DDR3 memory is able to run over clocked at 2000 from what Corsair says, the mainboard can take up to 24 GB. 6 GB. is what it has now with a 850 W. Corsair power supply and a nVidia GTS 260 video card, I even put in a USB 3.0 card on the rear of the new case.

So far Windows 7 64 bit is working and I have all of the hardware drivers working.

 

[Liar]

You sound like you've done your PC hardware homework, do you work within the computer field?

Kind of. I write articles for magazines, some of them are IT business news and tech features, and it helps to know a little about the topic. But mainly I'm just another self taught geek

A good enough ssd for your purposes, with room for the system plus selected apps and games you want speedy load times for, won't set you back more than $130. That's marginal considering the overall cost or your system. If I was to ration, I'd skip tyhe new motherboard and get that instead. But that's me.

 

[Mike_Yates]

Kind of. I write articles for magazines, some of them are IT business news and tech features, and it helps to know a little about the topic. But mainly I'm just another self taught geek

A good enough ssd for your purposes, with room for the system plus selected apps and games you want speedy load times for, won't set you back more than $130. That's marginal considering the overall cost or your system. If I was to ration, I'd skip tyhe new motherboard and get that instead. But that's me.

1TB SSD for $4,199!!!!

Would YOU pay that much? You can put together a top of the line everything for that price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227517

 

[Liar]

1TB SSD for $4,199!!!!

Would YOU pay that much? You can put together a top of the line everything for that price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227517

What the hell do you need a 1 TB SSD for?

You put the things you need to load fast (in your case, Windows and a handful of games) on a small SSD, and use a big cheaper, regular hard drive for everything else.

 

[Mike_Yates]

What the hell do you need a 1 TB SSD for?

You put the things you need to load fast (in your case, Windows and a handful of games) on a small SSD, and use a big cheaper, regular hard drive for everything else.

What SSD storage size is appropriate for about a Dozen games or so? For some reason, it is not recommended that you put your OS on a solid state drive.

 

[Liar]

What SSD storage size is appropriate for about a Dozen games or so?

Dunno. How much space to they take up on your hard drive today? And do you need to have all instlalled there? How about only the ones that you play the most or that are suffering the most from slow load times?

For some reason, it is not recommended that you put your OS on a solid state drive.

Uh, who says that? Putting your OS on it is exactly what they're for.

I have a 64 GB ssd with the OS, Adobe CS4, some music production packages and four or five games (1 - 5 GB each) that I play regularly. The rest is on my 500 GB D-drive.