High Performance Core Pack

[SemiDemented]

Hey guys,

For about 3-5 years now, I haven't upgraded a single thing on my PC (Besides the PSU).

I am still rocking my 9600GT, (had) a 300w ka-chunka power supply, generation 1 stuff, etc.
Wanting to invest in something now worthwhile, I am looking into the following package:

http://www.landmarkpc.co.za/store/intel-haswell-i54670k-34ghz-with-mpower-with-gskill-ripjaw-2400-p-10218.html

Being the not-so-hardware pro that I am, I'd like to get some feedback and opinions from the community on whether I should buy it or not.
The combo price is around R7k, whereas buying individually would come to about R8k.

Z87-MPOWER Details

*Supports 4th Gen Intel® Core™ / Pentium® / Celeron® processors for LGA 1150 socket
*Supports DDR3-3000(OC) Memory
*Supports USB 3.0 + SATA 6Gb/s
*16 Phase DigitALL Power Design
*Multi-GPU: NVIDIA SLI & AMD CrossFire Support
*OC Certified: Military Class Burn-in Test Passed
*Military Class 4: Top Quality & Stability
*OC Genie 4: Overclock in 1 Second
*Click BIOS 4: Easily Fine-tune Your System
*PCI Express Gen 3: World's 1st PCI Express Gen 3 Motherboard Brand
*Audio Boost: Reward Your Ears with True Quality
*Killer Ethernet: Kill Your Lag
*Sound Blaster Cinema: Realistic Surround Sound Experience
*Lucid Virtu MVP 2.0: Uncompromised Game Response Performance

*Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, Intel® Wireless Display

Edited August 1, 2013 by SemiDemented

[jimbojet2011]

That's a beast man.

Dont think about it just buy it and sweep up the engine

[SemiDemented]

That's a beast man.

Dont think about it just buy it and sweep up the engine

Done!

Haha had to pay before 10am today ;)

[BrainDedd]

Looks good ... but hope you're not going to run it on your 300W PSU?

[SemiDemented]

Looks good ... but hope you're not going to run it on your 300W PSU?

No no, recently upgraded to an 800W :)

[STEEL]

SemiDemented!!!

R7159.00 including VAT

For that price, good 1 :rolleyes:

Just remember the Die Shrinking of Intel Cores over next 3 years and Q/Computing over the Horizon :lol: :rolleyes:

[Nima]

Z87 is one of the highest-end motherboards chipsets, ever; but it would be much better if you go for ASUS, it produces the finest and best motherboards, MSI is good, too; but ASUS is much more famous and known as producing high-quality products.

But they are very expensive, especially ROG and TUF series, check them here:

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_Z87/

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/MAXIMUS_VI_FORMULA/

About the RAM, I should say that G.Skill is really a good brand, but it the memory industry, brands like Crucial and Corsair are known to be the most advanced and high quality one.

Also, 2400MHz frequency for a DDR3 is really high and thus not that efficient, because higher frequency rates cause higher latencies which is not good; 1600MHz or 1866MHz is best DDR3 frequencies, it balances between both frequency and latency.

If you can buy each them separately, I recommend you those products, but if you insist on getting combo pack, both for it's price and usability, this pack is already a dominative pack.

But, what VGA you are going to buy?

I see no sign of that in that list. :think:

Edited August 1, 2013 by Nima

[STEEL]

:doh: Lot off S.A. Blokes on forum :lol: :)

[SemiDemented]

@Nima - great advice man :)

I have already purchased this deal - Wanted it by tomorrow, so paid today ;)

I honestly didn't know about

Also, 2400MHz frequency for a DDR3 is really high and thus not that efficient, because higher frequency rates cause higher latencies which is not good; 1600MHz or 1866MHz is best DDR3 frequencies, it balances between both frequency and latency.

Though it raises me to think why High Performance gamers go for 3k OC RAM? Although this is precisely more powerful than what I currently have.

As for the GPU... Well, I didnt have about R12k-R15k to get one up to the standards of the board for now ;) So I unfortunately cant upgrade that yet.

My friend is willing to sell me a Gainward GTX 580 for about R3.5k - So I'm looking into that.

:doh: Lot off S.A. Blokes on forum :lol: :)

Haha and a good point that is :D

PS: I'll post some pics after the improvements tomorrow.

[DKT27]

As mentioned already, really powerful and good PC.

There are better brands for such available, however, getting this much of a powerful PC is great too.

As for graphics, well, the processor does come with a on-chip graphics processor. However, this on-chip GPU won't give you good performance to play games. nVidia GTX 580 should do great I think.

[BrainDedd]

:doh: Lot off S.A. Blokes on forum :lol: :)

Yeah, loving it. :)

[Nima]

@Nima - great advice man :)

I have already purchased this deal - Wanted it by tomorrow, so paid today ;)

I honestly didn't know about

Also, 2400MHz frequency for a DDR3 is really high and thus not that efficient, because higher frequency rates cause higher latencies which is not good; 1600MHz or 1866MHz is best DDR3 frequencies, it balances between both frequency and latency.

Though it raises me to think why High Performance gamers go for 3k OC RAM? Although this is precisely more powerful than what I currently have.

Standard DDR3 RAM frequency is 1066MHz and 1333MHz and latencies for them are CL7 and CL8, overclock/overvoltage them to reach higher frequencies are usually common in memory configurations but it's not recommended, even it's done by the manufacturer.

Latency and frequency has direct relation and reverse effect with each other, higher frequency = higher latency while higher frequency is better and higher latency is worse.

Both of this factors are very important to benchmark memory, although each of them has own benefits.

But the thing is that, many people don't have enough information to decide which product is better and companies also abuse from this, so, they only see 'numbers' and decide wrongly based on them.

For example, people think higher memory size is always better, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, etc.; it's true but the fact is that that much memory is not really needed and thus you will not be able to use from 100% of your memory capacity.

Same goes for memory specifications, people see only DRAM frequency regardless of it's timings/latency which is very important factor, too.

I can remember those days which G.Skill made a new overclock record and overclocked DDR3 memory to 2400MHz and people was really excited about it back in 2009 or 2010 I think, but they did not notice that this memory has latency of 20, which is really high and thus make the DRAM very very slow.

Although that technology has been improved much since that time, and your current DRAMs are about to be CL 10~12 which is not that bad.

Current extreme DRAMs like you mentioned, +3000MHz is really overkill and they are joke actually, standard of DDR3 memory is 1333 and they overclocked it more than double which is not good at all, they also reached DDR4 frequencies with these extreme overclockings! I remember I saw something about 3400MHz or more and I was really shocked actually, their timings are so high, more than 30, which is really bad.

DDR and DDR2 memories have very low latencies (even up to CL1) because of their low frequency; although low latency is good, there should be balance between latency and frequency.

And because of that, I said that 1600MHz is ideal, it has balance between frequency and latency.

Higher frequency (regardless of latency) means faster on processing data, as it can process more information in a second.

While lower frequency means faster transmission between CPU and RAM, so, memory can get required information from CPU much faster.

Although both of these factors are not very important in gaming, the only thing that is very important in gaming is memory size, which 8GB is really high and will be enough to max-out games for next couple of years. ;)

Read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDRAM_latency

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_latency

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_timings

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=873

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/tight-timings-high-clock-frequencies,1236.html

Edited August 1, 2013 by Nima

[SemiDemented]

@Nima => Your Godly advice brings a smile to my face :D

Thanks for all the info, I will definitely take it into consideration when I look into getting more RAM :)

[R3C0N]

I can not share your meaning about ASUS. I had many mainboards from ASUS since mid of the 90's but I must say the 'no-name' ASROCK was beat them in Price and features since many years where ASROCK was a unknown name.

Z87 is one of the highest-end motherboards chipsets, ever; but it would be much better if you go for ASUS, it produces the finest and best motherboards, MSI is good, too; but ASUS is much more famous and known as producing high-quality products.

[Nima]

But in my opinion, you are completely wrong; ASRock is really a cheap and low-end brand which only copy ideas from big companies just like ASUS and Gigabyte, you can clearly see in their products, even in their bundled softwares.

Almost every people know that ASRock copied many technologies from Gigabyte (mostly) and ASUS, like M-SSD port in their Z87 series which was first introduced in Gigabyte Z77 series and XFast 555 overclocking feature which is a copy of Gigabyte 333 Onboard Acceleration.

ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc. are not casual and mid-range brands, they are the most advanced and most innovative companies in computer technology (mostly in motherboard), ASUS with introducing ROG and TUF series achieved the highest performance motherboards and won many awards for them, ROG and TUF can easily beat every other competitor.

Gigabyte and MSI (more) was unknown to people back in 10 years old, especially MSI, which was really a mid-range company, I can clearly remember those days, when AMD 700 series chipsets came to market, I get a 790FX motherboard from MSI and clearly I feel the very low-performance it has, it broke in less than 2 years and I had to buy a ASUS one.

But after some changing in administration and politics of MSI in recent years, it has become a monster in motherboard technology, when MSI introduced it's Military-grade products, many experts and reviewers trust this company for it's high-quality products again.

Z87 MPOWER MAX is really an advanced and high quality motherboard which is 'top-of-the-line' in MSI series with it's 20 Phase DigitALL Power Design.

AMD chipset-based MSI motherboards are really perfect, I heard that from many experts that if you want to buy an AMD motherboard, go for MSI without doubt, it's Intel motherboards are very good, too; but in AMD it is astonishing.

Gigabyte still rocks with it's UltraDurable 5 Plus technology and 15µ Gold Plated CPU Socket (+DDR/PCIe Slots & AudioJacks, DisplayPort & HDMI) technology which can greatly reduce the temperature of CPU and increase lifespan of the computer in recent Z87 high-performance series.

I call all of these 'innovation' and bringing new features in computer technology instead of copying ideas from other companies.

ASRock has got much better since last years, but, it my opinion, it can not compete with ASUS and Gigabyte in high-performance products, yet. ;)

Regards,

Nima

[kacali]

Thanks

[Casper]

:doh: Lot off S.A. Blokes on forum :lol: :)

Of which I am the longest active one. :showoff:

Not bad buy. I'm still setting cash aside to purchase a new setup. Still using Intel C2D E6750 and 9800GT.

Looking at an i7 or newer cpu and a good graphics card like the 660 or 670 or something - but all so very pricey.

[SemiDemented]

@Nima - great advice man :)

I have already purchased this deal - Wanted it by tomorrow, so paid today ;)

I honestly didn't know about

Also, 2400MHz frequency for a DDR3 is really high and thus not that efficient, because higher frequency rates cause higher latencies which is not good; 1600MHz or 1866MHz is best DDR3 frequencies, it balances between both frequency and latency.

Though it raises me to think why High Performance gamers go for 3k OC RAM? Although this is precisely more powerful than what I currently have.

As for the GPU... Well, I didnt have about R12k-R15k to get one up to the standards of the board for now ;) So I unfortunately cant upgrade that yet.

My friend is willing to sell me a Gainward GTX 580 for about R3.5k - So I'm looking into that.

:doh: Lot off S.A. Blokes on forum :lol: :)

Haha and a good point that is :D

PS: I'll post some pics after the improvements tomorrow.

Hey Guys,

Heres a link to all the pics I took for the unboxing / setup...

Hope you enjoy :D

http://pho.to/3DczX