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OK. The "rescue machine" is pretty much ready to go. So let me do a quick post so we can tie a bow on it. Since you've already seen most of the parts going into the machine in the last post; this one will mostly be rationale with just a little bit about the final parts.
The last piece got added this weekend and I put it all together to check function. I've been looking into graphics cards for the better part of the last month...... really 2 months. It started with me replacing the GTX 650 with a GTX 750 (more performance, less power draw) in my son's gaming rig. Then I replaced the Radeon HD 7850 in my workstation with a GTX 770, then went right into looking at cards for this cheap gaming build for the friend's son. In the last post, I had discussed the possibility and merits of nVidia's "10 Series". But that was before I found a 660 Ti FTW Signature 2 for $60 on Craigslist. That pretty much completes the build right around $400 total. Is using this 660 better than the 1050... that's a close call. Is it a better deal than the 1060.... absolutely! I'm not crazy. He'll be playing for months at only slightly lower performance instead of saving up, the additional $150-200 it'll take to buy the alternative. Play vs. No Play? I'd call that better; hand's down!
So..... am I satisfied? Should I be? Well..... yeah, I'd say so. Here's why. The basic components have a few rounds left in them. The high-end AM3+ socketed board can take processor upgrades through the latest AMD hex and octo-core processors. The RAM can be bumped all the way up to 32Gb. The SSD is big enough to use for some time and there's expansion well beyond what's in this box. As an enthusiast board, there's lots of over-clocking potential. The SSD is pretty snappy and should be good for a few years. The 660 is a great card for the money invested and will allow game-play at medium to high detail at well over 30-35 fps on current titles. For the games this kid plays, he'll go between 50-75 fps! The best pieces are the case/PSU combo which is good enough to go several builds down the road. At the end of the day, $400 just isn't very much money for the capabilities of this machine. It will be a good starting point for it's new owner.
I've discussed new projects before. I've even talked about the rebuilding of the "Blackbird" (or any number of others) workstation before. But typically, I'm pretty far along in the process before I start writing about it. So this is a little bit different.
This time, it's more like this,.... in the drawing stages. So far, I've used the network identifier of "Blackbird" on my primary workstation with 2 different chassis. The first, being in a Cooler Master Centurion 590 which held a Core 2 Duo/Quad generation machine, then on to the Cooler Master Cosmos II which holds the current "Ivy Bridge" generation. Some of you might remember that I didn't have any intention of changing cases, until the lack of space behind the motherboard tray shorted out the new board/heatsink combo. This time, I well and truly have zero intention of building in a new case since the Cosmos II is still the "800 pound gorilla" of computer cases and will hold anything up through EATX boards and 13 drives! No, this time, it'll be completely about the guts.
In the previous versions, I skipped 3 generations before pulling the trigger. Part of that had to do with me being able to move from a "Wolfdale" Core 2 Duo to a "Yorkfield" Core 2 Quad. In the current board, I've been able to go from the original low powered ("S" Spec) i5 to a regular power i7 of the generation. These LGA1155 processors have been so solid that I was able to go another 3 generations now before I even started my planning this next build. Not that I'm complaining about my current hyper-threaded i7-3770 cpu; I just think that enough of the peripherals have moved on to faster interfaces that it's time to think about it.
What I've been chewing on is this. A move to the more professional/workstation oriented LGA2011-v3 and X99 chipset. These exist on true workstation boards and not just "enthusiast" ones like the "Z" chipsets. Why? Actually, what I do with my machine is more oriented in that direction vs. overclocking and having lots of PCIe lanes for video associated with gaming. These boards also tend to come with M.2 sockets onboard so I can move on to the new faster NVMe SSDs for primary OS and application storage. They also tend to have 8 RAM sockets vs. 4 so I can start out with lower density memory that's cheaper and allow me to upgrade without pulling modules in the future. Anything I expect to carry over to the new system?
I've already said, I'm keeping the Cosmos II, but I'm also going to expect to keep my current data storage drives. They are 2, 1.5Tb, 7200rpm Hitachi Deskstars. Some of the finest and most reliable that they ever made. My plan is to put them in a "mirrored" RAID and use them as protected online data storage. On that front, I'll probably also keep the 2 optical drives (one DVD+RW, one Blu-Ray), but will probably replace the 500Gb Toshiba "scratch drive" with either a bigger one, or an SSD. Of course, the modular 650watt, Seasonic M12II will stay unless something blows up. Changes (apart from the MB/CPU/RAM)?
Yup; this non-gamer bought something from Team-Green..... a GeForce GTX 770 Reference card. Reason? It's a pretty decent upgrade from the Radeon HD 7850 that was my main graphics card, but mostly because I got it for $75..... really. Alert to all you frugal gamers out there who didn't already know this, but the "10 Series" cards from nVidia has had people dropping perfectly adequate "9", "7", and "6" series cards like nothings I've ever seen before. You throw in AMD's RX cards it's looking like Berlin in 1945. There's just a lot of really nice cards floating around out there. I'm also keeping an eye out for a GTX 750 (non-Ti version), to replace the HD 7750 in the computer as well which run my number 3 and 4 monitors. Some of you might have detected that there's something fishy going on here, since 22" monitors (even 4 of them, although 2 aren't that big) don't need this much power to run. You're right. I'm looking seriously at moving to 4K, so I'll need something along the lines of the 770 to run that. I'm not talking 4K gaming mind you, but just 4K, so I think the 770 will be fine for that. Then the 750, which needs no power other than what the bus provides can handle the two 22", 1920 x 1200 which will move to the side.
So, that's it in a nut-shell. It'll probably take a while before I pull the MB and do the actual up grade, but that's be basics of the plan anyway.
