Advice for NFS LA system

[Jeff Gilchrist]

My wife is looking at upgrading her system and my system only has 4GB of RAM so starting to run into problems doing post-processing of NFS work. So I wanted to make sure her new system would also be decent for doing NFS LA work. This is what I am thinking so far, but I haven't looked into the latest and greatest parts for a while now so I'm not sure if there are better or more cost-effective things out there.

I was thinking of getting an i5-750 since they are fairly inexpensive, and easy to overclock. I'm not looking for the greatest performing system but something that is reasonably inexpensive but can still do the job. What does everyone think of these specs:

- DVD Burner
- Antec Sonata III case + EarthWatts Green 500 Watt power supply (80 PLUS certified)
- WD 640GB HD x 2
- ASUS 1GB Nvidia GT220 (for some basic CUDA stuff)
- CORSAIR DOMINATOR 8GB (4 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 8-8-8-24 1.65V
- ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard (there are a million versions of this board, this one seems like a good middle of the road model)
- Intel Core i5-750
- Noctua NH-U12P SE2 CPU cooler

Thanks,
Jeff.

[Batalov]

My 2 cents will be about a power supply:

it may be a good idea to get a 80-plus PSU and probably a bit higher wattage (just in case, for your GPU; you may spend a bit more but will save in electricity later). I bought a case with an included PS and it works but not spectacularly (we had storms here and the electric power was probably under-voltage-spikey for a few days -- and the box reboot three times. It had been up for 3 months before, though. The sibling, on the same power outlet, never rebooted - it has a fancy PS. So hence, my advice). Also, once you uncouple the case and the PS purchase -- I always liked the Nine Hundred.

Note that more memory also eats up more amps. Newegg has a wattage calculator that suggests 15W per Gb (so going from 4 to 8Gb, count for 60W extra)

Everything else doesn't look bad.

EDIT: Nice! It is strange that they didn't put the 80-PLUS cert in the description of the combo.
...but by browsing the images I could actually see it. It is probably the v2.2 model. Not the 500D Bronze.

[Jeff Gilchrist]

Originally Posted by Batalov

My 2 cents will be about a power supply:

it may be a good idea to get a 80-plus PSU and probably a bit higher wattage (just in case, for your GPU; you may spend a bit more but will save in electricity later). I bought a case with an included PS and it works but not spectacularly

The case comes with an EarthWatts Green 500 Watt power supply (80 PLUS® certified) so is a good quality PS. It is one of the few cases that comes with a good PS. But the Nine Hundred + decent PSU is about twice the price of the Sonata III 500 option.

The NewEgg wattage calculator says: Our recommended PSU Wattage: 378W

Jeff.

[ET_]

Hi Jeff, you chose the same setup I bought a couple of weeks ago

It works like a charm under both Linux 64 and Windows 64, just be sure, if you need to play with CUDA, to download and install the last drivers from Nvidia.

Luigi

[Jeff Gilchrist]

Originally Posted by ET_

Hi Jeff, you chose the same setup I bought a couple of weeks ago

Good to know Luigi. Did you buy the exact same case and graphics card too? No problems over clocking your system with 4 of those Corsair RAM sticks in the system?

Jeff.

[ET_]

Originally Posted by Jeff Gilchrist

Good to know Luigi. Did you buy the exact same case and graphics card too? No problems over clocking your system with 4 of those Corsair RAM sticks in the system?

Jeff.

Not really... I bought a nVidia GTX 275 graphic card, and used an old mid-tower case I had as a spare part.

I read about overclocking the ASUS P7P55D: using its "intelligent" overclocking firmware, with perfect thermal and electric stability, you can gain up to 20% of performance. Manually tweaking all values you can get it running smoothly up to 3.7GHz with an appropriate thermal cooler. Corsair RAM was the appropriate choice for that mainboard, and the i5-750 doesn't get hot.

Luigi