Build advice, please

I'm starting to plan the build of my next desktop computer, to replace
my venerable XP box built in 2006. It still works fine, but I'm finding
an increasing number of programs that require Win 7 or later. I've
already bought a copy of Win7-64. Technology has changed since the last
time I went through this process and I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'm hoping
you guys can give me a little direction. Suggestions for specific
motherboards and CPUs I might consider and any other thoughts would be
greatly appreciated...

My needs/requirements a

- needs at least 1, preferably 2 PCI slots to accommodate my existing
sound card (one of the primary things I do with this computer is audio
recording.)

- lots of RAM (I run several OSs using Oracle Virtualbox)

- I prefer Intel CPUs. I've lost touch with what's the latest-and-
greatest and what's slightly-less-late-but-still-plenty-powerful-and-a
much-better-bang-for-buck.

- I've had great luck with my past several ASUS motherboards, but I'm
open to suggestion.

- My goal is stability and future-proofing. Raw performance is less
important. I'm not a gamer. I don't care about fancy graphics. Audio
editing is my main task, and I know that doesn't need tremendous
horsepower. I might like to get into video editing, which I know does
take more power.

So, waddaya think?

On Wed, 29 Jul 2015 19:15:16 -0400, Nil
wrote:

Me, neither - haven't worked with newer technology past making
presumptions. ...Besides, my filtering capacity on my browsers at the
moment & some limits on them.

UEFI DualBIOSâ„¢ Technology

You can have fun figuring out past comparability in that "Dual"
aspect.

Looking at this MB the other day, though. AMD, and didn't research
for, probably, an Intel counterpart chipset same model. I wouldn't
necessarily be surprised if money is significant between available and
similar AMD performance. (Assuming a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO -
CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan (RR-212E-20PK-R2)...as low as possibly
$19.)

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128514

Let's see, could be $200, or less, so far. Memory, 4 or 8G (think the
most I'm running in either my quadcore machines is 2G), ops - scratch
that. Dunno about 16G/32G mem modules. Newegg, though, would have
some surprising prices for low-cost memory. ...Potentially the most
important aspect, not to mismatch specs and end up with incompatible
or memory with potential issues (Gigabyte also has a HTML CPU
compatibility list just to doublecheck).

Very popular MB if not the most. (Hmmm, needless to mention both my
MBs are Gigabyte.)

This should handle a couple PCI slots...

"(Multi-Display Support with Two-Way CrossFire and Two-Way SLIâ„¢
Flexible graphics capabilities - Up to two VGA cards are supported for
either two-way CrossFire or two-way SLIâ„¢ action (running at two x16
bandwidth). -Gigabyte"

Stability. Yes. Long before, way back when I wouldn't run anything
much other than DFI, MSI, ASUS -- I'd run into some damn good
hacker/programmer types who were swearing by Gigabyte. As I said, no
regrets here for my first two. They act as if they want to outlive
me.

Future-proof is one of those oxymorons grammarians can't resist.
Knock-off from 80's computer vernacular that needs retirement. (Of
course, corporate interests love planned obsolescence in every phase
of reinventing the wheel for phlat profit.)

Sounds like a barrel of monkeys for an update. (I'd offhand stack the
end price of an AMD 8- or 6-core directly against the price of an
"updated" Intel quad. One of my older quads is Intel and I also like
Intel, just perhaps not as much as you might pay for it in your
present situation.)

I'm starting to plan the build of my next desktop computer, to replace
my venerable XP box built in 2006. It still works fine, but I'm finding
an increasing number of programs that require Win 7 or later. I've
already bought a copy of Win7-64. Technology has changed since the last
time I went through this process and I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'm hoping
you guys can give me a little direction. Suggestions for specific
motherboards and CPUs I might consider and any other thoughts would be
greatly appreciated...

My needs/requirements a

- needs at least 1, preferably 2 PCI slots to accommodate my existing
sound card (one of the primary things I do with this computer is audio
recording.)

- lots of RAM (I run several OSs using Oracle Virtualbox)

- I prefer Intel CPUs. I've lost touch with what's the latest-and-
greatest and what's slightly-less-late-but-still-plenty-powerful-and-a
much-better-bang-for-buck.

- I've had great luck with my past several ASUS motherboards, but I'm
open to suggestion.

- My goal is stability and future-proofing. Raw performance is less
important. I'm not a gamer. I don't care about fancy graphics. Audio
editing is my main task, and I know that doesn't need tremendous
horsepower. I might like to get into video editing, which I know does
take more power.

So, waddaya think?

Btw - I usually spend hours and hours, days before researching before
actually buying. Please excuse any glaring omissions or major
incompatibility issues on that "drive-by" for the Gigabyte. (For
instance PCI/SLI compatibility I'd want to know more about;- Also a
perspective on total cores to balance for expectations on physical
memory population skews. Oracle VM, having looked over VM offerings,
all I know is Oracle is popular for freeware, perhaps at an entry
level across multiple platforms;- although I also know that polled
programmers prefer an Intel platform for development.)

I'd still stand on AMD and Gigabyte despite all that, provided
research results didn't kick back into another direction/brands.

8 core FX series looks positioned for a real good value. 95Watts both
to stress stability, not only humor rumors from others when "pushing
it" on that particular board, overclocking, but because I also like
staying within specs, even under-spec'd/clocking when appropriate
(though seldom is -- they're pretty well finely tuned). Tighter
feeling, overall, adequately covered with a good OEM heatsink, then
seeing consistent cool temps from an idle to pushing it too its max.

Lower wattage = newer die micron technology, may or not mean more
money. Doesn't offhand appear there's that spread to the FX series, I
ran into, costlier CPUs, when looking for (Ebay/used) quad CPUs in my
particular socket upgrade paths. Both boards, I've upgraded 3 times
each on both AMD/Intel platforms with better CPUs.

You'll also have to figure out the soundboard angles with having to
add your own slotted video. Those type of boards -- positioned now
for on-CPU, incorporated graphics -- has given MBs something of a new
technological spin against predominately NVidia/AMD video-chipped MBs
sold from a couple, three years ago.

(A dedicated sound-processing platform isn't really different from a
dedicated video/CAD-processing platform. Yesterday's setup at one
time, for such a system, might cost $150,000. Depending, it can
become very verge and proprietary, quickly turning into inhouse-build
territory, "edgy" and highly specialized. Doing it [all] with a PC is
still a hobbyist, of course, comparatively, home-for-studio gear
approximates. IMHO. I use PCI for my soundboard outputs -- and I've
still 20db higher outputs available than the GA-990FXA-UD3 touts for
its standardized soundchip. ASUS Xonar, which can run $200 for their
best XONAR PCI unit. Recording, dedicated gear, a Pinnacle specialty
box for low-latency issues in live mixes;- things get tight, but it's
cool with just a guitar and vocals, headphones, and laying in
solid-quality basics, nothing to complex, which I needed at time with
an uncompromising vocalist. USB-based recording, limited inputs,
sensitively a touchy system and easy to crash, but - hey, I got it
down. The vocalist is really quite good when focused and validly picky
or not just acting like a prima donna. I learned a lot about bands/
frontmen while working with him.)

Nil wrote:
I'm starting to plan the build of my next desktop computer, to replace
my venerable XP box built in 2006. It still works fine, but I'm finding
an increasing number of programs that require Win 7 or later. I've
already bought a copy of Win7-64. Technology has changed since the last
time I went through this process and I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'm hoping
you guys can give me a little direction. Suggestions for specific
motherboards and CPUs I might consider and any other thoughts would be
greatly appreciated...

My needs/requirements a

- needs at least 1, preferably 2 PCI slots to accommodate my existing
sound card (one of the primary things I do with this computer is audio
recording.)

- lots of RAM (I run several OSs using Oracle Virtualbox)

- I prefer Intel CPUs. I've lost touch with what's the latest-and-
greatest and what's slightly-less-late-but-still-plenty-powerful-and-a
much-better-bang-for-buck.

- I've had great luck with my past several ASUS motherboards, but I'm
open to suggestion.

- My goal is stability and future-proofing. Raw performance is less
important. I'm not a gamer. I don't care about fancy graphics. Audio
editing is my main task, and I know that doesn't need tremendous
horsepower. I might like to get into video editing, which I know does
take more power.

So, waddaya think?

First, you look at what "sockets" are popular.

LGA1150 is still around, and
LGA2011 is for when you want a really big-ass processor.

The extra memory bandwidth of LGA2011 is useless. But a LGA2011
motherboard with 8 DIMM slots leaves plenty of room to bump up
the total RAM complement. LGA2011 also has 40-lane PCI Express
(more expensive processors only), allowing plenty of video cards
to be fed from the bus. The cheapest LGA2011 processor, is
limited to 28-lane PCI Express.

LGA1150 is good for one or two video cards.
LGA1150, with bifurcation chips on the motherboard, runs
two video cards as x8/x8. You will see four small chips
between the two video card slots, which help split x16
from the CPU, into x8/x8 when needed. If only one video
card is installed on LGA1150, the bifurcation redirects
all the bandwidth to the one slot (full x16). Intel did
not want to put this logic on the CPU (more pins maybe?).
Without bifurcation chips (saves a few bucks), they can
fix the slots at x8/x8 no matter what configuration is used.

http://www.newegg.com/Intel-Motherbo...ategory/ID-280

I would say LGA2011-V3 could run you anywhere from
$1400 to $2000 or so. Assuming you bought it with
the idea of filling all the RAM slots, getting
a decent video card and so on. LGA2011 processors
are likely to have SLAT/EPT so that Hyper-V can be
run on Win8 or Win10. (The Win10 you could upgrade
to from Win7 if you wanted, within the next year.)
The only reason I haven't used Hyper-V, is only
one computer can use it here, and if that machine
dies, all my VMs would be dead-ducks. My other VM
platforms, I can move the stuff from machine to
machine, on a hardware failure.

You can get some "part numbers" here.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

(LGA1150, 4C 8T) Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz 11,239 $340
(LGA2011-V3, 6C 12T) Intel Core i7-5930K @ 3.50GHz 13,720 $580 +
$100 cooler

Usually, in terms of benchmarks, the hex core Intel
(second line above), performs at around the level
of a five core chip. If there is a ring bus inside,
it could be starving things a bit. On multithreaded,
it's a faster chip. For example, 7ZIP Ultra compression
will run faster on 5930K than on 4790K.

But the 4790K is bound to be faster on regular stuff.
And, it's cheaper. ("Al Drake" has one.)

If you plug 4790K in here, a large number of boards
should work. Near the bottom, you can see Z97 boards.

http://support.asus.com/cpu.aspx?SLanguage=en

The details for 4790K are here. Multiplier, as far
as I know, is unlocked. It has all three virtualization
tick boxes, and could run Hyper-V.

http://ark.intel.com/products/80807/...40-GHz?q=4790k

TDP 88 W

Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 32 GB --- 4x8GB. DDR3

Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x) Yes
Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) Yes
Intel VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) Yes

Example of a cheap motherboard, with Z97 and USB3.1

ASUS Z97-E/USB3.1 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 $129
HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813132512

The number of VCore phases is a bit limited. But the CPU is
Haswell, and AFAIK, should have the internal FIVR voltage
regulator system. That means the motherboard VCore, makes
a higher voltage like 2.4V (at a lower current flow level),
and the CPU makes 1.0V for itself. Check the motherboard
reviews, to see if anyone checked the VCore heatsink,
for excessive temperature. My latest Asus board, the VCore
heatsink was boiling hot - and that's not good. Traditionally,
they've been cooled to the luke-warm point, to prevent
thermal runaway on the MOSFETs.

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-132-512-Z03?$S640$

I think I see the four bifurcation chips, just below the
"M.2 Support" label.

When I tried to look for competing Gigabyte Z97 boards,
they don't seem to have USB 3.1. And this could be
because Asus owns Asmedia, Asmedia makes the USB 3.1 chip,
and isn't selling it to Gigabyte. Just a guess. MSI
seems to have USB3.1 added to theirs.

With regard to add-on USB3.1 and TypeC connectors,
the available USB3.1 chip only has enough bus bandwidth
(1GB/sec) for a single port. So while I can select
a motherboard with two USB3.1 ports, it's on the understanding
that full bandwidth is available, if I read from one
port at 1GB per second, and write to the other port
at 1GB per second. That's because PCI Express is full
duplex. If I wanted to write to two USB3.1 devices
at the same time, there is not 2GB/sec available
to do it. So simultaneous write would be bus limited.
And this has been the prevailing M.O. for USB add-on chips
since they started making them. So when you see a motherboard
with just one connector, you could make the excuse that
the single port is "unlimited" from a bus usage point
of view.

*******

A new CPU socket is likely right around the corner, new
batches of motherboards, CPUs, will use DDR4 and
so on. So if some of the components you need
(good DDR3) seem in short supply, that could be
the reason.

If you use DDR4 as a motherboard search term, that
gives you LGA2011-V3 boards. Whereas LGA1150 is
DDR3 as far as I know. So it's likely the next
"mainstream desktop" board will be DDR4. If you
wait much longer, you're likely to run into
the next batch of new stuff. See if any of the
enthusiast sites have a socket name and ETA...

Some chit-chat...

http://anandtech.com/show/9053/unloc...intel-at-gdc15

Paul

Thanks, Paul. This is a lot to chew on. I'll respond in more detail
as soon as I have a chance to compare this with real world
availability and prices at Newegg.

I should also have mentioned that I want to keep the cost of this
well under a grand. I plan to recycle my case, monitor, mouse, and
keyboard.


On 30 Jul 2015, Paul wrote in
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:

Nil wrote:
I'm starting to plan the build of my next desktop computer, to
replace my venerable XP box built in 2006. It still works fine,
but I'm finding an increasing number of programs that require Win
7 or later. I've already bought a copy of Win7-64. Technology has
changed since the last time I went through this process and I'm a
bit overwhelmed. I'm hoping you guys can give me a little
direction. Suggestions for specific motherboards and CPUs I might
consider and any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated...

My needs/requirements a

- needs at least 1, preferably 2 PCI slots to accommodate my
existing sound card (one of the primary things I do with this
computer is audio recording.)

- lots of RAM (I run several OSs using Oracle Virtualbox)

- I prefer Intel CPUs. I've lost touch with what's the
latest-and- greatest and what's
slightly-less-late-but-still-plenty-powerful-and-amuch-better-bang-for-buck.

- I've had great luck with my past several ASUS motherboards, but
I'm open to suggestion.

- My goal is stability and future-proofing. Raw performance is
less important. I'm not a gamer. I don't care about fancy
graphics. Audio editing is my main task, and I know that doesn't
need tremendous horsepower. I might like to get into video
editing, which I know does take more power.

So, waddaya think?

First, you look at what "sockets" are popular.

LGA1150 is still around, and
LGA2011 is for when you want a really big-ass processor.

The extra memory bandwidth of LGA2011 is useless. But a LGA2011
motherboard with 8 DIMM slots leaves plenty of room to bump up
the total RAM complement. LGA2011 also has 40-lane PCI Express
(more expensive processors only), allowing plenty of video cards
to be fed from the bus. The cheapest LGA2011 processor, is
limited to 28-lane PCI Express.

LGA1150 is good for one or two video cards.
LGA1150, with bifurcation chips on the motherboard, runs
two video cards as x8/x8. You will see four small chips
between the two video card slots, which help split x16
from the CPU, into x8/x8 when needed. If only one video
card is installed on LGA1150, the bifurcation redirects
all the bandwidth to the one slot (full x16). Intel did
not want to put this logic on the CPU (more pins maybe?).
Without bifurcation chips (saves a few bucks), they can
fix the slots at x8/x8 no matter what configuration is used.

http://www.newegg.com/Intel-Motherbo...ategory/ID-280

I would say LGA2011-V3 could run you anywhere from
$1400 to $2000 or so. Assuming you bought it with
the idea of filling all the RAM slots, getting
a decent video card and so on. LGA2011 processors
are likely to have SLAT/EPT so that Hyper-V can be
run on Win8 or Win10. (The Win10 you could upgrade
to from Win7 if you wanted, within the next year.)
The only reason I haven't used Hyper-V, is only
one computer can use it here, and if that machine
dies, all my VMs would be dead-ducks. My other VM
platforms, I can move the stuff from machine to
machine, on a hardware failure.

You can get some "part numbers" here.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

(LGA1150, 4C 8T) Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz 11,239
$340 (LGA2011-V3, 6C 12T) Intel Core i7-5930K @ 3.50GHz
13,720 $580 +

$100 cooler

Usually, in terms of benchmarks, the hex core Intel
(second line above), performs at around the level
of a five core chip. If there is a ring bus inside,
it could be starving things a bit. On multithreaded,
it's a faster chip. For example, 7ZIP Ultra compression
will run faster on 5930K than on 4790K.

But the 4790K is bound to be faster on regular stuff.
And, it's cheaper. ("Al Drake" has one.)

If you plug 4790K in here, a large number of boards
should work. Near the bottom, you can see Z97 boards.

http://support.asus.com/cpu.aspx?SLanguage=en

The details for 4790K are here. Multiplier, as far
as I know, is unlocked. It has all three virtualization
tick boxes, and could run Hyper-V.

http://ark.intel.com/products/80807/...40-GHz?q=4790k

TDP 88 W

Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 32 GB --- 4x8GB.
DDR3

Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x) Yes
Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) Yes
Intel VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) Yes

Example of a cheap motherboard, with Z97 and USB3.1

ASUS Z97-E/USB3.1 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 $129
HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813132512

The number of VCore phases is a bit limited. But the CPU is
Haswell, and AFAIK, should have the internal FIVR voltage
regulator system. That means the motherboard VCore, makes
a higher voltage like 2.4V (at a lower current flow level),
and the CPU makes 1.0V for itself. Check the motherboard
reviews, to see if anyone checked the VCore heatsink,
for excessive temperature. My latest Asus board, the VCore
heatsink was boiling hot - and that's not good. Traditionally,
they've been cooled to the luke-warm point, to prevent
thermal runaway on the MOSFETs.

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-132-512-Z03?$S640$

I think I see the four bifurcation chips, just below the
"M.2 Support" label.

When I tried to look for competing Gigabyte Z97 boards,
they don't seem to have USB 3.1. And this could be
because Asus owns Asmedia, Asmedia makes the USB 3.1 chip,
and isn't selling it to Gigabyte. Just a guess. MSI
seems to have USB3.1 added to theirs.

With regard to add-on USB3.1 and TypeC connectors,
the available USB3.1 chip only has enough bus bandwidth
(1GB/sec) for a single port. So while I can select
a motherboard with two USB3.1 ports, it's on the understanding
that full bandwidth is available, if I read from one
port at 1GB per second, and write to the other port
at 1GB per second. That's because PCI Express is full
duplex. If I wanted to write to two USB3.1 devices
at the same time, there is not 2GB/sec available
to do it. So simultaneous write would be bus limited.
And this has been the prevailing M.O. for USB add-on chips
since they started making them. So when you see a motherboard
with just one connector, you could make the excuse that
the single port is "unlimited" from a bus usage point
of view.

*******

A new CPU socket is likely right around the corner, new
batches of motherboards, CPUs, will use DDR4 and
so on. So if some of the components you need
(good DDR3) seem in short supply, that could be
the reason.

If you use DDR4 as a motherboard search term, that
gives you LGA2011-V3 boards. Whereas LGA1150 is
DDR3 as far as I know. So it's likely the next
"mainstream desktop" board will be DDR4. If you
wait much longer, you're likely to run into
the next batch of new stuff. See if any of the
enthusiast sites have a socket name and ETA...

Some chit-chat...

http://anandtech.com/show/9053/unloc...intel-at-gdc15