Breaking in Sandy Bridge-E: Building A Kick-Ass Rig with Intel's New Chip
Breaking in Sandy Bridge-E: Building A Kick-Ass Rig with Intel's New Chip
Posted 11/14/2011 at 2:31pm
| by Nathan Edwards
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Intel's new enthusiast platform is here. I'm going to put it through its paces with a quiet riot of a gaming rig.
Intel has just released its new Sandy Bridge-E platform. With six- and eight-core processors, eight DIMM slots, and multiple PCIe 3.0 slots, it’s Nehalem’s true heir and the answer to complaints that Sandy Bridge, while awesome, just isn’t enthusiast enough. (Check out our official benchmarks here). The i7-2600K is a great part, but it’s only a quad-core, and there hasn’t been a six-core enthusiast CPU from Intel since the i7-990X, which is on a dead platform.
I’ve gotten my hands on the Sandy Bridge-E flagship CPU: the Core i7-3960X, a $1,000, six-core beast at 3.3GHz. Oh, and a motherboard and cooler to go with it. I’ve rustled up a passel of RAM, a titanic GPU, a quiet case, and a speedy SSD. I’m going to see whether X79 has what it takes to wrest the enthusiast crown from X58, and whether it can do so quietly.
Ingredients
| Part/URL | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Case | Antec P280 | $140 |
| PSU | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 850W | $195 |
| Mobo | Asus P9X79 Deluxe | $400 |
| CPU | Core i7-3960X | $1,000 |
| Cooler | Intel RTS2011LC | $100 |
| GPU | Asus ROG Matrix GTX580 | $530 |
| RAM | 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 (8x4GB) | $190 |
| Optical Drive | Plextor PX-B320SA Blu-ray combo drive | $110 |
| SSD | 256GB Samsung 830 Series | $420 |
| HDD | 3TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 | $360 |
| OS | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (OEM) | $99 |
| Total | $3,544 |
Building From the CPU Out
Why a $1,000 CPU? Well, it’s the only Sandy Bridge-E chip we could get our hands on, but it’s also multiplier unlocked, so in a matter of moments that 3.3GHz hexa-core becomes a 4.3GHz without even trying, thanks in part to the desktop overclocking software included with Asus’s P9X79 Deluxe motherboard. Intel’s RTS2011LC cooler is Asetek-made, and should enable nice overclocks without causing much noise.
The mobo’s eight memory slots and the low cost of 4GB DDR3 DIMMs make the RAM choice easy—two 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 kits cost less than $200. A 256GB Samsung 830 SSD will hold my OS and games, with a 3TB Deskstar for storage.
Asus’s ROG Matrix GTX 580 is one of the quietest full-powered videocards we’ve ever tested, and its massive fans mean it stays quiet even when overclocked and overvolted. Speaking of quiet: Antec’s P280 combines the quiet competence of the P180 series with modern niceties like cable-routing cutouts and USB 3.0 front-panel connectors. Thermaltake’s Toughpower Grand 850W provides the juice for my build while promoting good cable management with its modular design. Add in a Blu-ray combo drive, and I’ve got all the ingredients for a fantastic, overclockable, quiet gaming rig. With 32GB of RAM. Still not tired of that.
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Jongalt26
November 15, 2011 at 12:25pm
Hey Nedward, i noticed you filled all 8 slots of ram, would there be a performance increase for Vegas using only 4 slots and 16 gigs total? (primary uses are gaming, vegas, 3ds max & after effects)
The 4 slots of 32 is currently prices at $600, which id rather get another ssd or video card....
Wingzero_x
November 15, 2011 at 2:26am
So do you think there will ever be any extreme software that will justify the expense? With the direction gaming is going does this seem like buying a fire truck to water the lawn?
Neel Chauhan
November 15, 2011 at 7:48am
If you do a lot of video rendering or CAD work then SB-E will work, but for most gamers a 2500k is fine.
Logun
November 14, 2011 at 11:39pm
You mentioned RAM disk - can you do a run down on how to use a 20GB RAM disk? I've got a 4GB which I only use for browser caching I feel like I should be using it for so much more. Some one told me to use it for my page swapping but ummm if youve got enought ram to create a RAM disk with then I'm guessing you're not going to be using page files at all...??
h e x e n
November 14, 2011 at 10:47pm
Holy hell, those performance jumps are HUGE!
A $1000 CPU though? It's just so hard for me to justify. Two years will go by and I'll be able to get the same performance for $500-$600 less.
Still, those benches are pretty remarkable. You should do an article that specifically tests games and some of the benefits of building with a E chip when it comes to gaming. I'm still rockin a Phen II 965 quad. How much of a difference does the CPU really make past 1920x1080 and 2560x1440?
limitbreaker
November 15, 2011 at 12:21am
You'd be surprised to know that the difference in gaming with you phenom II would be around 3% to 6% unless you use a very low resolution with minimum graphics to make your CPU the bottleneck instead of your gpu. Even then you'd probably need an SLI setup to achieve.
Cymek
November 14, 2011 at 10:26pm
I know it hasn't been out a month yet, but when can we expect to start seeing BF3 in the benchmarks?
nedwards
November 14, 2011 at 11:35pm
Believe me, I want to. Trying to track down a benchmark that's a little more consistent than "start a level, start FRAPs, take an average." A time demo would be gold.
SleepyCatChris
November 14, 2011 at 8:34pm
Is the P280 the same "looks gorgeous in pictures but is cheap plastic crap in real life" as the P180? I don't think I've ever been more starkly disappointed in a component in person versus what I'd been expecting from the press as I was when I got to see a P180 in person.
Baer
November 14, 2011 at 7:06pm
Warp, if I wanted cheap I would not be in Maximum PC. AMD's are fine but if I want to run the Indie 500 I am not getting a Toyota.
So my next build has two componnents chosen so far, a 3960X and an Asus Rampage 4 Mobo.
dwellman
November 14, 2011 at 6:41pm
Power consumption. I'd like to cee platform (modo, cpu, ram) consumption numbers (if possible) from time to time. Performance per watt is an important metric to me.
limitbreaker
November 14, 2011 at 5:42pm
Well this is a great PC assuming money isnt an issue at all for the builder in which case i would wonder why not spend more and atleast have a gtx 580 tri SLI. If this isnt a gaming pc then youre better off putting that 1000$ on a amd opteron 16 core server cpu lol.
what bothers be specially about intel chips is that even with the SB-E release the i7 990x is still over 1000$ and still out of the price range for all those people with a lga1366 paired with a quad core, those people have no logical upgrade path without changing motherboards and possibly the ram.
PulsePCTeck
November 14, 2011 at 5:23pm
Hey there Warp,
You don't open up a magaizine called "Maximum"!! PC and expect too see a bunch of articles about 300.00 computers that are streamlined by Dell and HP. That would be like opening the hood of a Corvette and finding a motor from the Chevrolet Aveo.
There's got to be a fantasy for everybody out there...and it may not have a motor, a set of boobs (or abs), or be called panhead. So leave us dorks to our private times with naked pictures of motherboards and Sandybridge processors!!
*snickers and slams bathroom door shut!!
warptek2010
November 14, 2011 at 5:10pm
Well, let's see... I know at least 4 to 5 areas where you can shave off a lot of money.
If you go with FX-8150 platform with a 2TB WD Black, 128GB SSD and AMD motherboard, CM cooler, 8 or 16GB ram then you can shave about $1500-1600 bucks off the above. $3500 is a down payment on a car.
nedwards
November 14, 2011 at 6:29pm
"If you go with FX-8150 platform with a 2TB WD Black, 128GB SSD and AMD motherboard, CM cooler, 8 or 16GB ram then you can shave about $1500-1600 bucks off the above."
Well, yes, but then it wouldn't be a Sandy Bridge-E build. There's a Bulldozer build incoming, but this ain't it.
neo_mouse
November 14, 2011 at 4:43pm
so tell me again why i spend money on this mag when everything is online before it comes in the mail?
nedwards
November 14, 2011 at 5:01pm
Because you enjoy the magazine format, I hope.
In all seriousness, if we had waited until the mag hits newsstands, this story would be a month old. Instead we were able to put it up the day the Sandy Bridge-E NDA lifted, when it's hopefully more valuable to more people. The rest of the January issue's content will still be waiting for you when you get the magazine in a few weeks.
neo_mouse
November 14, 2011 at 5:15pm
sorry nathan, just a rage post. i do love the mag. i have been a subscriber since 99. and have loved every issue. i do understand why you posted this when you did. sometimes the internet brings out the worst in all of us.
Jongalt26
November 15, 2011 at 12:22pm
i've been a subscriber since '98.5. Im wondering about the digital subscription though. Does the digital subscription have everything that the mag does?
Digital-Storm
November 14, 2011 at 3:23pm
Performance by the bucket full huh? Tomshardware has a extensive rundown of the new cpu, and it only has about a 17% average difference over todays 2600K. And 95% of that difference is in Modeling and rendering, and the other 5% is in gaming. Waste of money IMO. 700 Bucks could be spent on a Quadro GPU that would speed the process up alot more than 17%.
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