Hardware upgrade, can someone vet it for me please?

So just wanted an expert to give this a once-over. Here are the upgrades I'm looking at on Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817152043 (PSU)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128512 (Mobo)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115073 (CPU)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814161382 (GPU)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820220629 (RAM)

I'm also going to bite the bullet and just have the guys at Geek Squad assemble it and make sure I'm not going to keep getting BSODs, since I apparently suck at it(that, and there's a problem with the drivers for the Radeon HD 6970 cards that causes a lot of BSODs).

Will that all work together fairly well, or should I look at some different stuff instead? I'm keeping my case, hard drives, and optical drive (Antec 900 case, 2x 1tb and 1x 80gb HDD, Lightscribe capable BD-RW) since those are all still decent. I'm thinking of crossfiring two GPUs, but until my taxes come in, I won't be able to afford the second card. I'm already looking at right around $600, including shipping, in those parts above (I already have the graphics card). There's "better/faster" memory available, but that 16gb for $85 seemed to be the best bang for my buck; assuming everything plays nice with everything else.

You don't need more than 600W for a single card, a 750W would be plenty for CFX'ing two 6970s. You can get an overclockable i5 2500K for 10 dollars more (and you might need the K model to run 1600MHz RAM too).

The RAM is quad channel, you cannot use it on an LGA 1155 motherboard. You need dual channel RAM. If you want to stay with 16 GB, something like

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231480

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145347

I'm not worried about overclocking (it's something I have NO idea how to do, and I don't really play the kinds of games it'd help any with).

I've got a 750w PSU right now, but it's modular, and I lost some of the cables for it. The 850w model was the only one I found that's gold certified, and that's something I was specifically looking for.

So other than the RAM, everything else looks okay?

That ram will absolutely work fine in an 1155 board. Quad channel just means they tested it to work together in a 2011 board. 99.99999999% of the time, you can use two sets of matching dual channel kits as quad channel ram. There is zero difference between single channel, dual channel, and quad channel ddr3, all that means is they tested the sticks together.

As for power supplies, that raidmax is actually an almost decent unit, which is a big step up for raidmax, but it is still sub par. A review of its big brother (made by the same people as the 850 watt, Andyson) http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/02/ ... y_review/5 shows it missing its gold efficiency by a huge amount. If you dont need the psu to be modular, i would suggest you look at the rosewill capstone 750w http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182073

The review of that unit can be found here http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?na ... t&reid=266

As to the 2500 vs the 2500k, they overclock so silly easy a blind drunk monkey could get 4ghz out of one. If you dont feel you want to overclock right now, thats fine, but spend the ten dollars and get the k series, in case you change your mind later. In fact, depending on where you live, if you have a microcenter by you, they run fantastic deals on intel chips and motherboards, you could get the unlocked 2500k for 180$ and i think they also give cpu/mobo bundle discounts. I hear you have to put up with some pushy salesman, but id do it, to save money, if i was looking to buy a 2500k.

There aren't any stores in town other than Best Buy, Staples, and OfficeMax that sell computer parts, and the selection on them is extremely limited to boot. There are a few mom & pop shops, but the prices here are RIDICULOUS - so I'm going through Newegg, both for selection and convenience (I could drive down to Phoenix, but I'm tapping my PayPal line of credit for this, so need to find a merchant that accepts PayPal).

Looks like the 2500K is out of stock at Newegg, and I'm looking at getting this done by next week, since I have classes to worry about (a frequent BSOD problem is incredibly annoying when I'm doing a lot of writing).

As far as modular vs non-modular is concerned, I'd actually prefer a non-modular power supply - I have this pesky habit of losing those power cables that come with the modular power supplies, then getting shafted when I need them. So that one works great - it's even the same price!

Thanks for the help, guys, I appreciate it muchly. If I wasn't in a hurry, I'd wait until I do my taxes to get an entirely new PC - my returns average around 5-6k/year (depending on how much OT I work). But with 2 papers due every week, I need the stuff yesterday.

Pyrea wrote:The RAM is quad channel, you cannot use it on an LGA 1155 motherboard. You need dual channel RAM. If you want to stay with 16 GB, something like

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you don't seem to know what dual and quad channel kits are/mean.

I don't either... enlighten us?

Unless this is all there is to it:

There is zero difference between single channel, dual channel, and quad channel ddr3, all that means is they tested the sticks together.

Skye1013 wrote:I don't either... enlighten us?

Unless this is all there is to it:

There is zero difference between single channel, dual channel, and quad channel ddr3, all that means is they tested the sticks together.

AFAIK It's mostly a marketing scheme. It just means someone tested the RAM together and ensures it will run correctly when used together. But for all intents and purposes 4x1 single channel and 2x2 dual channel sets should work fine. I could be wrong but that's the way I understand it.

Well, here's hoping that the RAM works. I switched up the power supply for the 750w non-modular model, but the rest of it I just ordered a few hours ago.

I'll know in about 4 days or so, I suppose!

Yep, its marketing. The memory controller on the cpu (and in older computers, on the motherboard) is what makes ram running in dual or quad channel possible. The sticks themselves are all just ddr3.

Fivelives wrote:I'm also going to bite the bullet and just have the guys at Geek Squad assemble it and make sure I'm not going to keep getting BSODs, since I apparently suck at it(that, and there's a problem with the drivers for the Radeon HD 6970 cards that causes a lot of BSODs).

Never heard of this. Been running a 6970 for about a year now, never had any problems at all; it's been completely stable all the way through. I also have a few friends with the cards, none of us have ever heard of or experienced this.

I would recommend avoiding crossfire in general; it can create headaches (generally won't work well with new games for the first couple of weeks; micro-stutter means it's not as smooth as the framerate might indicate, etc). Unless you're doing eyefinity, a single 6970 is more than enough to run every game currently available at 1080p.

tullock wrote:Yep, its marketing. The memory controller on the cpu (and in older computers, on the motherboard) is what makes ram running in dual or quad channel possible. The sticks themselves are all just ddr3.

Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up. Better to be told that you are wrong than to continue in the belief that you are right

So it would in fact be better to buy a quad channel kit with 4 sticks instead of two dual channel kits with two sticks because of the guarantee that they will work together if one wanted to buy 4 sticks of RAM?

Pyrea wrote:

tullock wrote:Yep, its marketing. The memory controller on the cpu (and in older computers, on the motherboard) is what makes ram running in dual or quad channel possible. The sticks themselves are all just ddr3.

Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up. Better to be told that you are wrong than to continue in the belief that you are right

So it would in fact be better to buy a quad channel kit with 4 sticks instead of two dual channel kits with two sticks because of the guarantee that they will work together if one wanted to buy 4 sticks of RAM?

... Did you even read what you just replied to?

I need to be more clear. There, a new year resolution.

I meant:

Buy a quad channel 4x4GB kit as all four sticks are guaranteed to work when put in the same computer.
Run it in dual channel using all four slots. The memory controller supporting dual channel with 4 sticks of ram.
---> I have 4 4GB ram sticks that are guaranteed to work together

Talaii wrote:

Fivelives wrote:I'm also going to bite the bullet and just have the guys at Geek Squad assemble it and make sure I'm not going to keep getting BSODs, since I apparently suck at it(that, and there's a problem with the drivers for the Radeon HD 6970 cards that causes a lot of BSODs).

Never heard of this. Been running a 6970 for about a year now, never had any problems at all; it's been completely stable all the way through. I also have a few friends with the cards, none of us have ever heard of or experienced this.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... otfix.aspx <- it was a driver issue, AMD patched it.

Well, you can buy a quad kit, for whatever assurance that it will work, though often times its motherboard bioses that give ram related problems, so even if they tested it, it may not work in your pc. This has nothing to do with 2 or 4 stick matching sets though, some ram simply just doesnt play nice in some motherboards. However, this is mostly limited to the very high end of ram, i.e. buying 2133 ram that wont work above 1600 or 1866 in a given board. The rest of the problems stem from needing to slightly raise the memory controller or northbridge voltage to get 4 sticks to run well together, as often times what speed and timings work with 2 sticks will put more stress on the memory controller with 4. So you may have memory related stability problems unless you lower memory speed/timings or raise key voltages. Again, this is seen more at the high end of ram speed than the low end.

Ive never had any trouble getting identical sticks to run together in a board, regardless of how they were bought, and i have even had a great deal of success running sticks from different manufacturers, with different speed ratings, memory chips, and different voltage requirements, something the ram makers would like you to believe just doesnt work. If i saw a quad channel kit of ram and it was the same price or less than two matching dual channel sets, id buy it. If it was even a dollar cheaper to buy the two dual channel kits, i would (and have) buy the cheaper option.