Upgrade: AMD X2 to Intel i7

Ginger

Right I am planning to up my main dev machine from its current AMD X2 4400,4GB RAM to a new i7 with 12GB RAM.

Its going to be running x64 anyways and most of my dev apps have native x64 versions. Also running 64bit on my work laptop.

So I am planning on replacing a few parts

One thing is I have an OCZ 700w PSU and I am wondering will be enough for the new chip and config

I am looking at a new
X58 motherboard such as the ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
i7 920 or 940 (I am not too up to speed on these yet)
12GB of RAM

Stuff that will be coming over will be

7*1TB disks(SATAII)
2*7800GT
Terratec DMX Fire 24/96
2*DVD(IDE)
PCI SATA Controller card

So will the OCZ be ok with this or will i need a higher spec PSU.

Machine wont be really used for gaming other than possibly Civ4 or Warcraft3. Have an XBOX360 for the other game types

TerrorFirmer

OCZ will be fine

Ginger

Spot on,

PSU calcs always give me a headache

TerrorFirmer

If you really wanted to upgrade, you could probably get a quieter PSU (do you have the Stealth or Game Xstream?), but power wise you'll be grand, they're both reliable PSUs.

Ginger

OCZ GameXStream 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply .. currently whats installed

Ginger

Ok quick spec

(based in Norway so change the .no to .ie for english stuff )

MSI X58 Platinum http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=393172
Core i7 920 http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=391447
12GB RAM http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=422875

Thats all I need to change at the moment. Case is a thermaltake Armor 8003 and all the drives are ok at the moment, tho I am hoping to swap out some of them for some larger ones or change the boot drive to a raptor

Solitaire

Its not the wattage that matters as much as how you use it

In all honesty I'm amazed if you've already been using such a big storage array on an overrated Epsilon (700W lol!) you haven't already seen pretty fireworks

On another note I'm really not having any joy with PSUs here lately... :rolleyes:

Generally, big storage arrays on "early" ATX2 PSUs with multiple rails is often a recipe for fail. In this case the rail allocation means you have just 216W to cover ALL your storage, motherboard, RAM and probably half or more of each 7800GT's power requirement (power plane usually splits draw equally between each source - mobo, PCIe1, PCIe2...). The older mobo was probably a lot less 12V-hungry as well. CPU doesn't enter this particular equation; i7 is a hungry fella but you can get all its power requirement from the first two rails; the third is stuck powering almost everything else in the system :eek:

And Epsilons hate being loaded, period. Pushing any rail toward the limit will result in serious instability, voltage droop and massive ripple outside ATX spec (i.e. officially not safe for component life expectancy). Its a hallmark of FSP's Epsilon platform - and even the next-gen Eppy in the new Silverstone PSU isn't a happy bunny by 700W; Zalman underrates their FSP-based PSUs to 600W, which says a lot.

The issue is that during startup (if you don't run it 24/7) most MS OS (Win7 seems the only one not to go flippin' mental at startup) will query everything and possibly load both GPUs while driver extensions initialise at startup while spinning up all seven HDDs simultaneously. And this is while the CPU/RAM/chipset is under heavy load. And then you get to see this happen again if your code or apps suddenly need to access all those HDDs simultaneously; the big power issue with 3.5" HDDs is spindle spin-up following idle (they don't require that much juice for continued operation). This could all push the rail over 18A and trip the OCP; your session has just expired via PSU getting cranky and pulling the juice Even if it avoids tripping you'll be pulling so hard under these circumstances the rail may become momentarily unstable and cause minor hardware damage that'll add up over time, as well as compromise data integrity which you really don't want with mission-critical data or code in the firing line.

If it wasn't for the rail issue I'd say it wasn't that critical but in this case I'd advise not pushing your new system too hard until you get a better PSU; something decent and preferably unirail due to your not-at-all-mainstream hardware configuration. Which means Seasonic or Corsair :rolleyes:

Spear

Ginger wrote: »

I am looking at a new
X58 motherboard such as the ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
i7 920 or 940 (I am not too up to speed on these yet)
12GB of RAM

You've already suggested going for the MSI, but if you do go for the Asus P6T, make sure you get the 0406 BIOS, released a few days ago that sorts an issue with Vista loading slow if you've more than 3gig of RAM and large video memory amounts.

Ginger

Thanks Solitaire.

I picked up the OCZ PSU I think in late 2006 and I can honestly say its being very reliable. Now that said I didnt use it from late 2007 to late 2008 due me moving country and it taking a while to get stuff moved.

I am using an MSI-7100 Platinum board, which is from late 2005 when I built the machine. I suppose the fact that I left out that the amount of fans running in the machine too might not help my cause.

Can you recommend a PSU that will be ok.

What I will be running on it

Win7 RC x64
SQL 2008 x64
MOSS 2007 x64
VS2008

Odd game of W3 or Civ4 ..

Additional fans 5*120mm LED + 1 25cm side case fan and 2 cold cathodes

TerrorFirmer

Sorry I didn't notice the 7 1TB drives, thought that was a single TB drive. that's my mistake, sorry about that, should have paid more attention. Though I think the dismissal of that PSU is a tad OTT. I owned the Gamexstream for quite some time and always found it rock solid, admittadly I didn't have that amount of devices but I did have a q6600, 2xoptical, 2x8800GTS 512MB, 3x Sata drives and all the other usual stuff like fans, cathodes, etc and never as much as a blip. Wattage is actually a solid measurement on Game and StealthxStream too; in fact, a lot of reviews said that the 600w StealthXstream was capable of providing a stable 690-700w and at excellent efficency at those higher levels, and well within spec. In fact I've never really seen any reviews for either game or stealth xstream that say anything other then high efficency and solid rails under high load. I know a few people have complained about them in the past here and there but I find that that's in relation to top end corsair supplies and amongst enthusiastics as opposed to average users, and not that either are inherently bad psus. I have always found them excellent as have nearly all reviews. in fact in most reviews the ocz psu's flucuated less then other competing brands at high load. The CPU will get its juice from the first 12v and the gamexstream is pretty efficient as well as triple rail, leaving you 36a on the remaining 2. not that i'm advocating against a solid single rail psu, in an ideal world.....i have a jeantech storm 700w and its never failed to impress me despite being a slightly cheaper psu, running dual kinds of every gaming card as well as several optical and sata drivers, case fans, cathodes, the works. triple rail as well, about the same age as the gamexstream i think.

sorry about the formatting of this post, typing on a tiny netbook. and to summarise i'm not disagreeing with the wisdom of a good single rail psu but the ocz is not as bad as you made it out to be, i think personally.

Solitaire

TerrorFirmer wrote:

sorry about the formatting of this post, typing on a tiny netbook

You are most certainly forgiven (remembers thumping away on Asus EeeEeeEee "keyboard")

And if I seem to be coming down hard on the GXS its not because of the PSU itself (although I've seen the RMA queue for FSP PSUs on the OCZ forum before, a sight to inspire both fear and hysterical laughter ) but rather the way its intended to be used. Worst case, Ginger will intermittently trip the OCP on 12V3 and swear at the PC for losing unsaved work, but I'm more worried about the ripple issues that plague all but the later models - over 50% load on a rail and you start approaching the ATX spec, usually exceeding the safe maximum by 80-85% load, which just ain't right.

On a normal PC the load would be distributed well between all rails, but a server-style machine is a different kettle of fish. Its not like he'd be running it at 90% load all day every day, just the possibility that he'd do so frequently enough on one rail to gradually reduce the life expectancy and reliability of components on it due to potential voltage ripple wearing the logic, and, far worse from his point of view, risk data corruption which can be a far more insidious threat to coders and servers.

For normal usage the GXS700 is a decent PSU and I'm not gunning for it that way, it just might not be cut out for this intended purpose, and many multirail PSUs will have similar (if less severe) issues with such an asymmetrical build.

Ginger

So folks

In your honest (and quite respected from this posters view) opinions, shoudl i change PSU?

This is always the hardest part of the build, the bit where you do the research and try to make an educated decision before you press the purchase button

Solitaire

Honestly, yes. A good unirail PSU won't be adding that much cost to a Core-i7 build and I'm not at all happy about loading a huge RAID array on a single 18A rail that's already got an optical drive, mobo/chipset, the entire PC cooling system and half of two 7800GTs sitting on it, much less adding a very hungry and aggressive X58 chipset to the mix; that would probably be the proverbial Land Rover that broke the camel's back

In almost any other circumstances I'd say keep the GXS700, the i7/X58 won't be hitting 700W that often. But this is pretty much the one application that will lead to you having to bin a multiple-rail PSU, one way or the other... best to do it before any damage is done. Letting the magic smoke out is not a danger in this instance, but hurting a build where data integrity is critical can in many ways be far worse than the crashing issues that are also possible.

Ginger

Right then suggestions on new PSU?

thepcgp

Hi Ginger, I know you've answered this question already but just to put the final nail in your 700W PSU's coffin I just did a quick calculation for you here, and based on the following specs:

2 x PCI-e graphics cards
2 x optical drives
7 x hard drives
1 x motherboard
12 x GB RAM
2 x P4 processors (i7 prob. more like 4)

It looks like you need a minimum of 765W PSU. This doesn't account for any fans, lights, cigarette lighter etc.

I think the ANTEC - PSU/TruePower Quattro 850W PSU would do the trick, it's 80PLUS certified which indicates power efficiency, although I don't think you're going to be winning any green power awards with this beast

Personally I would settle for no less than 1KW, to be safe.

TerrorFirmer

you're rated that seriously wrong, an i7 is nowhere near 2 pentium 4s, some of the p4 go up to something like 120tdp which is almost the same as i7. you'd really want to do a bit of reading before telling someone i7 is like 4 pentium 4s, which would be something ridiculous like 800+ w

Spear

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

you're rated that seriously wrong, an i7 is nowhere near 2 pentium 4s, some of the p4 go up to something like 120tdp which is almost the same as i7. you'd really want to do a bit of reading before telling someone i7 is like 4 pentium 4s, which would be something ridiculous like 400+ w

Toms Hardware has an article about this

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-cpu-power-consumption,1750.html

TerrorFirmer

god bless the pentium d

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-cpu-power-consumption,1750-10.html

thepcgp

Actually, it depends on what you're doing. To quote the study on Tom's Hardware Guide, they put it quite plainly:

Power consumption has to be related to performance at all times... the faster solution might have a higher maximum power requirement.

So if you're using the machine primarily for high power operations, such as games or multimedia editing, your power requirement for the processor will be higher. They also state, quite clearly, that the quad-core has

...a higher total power consumption due to the fact that the quad core has a higher power requirement across all tests...

Not to mention that the i7 has 2 threads per core. This means that at the same frequency the power consumption is going to be 2 x that of the quad core, because instead of 4 threads, you have 8. Look, the i7 is not designed to be an energy efficient processor, it's designed to be powerful. And to be more powerful than other processors, it must draw more power. You can't have it both ways.

By the way, according to CNET, the power consumption of the i7 extreme under load is 328W. So I'm not that far off.

Spear

thepcgp wrote: »

Not to mention that the i7 has 2 threads per core. This means that at the same frequency the power consumption is going to be 2 x that of the quad core, because instead of 4 threads, you have 8.

Nonsense, how could running two threads per core possibly double the power requirements?

TerrorFirmer

A pentium 4 3.4Ghz would draw close to bout 200w under full load (i made a mistake up above i meant to say 800w+ for four p4's or 400w+ for 2). the i7 965 extreme draws about 270 - the figure of 330 i assume probably refers to full load overclocked, because it wouldn't draw 330 at stock. so again, not sure where four pentium 4s come into it (which could be from 700 to almost 900w depending on what youre talkin about) or even 2, which would be 400-440w. in fact if it was a highly clocked p4 ee it could actually exceed the i7 in power draw as far as i'm aware but i'm open to correcton. even if we said it was just a bog standard 3.2ghz p4 you would be looking at about 160w so x4 would = 640w.

also you've contradicted yourself, you state that the quad core had a higher draw, but then also say the i7 would be 2x the draw of the quad at the same frequency?

Ginger

so am i buying a new power supply or no?

thepcgp

In the i7 Extreme we're not talking about running threads, we're talking about physical ones. These are mainlines into the core itself. It is my belief that this will necessarily increase the voltage being used as you have multiple threads accessing the core. This would not be as apparent at normal speeds and under standard load, but it's part of the reason why this chip has a higher draw. Also due to large cache and greater processing efficiency (supposedly), the core will be handling more operations, making greater use of the threads. It's simple multiplication, I think.

TerrorFirmer, from what I've read, only the 3.6-3.8GHz Prescotts and Prescotts 2M reached a power draw of 115 W, a standard P4 chip draws 82 W. See Wikipedia article on the Pentium 4. So we see that for Pentium 4s would be:

82 x 4 = 368 W

On the i7, Overspeed Technology doesn't kick in below 4GHz. At this speed, the peak power consumption of the i7 is 417W. This is well above the 368 W mentioned above. However, once the OT does kick in, the CPU will be throttled and the draw will drop down to 370W, which is almost exactly 4 x the P4. This is not overclocked, but it is at peak.

Also, I didn't say the quad core has a higher draw, Tom's Hardware Guide said that. I was quoting the study that Spear mentioned and linked to. I think the point here was that the Quad draws more power than the Duo or the standard P4. Now when I said the i7 Extreme, with 2 threads per core, would have twice the power draw of the Quad, this is only hypothetically true; if the Extreme were overclocked high enough, I believe you would see this, because of the dual threads and large amount of cache memory. I think that baby would absolutely be sucking up juice. This is the point of having the Overspeed Technology removed on the Extreme. But I wasn't clear about that, I'm sorry, it's my mistake.

Ginger, in my opinion, for the sake of system stability, life expectancy, and performance, I would advise you to upgrade your power supply. But if you want to make sure there is a better and more detailed power supply calculator here, if you put in all your system components, just choose Intel Quad Core as your processor and add 100W to the total. This will tell you almost exactly what power your machine will need. And it's always safe to have a little extra as overhead, just in case.

Good luck with it anyways Ginger, it looks like you've got a pretty sweet machine in the making there, whatever you decide to do.

Spear

thepcgp wrote: »

In the i7 Extreme we're not talking about running threads, we're talking about physical ones. These are mainlines into the core itself. It is my belief that this will necessarily increase the voltage being used as you have multiple threads accessing the core. This would not be as apparent at normal speeds and under standard load, but it's part of the reason why this chip has a higher draw. Also due to large cache and greater processing efficiency (supposedly), the core will be handling more operations, making greater use of the threads. It's simple multiplication, I think.

Er, what?

TerrorFirmer, from what I've read, only the 3.6-3.8GHz Prescotts and Prescotts 2M reached a power draw of 115 W, a standard P4 chip draws 82 W. See Wikipedia article on the Pentium 4. So we see that for Pentium 4s would be:

82 x 4 = 368 W

On the i7, Overspeed Technology doesn't kick in below 4GHz. At this speed, the peak power consumption of the i7 is 417W. This is well above the 368 W mentioned above. However, once the OT does kick in, the CPU will be throttled and the draw will drop down to 370W, which is almost exactly 4 x the P4. This is not overclocked, but it is at peak.

Peak TDP on a Core i7 965 is 130W, so says Intel.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=37149

thepcgp

See the CNET report here, look down the page for where it says "Power consumption (in watts)". You can see in the bar chart, 328W under load.

TDP doesn't change under load. See this article. TDP is the maximum amount of power in watts that a processor may consume, and dissipate as heat. This doesn't take into account the energy that is transferred as signals to the bus. TDP, in short, represents the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate.

Again, see Tom's Hardware Guide here, scroll down to the heading Overspeed Protection and you can read how the peak power was 417W and then throttled back to 370W.

I swear, you guys must think I'm just making stuff up.

Spear

thepcgp wrote: »

See the CNET report here, look down the page for where it says "Power consumption (in watts)". You can see in the bar chart, 328W under load.

TDP doesn't change under load. See this article. TDP is the maximum amount of power in watts that a processor may consume, and dissipate as heat. This doesn't take into account the energy that is transferred as signals to the bus. TDP, in short, represents the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate.

Again, see Tom's Hardware Guide here, scroll down to the heading Overspeed Protection and you can read how the peak power was 417W and then throttled back to 370W.

I swear, you guys must think I'm just making stuff up.

You seem to be. Almost 100% of the power used by a CPU ends up as heat. What goes out on the bus/interconnect is absolutely token. The higher power levels given were for the entire systems. An idle i7 draws only in the region of 3W. Why do you think your own links show a jump in power of nearly 130W when they move from idle to full load.

requiem1

thepcgp wrote: »

See the CNET report here, look down the page for where it says "Power consumption (in watts)". You can see in the bar chart, 328W under load.

TDP doesn't change under load. See this article. TDP is the maximum amount of power in watts that a processor may consume, and dissipate as heat. This doesn't take into account the energy that is transferred as signals to the bus. TDP, in short, represents the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate.

Again, see Tom's Hardware Guide here, scroll down to the heading Overspeed Protection and you can read how the peak power was 417W and then throttled back to 370W.

I swear, you guys must think I'm just making stuff up.

Alright lets get this sorted and accurate. If you want to calculate the watts for a pc use this site
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
To clear up the i7 issue, these are roughly the power draw of the i7 on its own
i7 920 CPU at stock 2.66 GHz (Vcore 1.20) .................. 96 W
i7 920 CPU OC'd to 3.8 GHz (Vcore 1.35) .................. 169 W

Hope this helps

thepcgp

Requiem1, can you please tell us what is your source on this information? I'd really like to know for sure because I'm starting to doubt my sources, i.e. Tom's Hardware Guide and CNET, or wonder if perhaps the information is skewed in some way. If you read the links I posted, I think you'll see they clearly state draws of 328 to 370 W. Unless maybe they're talking about total system power consumption, but I couldn't find any mention of that. It looks like they're talking about the processor itself.

Thanks.

requiem1

I just banged in those figures into the calculator link I provided, dude a single processor will never draw down more than a couple of hundred watts regardless of number cores. I'd honestly be worried if my processor alone was drawing down 300 watts

Sure my systems has an overclocked E6600 and a gtx295 with all the other bits and pieces for watercooling etc. and it draws on load around 438 watts to 490 on max load. The reason people go for high wattage psu's is because of efficiency and the fact you never get the maximum wattage from your psu hence the 80+ certification to ensure that you get at least 80 percent of your quoted wattage on difference loads.

Read what uber pixie wrote which is a better explanation of what i said.
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055556229

Solitaire

Also, thepcgp, you forget that only the 12V3 rail on the old GXS700 is overloaded, and that's the reason for the upgrade. The CPU is run seperately on 12V1 and 12V2 on that PSU, with a combined rating of 432W :P Even if it did draw that much power it wouldn't be the problem in this instance.

And it doesn't. That chart there is from an ad-hoc test using undisclosed hardware. See those wattages? Those are for the entire system. And even then they seem a bit off - QX9650 runs hot, but an i7-965EE runs a helluva lot hotter. Just not 328W