Build Advice ! :)

Moreilly

Currently building my first build :eek: , have the case coolermaster HAF x, corsair AX850 power supply, caviar black HDD, Aerocool fan controller and have the benq ew2420 on the way ,will probably end up with crossfire or sli graphics set up as well. i was about to get the ASUS Sabertooth x58 board and the i7 950 but then heard about the sandy bridge release, am i right in saying that this release replaces the 1156 socket and not the 1366?, i also heard that it uses dual channel ram while the current 1366 uses 3 channel and the upcoming 1366 replacement will probably be quad channel .my question is should i buy a x58 MB and i7 950 now and upgrade in about a year to the 1366 replacement or get a 1156 replacement sandy in jan ?. Either way in a years time ill have to replace the motherboard/chip/ram anyway if upgrading to the 1366 replacement, confused..? !!

Monotype

How much do you want to stay at the edge of technology? Is it for games? If so, processing power won't make as much difference as graphics card upgrades. That said, being on a dead socket is no fun, when new, faster processors are considerably cheaper than upgrades.
1366 might offer better opportunities for multiple GPUs and might be better value initially.
There probably won't be much selection and prices will be high for 1155 when they come out, but new technology could have better boasting rights and we may see 6 core CPUs and above down the line, so you'd have a long upgrade future... well long by intel's standards.

game4it70

I'd say wait for Sandybridge as its due out early january.
The 2600k and 2500k seem to be good chips but there's so much speculation on the net its a case of having to wait and see how they do perform.
The Dual channel is a bit of a let down but i'd say 8gbs will be the norm instead of the 6gbs of i7.

It will be late in the year i believe for the socket 2011 to be released but this will be the high end socket and i would expect it to be very costly.

It really depends though what you need out of your pc and if "bragging rights" come into play.
Atm i5 for gaming and i7 for multi-threaded tasks/gaming is more than ample to cover those needs.

Moreilly

ill be playing using it for a bit of gaming but mostly video encoding and photoshop, my current desktop is a old dell windows xp pentium 4 ht with 128mb graphics and dodgy 17" screen !, it has served me well though

game4it70

Moreilly wrote: »

ill be playing using it for a bit of gaming but mostly video encoding and photoshop, my current desktop is a old dell windows xp pentium 4 ht with 128mb graphics and dodgy 17" screen !, it has served me well though

Well SB with the hyper-threading would be ideal for you.
It will also be a huge upgrade from a P4.

I really doubt unless SB is all hype and no action that you would have a need to ugrade from that for a good while given how long the P4 has served you.