Anyone using a computer with Intel's new

[pscot]

chipset? My 5-year-old laptop is starting to feel sort of creaky. I'm getting the urge to build something with more horsepower.

[struggle4progress]

1. I built using an i7 last summer. Quadcore, not six core, and I didn't

go for the Extreme Edition -- couldn't justify the expense

Personally, I wonder if AMD isn't a better buy than Intel for many purposes: the sixcore i7-980X Extreme Edition Gulftown 3.33GHz will run you over a grand, while the sixcore Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Thuban 3.3GHz comes in under a quarter of that: I could probably do several entirely decent machines just on that difference in processor prices

A lot depends on your budget and what you want to use the machine for. If you want a laptop, my guess is don't build it yourself: buy something upgradable and then upgrade it. In fact, if your laptop has life left in it and you can upgrade RAM, you might consider doing that

If you're going to build a box, pay attention to power supply: it looks to me like that's a place people frequently have problems. Also decide if you really need Windows, because linux can be free and you have lots of options there

[pscot]

2. I did some research on Amazon

and I can put together an i5 2500K system for around $800 + a monitor. A comparable Dell system runs about $1250 and comes with one of their funky 300W power supplies.

[struggle4progress]

3. I don't doubt you can beat retail prices by building yourself

I'm no expert at this. I've built myself a handful of machines in the last year or so to see what could be done with various constraints. The cheapest one came in under $200 (1.66ghz singlecore, 2gb RAM); the next cheapest came in under $300 (2.9 ghz dualcore, 4gb RAM). The one I built to see how fast I could get at a price I was willing to pay came out a bit over your $800

[hobbit709]

4. My main system has a Phenom II 1090T BE oc'd to 4GHz

8 Gb 1600 MHz RAM. The processor was on sale for $199.99 at the time I got it. My backup system has a 1075T and 4Gb ram. Including motherboards I still have less money in them than what Intel wants just for the i7 cpu.

[struggle4progress]

5. How much trouble did you have with the OC? I have a machine that I thought about OCing

but I convinced myself on abstract grounds that it had too many cores for me to have much chance of success: my thinking was that the cpu chips were mass produced, then tested and binned, so there would be natural variation in the chips -- and therefore the more cores, the more variation likely and the greater the chance that different cores would respond differently to tweaking. So I never tried the OC

[hobbit709]

6. Black Editions are easy.

since they have an unlocked multiplier. My motherboard, MSI 870A-G54 has BIOS settings for that. I tried running it faster but it started blue screening after about 20 minutes. At 4 GHz, it runs stable and cool 30-31°C at normal usage.
It now cranks. My test fractal rendering takes 35 seconds for a 1600x1200 resolution now. Took a minute on my 3.2 GHz x4
Once I finish tweaking the OS (XP X64) I plan to transfer the system drive to a 64 Gb Corsair SSD.