Core i7 Dodo

I just noticed that the new Core i7 chips are out (as of September 2009). See this tom’s hardware article.

The new i7-860 and i7-870 chips are 95W instead of 130W. But the thing that makes the i7-9xx series a dodo is that the 8xx series is dual memory channel, not triple. Motherboard support for LGA 1156 is already huge, and prices are already below $80. Nobody is buying the expensive X58 boards now, and there won’t be any pressure to decrease the price.

So that’s it. I now own the last of the triple-channel CPU solutions that we’ll be seeing for a long time [if ever]. Along with it goes the LGA 1366 socket, which loses to the LGA 1156 socket. And X58 gives way to P55. The new chip line is “Core i7 for LGA 1156”. It is an i7, but not really.

There are some articles mentioning “Gulftown” i9 – a CPU with six cores and 32nm manufacturing, set to release 2010Q2. I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude.

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Core i7 build

After nearly a year of waiting (and accumulating pieces like the case, power supply and video card), I finally bought the “big three” [CPU, RAM, and Motherboard] and built the Tiemens Family Core i7 machine.
This machine is intended as a virtual machine [Linux] host.
DDR3 prices came down so much that I switched from 6GB to 12GB for basically the same price.

Item Product Cost
CPU Intel Core i7-920 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W $280
RAM Corsair XMS3 12GB (6x2GB) DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 Triple Channel TR3X6G1600C9
[2012-Jan] Corsair Vengeance 24GB (6 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 Hexa Channel CMZ24GX3M6A1600C9
$285

($135)

Motherboard MSI X58 Pro-E LGA 1366 $190
Power Supply Corsair CMPSU-450VX ATX 12V V2.2 80 Plus $60
Video ASUS EAH3450 Silent Radeon 3450 512MB PCIx2.0 x16 HDCP $33
Case Antec Three Hundred ATX Mid Tower $40
Hard Drive Western Digital 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 7200RPM 32MB WD1001FALS $95
DVD/CD Samsung SH-223B SATA 22X Black DVD burner $31
Total $1014
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