Ivy bridge now or wait for Haswell support?

[cmedlin]

I want to build a hackintosh combo NAS/HTPC, something similar to what this guy did here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-builds/85431-asrock-h77m-itx-core-i3-home-media-center-nas.html

Since it will be on 24/7 I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on whether it makes more sense to just go ahead and build it now with ivy bridge components (which at least right now are cheaper), or if the supposed power-saving aspects of Haswell will make it worth the wait in the long run? I don't need it right now, so I can wait, but I already have some stuff lying around "wanting" to be used (a power supply, ram, FD node 304 case, some hard drives).

At first I was thinking of just buying a real mac mini as those are so small and use such little power, but then I would have to buy an external RAID enclosure as well... and it is very difficult for me to justify the cost.

If you have any advice, let me know what you think. Thanks everyone.

 

[deathjester]

I want to build a hackintosh combo NAS/HTPC, something similar to what this guy did here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-builds/85431-asrock-h77m-itx-core-i3-home-media-center-nas.html

Since it will be on 24/7 I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on whether it makes more sense to just go ahead and build it now with ivy bridge components (which at least right now are cheaper), or if the supposed power-saving aspects of Haswell will make it worth the wait in the long run? I don't need it right now, so I can wait, but I already have some stuff lying around "wanting" to be used (a power supply, ram, FD node 304 case, some hard drives).

At first I was thinking of just buying a real mac mini as those are so small and use such little power, but then I would have to buy an external RAID enclosure as well... and it is very difficult for me to justify the cost.

If you have any advice, let me know what you think. Thanks everyone.

If you OC? They are about even.
If not, Haswell is slightly in front.
If you are on a budget and can find a fantastic deal on Ivy compatible hardware (getting harder and harder as the hardware disappears), get it IF you are not using integrated graphics.

These two series are very close. Integrated graphics is the biggest difference. If using the integrated graphics over a dedicated GPU? Haswell in a landslide.

 

[cmedlin]

That is helpful, thank you.

I will not be gaming on it, so I will probably go with integrated graphics as that should be able to handle any of my htpc stuff (movies, streaming) just fine for now.

So, perhaps I'll wait to make a haswell build if the integrated graphics are that much better.