Building my own computer.. thoughts?

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Mazurati

Mazurati

OG
After doing a lot of research through some of the links provided in other threads here and some of my own, I've finally come to some final choices and would like to hear your thoughts.



Motherboard:

1st choice: Asus Sabertooth P67

2nd choice: ECS Black Deluxe P67H2-A2 SLI



Processor:

1st choice: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz

2nd choice: Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz



Graphics Card:

1st choice: Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

2nd choice: GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card



Hard Drive:

Western Digital Caviar Green WD7500AARX 750GB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive



DVD Drive, RAM, Power Supply Unit & Cooling Device I still need to do a little research on, but was trying to get your opinion on what I've picked so far.
 
Pretty nice choices so far, except for the Fermi.

Go with the 1st choice on all of em.
 
All of your choices look really solid but that HDD is discontinued.

If you have the cash to spare I would suggest running a pair of SSDs in raid 0

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227728

with a HDD drive as a data drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

for something a bit more budget friendly

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136769









for cooling look at

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181010

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181016



for ram

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145291



as far a a power supply, anything over 700 watts with work for you but bump it to 1000 if you want to run dual video cards
 
My concern is if I'm paying too much for certain name brands..ie



the motherboard in my 1st choice sold by Asus.. maybe there's another manufacturer that has an Intel p67 base with the exact same stuff that sells for a lot cheaper?
 
yougotcriton said:
All of your choices look really solid but that HDD is discontinued.

If you have the cash to spare I would suggest running a pair of SSDs in raid 0

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820227728

with a HDD drive as a data drive

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136284

for something a bit more budget friendly

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136769









for cooling look at

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835181010

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835181016



for ram

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820145291



as far a a power supply, anything over 700 watts with work for you but bump it to 1000 if you want to run dual video cards
Click to expand...

will 60b be enough? I think SWTOR will need 30+ GB alone.



I'm still trying to learn about all the components in detail, so I just read about the HDD vs SSD a couple days ago and there pretty expensive. I would assume you would have an SSD for all your programs, operating software and processes, but for media files, documents and other data that can be moved from computer to computer, put on a HDD, yea?
 
yougotcriton said:
All of your choices look really solid but that HDD is discontinued.

If you have the cash to spare I would suggest running a pair of SSDs in raid 0

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820227728

with a HDD drive as a data drive

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136284

for something a bit more budget friendly

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136769









for cooling look at

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835181010

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835181016



for ram

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820145291



as far a a power supply, anything over 700 watts with work for you but bump it to 1000 if you want to run dual video cards
Click to expand...



I think for his purposes a single SSD should be good enough.



But yeah, if you get a small SSD just throw your OS on there and your essential programs, and load everything else off of the HDD.



As far as brand names go, I'm not so sure myself but performance wise they should be the same, however name brands have much better customer service, that's for sure.
 
Sabertooth both looks better and perform at least as good as the intel.

As mentioned earlier, you should go with 1st choice of all of them, and smack in a SSD if you got room in the budget, if not it's something you can easily upgrade later on.

A ~700+ PSU should do the job as well, you just have to remember this the place where you wanna look at the names, you can easily get a ~800-900 made by a "bad" brand, which will only do ~6-700, so go with a well known brad, ie. Corsair.



Extra CPU cooling isn't THAT needed if you're not planing to OC the CPU, and this is another thing you can upgrade later on if you decide to do some OCing.



Ram wise, I'd say go Corsair, with a 2x4GB kit and you should be fine. If you want you can bumb it up to 12 or even 16GB, if there's room in your budget ofc.



Edit: If you want to get a SSD, you should at least think about going ~100+ GB, I started out with a 60GB and regret it the day after I had put it together. Things just take up way more space than you first think.
 
Mazurati said:
will 60b be enough? I think SWTOR will need 30+ GB alone.



I'm still trying to learn about all the components in detail, so I just read about the HDD vs SSD a couple days ago and there pretty expensive. I would assume you would have an SSD for all your programs, operating software and processes, but for media files, documents and other data that can be moved from computer to computer, put on a HDD, yea?
Click to expand...



no 60 gb will not be enough if you want to put your games on the primary drive with your OS which I would recommend, which is why i suggest you get 2 of the SSD's and run them in raid 0 with will effectively double every aspect of the drive. 120 gb of space, 1 gb/s read/write speed and 12 gb/s transfer rate



I have a single 60 gb ssd in my system with the OS and wow on it, I am running out of space FAST.



as for the second part about moving the other files to the secondary drive, you are exactly right



iaccidentallytwink said:
I think for his purposes a single SSD should be good enough.



But yeah, if you get a small SSD just throw your OS on there and your essential programs, and load everything else off of the HDD.



As far as brand names go, I'm not so sure myself but performance wise they should be the same, however name brands have much better customer service, that's for sure.
Click to expand...



I think going with a single SSD for the OS might actually lessen the performance of the games a bit since some of the data will still be on the primary drive and the system will have to read both drives to run the game. and since they will not be in raid it will be a staggered read of the ssd and the hdd which could lead to a bit of performance loss, not much, but a bit.





as far as name brands go I agree with IAD, name brands usually mean better customer service and a better warranty both of which could bite you in the ass if you went with a lesser company for the core parts.



Things like motherboards arent cheep, even the cheep ones, and if you have to end up buying a new one because the brand you bought doesn't honor RMA's and only has customer service in korean with no 800 number to call for support jsut an international number where you will have to pay for the long distance charges as well it will not be a happy day (bad memories, wasn't pretty)



edit











Arihant said:
Edit: If you want to get a SSD, you should at least think about going ~100+ GB, I started out with a 60GB and regret it the day after I had put it together. Things just take up way more space than you first think.
Click to expand...



quoted for truth
 
Mazurati said:
I was looking at the RAM and thought I may go with this...



CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 15000) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9



it's at 1866 MHz which is the most the motherboard RAM slots can handle if I read correctly.
Click to expand...



the asus motherboard you chose can easily hold this ram and should do so with no problem but remember the larger the sticks of memory the higher the latency will be. not really an issue unless you are running benchmarks on it which is about the only place you will notice the difference. But just a rule of thumb to keep in mind
 
yougotcriton said:
I have a single 60 gb ssd in my system with the OS and wow on it, I am running out of space FAST.
Click to expand...



how long since last format? my winsxs folder fucked up my 30gb OS partition real fast



@mazurati

asus is good but sabertooth and its thermal armor is a gimmick until you slap a 50mm fan on there



while fans are cheap you're only a couple of $ away from a z68 card which add a few neat features, that said you probably won't use any of them though
 
tweedledum said:
how long since last format? my winsxs folder fucked up my 30gb OS partition real fast



@mazurati

asus is good but sabertooth and its thermal armor is a gimmick until you slap a 50mm fan on there



while fans are cheap you're only a couple of $ away from a z68 card which add a few neat features

but idk, you gonna be overclocking?
Click to expand...

I was kinda concerned about the "thermal armor" and heating issues
 
yeah, iirc it does give results though once you add a 50mm fan to push fresh air under the 'thermal armor', moreso when combined with a cpu cooler that blows air downwards
 
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