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Building New PC - Help Review?

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:49 am
by photon6786
Hello everyone,

I'm looking to build a new PC here in the next week or two and replace my old system. Looking for a pretty beast gaming rig. I'm looking for a second set of eyes / someone to help look over my list and see if all looks good, any possible conflicts, etc. I GREATLY appreciate all that help to assist making this rig the best it can be:


Case - COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 ATX Full Tower:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811119225
-I really like the look of the case, and it looks like it should have VERY good air flow.


Motherboard - ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131760
-Did quite a bit of reading up and this seemed to have pretty good reviews and recommendations.


CPU - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz [LGA1155]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115070
-Looks like the best bang for the buck - great reviews.


CPU Cooler - Was looking at some of the Corsair Hydro liquid CPU coolers. Look good at all?


Hard Drive - Crucial 256GB SATA III SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820148443
-I've never owned a SSD hard drive. From what I read it works just like any other drive. Just pop it in and it works with no issues. Please correct me if I'm wrong in my understanding.


Video Card - ASUS ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5 GeForce GTX 590
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121436
-Like I said, I am a pretty big gamer, and looking for a beast card to handle everything. This card looks pretty sick, and could SLI in the future. Also I am running dual monitors now (One for gaming on a single monitor, second one has random crap up, Steam friends messaging, TV show, etc). Eventually I'd like to get a third monitor up and running.. just throwing that out there.


Memory - Corsair Vengeance 16GB [4 x 4GB] DDR3 1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820233143
-Good reviews.. any other recommendations? Should I look higher than the DDR 1600? I know 16gb is overkill, but for the price it's not bad at all. Also saw some pictures of memory fan cooling units? Worth looking into?


PSU - COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series 1200W ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817171055
-Needing a powerful enough PSU to handle three hard drives, possible dual 590's in the future, etc.


Sound card - Feel free to provide any recommendations


Bluray drive - Will pull my Bluray burner from my current tower.

Re: Building New PC - Help Review?

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 11:06 am
by thegleek
photon6786 wrote:
Case - COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 ATX Full Tower:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811119225
-I really like the look of the case, and it looks like it should have VERY good air flow.

I have the CM 932 HAF Advanced ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811119160 ) myself and find myself in love with it! It's one of the quietest cases I have ever owned (probably cuz of all the large fans - none of those small ??mm fans are in here). It offers 2 places for the P/S (top or bottom), the functionality of the case is superb, wire management is awesome, and even how the hard drives are installed/removed.

photon6786 wrote:
PSU - COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series 1200W ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817171055
-Needing a powerful enough PSU to handle three hard drives, possible dual 590's in the future, etc.

1200 watts?! Seriously? I run double of what you listed and 800 watts is more then enough for me. Why waste the $?

Re: Building New PC - Help Review?

Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2011 9:48 am
by HorseIicious
photon6786 wrote:
PSU - COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series 1200W ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817171055
-Needing a powerful enough PSU to handle three hard drives, possible dual 590's in the future, etc.

thegleek wrote:
1200 watts?! Seriously? I run double of what you listed and 800 watts is more then enough for me. Why waste the $?


I have to agree 1200W seems like way too much. I have an i5 2500k, GTX 460, 16GB of the same RAM (good stuff by the way), 2x DVD drives, 5x case fans, 5x 7200 RPM non-green HDD's, running on an an Asrock Extreme4... And all of that is running on a Corsair TX650W PSU just fine - never had the least bit of trouble.

Re: Building New PC - Help Review?

Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2011 10:28 pm
by Airmantharp
I'll start at the top.

Literally every choice you make in a system will be determined by usage, particularly what games you wish to play, and what resolution and monitor configuration you want to play them on. As I considered your original choices and different alternatives I see that not having the first part nailed down made making recommendations pretty difficult.

But to give it my best effort, I'll try and explain as I go:

Case: I'm not a fan of Cooler Master cases, as larger than the normal 120/140mm fans gives me pause concerning reliability, and I don't particularly like lights. Still, my younger brother likes his Storm Scout, and if the case is functional, it's hard to discount. The feature I like on the HAF X is the capability for increased slot capacity over the standard 7- this will be necessary if you need to use more than two double width GPUs, the reason for which I will explain below.

Motherboard: What the hell. It seems to me you're spending over $150 here more than would ever be necessary; the more expensive boards aren't likely to readily pay for themselves. Since you mentioned a Corsair Hydro series cooler, I don't see you pursuing extreme overclocking, so unless you explicitly need the extra expansion capabilities, extra money spent here wasted. The only thing I will mention is that going with a board that allows a third GPU to operate at 8x could be helpful.

CPU: The 2600K is the Sandy Bridge darling, but it's an extra $100 not well spent for gaming. Hyperthreading is indeed useful for many applications, but not as nearly so in gaming situations as it generally requires specific instructional loads to be effective. Particularly if overclocking is a concern, and how couldn't it be given your original choices, I don't see the need for anything faster than a 2500K.

CPU Cooler: This is affected by your case choice more than anything, and you'll have to do your own research here. I like my H60, and there are even better units available; if cost isn't an issue, focusing on noise reduction might be more helpful. Since Cooler Master usually focuses on exhaust, a standard tower cooler might be just as effective, and Noctua has a range of excellent quiet cooling solutions available.

Hard Drive: I'd be loathe to give up my SSD when it comes to load times though I'll admit that it isn't entirely necessary. I would recommend grabbing a mechanical drive to back it up though. Either Samsungs F3 1TB or WD's Green 2TB make the top of the list, depending on whether you want to focus on speed or space.

Video Card: Here's where the real focus comes in. I take exception to dual-GPU cards due to their general difficulty in cooling as well as extra noise generation, along with extra cost, over dual card solutions. Further, if you intend to run a triple-monitor solution, the memory limitations on the GTX590 (you still only get 1.5GB/GPU) come into play as well. For over $100 less, you could get a pair of AMD HD6950 2GB cards that would be both faster than the GTX590 and have 33% more effective memory. The only problem here lies in adding more performance- while you could easily add a second GTX590, adding a third HD6950 would mean carefully selecting a motherboard as well as being aware of case restrictions, should you wish to change your original selections.

One thing I would mention is this that AMD is expected to release their next round of cards for the holiday season, and Nvidia is expected to get theirs out by spring of next year. Due to this, grabbing a single HD6950 2GB now might be the most prudent option. If a single card isn't fast enough you can easily just add a second- but at ~1080p, I'd think you would be happy with just one, at least until newer cards become available.

Memory: This is what I have in my system below. I will say though that while memory is dirt cheap, >8GB is still not necessary.

PSU: If you look at the system in my signature you'll notice that I'm running a pair of HD6950's and a 2500k off of a single 650w PSU, though it is a very nice one. Even with a pair of GTX590's I have a hard time seeing the need for more than 850w out of a good PSU- heck, even at 5.0GHz I haven't been able to push my system over 500w.

Sound card: Asus' Xonars are well regarded, and Creative has made an HD version of their X-Fi with better support for headphones. To be more specific though, we'll need to know what you intend to output sound to.

-----

The overall theme I'm coming from here is that it seems like you're focusing too much attention and resources on the parts that do not matter as much, like the motherboard and power supply, while not really focusing on things that may be more important down the road. Are you content with the monitor you have now, or would you like to try an IPS option? What about a higher resolution 27" or 30" panel? Are you really sure you want to mess with multi-monitor gaming?