Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, JustAnEngineer
w00tstock wrote:Why not get 2 x 8GB sticks of ram?
You don't really need to pay tons of money for a motherboard since you'll be replacing it within two-three years if you want to keep up with the changes in hardware. I have the UD3H which is another variant of that board but pretty much anything Gigabyte makes is good.
DPete27 wrote:1) I think you would be well served starting with a base config of TR's Sweet Spot build. A 7950/660Ti is all most people will need for 1080p gaming at high detail levels. Playing BF3 at 1900x1080 and Ultra detail settings at 50fps is no joke. TR has done a lot of testing on those two cards.
2) Is there a reason you chose the Asus Sabertooth mobo? One thing I've learned is that you can spend an awful lot of money on mobo's that don't offer any real feature benefits you would use over cheaper models. The P8Z77-M and P8Z77-LK go for $125 and $135 (after MIR) respectively and have great feature sets.
3) Have a read through TR's Inside the Second testing of CPUs. It's easy to see that you get almost the same exact gaming performance out of a quad core Ivy Bridge (i5) as you would with an i7 for roughly $100 less.
4) Being in Switzerland, are you shopping from newegg or will you be using another retailer/etailer? This info will help as we get the build narrowed down.
Flying Fox wrote:You missed the mechanical drive?
Flying Fox wrote:Since you are buying a K processor, does this mean you are going to overclock? If that's the case, you should get a decent cooler, even if it just means to lower the noise level compared to the stock one. The Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO is standard recommendation these days.
Flying Fox wrote:What about the OS?
Flying Fox wrote:Time for new keyboard/mouse?
JustAnEngineer wrote:I'll support what everyone else has suggested.
The difference in gaming performance between the Core i7-3770K and the Core i5-3570K isn't much, and you'd save $100 by giving up hyper-threading.
The Asus P8Z77-M Pro or P8Z77-V LK motherboards provide everything that you need for less than the Sabertooth motherboard.
Have you considered a third-party CPU cooler like the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo? The stock Intel cooler works acceptably, but the third-party cooler will be quieter.
I agree with 2x8 GiB of PC3-12800 or PC3-14900 memory (CAS 9 or faster, 1.5 V or less) instead of 4x4 GiB.
The Caviar Black is a fine drive, but why stop with only 1 TB? Consider a 2 TB or larger hard-drive.
Your graphics card is a bit of overkill. One of the hot-clocked Radeon HD7950 or GeForce GTX660Ti cards would be sufficient.
Will you be installing a Blu-ray drive so that you can read shiny discs?
If you've got good headphones, do consider a sound card.
Do you need a new keyboard, mouse or speakers?
You'll need an operating system. Windows 8 Professional 64-bit should do the trick.
automaticus wrote:http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.c ... 655&page=3What gives?
JustAnEngineer wrote:automaticus wrote:http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.c ... 655&page=3What gives?
The CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo is quiet, effective and affordable. You can find CPU coolers that do a better job, but they're all more expensive than this one.
automaticus wrote:If you don't need the speed for a 7200rpm drive and just for storage, then you can get the slower spinning drives, such as the WD Green or Red. I prefer the Red mainly for their longer warranties. The faster drive will make a bit more noise, but the 1TB Black is sort of acceptable to me. Noise is highly subjective and dependent on your setup. You can get the Green/Red drives cheaper for larger capacities. 1TB is fine for starter storage, but if you download a lot of stuff, then no amount of storage is ever "enough".Flying Fox wrote:You missed the mechanical drive?
Missed that on purpose for now. Figured I could add it later. The reasoning being that this machine is purely for gaming. My main every day computer is a 2011 15" Macbook Pro. But while we're on the topic, what's a good mechanical drive? In earlier build configs I had one in and it was a 1TB WD Black.
automaticus wrote:Make sure you are ok with the drastic UI changes. We have many bitching threads about this already.Flying Fox wrote:What about the OS?
I'm thinking Win 8 x64 Pro. Makes sense.
automaticus wrote:If they are still working for you, sure. There are always new models. These days the mechanical keyboards are being touted as "gaming keyboards", so you may want to look at those.Flying Fox wrote:Time for new keyboard/mouse?
Don't know! You tell me! I have a Logitech G5 and the Saitek ECLIPSE II I bought waaaay back in 2007
automaticus wrote:How are you connecting the sound? Is it through the optical cable to your headphone? Or direct USB to the computer? If it is through the analog plugs, then you may need better sound. But if you are doing sound digitally, either through optical cable or HDMI, then I don't think you need a discrete sound card. The description on your A50 is a bit confusing to me.Sound: This is something I need to look into. The TR System Guide suggests the Asus Xonar DSX. I did absolutely zero research on this, so I'm guessing this should be a solid choice.
Flying Fox wrote:automaticus wrote:If you don't need the speed for a 7200rpm drive and just for storage, then you can get the slower spinning drives, such as the WD Green or Red. I prefer the Red mainly for their longer warranties. The faster drive will make a bit more noise, but the 1TB Black is sort of acceptable to me. Noise is highly subjective and dependent on your setup. You can get the Green/Red drives cheaper for larger capacities. 1TB is fine for starter storage, but if you download a lot of stuff, then no amount of storage is ever "enough".Flying Fox wrote:You missed the mechanical drive?
Missed that on purpose for now. Figured I could add it later. The reasoning being that this machine is purely for gaming. My main every day computer is a 2011 15" Macbook Pro. But while we're on the topic, what's a good mechanical drive? In earlier build configs I had one in and it was a 1TB WD Black.
Flying Fox wrote:automaticus wrote:Make sure you are ok with the drastic UI changes. We have many bitching threads about this already.Flying Fox wrote:What about the OS?
I'm thinking Win 8 x64 Pro. Makes sense.
Flying Fox wrote:automaticus wrote:If they are still working for you, sure. There are always new models. These days the mechanical keyboards are being touted as "gaming keyboards", so you may want to look at those.Flying Fox wrote:Time for new keyboard/mouse?
Don't know! You tell me! I have a Logitech G5 and the Saitek ECLIPSE II I bought waaaay back in 2007
Flying Fox wrote:automaticus wrote:How are you connecting the sound? Is it through the optical cable to your headphone? Or direct USB to the computer? If it is through the analog plugs, then you may need better sound. But if you are doing sound digitally, either through optical cable or HDMI, then I don't think you need a discrete sound card. The description on your A50 is a bit confusing to me.Sound: This is something I need to look into. The TR System Guide suggests the Asus Xonar DSX. I did absolutely zero research on this, so I'm guessing this should be a solid choice.
DPete27 wrote:Do you need a full ATX mobo or is mATX all you really need? I am very happy with my AsRock Z77 Pro4-m.
AsRock makes some good products these days. The AsRock Z77 Extreme 4 is a full ATX mobo in the same price range as the Asus P8Z77-LK and is very feature rich. (Review 1 and Review 2)
automaticus wrote:another thing I'm wondering... would a higher-tier mobo bring an appreciable performance boost to this build
automaticus wrote:Thank you both for the detailed answers.
I have two more questions:
1. How do I know the CPU cooler will fit with the RAM sticks on the board I chose? The RAM sticks I picked have heatspreaders on them that make the sticks significantly taller. It's hard to tell whether that will be a problem judging by just pictures on the web.
Thanks!
automaticus wrote:Also, while I love the look of the Corsair 600T case I picked, I'm wondering whether it's a bit overkill for the components. Any comments on that? Another case that I read a lot of good things about is the NZXT Phantom 410. Might be worth looking into.