Mid to High End Build

[turkstur]

Hello All

About a week away from pulling the trigger on a new build and figured I would put it up on your board to prevent any mistakes. I have built before but not in a long time. I know there may be cheaper options but since it is my first build in probably a decade, I didn't want cost to get in the way too much. I do plan to overclock and the hope is to have a computer that will play any game on high settings for a long while with potential upgrades, SLI, RAM and such. I guess the only things that I am not reasonably solid on are the Revodrive, fan controller and the RAM (not on the Sabertooth compatibility table). For the Revodrive, I have read some issues but I have also spoken with OCZ and they said it has been tested with the Sabertooth. Thank you for any feedback.

 

Case: COOLER MASTER HAF XM RC-922XM-KKN1

MB: ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 LGA 1155

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K

CPU Cooler: CORSAIR Hydro Series H100i

SSD Drive: OCZ RevoDrive 3 series RVD3-FHPX4-240G PCI-E 240GB

PS: CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W ATX12V 2.3

Fan Conrtoller: NZXT Sentry Mesh Fan Controller w/ Five 30 watts Channels

GPU: EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB

RAM: Patriot Viper 3 16GB (2 x 8GB)

Mech drive: Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

Other stuff

 

Monitor: ASUS VS278Q-P Black 27" 1ms (GTG) HDMI Widescreen LED Monitor

Mouse: Logitech G9x

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM

Side Fan: COOLER MASTER Megaflow 200 R4-LUS-07AR-GP 200mm Red LED Case cooler

Optical Drive: LITE-ON Black 12X Blu-ray Burner

Speakers: Logitech Z623 200 w 2.1 Speaker System, THX-Certified

[Tjj226_Angel]

I am going to assume this build is just for gaming.

 

Get what ever case you like. You will be sitting next to it, so it might as well look good.

 

Motherboard: Asrock extreme 4 gen 4. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293 The reason being is that it is a lot cheaper, still performs very well, and still gets good CS from asrock. In a blind test, you wouldn't know the difference. (unless you like to benchmark ram in which case the asrock would win)

 

CPU: i5 3570K. (if you can, try to get both the mobo and the CPU from microcenter because you will save a crap ton). Here is the thing. The only difference between the i7 and the i5 is that the i7 is hyper threaded, and games don't even take advantage of that. Again, in a blind test, you wouldn't know the difference in gaming, so don't waste your money on the i7.

 

Cooler is a good choice.

 

As for the revo drive, don't get it. I am going to assume you are talking about this model http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227740. For gaming, you won't see a bit of difference in that or in something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147138 (provided that you buy it when it is in stock). Those revo drives have a long list of problems, and I would avoid them for the safety of your data. Not that I am recommending it, but you could get 2 240GB SSDs and just put them in raid 0 for the same read and write speeds, but that is only if you need that speed to please your epeen and nothing else. I would strongly suggest that you get a single 256GB samsung 830 drive instead.

 

Great PSU choice, although corsair is having a special right now where if you buy a select PSU, you get a set of their sleeved cables for free. http://www.corsair.com/en/promo?utm_source=Corsair&utm_medium=EmailNewsletter&utm_content=PromoPage&utm_campaign=Holiday2012 That being the case, and considering how much you saved from the CPU and motherboard, I would splurge on a corsair AX 850 watt PSU. That way you can take full advantage of the sleeved cables with a fully modular PSU.

 

I would switch your ram to two this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147096. This stuff can overclock like crazy. Plus you don't need to waste your money on 16GB of ram since you won't even need 8gb.

 

Great hard drive choice. You might want to go for 2 2TB versions of the same drive and put them in raid 1 for data security. But that is up to you.

 

I know I am going to get flamed for this, but considering your attitude towards you build and your budget, you might want to add a sound card. But there again, that can be up to you.

 

Everything else looks good.

[turkstur]

Looks like great advice, thanks. I swapped the MB and CPU. Don't want to drive the 200 miles to microcenter, so I guess I will pay the extra $55 or so from newegg.

 

Dropped the Revodrive. I was already on the fence, thanks for the push. Added the Samsung 250GB 840 SSD.

 

Really appreciate the heads up on the sleeved cables deal. Going with the AX 850.

 

I'm going back an forth on the RAM. I know your probably right but it is very likely I will be running a server from this box while playing. 8GB may still be enough but the 16 sounds nice. Any suggestions if I go with 16?

 

I was only going with the 1TB b/c I have a NAS raid 5 set up for all my storage and steaming.

 

Now that I have open slots and an extra $250, I may look at a sound card but that extra SSD is more enticing. Thanks again for all the help.

[Tjj226_Angel]

Looks like great advice, thanks. I swapped the MB and CPU. Don't want to drive the 200 miles to microcenter, so I guess I will pay the extra $55 or so from newegg.

 

Dropped the Revodrive. I was already on the fence, thanks for the push. Added the Samsung 250GB 840 SSD.

 

Really appreciate the heads up on the sleeved cables deal. Going with the AX 850.

 

I'm going back an forth on the RAM. I know your probably right but it is very likely I will be running a server from this box while playing. 8GB may still be enough but the 16 sounds nice. Any suggestions if I go with 16?

 

I was only going with the 1TB b/c I have a NAS raid 5 set up for all my storage and steaming.

 

Now that I have open slots and an extra $250, I may look at a sound card but that extra SSD is more enticing. Thanks again for all the help.

 

Hey a deal from newegg just came up. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293 If you buy that mobo, you get 8Gb of this stuff http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231416 for free. I would simply get a second kit and call it done. 

 

As for the SSD, I would either go with the cost effective samsung 830 since it performs about the same as the regular 840, or I would go all out and get the 840 pro which performs better than the 830 and 840. Now you should also know that getting a faster SSD is pretty much only for bragging rights. As soon as you get a good drive like the samsung 830, the only people who will notice a difference in performance is bench markers and people who like to do massive reads and writes 24/7. 

 

As for the sound card idea....mehhhhh it really depends. First off your speakers aren't exactly the best. If you just wan't something simple, that works well, then you have a good set and I would simply add an asus 5.1 sound card with the headphone amp for 30 bucks. 

 

If you want to go audiophile, then you would need something like the asus essence STX with MUCH better speakers. (I can tell you how to build some, but I have no idea what company or model to recommend to you.....Stonerboy would be able to help you in that department). 

 

If you are looking for shear gaming sound and you couldn't care less about audio quality, then I would skip the speakers and go for a creative titanium 7.1 sound card and some razer tiamat 7.1 headsets. 

 

What I would personally recommend is that you skip the speakers (or get something cheap) and then I would get the audio engine D1 dac and headphone amp combo with a pair of good headphones.