Build now or wait till June?

[Darastrix]

I'm looking to build a gaming PC in the price range of $1500 - $2000. I just have a few questions I'm hoping I can get some feedback on. First off, the parts I'm looking at now:

CPU: i7-3770K Processor (4x 3.50GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
Mem: 16 GB [8 GB x2] DDR3-1600 Memory
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7950 - 3GB
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z77-HD3 -- 4x USB 3.0
Power: 750 W
HDD: 2 TB HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200rpm, 6.0Gb/s

This is at the very low end of my budget, but I plan on keeping some money saved and putting in a 2nd video card. I'm no pro so I probably won't be overclocking anything. Now my questions are these:

Should I wait until June when Intel unveils Haswell and perhaps lowers the price of their other processors so I can upgrade to a i7-39XX for about the same amount?

How hard is it to stick a second video card in and set up Crossfire?

How important is the motherboard? I see dozens of options, but the language is a bit confusing and I'm not sure I will see much of a difference between boards. The way I see it, the choices are mostly for considering maximum memory and future slots available for upgrades which only supports a certain architecture.

Clearly there is a lot of wiggle room in the budget, but I would like to keep the costs on the lower end of the spectrum where possible. So I'm looking for the most efficient performance per dollar without sacrificing too much in the performance department. I would like to purchase sooner rather than later, and I haven't heard any new graphics cards comming out any time soon.

Any thoughts anyone has would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[Sakkura]

Dude are you stupid or something?
If you had 3 Titans for example you could connect them in SLI with either of these motherboards and it would work despite each not having 8 PCIE lanes. The truth of it is right there but you still argue.

No it wouldn't. Notice how it supports SLI and Quad SLI, but not three-way SLI. Whereas it supports Crossfire, three-way Crossfire, and Quad Crossfire. That's because AMD can make do with a 4-lane slot, but Nvidia cannot.

 

[Sakkura]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Vjtg This is what I've come up with, near the limit of my budget based on everything I've read here. I welcome comments and criticisms. As a note to those of you with far greater technical experience than I, I think my original post got lost a long time ago, I'm not planning on overclocking for fear of damaging parts. I might down the road, but at first only consider stock parts.

You've got a Coolmax PSU there, that's not a good choice. You'd be better off with a higher-quality PSU with a lower rated wattage. An 850W XFX unit for example.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Dude are you stupid or something?
If you had 3 Titans for example you could connect them in SLI with either of these motherboards and it would work despite each not having 8 PCIE lanes. The truth of it is right there but you still argue.

No it wouldn't. Notice how it supports SLI and Quad SLI, but not three-way SLI. Whereas it supports Crossfire, three-way Crossfire, and Quad Crossfire. That's because AMD can make do with a 4-lane slot, but Nvidia cannot.

Okay, you are having trouble reading again. SLI. Its different than CROSSFIRE. The thing directly says QUAD SLI. Also what on earth makes you think that because it can do Quad-sli makes you think it cannot do triple sli? And don't start the crap with the 690's because using two 690's is still not Quad sli thats only Dual-sli. Really stop and think before you speak. It's not that difficult.

 

[Sakkura]

Okay, you are having trouble reading again. SLI. Its different than CROSSFIRE. The thing directly says QUAD SLI. Also what on earth makes you think that because it can do Quad-sli makes you think it cannot do triple sli? And don't start the crap with the 690's because using two 690's is still not Quad sli thats only Dual-sli. Really stop and think before you speak. It's not that difficult.

Using two GTX 690s is quad SLI. Each 690 has two GPUs, so with two of them you have four GPUs, all running in SLI.

You could actually run with a GTX 680 and a GTX 690 to get three-way SLI, but they choose not to market that because it wouldn't work with eg. three GTX 680s.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Also looked at your build, and it looks good. As much as I hate to agree with this guy I have been arguing with all day, he is correct however on that Coolermax is not a great brand of PSU. Here is one would be better.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152043
It is gold rated efficiency so it should provide all the power you need for that rig, since only a small part is lost.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Okay, you are having trouble reading again. SLI. Its different than CROSSFIRE. The thing directly says QUAD SLI. Also what on earth makes you think that because it can do Quad-sli makes you think it cannot do triple sli? And don't start the crap with the 690's because using two 690's is still not Quad sli thats only Dual-sli. Really stop and think before you speak. It's not that difficult.

Using two GTX 690s is quad SLI. Each 690 has two GPUs, so with two of them you have four GPUs, all running in SLI.

You could actually run with a GTX 680 and a GTX 690 to get three-way SLI, but they choose not to market that because it wouldn't work with eg. three GTX 680s.

No it is not. SLI connects graphics card to graphics card, not GPU to GPU. A 690 is not two graphics cards connected together on one, but two GPU's connected together. It's different.

As for three way sli with a GTX 680 and 690, again if this works it would only be two way sli. I question if it does though, as usually you need to use two cards that are the same to make the connection work well.

You can triple SLI on those motherboards with three Titans and they work without having 8 PCIE Lanes each. Its that simple. Stop posting please, you really don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Darastrix]

Excellent, you both provided the needed info about some of these brands I'm simply not familiar with.

 

[assasin32]

I feel like my knowledge is patchy at best. I'm well aware of the CAS latency and how it affects the timing of the memory. 2 x 4gb RAM gives me a nice compromise of plenty to play any existing game and still some room to upgrade, double in fact. The side issue is that this computer will also be used for work which involves high level computation DFT calculations, so I have reason to want some unusual power requirements such as hyperthreading and higher ram. I read so many articles about which GPU to go with it really seems like we're in an actual tie between AMD and nVidia so price wise AMD seems like the winner for now.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Vjtg This is what I've come up with, near the limit of my budget based on everything I've read here. I welcome comments and criticisms. As a note to those of you with far greater technical experience than I, I think my original post got lost a long time ago, I'm not planning on overclocking for fear of damaging parts. I might down the road, but at first only consider stock parts.

Since your not overclocking you don't need the "K" processor as it's main benefit is the unlocked multiplier which allows us to overclocked. And since your not overclocking you probably don't need as high end of a motherboard, chances are you can get one that will get the job done for less cost while still being high quality. And considering there is a good price difference between the 3770 and 3770k and only 100mhz difference I just go with the 3770 personally, it's a lot easier to justify.

THe PSU you have is junk, and I wouldn't get that case from the looks of the fan grills it will obstruct a large portion of the airflow. Easiest example is look at the challenger u3 the case I selected and than yours on newegg and look at the back of the case at the rear grill and zoom in. Having had an older case which had fan grills just as obstructed as the Azza I will say this, it's sturdy enough to stand on and throw weights on the vents without worry but it's airflow is so obstructed that you be lucky to get half the actual airflow of the fan and it will shoot up the temps in the case over a more open design.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($279.99 @ Newegg)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Cooling MX-2 4g Thermal Paste ($7.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G45 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($105.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($62.68 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($162.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($89.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) ($449.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) ($449.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: OCZ Z Series Gold 1000W 80 PLUS Gold Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-207DBK Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($37.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $1837.56
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-05 23:15 EDT-0400)

This is what I get when working off your build more, though personally the 7970's require a bit too much power for my comfort for the performance they give in comparison to the 670's but to each their own.

Here is a link to some heatsink comparisons, ignore the heatsink highlighted I just used on of their most recent reviews so you have a more up to date list. Look at the 85w temp listing and the noise and choose from there. As you can see a lot of the high end heatsinks are quite comparable especially in the 85w thermal range which your CPU has 77 TDP, so I take the noise level into consideration as the main factor. And the water cooling setups, especially those prebuilt ones are comparable to good heatsinks (the h60 is in the list).
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2716&page=5

Another good case is the corsaid 300r, just remember to add more fans to either.

 

[IInuyasha74]

assassin32 makes a good point with everything he i saying. The build h listed is also a very good one, but I would stick with the RAM you had on your own build before, its not much more expensive, but will perform much better with applications like 7z and other programs. Other than that he is rght about the CPU and all the parts he listed are really good.

 

[assasin32]

Yup the ram he listed was better I wanted something that was in middle of the road for this build on the ram so we have a bit more variety.

For ram I think it's definitely more of a preference as I think it was stated earlier in this thread, so more variety was needed in my opinion.

 

[Darastrix]

Yeah, not sure I'm sold on the 1000W PSU, seems like a bit of overkill, but I'll keep the cases in mind. As far as GPU goes, I am constantly going back and forth, I've been nVidia since they first came out, but for every article I see that puts the GTX ahead of the AMD I see one that says the opposite.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VlA3 Always trying to take advice from those more experienced than I, I found a nice deal on a pair of GTX 680s

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VlA3
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VlA3/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VlA3/benchmarks/

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($279.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler ($70.12 @ NCIX US)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Cooling MX-2 4g Thermal Paste ($7.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LK ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($77.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($162.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($89.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: PNY GeForce GTX 680 4GB Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($479.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: PNY GeForce GTX 680 4GB Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($479.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($64.99 @ Microcenter)
Case Fan: Kingwin CF-012LB 40.0 CFM 120mm Fan ($3.89 @ Outlet PC)
Case Fan: Kingwin CF-012LB 40.0 CFM 120mm Fan ($3.89 @ Outlet PC)
Power Supply: Raidmax 850W 80 PLUS Gold Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($105.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-207DBK Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($37.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $1980.76

 

[assasin32]

Raidmax is a pretty bad company to get a PSU from, I wouldn't go with them. The PSU is one thing you don't want to go with sub par quality on as if it goes bad it can take other components with it.

I went with the 1k PSU in my build as there was an acceptable price gap to go from it was either an 80+ or 80+ bronze to that 80+ gold 1k PSU and the cards were pulling in a lot of power as it was so I was looking at some pretty high wattage PSU's.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($279.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($79.98 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Cooling MX-2 4g Thermal Paste ($7.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LK ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($77.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($162.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($100.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($363.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($363.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($64.99 @ Microcenter)
Case Fan: Masscool FD14025S1L3/4 57.1 CFM 140mm Fan ($5.98 @ Outlet PC)
Case Fan: Masscool FD14025S1L3/4 57.1 CFM 140mm Fan ($5.98 @ Outlet PC)
Case Fan: Masscool FD14025S1L3/4 57.1 CFM 140mm Fan ($5.98 @ Outlet PC)
Case Fan: Masscool FD14025S1L3/4 57.1 CFM 140mm Fan ($5.98 @ Outlet PC)
Case Fan: Masscool FD14025S1L3/4 57.1 CFM 140mm Fan ($5.98 @ Outlet PC)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 750W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-207DBK Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($37.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $1740.73
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-06 02:25 EDT-0400)

It's too hard to justify the price difference to go with the 680's over the 670 when there is about a 5% difference and you pay about $200 for the 680 with stock cooling vs the 670 with aftermarket cooling, even less if you were willing to go stock.

Tossed in the appropriate number of fans to fill in the fan slots in the 300r going off the corsair website, threw in pretty much the cheapest fans till you find what you like to throw in. Here is where I found the info on fan slots size and number of them.
http://www.corsair.com/carbide-series-300r-compact-pc-gaming-case.html

Here is a benchmark of the 670sli vs some other cards including the 680 and 690
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_670_SLI/24.html

EDITED IN:

Just swapped the fan to the Noctua NH-D14 so you can exhaust the hot air out of the case instead of recirculating it which will bring the overall case temps down and thus help keep the CPU cooler. The NH-C14 is a good choice as well but between the two the NH-D14 will help more.

Another thing you might want to think about is possibly fan grommets so the vibration of the fan won't vibrate the case and create more noise. Not necessary by any means but it helps if you want to keep the computer a little quieter it's a cheap way to help go about it. This is a quick example of what I am talking about.
http://www.amazon.com/Silenx-IXAFM20-Silicone-Dampening-Mounts/dp/B001C4R7OA/ref=pd_cp_pc_3

2nd Edit In:
Actually if you were to go the fan grommet route it just might be a better idea to buy higher end fans which have the noise dampening built in, you will more than likely get a better experience in the end.

 

[Sakkura]

No it is not. SLI connects graphics card to graphics card, not GPU to GPU. A 690 is not two graphics cards connected together on one, but two GPU's connected together. It's different.

As for three way sli with a GTX 680 and 690, again if this works it would only be two way sli. I question if it does though, as usually you need to use two cards that are the same to make the connection work well.

You can triple SLI on those motherboards with three Titans and they work without having 8 PCIE Lanes each. Its that simple. Stop posting please, you really don't know what you are talking about.

Tom's Hardware disagrees with you:

two GeForce GTX 690s in four-way SLI

 

[Darastrix]

Raidmax is a pretty bad company to get a PSU from, I wouldn't go with them. The PSU is one thing you don't want to go with sub par quality on as if it goes bad it can take other components with it.

I went with the 1k PSU in my build as there was an acceptable price gap to go from it was either an 80+ or 80+ bronze to that 80+ gold 1k PSU and the cards were pulling in a lot of power as it was so I was looking at some pretty high wattage PSU's.


It's too hard to justify the price difference to go with the 680's over the 670 when there is about a 5% difference and you pay about $200 for the 680 with stock cooling vs the 670 with aftermarket cooling, even less if you were willing to go stock.

Tossed in the appropriate number of fans to fill in the fan slots in the 300r going off the corsair website, threw in pretty much the cheapest fans till you find what you like to throw in. Here is where I found the info on fan slots size and number of them.
http://www.corsair.com/carbide-series-300r-compact-pc-gaming-case.html

Here is a benchmark of the 670sli vs some other cards including the 680 and 690
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_670_SLI/24.html

EDITED IN:

Just swapped the fan to the Noctua NH-D14 so you can exhaust the hot air out of the case instead of recirculating it which will bring the overall case temps down and thus help keep the CPU cooler. The NH-C14 is a good choice as well but between the two the NH-D14 will help more.

Another thing you might want to think about is possibly fan grommets so the vibration of the fan won't vibrate the case and create more noise. Not necessary by any means but it helps if you want to keep the computer a little quieter it's a cheap way to help go about it. This is a quick example of what I am talking about.
http://www.amazon.com/Silenx-IXAFM20-Silicone-Dampening-Mounts/dp/B001C4R7OA/ref=pd_cp_pc_3

2nd Edit In:
Actually if you were to go the fan grommet route it just might be a better idea to buy higher end fans which have the noise dampening built in, you will more than likely get a better experience in the end.

This looks fantastic and thanks to the link you sent I can see the marginal difference between the 680 SLI and 670 SLI is not worth the $200 price tag increase. I had originally something like a cooltek PSU in there and thought that was what you were referencing when you said the PSU was a poor choice. I do like going with something like Corsair as I know the brand and have never had complaints from them. Since you managed to get the 670s in there the price drops appreciably and I will probably just go with the higher end fans as per your suggestion. I replaced the Masscool fans with some spiffy looking Xigmatek

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233092&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=