Building new rig next week (Looking for input and advice)

[negativelychrgd]

Approximate Purchase Date: Next Week

Budget Range: < $2800 after rebates

System Usage from Most to Least Important: School/Work, Gaming, Surfing the Internet, media editing with HD Video and Images, Watching Movies

Parts Not Required: Need Everything

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: NewEgg & Amazon

Country of Origin: US

Parts Preferences: by brand or type ASUS, Samsung, G.Skill, Western Digital, EVGA, Intel, Logitech, Corsair

Overclocking: Maybe

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe

Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080, 1920x1200

Additional Comments:

Been planning on building new PC for a couple months nowI'm going to be using this PC for everything. School/Work, Higher-end gaming, HD video and picture editing, browsing the internet, and as a media center PC. I've had several questions I've thought up during the course of my research and was wondering if anyone would address them.

1.) Is there anything to be concerned about when installing games and programs on drives other than C? I currently plan to buy a 64GB SSD for the OS(64-bit) and several frequently used programs. I also plan to buy several other HDDs for installing games onto, and storing HD movies, music, and pictures.

2.) Than plan right now is to go with the GTX 580 and maybe do SLI in the later months of this year, going to consider picking up the second come black Friday. I've read multiple forums and it seems the 1050 watt supply should be sufficient for the 580s in SLI in addition to plenty of power for overclocking and other devices. Would anyone disagree or have and advice on this?

3.) I was also wondering if a sound card would be necessary if I planned to use the Mini HDMI-HDMI port on the GTX580, or if on-board audio is sufficient?

4.) Lastly, general comments and suggestions on the build components are the main reason I'm posting, I appreciate all input, thanks again!


ASUS P8P67 DELUXE (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz

EVGA 015-P3-1580-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

CORSAIR Professional Series HX1050 1050W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Modular Power Supply

COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Compucase Case with USB 3.0 and Black Interior

Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - For OS and frequent programs

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - 2 Packages

Western Digital RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - 2 Drives(Raid-0 for games)

Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - For HD video editing & playback, music, picture files, storage

SAMSUNG S24A350H ToC Rose Black 24" 2ms Full HD HDMI LED BackLight LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 DCR 1,000,000:1 (1,000:1)

SONY Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 8X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner BD-5300S-0B - OEM

ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-B 135mm Long life bearing CPU Cooler Blue LED

G.SKILL FTB-3500C5-D Fans

 

[z_4]

Here's the almost the same build with combos :

CPU & BluRay Burner : $380- i7-2600K & LG

Power Supply & RAM : $175- Thermaltake Black Widow 850 & GSkill Ripjaw (2x 4GB)(Cheap memory and bronze certified modular power supply)

SSD: $200- OCZ Agility 3 120 GB(Hurry before the offer ends)

Cooler : $90-Noctua NH D14(One of the best air cooler)

OS: $95- Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64bit)

Motherboard: $170- Gigabyte GA Z68X UD3H(Great board for its price)

GPU: $560 ( 2X $280) - XFX 6950 2GB(You can get 2 gtx 580, but spending $1000 on GPU is not wise)

Monitor : $300-Samsung 27" LED Backlit

HDD: $130 (2x $65) Samsung Spinpoint 1TB

Case: $180- Corsair Special Edition White Graphite(Has great cable management)

Total (Excluding Rebates) : 2280 USD

Rebates: 125 USD

It's up to you to decide on what Keyboard/ Mouse you would like , as well as Speakers/Headset

 

[negativelychrgd]

Thanks, z_4, for bringing those combos to my attention. I've heard 1 TB hard drives have problems with playing games which is one of the reasons I was pushing for a Raid-0 configuration. Do you, or anyone else know if there's any truth to that? I also read somewhere that windows "doesn't like" installing game or programd on drives other than C....Anyone know whether this is true either?

 

[hunter315]

If you set it up right windows doesnt even notice if something isnt on the C drive, i have several of my games installed on my secondary drive to free up space on my boot drive, it works just fine, both the boot drive and the secondary are 1TB drives. Im not sure what you mean by "1 TB hard drives have problems with playing games", the new 1TB drives are much faster than the drives of the past and the hard drive is only a factor during load times, which a good 1TB these days will do much faster than a 500GB drive of a couple years ago.

Also, the raid edition drives are not meant for a raid 0 array, they are meant for a set up with parity like RAID 5, they automatically drop themselves out of the array to be rebuilt if they detect data corruption, if you get data corruption on a raid 0 array the whole array is screwed so it doesnt matter if you use a Raid Edition drive or a normal drive, and the normal drives are much cheaper.



As for the power supply, the HX 1050 is a slight improvement over the performance of the HX 1000 but its not a spectacular unit, there are many great 1kW units available, its good but not quite great. Jonnyguru reviewed the ZX1000 and liked it a bit better, its cheaper and significantly more efficient which can pay off with a 1kW unit
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341045&Tpk=zx1000

 

[negativelychrgd]

I appreciate the information, hunter315, so it's really a matter of just telling a game installer to install the game on the other drive and everything should be fine?

Also, If I go with a 1TB, is it important to keep an eye out for 64MB or 32MB cache?