I7 Gaming Build First Timer Askign for help.

czigoh

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Apr 27, 2009
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Within the next 6 months I plan to build myself a new home computer. It will be used for gaming, photo editing (minor amount). My last computer is almost 6 years old. I am looking at getting that kind of life out of this system. So using the latest CPU / socket type so I can have some future expandability for the latest CPUs and graphics cards, etc.. In the past I have replaced video and sound cards, added memory, reformatted and reinstalled windows and various applications but, this would be my first home build.

Below are my picks and what I plan to do, questions and concerns. Your help is greatly appreciated. I am trying to stick to $2500 or less. I will be reusing my monitor, sound card + speakers, mouse and key board.

CPU: $280
Intel Core i7 920 NewEgg Price and Info
Plan on over clocking to around 3.66 depending on temps.

Video Card: $260
ASUS EAH4890/HTDI/1GD5 Radeon HD 4890 1GB NewEgg Price and Info
4890 home page
I decided to lower total cost versus dual card performance. So I could what for the wait until the Direct 11 Video Cards are released.

CPU cooler: $32
Scythe MUGEN-2 SCMG-2000 120mm Newegg Price and Info
http://scythe-usa.com.
Very quiet and very effective cooler, may add a second fan in a push / pull arrangement.

Thermal Compound: $18.
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound NewEgg Price and Info
Is there a better one to use? Is this worth the price?
I just picked this one based on review comments at New Egg.

Mobo: $370
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution Newegg price info
Asus Web site
Will over clock and want the future expandability. SAS option for later.

CASE: $180 Plus (2 Fans x $14 =$28)
Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel
NewEgg Price and Info
Manufacturer Product Page
ATX Full Tower Computer Case
Will it power all 6 Fans?
Do I need extra cable extensions for the fans / HDD, etc..
I Plan on adding Two (2) Scythe GentleTyphoon D1225C12B4AP-14
120mm Case Fans NewEgg Price and Info
$8. MOBO PWR cable extension
Idea is more fans but using them all with lower speed settings to reduce total noise without losing cooling.

POWER SUPPLY: $140
CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX NewEgg Price and Info
70amps on a single 12v rail.
Extra long cables support full tower size chassis.
TX850W Dimension: 5.9"(W) x 3.4"(H) X 6.3"(L);”
Manufacturer Product Page

Memory: $105 minus $20 rebate = $85
OCZ Platinum 6GB (3 x 2GB) NewEgg Price and Info
240-Pin DDR3 1600 7-7-7-24
Manufacturer Product Page

Hard Drive(s): (Operating System / Apps) $230 x2 $460 for RAID 0
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB
10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
NewEGG Price and INFO
Manufacturer Product Page
NEED DEDICATED COOLING FAN for these drives…?
Use the Rubber grommets around the hold down screws to minimize vibration / transfer.

Hard Drive (Storage) – $110
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB
7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
NewEGG Price and Info
Manufacturer Product Page
NEED DEDICATED COOLING FAN for this drive?

DVD Drive - $29
ASUS Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD- ROM 2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD Burner with LightScribe
New Egg Price and INFO
Manufacturer Product Page

BLUE RAY / HD DVD- ROM Burner - $109.99
LG Black 6X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-ROM SATA Internal
Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Model GGC-H20L - Retail
NewEgg Price and Info
Manufacturer Product Page
 
I think the most important deciding factor here will be "when" in the next 6 months. If you are going to build this tomorrow then you have some great picks. If you are going to wait four months the the gpu will be different (looking at august release from ati and nvidia).

HDD - if you are planning on spending $460 for application drive then you might want to consider an ssd. The prices are dropping (slowly) and the capacity is increasing.

Heatsink/fan - a perosnal favorite on this forum is the xigmatek dark knight. It does a great job and is usually found for under $40.

You might want to consider saving a little on the RAM. A good set of DDR3 3x2 can be found for well under $100 before mail in rebate. Besides I have not seen any benchmarks (I haven't spent a lot of time looking) that show a REAL performance increase with the more expensive ram.
 
Looks pretty good, take these suggestions into consideration:

The Asus P6T Deluxe (not V2) overclocks very well and has a SAS controller, and is cheaper than the revolution so take it into consideration

I would just get two WD6401AALS drives in raid 0 for your system drive. The Vraps are way overpriced and only slightly faster than the 640gb and 1TB Caviar Black drives. You will save a ton of money there and have more storage space for pretty similar performance, maybe it will take half a second longer for your game to load.
 
Thanks for the responses. I see that all the time I took to draft this in WORD then cut and paste it here, I lost the HTML links..( At least I have them for my own use..

With WIndows 7 release on or about 4 May, I am planning to pick up the 64 bit Version.

The antec 1200 Case has nice fan placement to keep the Vraps cool. I was looking at both boot up and application / game loading times, which is why I wanted the Vraps. I should be able to add plenty of storage into the giant case over time, changing to from Raid 0 to Raid 0 +1, Raid 5 down the road.


I thought about the SSD drives but the cost per gig is still very high at this point. I am guessing by this time next year, there will be other drives on the market with larger capacity and competive speeds from other companies.

I think the RAM I picked is decent price at $85 after rebate.. with the memory settings and latency to match the MOBO.


I will look into the different heat Sink mentioned.
 
or if you want to try something really fast, 2x OCZ vertex SSD's for OS, apps and games, 119 each, same as one raptor, raptor throughput is 130ish read/100write maybe little higher but OCZ 450mb/sec read/ 390ish write no moving parts, small, quiet.... just tried em, crazy fast, simple to setup, give it a though...
 
Thanks for the responses everyone. I still think the SSD drives are too small for the cost.

A am hoping a year or so from now the cost should be down and the capacity will greater.