New Build and a few questions

[jonyb222]

Good evening everyone, the title says it all, I'm building a new computer and I have a few questions
For the most part it shares many similarities with other AMD/ATI builds I've seen around recently but please tell me if I missed something.

Approximate Purchase Date: next 2 weeks
Budget Range: (about 800) Before Rebates
System Usage from Most to Least Important: gaming
Parts Not Required: Case, keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, OS
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: (newegg.ca but really I couldn't care less)
Country of Origin: Canada
Parts Preferences: AMD/ATI
Overclocking: Yes
Crossfire: Possibly in the future
Monitor Resolution: 1680x1050 possibly adding a 1920x1080 later (boxing day/christmas)


Processor: AMD Phenom II 955
Motherboard: ASRock 870 EXTREME3 AM3
RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600
Graphics Card: MSI R6850 Cyclone
^^Thinking of getting another one later for CF, also plan on having fans to take care of the fact that it doesn't blow out (and might help cool down better since the HeatSink is exposed)

Hard Drive: 3 X Seagate Barracuda ST3500413AS 500GB 7200 RPM
^^Thinking of making a Raid 5 to get a little bit more performance and some redundancy

Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II Bronze 620W
^^Plenty for CF and from what I've heard good quality that'll last me

Cooling: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus

250 Fan: Rexus Rexflo250mm 250mm Case Fan
^^ Alternative would be 2 X 120 fans

140 Fan: GELID Solutions WING 14 UV Blue FN-FW14B-12 140mm Case Fan

Card Reader/ USB frontplate: nMEDIAPC ZE-C198
^^Need a way to read SDs and it'll relocare some USB3 ports from the back to the front

DVD Drive: Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner

All in all it comes to 775$
Newegg List

Already have from a local sale (mostly same price as newegg would have been with shipping):
Case: COOLER MASTER HAF 912

My plan is to load up on fans, and OC the Processor to a nice 3.7 ish and the Video card to where-ever it wants to go

I then plan to get a (or more depending on crazy Boxing day sales) 1920x1080 monitor which I will then use as primary monitor with my 1680x1050 monitor being for side stuff, would there be any issue with this while gaming?

Price, time and performance depending I'll also add another 4gigs of ram and another 6850.

*Edit* The question part of the title refers to whether or not my plans (Raid 5/ amount of fans / upgrade path) is sound

 

[andrew1795]

Everything looks pretty good as far as your budget! Good call on the 955 gives you option to upgrade to bulldozer (New amd processors) in the future. As for the gpu. Get the highest possible you can now. If you can squeez a 560 ti or 6950 the sli performance or crossfire performance has amazing benchmarks.

 

[rvilkman]

As long as you stick to 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 resolution, 6850 CF smokes it nicely. So you don't need to spend any extra on the graphics now, just crossfire when you can afford it and you are all set. The 6850 is quite capable of running at 1680x1050.

 

[jonyb222]

Alright, and what about my OCing, given the amount of Fan-power I'm putting in how reasonable is OCing the CPU to 3.7 or 4.0 over a long period of time? and the GPU? Of course there's variances between individual processors but as a ballpark estimate, is it feasible?

<Edit> I phrased this wrong, I know such an OC is somewhat common but I meant will the proc be cool enough or might it dies in 2 years time at that speed? </Edit>

On that same note how loud can I expect the system to be? Not that big of an issue but still something nice to know. Mostly I don't want to to be like an old television that you know is on from across the house

The 6850 I've linked has an exposed heatsink that doesn't shoot out, my logic being that the 140 side fan will be blowing approximately right on top of it directly cooling it and the 250 would draw the air out of the sink fairly easily. How much of a difference heat/OC potential might that make against a GPU with a more standard heatsink?

If I were to go with a 6870 what could I expect to be able to push, 1680x1050 should be easy but what about a single 1920x1080? And how many multi-monitor 1680x1050s or 1920x1080s could a 6870 CF push or a 6850 CF?

<Edit>From what I've been seeing it seems it would be best for me to put my dreams of multi-monitor gaming off to a later date</Edit>

What would be a good fan push-out/pull-in configuration? The case already has 2 120mms in the front for intake and 1 in the back top for out would putting the 140 side fan as intake and the 250 top as out work out well?

<Edit>Seems a small negative case pressure is better</Edit>

And is Raid 5 viable using the drives I've linked and is there a downside I'm not aware of, I was told that reads and writes would be improved and there's also the redundancy aspect of it, how big of an improvement can I expect?

I just thought of these now, I'll research and edit in the answers I find but I'm curious about what others opinions are.

 

[jonyb222]

Well I bought the CPU, Fans, HDDs, Heatsink and DVD burner at my local store as their price for those ended up being the same as Neweggs+shipping, the other pieces will be ordered from Newegg in the next day or so if I don't get any replies telling me to change anything.

Kinda wish my other questions got answered though...

 

[jonyb222]

Best answer selected by jonyb222.