New system build (3 months time)

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manshiny

manshiny

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Hello people of the internet.

So, due to personal and financial problems, I wasn't able to build a computer last month.
Anyway, I'll give you the details...

Approximate Purchase Date: Around Late May- Early June

Budget Range: up to (preferably less than) 4000 USD, including peripherals and shipping.

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Programming, Microsoft office, gaming (high quality + extreme modding), movies (blu ray and HD movies/tv series), surfing the internet/everyday use, multimedia editing (sony vegas/after effects) and some modelling/photoshop (for mods).

Are you buying a monitor: Yes / No (X3, planning on going surround)


Do you need to buy OS: No

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Amazon and Newegg. I will either buy in USA or Hong Kong

Location: Sending to Sacramento, then shipping to New Zealand (where I am located)
HOWEVER, I may also be shipping from Hong Kong. Depends on prices.

Parts Preferences: Intel CPU, Nvidia graphics. I prefer Asus when it comes to Mobo, and EVGA for graphics.

Overclocking: Yes (not too much)

SLI or Crossfire: Yes

Your Monitor Resolution: I'd like to go 2560x1440 (7680x1440) in triple monitor setup, but it depends. May just go with 1920x1080 x3

Additional Comments: I'm building for me and my fiance, she's very fussy with cases. She loves the NZXT Phantom 820 or Phantom 630, Or the Corsair 600T. Both of us are very much obsessed with colorful/shiny things, so we'd like to add in accessories like the NZXT Hue. Aesthetics is a huge part of this, my girlfriend is especially fussy with it.

I'd like to add the maximum amount of fans in, I'm looking at adding Corsair SP 120mm high performance/low sound fans and a NZXT Sentry 2 fan controller (not keen on the touch screen thing, just need something nice and simple) knowing the Phantom 820 however, I'd like to utilize max cooling, so 200mm fans may be an option. LED fans would be nice, however, performance over aesthetics first.

I'd like to keep this baby quiet. As quiet as possible. Any accessories or whatever that can keep it quiet will be great.

I'm going for high end, and will spend a lot, HOWEVER I want to spend smart.

And finally, and probably most importantly, I want to make sure this machine doesn't consume a lot of power.

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: I'm upgrading from my laptop which is a Dell Latitude 630. I'm a computer Science/Mathematical Science student, and I do a lot of number crunching. I also like to game and edit videos for a website I work with, which also has a youtube channel (CHECK OUT OTAKUTECH!!)


Just a few more things. We're waiting for Hawell (the i7-4770K) I've been looking at the GTX Titan, praying it drops in price by the time I'm ready to buy. SLI is something I'd love to do again (I've had multi-gpu setups before and loved it. Only had problems with AMD) I will only use Intel and nVIDIA, so don't even bother mentioning AMD products. I'd love to use SSD's, and I'm not keen for all the fancy bells and whistles (eg. Thunderbolt). I will be overclocking lightly on the odd occasion, but only to about 5ghz at max, for the odd benchmark, but I like to keep my CPU nice and cool. Water Cooling isn't an option, been there, done that, Not worth the hassle.

So, you should have a good idea of what I want, and where I'm coming from. I hope this helps. Any questions, Please ask away :D
 
Solution
Anthony Chu
Do consider NCIX.com they sometimes have better deals then newegg and have a pricebeat you can always ask about it.

To be honest the Hawell doesn't look like something that would give you a significant boost in terms of performance if you would consider the prices that they might start at. The only thing that you might want are the new mobos like the Gryphon from Asus are coming in early june because their new socket support, hopefully they'll have support for 8 sticks of ram like the x79 series.

I do agree with your choices on PC cases the 600T is very slick and the already installed fan controller is perfect for you since you wanted a quieter system do note though that it is mid-tower so it might be a bit small if you're going to...
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manshiny

manshiny

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We have enough knowledge to know that new mobos and Cpu's will be coming in june. What's stopping us from guestimating a build with current parts that can be subsituted closer to the time?
 
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Anthony Chu

Anthony Chu

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Mar 17, 2013
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Do consider NCIX.com they sometimes have better deals then newegg and have a pricebeat you can always ask about it.

To be honest the Hawell doesn't look like something that would give you a significant boost in terms of performance if you would consider the prices that they might start at. The only thing that you might want are the new mobos like the Gryphon from Asus are coming in early june because their new socket support, hopefully they'll have support for 8 sticks of ram like the x79 series.

I do agree with your choices on PC cases the 600T is very slick and the already installed fan controller is perfect for you since you wanted a quieter system do note though that it is mid-tower so it might be a bit small if you're going to get a large aftermarket heatsink for the CPU. I myself am leaning more to the NZXT Phantom 630 because of it's shape. Not a lot of cases in the market have slick, pro and lighting traits without looking like a spaceship or for female aesthetics, you may take a look at casecom cases if they are available near you.

TBH a lot of the products you don't really need much suggestions on I mean ram sticks you can pick your favorite brand or go with corsair vengeance series, SSD you can go with 2 Corsairs or OCZ vertex (I myself had many DOAs with OCZ but they are more powerful at times).

Sli isn't really required for gaming and such, unless you are doing massive amounts or media editing like FX videos and music producing (same thing goes for an i7 cpu). If you are completely set for Sli you should consider getting 1 graphics card of the card you want to sli and get more after a month or 2. But 2 gtx 680s is already overkill so depends.

Power consumption is not something you can get away from since you are making a high end build, running 3 monitors and sli with probably an i7 processor. Unless the power consumption of Hawell is significantly lower then maybe there's hope for you in the new gen cpu but since you are running alot of fans and a high build you'll need at the least a 1000W PSU antec or coolermaster.

Nevertheless, prices for the computer in whole is hard to say because the new specs and parts coming in June but:
PSU= 172-230$ (depends on efficiency CM 1000W silver= 172, Antec Gold-platinum= 230 ),
case = 252$, (Probably the NZXT phantom 820 full tower cause you're going to be making a fan build and the extra space is good for air circulation also includes a fan that is directed straight to ram and cpu heat sink and a HUE system)
3 monitors= 490$ (BENQ is a good option in terms or price)
Ram=52-100$ (depending on how much you're getting I myself like the Corsai Vengence series cause the fins work well with fan based PCs)
Consider some Scythe brand case fans they are pretty silent.
Total = 966-1072$ you probably want to consider RMA if you have a DOA part so I guess Newegg is your best bet or if you have a NCIX VIP membership then yay free RMA

left out is HDD/SDD, Motherboard, Graphics card, CPU and MISC (such as rubber mounting screws if not included, temperature screen (essential for your build), BD drives).

with 4000$ to spend there's no problem getting everything top-notch and hold up on SLI for a month and get more graphic cards then but hopefully it won't cost you that much money =.=
 
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Solution
Anthony Chu

Anthony Chu

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Mar 17, 2013
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Another suggestion is take a look at the NCIX gaming computers like: http://pc.ncix.com/ncixpc_new/ncixpc.cfm?uuid=81DB9FFD-0778-4A58-AE659A22D156E76B-4961527 the price is very close to buying parts and making it yourself so it's a good indicator of where you're spending money on.

Note: I myself dislike AMD, dealing with driver updates and AMD related blue screens is just not my thing had to constantly fix them on my gf's computer and she was only playing Sims 3 >.>
 
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Anthony Chu

Anthony Chu

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Glad it was informative, do post your final specs whenever you decide on them we could probably give better pointers here and there, sometimes it might help to save money. Initially I wasn't going to post anything, because you seem quite set on what you are going to get but the fact that you like the same cases as I do, don't like watercoolers and the coincidence that I'm finishing my uni program in math and stats program got me interested. So I thought heck why not post a suggestion. XD

As a PC builder myself I actually am planning on building a PC for my gf in the summer (waiting for Asus's new mobos for finalized specs otherwise I can just use my spare sabertooth z77) as well since she wants one to replace her laptop and super old antic PC for playing sims 3 in her dorm >.>, although I'm probably going to spend about 800-1000$ with room for future upgrades in a NZXT phantom 630. I like it's wider form I would get the 820 if it were the same width I don't really like tall towers in comparison to wide ones but the 820 does have an integrated HUE controller which looks much better then the aftermarket HUE controller so they have selling points I guess. Of course I find some Casecom cases pretty neat but since I'm in Canada it's almost impossible or to expensive to get one.

Another great money saver for you though is to not get the x3 screen monitor setup yet and invest solely on your pc that way with one monitor your pc will run your applications crazy fast for like a month and you can get your 2 other monitors. I mean I do understand you're going all out but sometimes it's just a nice feeling keeping some of your money for a month or 2 and noticing the parts you were going to get goes on special or you notice that you could've forked 30$ more to get the latest chip.... I've experienced that almost too many times with PC builds hence as a smart tip: when building a new PC get the bare minimal at high quality such that you'll know if items are DOA and that you have the working PC and wait for a month or 2, working hours at work thinking about the next customer that gets suckered into raising your sales commission (not literally suckered I mean I do give top information and services to my clients it just kinda makes you happy knowing you got fast commission) and finish with the extras like more ram more SSDs more graphic card and more fans.
 
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manshiny

manshiny

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I decided to go with this:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77 WS ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($329.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($218.61 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (Black/Orange) ATX Mid Tower Case ($108.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic Platinum 1000W 80 PLUS Platinum Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($226.82 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Asus VG248QE 144Hz 24.0" Monitor ($284.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Monitor: Asus VG248QE 144Hz 24.0" Monitor ($284.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Monitor: Asus VG248QE 144Hz 24.0" Monitor ($284.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Keyboard: Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2013 Wired Gaming Keyboard ($119.99 @ NCIX US)
Mouse: Razer RZ01-00780100-R3U1 Wired Laser Mouse ($65.00 @ Amazon)
Other: EVGA GeForce GTX 680 4GB Video Card ($250.00)
Other: EVGA GeForce GTX 680 4GB Video Card ($250.00)
Other: EVGA GeForce GTX 680 4GB Video Card ($250.00)
Total: $3034.33
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-23 18:20 EDT-0400)

I'm going to grab some fans, HDD's and SSD's and a Noctua DH-D14 later on for extra storage. I already have an HDD now and will add the 840 pro :)

Thanks for you advice btw :D
Will post pics of the build when it's complete :D
 
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