JoMa17 said:
Thank you very much for taking the time to help me with this. I've finally had time to sit down and look through your recommended builds, and I do have some questions just for clarity and to help me better understand.
First, is there really a benefit to SLI? I know that if I intend to go to multiple monitors I would need it; however, looking at it from a future upgrade perspective (to get more life out of the build), is there any advantage to dropping in a 2nd video card as opposed to just buying an updated GPU?
Second, what is the purpose/advantage of the WNA adapter in the higher end build? Is it really needed? If so, would it be wise to include one in any build? My current PC has a physical Internet connection, so I'm not sure if I would really need a wireless connection for my future PC.
Third, would it be wise to include a CPU cooler in any build? Although I currently know next to nothing regarding overclocking, my original build and your 2 suggested builds all include CPUs with overclocking capability. If overclocking would allow me to extend the practical life of the PC, I'm assuming it would probably benefit me in the long run to include a CPU cooler regardless, correct?
Finally, I've been seeing the SSD/HDD combo in a lot of sample builds as part of my research, but aside from faster boot up & load times, what advantage does SSD give me regarding gaming? My understanding is that it doesn't impact FPS at all, so I'm not sure that it's really worth it. It also seems like something I can always add at a later time if I decide I want it after all.
Thanks again for the time you've already taken to help me. It's greatly appreciated.
Well say in 2 years you decide to add another 780/770, they will be cheaper then and would perform 9/10 better then the new card for the same price like right now 2 580's is still pretty good and ive seen them for about $190 on ebay which is 7870 price and they will be better.
Well i forgot the WIFI in the first build and i had to go at that time, wifi is optional since you have a wired lan connection but for about $10 it would allow you to move it or something in the future if you want.
The cpu cooler would be good to include for overclocking in the future, keeping the cpu cooler which is better for it and its quieter depending on the cpu cooler.
I chose a pretty good one that is very very quiet which is kinda nice if you are not gaming, or even while gaming to have a 4ghz+ cpu thats really quiet.
I built a pc for my cousin recently and he was skeptical about the ssd also but i convinced him to get it, and now he loves it since (win8) it boots in about 6 seconds!
No games on it yet and its just annoying to copy stuff over to the ssd and since they have gotten cheaper recently and you can find 120gb ones on sale for about $80 which is a pretty good price.
I think having an ssd and being able to SLI in the future is a good thing to have and since for the price of the ssd you wont get alot more performance that being spent elsewhere and the bigger psu helps so you never have to worry about power and it will be a lower load so it will be more quiet and might last longer.