Picking a PSU

Quality (80 = Bronze or better) 750W or go up to 800-1000W if you ever intend to use multiple GPUs from one of the following: Seasonic, PC Power & Cooling, Corsair, Antec. Here is a selection: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=Property&N=100007657%2050001516%2050001697%2050001459%2050009830%20600014095%20600014099%20600014124%20600014100%20600014101%20600014104%20600014106%20600014127%20600014107%20600014108%20600014109%20600014110%20600014091%20600325948%20600014093%20600461335%20600014094&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=58|9SIA4H81E87008^17-703-038-22%23%2C17-371-074^17-371-074-TS%2C17-139-010^17-139-010-TS%2C17-151-105^17-151-105-TS%2C17-139-034^17-139-034-TS&percm=9SIA4H81E87008%3A%24%24%24%2432%24%24%24%3B17-371-074%3A%24%24%24%2432%24%24%24%3B17-139-010%3A%24%24%24%2432%24%24%24%3B17-151-105%3A%24%24%24%2432%24%24%24%3B17-139-034%3A%24%24%24%2432%24%24%24

Best 750w on the market read the jonnyguru review below.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $89.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-16 09:52 EDT-0400


Performance (40% of the final score) - 10. I mean, really... were you expecting any other score in this category today? Beyond excellent ripple suppression, beyond excellent voltage regulation, easy pass for Gold efficiency both times. I mean, come on... if anything deserves a perfect score here it's this unit.

Functionality (20% of the final score) - and it's getting another 10 here, as well. We have a fully modular unit with very nice black sleeved cables. The manual's decent. There are lots of connectors. There's a switchable fanless mode. EVGA gave us a little test adapter to see if it works before we use it. There are lots of other goodies in the box. Can you find something to complain about here? I certainly can't.

Value (20% of the final score) - Newegg's offering this unit for $129.99 right now, with a rebate on top of that. I can't score on rebates, but I can drool all over that price. It's directly competing with the Thermaltake Toughpower Grand, which may or may not still be the same one I reviewed. That said, the real competition is from Seasonic. Their KM3 750W is ten dollars more money. And you'd probably think EVGA has this all sewn up based on that alone. But... XFX has a Seasonic built unit at this same price point, so this category is not a lock like we saw with the 850W model. I'm going to go with a 9.5 here. When a Seasonic build is your only competition, you're doing it right. In fact, I'm almost ready to say that it is Seasonic who is competing with this one than the other way around.

Build Quality (20% of the final score) - as was the case with the 850W, I still want to see that fan control switch wiring cleaned up some. There's a little more glue on it this time holding it to the modular board insulation, but it still looks rather like an afterthought. There's room for that switch directly on the back panel... how about we do that instead, Super Flower? 9.5.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story6&reid=380

I have the same board , but I prefer and use Gskill.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($159.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $159.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-16 10:00 EDT-0400

1. For a gaming box, consider a 4670k .... even tho the 4770k is 3-5% faster in gaming, most don't consider the extra $80 worth it.

2. The 760T is an attracti9ve case, but consider the new Case of the Year for 2014 Phanteks Pro at $99
http://www.phanteksusa.com/products/phanteks-enthoo-pro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBhmn21ylkc

3. The current edition of the Hero is VII .... you'll need at least the VI to run Haswell. You should also be aware of the Asus BIOS Clock bug which has yet to be resolved.

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?33895-Hero-Time-Clock-Problem

Until it's fixed, you might want to consider the MSI GD65 which is a feature for feature match with the Hero and is $40 cheaper. It also comes with some nice combo discounts (save ya $25 extra) with CPUs if you're buying from newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1690291
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1690296

4. The Seagate's are 30% faster than the WD Black



5. Yes, the 780 Ti is the faster of the 2 cards .... which cards are faster to an extent these days is dependent on how you are going to use them. The AMD cards are very aggressively clocked outta the box so that there's not as much OC Headroom available. "Outta the box", the 780 Ti > 290x > 780. However in my experience.... I have been able to OC the 780's (23 - 28%) higher than I can OC the 290x's (12 - 16%)so overclocked "bawlz to the wall" as Linus puts it, I'd have to put them 780 Ti OC'd > 780 OC'd > 290x OC's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djvZaHHU4I8 (Skip to 8:40 mark for test results)

As for VRAM, I hav enot found it to affect anything as of yet..... yeas, we have all see the posts that this game or that can "use xGB of RAM" but what we have not seen is that it improved performance in any way shape or form. For more on GFX VRAM see the following link.

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/

The 290x's are running $550 - $650 .... The 780 Tis are running $600 to $720 .... every other week the MSI one has been running at $600 on newegg.

The MSI is the best one out there, of course outside the specialty cards like the Lightning (if it ever hits store shelves) and the Classified. As you can see in the review, it handily tops the 290x even before overclocking and is waaaaay quieter

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_Gaming/29.html

MSI's GTX 780 Ti is almost too good to be true. ..... Compared to AMD's Radeon R9 290X, the difference is 16%, .....What is even more amazing is that MSI has achieved these fantastic performance results without scorching temperatures or lots of fan noise. While MSI uses a reference-design PCB, they have opted for the latest version of their well-known dual-fan TwinFrozr thermal solution, which we've seen on other cards before. Temperatures reach only 78°C, which is well below the temperature limit beyond which Boost 2.0 starts reducing clocks to keep the card cool. The real highlight of the MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming, however, is fan noise. The card is whisper quiet in idle, which will be important if you don't game all the time. More importantly, once you start gaming, fan speed increases just a little bit, enough to keep the card cool without all hell breaking loose. At just 30 dBA, the MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming is quieter than most graphics cards, no matter their performance segment - and this is the fastest card we ever tested! I recently reviewed several GTX 780 Ti cards, by all the big players, and none are even close in noise levels. It really is a night and day difference, even more so when you start comparing this card to AMD's R9 290X flagship.

Click to expand...

Finally, there are three very easy ways to see what size PSU you need.

1. Google [Guru3D [your GFX card]"

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_geforce_gtx_780_ti_gaming_review,7.html

Here is Guru3D's power supply recommendation:

GeForce GTX 780 Ti - On your average system the card requires you to have a 550 Watt power supply unit.
GeForce GTX 780 Ti 2-way SLI - On your average system the cards require you to have a 800 Watt power supply unit as minimum.
GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3-way SLI - On your average system the cards require you to have a 1200 Watt power supply unit as minimum.

If you are going to overclock your GPU or processor, then we do recommend you purchase something with some more stamina.

Click to expand...

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_r9_290x_gaming_oc_review,9.html

Here is Guru3D's power supply recommendation:

AMD R9-290X - On your average system the card requires you to have a 550~600 Watt power supply unit.
AMD R9-290X Crossfire - On your average system the cards require you to have a 800 Watt power supply unit as minimum.

If you are going to overclock GPU or processor, then we do recommend you purchase something with some more stamina

Click to expand...

2. Check card manufacturer's web site

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-780-ti/specifications

Thermal and Power Specs:
95 C = Maximum GPU Tempurature (in C)
250 W = Graphics Card Power (W)
600 W = Minimum System Power Requirement (W)
One 8-pin and one 6-pin = Supplementary Power Connectors

Click to expand...

600 for system + 250 for 2nd card = 850 watts

3. PSU Calculator

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp'

Use the "compare" feature on newegg for the MoBos and you will see a virtual match up and down the feature list. The Asus Z87 boards had an issue with external storage (would not recover from sleep) but current boards solve that problem. The BIOS clock issue has not yet been addressed for any RoG Boards.

I have 6 desktops here and all 6 have Asus MoBos. But all of them are well into the $200+ range .... under $200, I have gravitated more towards MSI. They **want** market share in this segment and are making a very strong push to get it, it would seem sacrificing profits for market share. Problem I have with these nameless and mysterious "MSI problems" is that they aren't documented .... anywhere. The Asus BIOS problem certainly is....numerous year long threads over on the RoG Forums. The main difference on most Z97 boards is simply the Intel Z97 chipset is used instead of the the Z97. The differences are likely not significant to most users except from the residual value of the component being higher as it's current generation. Simply using Z97 instead of Z87 will not eliminate the BIOS Clock Freeze problem linked to above.

The EVGA Supernova is certainly a great PSU....not the best on the market but with a 10.0 Performance rating and 9.5 build quality rating from jonnyguru it's certainly up there. Not quite the 10.0 / 10.0 that the Seasonic X series gets (weird thing about the Seasonic is price fluctuates like crazy ..... my X-1250 has varied by as much $100 on newegg) . Right now the Seasonic X-850 is $138 after 10% off coupon and $15 MIR....but the EVGA being $23 cheaper might be enough to sway me if I was on a tight budget.

Thatz just it on the CPU....no doubt the 4700k is better.....even in gaming it gives an extra 3-6% but is the gain worth the extra $$ .... what it comes down tio is will you be needing HT often enough to justify the cost ?

As for the SSD's, I really don't get the logic that makes one device paramount and one device of no consequence. The SSD is going to get ya system to boot less than a second faster than say a SSHD. I don't really see the impact there. Is < 1 second of boot time one of those important things ? If you are gonna save the SSD for the OS ....that will soon rake up 72 GB or so in short order, if you very actively manage what goes where and trim out the crud on a regular basis. So that means your games will be on that "other drive"....that means your video editing (one of the few things that actually shows a real benefit from RAID) will take place on that other drive. For that reason, I don't know why so many folks want that fast SSD (Cool benchmark scores ?) but don't care much how fast the device that will hold typically "16 times as much of their stuff" is going.

And yes, the price premium for the 780 Tis was too much for me .... when I bought my cards. The twin 780s have managed to outperform the 290x's at 1920 x 1080 as I have been able to overclock them 25+% something I haven't gotten close to on a 290x. But then again MSI wasn't selling a factory overclocked 780 Ti for $600 when I bought mine..... of course, we have seen these appear on newegg 3 times in the last 6 weeks and then disappear again. I remain quite a bit shy of endorsing the 780 Ti at $700.