Budget i7 Build - New To Building PC's

Okay i almost crapped myself when i hit the 4670 at the bottom, you really dont need an i7 for your uses, unless your multitasking is transcoding and animation then you arent going to be using an i7 anywhere near its potential. An AMD 720 triple core would probably serve your needs just fine and save you a ton, and even for gaming unless you are running a multicard solution an AMD build will serve your needs just fine.

I think I will stick with the i7, I will be doing tanscoding, I also like the idea that its more than I need right now, because im sure in a year or two I will be glad that I did (The PC i am on right now is 5 years old, P4 1.8Ghz).

Is there a better budget graphics card you would recommend? I would be willing to spend ~$20 - $30 more on a graphics card if I was getting my moneys worth.

Does the rest of the build seem like solid choices?

okay, as long as you are doing transcoding then it is useful. Everything else looks like a very solid choice, i cant even find any combos to save you any more. Since you seem to be good at shopping around and know way more canadian sites than me you may want to see if you can locate a 4850 that fits into the budget, the 4800 series is significantly better than the 4670.

I just added a Gigabyte Radeon HD 4850 625MHZ 512MB 1.92GHZ DDR3 PCI-E CrossFireX DU-DVI-I HDCP HDTV Out Video Card to original post for about $104 CAD.

That is about 50% more expensive than my original ASUS 4670 1GB. Is it worth the extra $35?

yes, if you ever want to do gaming the difference is significant, its the difference between 54 FPS(playable) and 32 FPS in fallout 3 at your resolution
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-char...

That RAM is $70 more than the ram I have selected? What am I getting for that extra money?

NCIX will price match other websites, Also, you can buy a $10 gift card and get free shipping up to 150lbs. They also do not charge provincial sales tax (8%) which makes a big difference on the price.

What advantages would the haf 932 or antec 1200 give me?

I might play around with a slight overclock (up to 3Ghz?), then if I think thats something I want to get into, I will buy a decent fan for my CPU.

Thanks for all the replies

The dominators arent worth it, i have yet to figure out why they are so damn expensive. The ram you selected is fine, if you really want to get every last bit of performance out of your system you can get the OCZ ram for slightly more and it will perform BETTER than the corsair for only $6 more not $70
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1682...

When you place your order, there is a button to do price matching (you have to scroll down for it), It will then pop up your items with a box for the price to be priced matched, and a box for the link to the web page with the cheaper price.

I believe someone then verfies that price matching before they ship it out.

I have not used it yet, but have read good reviews about it.

I use ncix for all my builds, personal and for my work and I've never had a price match get rejected (unless I miss linked or messed up and it was an american site) and I'm sure I'm up to well over 500 price matches because I order for my work every second day or so.

If you don't plan to put at least two 4870 or 2 GTX260 in crossfire or SLI, you are wasting your money...

So, in clear and simple, 400$ CAD of graphic cards minimum if you want to buy a Core i7 rig.

You cannot have a stronger computer with an i7 if you are not investing at least 1700$ CAD.

AuzenTech Forte Low Profile PCI-E 7.1 Sound Card PCI-E Dolby Digital Live Headphone AMP
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NCIX Gaming CrossFire Bundle 2X Powercolor Radeon 4850 512MB Video Cards
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Backorder 41665 $209.99 $209.99
1 x Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 625MHZ 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E VGA DVI-I HDMI Video Card
1 x Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 625MHZ 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E VGA DVI-I HDMI Video Card

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OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W ATX 20/24PIN SLI Ready Modular Cables 135MM Fan 80PLUS Power Supply
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Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black 1TB SATA2 7200RPM 4.2MS 32MB 3.5IN Dual Proc Hard Drive OEM
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YOUR TOTAL $1,087.89

You also got 50$ in mail in rebate and you can use pricematch using this site...

http://hardwarecanucks.pricecanada.com/

A price match let you have the price of another canadian store. You can easily get 50$ less from the total.

For your price range, just forget the i7 build, you will get a lot more for playing games with two 4850 in crossfire.

Also, if you add a 10$ gift card you will have free shipping until the 28th july. Really a nice deal...

^ not everyone who buys an i7 is just/a gamer.

I bought the i7 because it speeds up media transcoding an awful lot, and aids in multitasking, I also use it for gaming, but the media transcoding gave it the upper hand against Phenom II and Core 2.

Some will use their i7 machine as a workstation or just for future proofing, so you can't say "If you buy an i7, you're a very serious gamer" because most people who buy it aren't.

Hmmmm... I am an engineer... you know MATLAB? I was making numerical audio filters for some DSPs applications. You don`t need an i7 and I was really exaggerating in making filters with 5000 coefficients.

Name them all... Cadence, Code Composer Studio, MPLAB, audio recording (I am a musician)... you don't need the extra for 100% more expense on your cpu, mobo and memory.

I will say otherwise if you were calculating data for a whole night, but 5 second less on any application is by far not worth 300$ CAD more.