Need advice on a 1st time build

Hi all!


Well, I've stumbled on this site, and boy am I happy to count on your opinions and advice. I'm planning to build a PC from zero, buying all the components and installing them myself. Aiming for a rather high-end machine.

So let's get started:



APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: ASAP

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming is my motto for this build

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, monitor and OS

REFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Any since I'm writing to you from the EU.

PARTS PREFERENCES: A few ones I wont part with - Full tower, 2 video boards, 4 to 8 RAM and a Branded MB

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Crossfire preferably

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Power has got to be were it is needed, unless a more environmentally option performs just as well.




This is what I've come up with for now:


Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 or the Cooler Master Cosmos S

Motherboard: ASUS - P5Q3 - Intel P45

CPU: Intel Intel® Core I7 920 2.66GHZ

RAM: 2 X Kingston valueram ddr3 2gb 1333mhz cl9, probably upping up to 6 or 8 Gb

Graphics Card: XFX HD 4890 1024MB that will certainly become a crossfire with another XFX HD 4890 1024MB before Christmas.

Hard Drives: 2 X Samsung HDD Samsung 1TB EcoGreen SATA II 32mb OR 2 X Western Digital HDD 1TB CAVIAR 32mb cache GREEN SATA II OR 2 X WD Caviar Black Hard Drives 1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM

Bear in mind that the Caviar Green is 11% more expensive than the Samsung Green. And that the Caviar Black is 23% more expensive than the Samsung Green and about 14% more that the Green Caviar.

Gave you these percentages so you can roughly compare cost/performance of these disks.

There will be a black optical drive, probably cd/dvd burner.


As you all surely noticed, I haven't mentioned the APU. And that's for a reason. With all this I just don't know what brand I should go with and what wattage to choose.

That's were you guys come in.

So I need your advice on probable changes on my configuration and on choosing a APU.


Thank you all for your patience to read all this and thank you for all your help and feedback.

also forget "green" hard drives.

they only run at a slower RPM really, which means they run for longer when fetching or writing data. also the power difference in the grand scale of the whole pc is negligible. you would be better to choose a good quality HDD.

the samsung spintpoint range are very good and if you are buying two identical drives i would advise you RAID them together.

finally, i would suggest a Dx11 GPU for a similar price.

Sorry about that Build.

I was copy pasting and pasted the wrong MB.

It should be the ASUS - P6T SE

dougie_boy,

I guess you're right! Gonna scrap the "green" idea and keep on the black caviar ones...

what country you from?

i need to learn spanish sometime i remember helping someone with a graphics card on a spanish e tailer now i cant find it

thats Portuguese... not Spanish.

Yet on both countries there is a different language.

I lived 1 year in Spain and believe me when I say that in pc stuff, prices are similar. If you are willing to search.



I take this opportunity to thank you all for your help.


Any advice on RAM?

What do you guys think of the case? Is it any good?