[Solved] Building 2 PCs/2K Each - Review/Advice

It's been five years since I built PCs for me and my wife and they are showing their age. This is the third set I am building for each other. I usually build towards the top end and run them into the ground. I'm not into replacing parts unless they die. When I want to upgrade it's usually everything. The differences between the builds with be [1] mine [2] hers.

I am currently upgrading two machines with the following specs:
Cases/PS: Tsunami VA3000 w/450w PS
Motherboards: Asus K8N-E Delux
CPUs: AMD Athlon 64 3.4G
Graphics Cards: NVIDIA GeForce 6800s
Memory [1]2G, [2]1.5G
The rest is pretty basic with WD hard drives (7200 RPM, 16MB), dvd writer optical drives, etc.

Basically we both are going to spend around 2K each. I am going over because of the graphics card and my wife asked where she can "cut" corners. So both systems will not be identical. Basically this is where I will be asking advice. I don't mind cutting corners for her since this is the first time she is actually helping to pay for the systems! But I want to make it smart choices when "cutting" corners. I told her anything I build will be an extreme upgrade from our current systems.

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Can build both machines now. At least hoping too!

BUDGET RANGE: [1] Over $2000, [2] Under $2000

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: [1] gaming (EQ, EQII and now WoW, but want to get back into regular PC games), photo editing/graphic design with Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., watching videos, programming/developing, music, surfing, email, im, ect. [2] Photo editing is her number one thing now with Photoshop Elements. The rest she mostly does it surf, LiveJournal, Facebook, and plays WoW erratically (around a third or less of what I play). We keep talking about getting something more that an Flip video camera, so I would be the one to edit videos. Probably next year.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: I'm pretty open, but Amazon with Preferred shipping and no tax! Newegg.com or any reputable site that comes up in Google. I've built my last two sets of PCs from a local shop in San Diego, which has great prices if using your debit card at Chips and Memory

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA

PARTS PREFERENCES:
CPU: [1]Core i7 950 [2]Core i7 920 I figure downgrading her shouldn't hurt too much with performance and can save around $270.

Graphics [1] I'm pretty much set on Radeon HD 5970 and truthfully will want to crossfire another one in a year or so. I program during the day and gaming is my outlet now (when the kids go to bed. [2]Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 I've been reading this is the best value for a budget. She only plays WoW for a month then stops for two or so. The rest she is editing photos. Thought this would be a good card to start with and if she want to upgrade or get another and crossfire in a year or so she can.

Memory: I'm biased towards Kingston, but open to suggestions: Kingston HyperX 6GB DDR3-2000 For myself I was thinking about getting two kits for a total of 12G, but starting to thing that is overkill and can always add more later.

Motherboard: This has been the hardest to decide. I've had mostly ASUS mobos, but had others and open to suggestions. I've been leaning towards the Asus P6T series, but having trouble deciding. For myself I am thinking about the ASUS P6X58D Premium, which is supposed to have USB 3.0 support. I was originally thinking of the ASUS PST Deluxe for both of us. I've been going back and forth on this for a few weeks now.

Hard drives: [1]Western Digital 300GB Veloci-Raptor for boot and apps (For gaming). For my data and her drives: Two Western Digital 1 TB. 7200 RPM, Black Edition in a Raid 0 config.

PSU: Open for this: I know I need at least something like the Thermaltake 1000w TR2. Not sure if it could handle two HD 5970s. For her basically the same if she want to crossfire another card in a year.

Cases Again open to suggestion. It just needs to fit two monster graphic cards! Chips and Memory have some nice "gaming" style cases. But as long as it fits my hardware, has many fans, and is either black or silver, its good by me. LED light is nice, but not mandatory.

OVERCLOCKING: Yes... Was maybe, but this tread convinced me it's safer to overclock now. *Guide to Choosing Parts*

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Yes

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1200 Both are HD compatable

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Just thanks in advance for taking the time in reading this. The mobos are the biggest bottle neck in deciding a final build. All my friends went Mac, but with Windows 7, I decided to try one more PC build again! As in the beginning, I usually try to build systems that will last for a couple of years until everything is outdated. Usually more that two years.

FYI... I have some Logitech Z Cinema speakers that sound awesome, but the USB type connection and driver/software are not the best. If you have a suggestion on a good speaker system (Usually I look for 2.1 since 5.1 does not make sense when you get get the "rear/side" speakers in the right place on a desk.) Before I bought these, I was seriously thinking of getting the Bose 2.1, but for the price?

You don't need 12 GB of RAM. 2000 mhz is also overkill. Pick up a nice set of DDR3 1333 mhz with CAS Latency of 7.

HDD: Velociraptor's are ccompletely worthless now days. Either go SSD or leave it out. Switch the WD data drives to Samsung Spinpoint F3. They're a lot faster and chepaer.

GPU: 5770 is overkill for what shes' doing.

PSU: You don't need 1000W. Probably be alright with 850W. Go Corsair or OCZ for quality.

Case: HAF 932.

If you are going to be overclocking then the i7 950 is not worth the premium price. Get both systems i7 920s and overclock them both, the performance difference between OCed 920 and 950 won't be noticeable. That will help the price cutting you need tremendously.

PSU: For her a Corsair 750tx will be more than enough if she intends to crossfire 5770s. For 5970 you still probably won't need 1000w. An 850tx should do, or new 950tx for sure.

Make sure to do some research into aftermarket coolers for OCing, plenty of good and reasonably priced options around now for socket 1366.

I will also throw in for the Spinpoint F3, using one in my newest build and it is quite zippy. Velociraptors are not worth it anymore.

I wouldn't want to go lower than the 5770, mainly for the future potential. Any build with a decent budget (over $700) should be using a 5xxx series for a little bit of future proofing.

ONLY downside??!! How about having to shell out a couple hundred bucks for a tiny drive. Or wasting valuable budget on something that doens't help anything beside booting up. Or seeing the price fall through the floor the second you buy one. Or only being able to use half the capacity to be effective. Or having to reformat all the time.

Any of those ring a bell?

I did, but that's only because if you're wasting the money on a raptor, you might as well waste more for a SSD. They're nice to have, but not worth the premium.

5770s are relatively short cards. They will fit in a small case. Get her the 922.


The Megahalems is arguably the best air cooler available. Its also silly expensive ($120ish once you buy fans and clips). The Xigmatek Dark Knight is only $45 and only a couple degrees warmer than the Megahalems. The Coolermaster Hyper 212 plus is only $30 and is maybe a degree warmer than the Dark Knight. There are several other fine coolers in the price range like the Scythe Mugen 2, Noctua UD-12H, etc. With those glass side doors, aesthetics matter.

@Specialk90 - Between your posts and friends that asked me if I am getting a SSD drive for the new build, I was finally sold. $200 - @250 isn't too bad. Thanks for the info on CS4!

Looked at reviews for the Dark Knight and they were great. I'll compare with the Noctua. Finalized the mobos: The P6T should be fine for my wife and is around $80 cheaper than the V2 and $100 than the P6X58D Premium.

Still looking into the RAM suggestions I have seen here and other threads. Usually always bought Kingston and never had problems nor do you ever see bad reviews. RAM is something I don't like to skimp on because failing RAM is a headache to troubleshoot!

Failing Ram...don't get OCZ then. I got 12GB of their Obsidian DDR3-1600 in Sept and had 1 stick bad but didn't find it until about 2 weeks ago. Their reviews on newegg are bad also.

G.Skill has excellent reviews and is priced fairly low too.

I agree that many reviews on newegg are clueless but thats why I look at the low scores only. I weed out those that clearly seem clueless and go from there.

I just noticed that the Samsung F3 has incredible reviews, which means either newegg fixed their shipping process or Samsung has a very reliable drive.

And I can attest to the poor reviews for the OCZ Obsidian as I had a bad stick. There is not that much user error that can happen with ram to explain all these bad reviews/problems people are encountering.

In the process of ordering parts and talking to a friend on IM. He said don't spend the money on Intel X25-M 80GB SSD and Raid 0 two Kingston Kingston SSDNow V-Series SNV125-S2BD/64GB. He said they are pretty reliable. Anyone else heard of these?

@cory1234 - Agree on the read/write speed on a single drive, but having them in Raid 0 should make up the difference.

I went with the Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV125-S2/40GB and bought two to Raid 0 them. These use the Intel’s 34nm X25-M SSDs controllers, but only use five data channels instead of 10 like the Intel X25-ms. Pretty good read speeds of approx. 170MB/s, but only 40MB/s for write. Besides the capacity being only 40MB, this screams (and Kingston expects) you to Raid 0 these. I've read a lot of reviews with these in Raid 0 and it is mostly positive. Put two in Raid 0 and they usually benchmark above the Intel X25s.

In the end it sometimes comes down to what is available atm. The Intel's are not expected till the end of the year but I was able to buy the two Kingston's earlier. Plus the Raid 0 will slightly outperform the X25.

I notice most of the responses to my thread are users who seem active in this forum.

This is OT... But what is this fear of Raid 0? Sure the failure rate increases, but it is not doubled. Everyone I know has been Raid 0'ing for years and never having problems. I don't know one person who had Raid 0 and a hard drive failed. Hell, my current experience is I built two rigs identical except one had hard drives in Raid 0. The one with one drive failed a year ago. I know many people with one hard drive that failed... to include the misses. Should be backing up anyway!

The problem with the Kingston version (and Dane-Elec) is that they don't use Intel's firmware and, therefore, cannot be updated with Intel's firmware releases. You are stuck with whatever Kingston releases.

Part of why the X25 is so good is Intel's firmware that automatically fixes/defragments the drive without any user intervention.