Advice on a new build. Thanks!

[Hulia]

Hi all!

I'm currently looking at this build for my new machine. I'm curious to hear any opinions and advice you might have.
I know I should probably try to build this myself, but I don't feel confident enough in my computer building abilities, so I'm going to order from Cyber Power. (they are 30 mins from my house and I've purchased with them before. Both times were positive experiences.) If I was building it myself, I would choose some different things, but I'm limited by what Cyber Power offers. (in case you were wondering about some of my choices)


(Note: I won't be overclocking anything, and I basically only play World of Warcraft.
I'm sure this machine might be overpowered for what I do, however, I wanted something that can go a good amount of time without needing upgrades.
One thing that does concern me is heat/cooling. I'd really rather not deal with liquid cooling, but want to make sure that what I have here won't have any heat issues.
I've also been debating between the ATI Radeon HD5850 or the GeForce 285. I tend to stick to brands that I have used in the past and not had any issues with, so that leans me towards the Nvidia card even though I think the 5850 is probably the better card/better value. I have a 24" monitor and I play in 1920x1200 resolution.

I know that having 1 large drive is not optimal for gaming, but being that I only really play World of Warcraft, I'm not sure if it will make that big of a difference for me. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me! ^_^
Thanks!





CASE: Cooler Master Storm Sniper
PSU: Corsair 950 Watts CMPSU-950TX - Quad SLI Ready
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-960 3.20 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
COOLING FAN: Xigmatek Thor's Hammer Gaming CPU Cooling Fan
MOBO: (3-Way SLI Support) Asus P6X58D Premium Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3 FCLGA1366 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, SATA-III RAID, 3 Gen2 PCIe, 1 PCIe X1, & 2 PCI
MEMORY: 12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Corsair Dominator)
VIDEO CARD:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX285 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA)
or
ATI Radeon HD 5850 PCI-E 16X 1GB Video Card [DirectX 11 Support]

HARD DRIVE: Single Hard Drive (1TB (1TBx1) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
HARD DRIVE COOLING FAN: Vigor iSURF II Hard Disk Drive Cooling System (1 x System)
OPTICAL DRIVE: Sony 20X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
OPTICAL DRIVE 2: SONY 16X DVD-ROM (BLACK COLOR)
*Just going to use onboard sound for now

 

[MadAdmiral]

Budget?

Case: I hate the Storms. Get a HAF 922.
PSU: You don't need 950W ever. At most, you'd need 850W for Crossfired 5970s. This Silverstone is excellent at $150.
CPU: Overkill and completely pointless. Get an i7-920 and overclock. Use the $300 saved to upgrade to the HD 5970.
Cooling: Also too expensive for what you get. Coolermaster Hyper 212 for $30.
RAM: You don't need 12 GB. You only need 6 GB because it's triple channel. Get the Mushkin Enhanced Redline 3x2 GB 1600 mhz CAS Latency 6 for $230.
GPU: Neither. With your budget, you should be getting the HD 5970.
HDD: Make sure it's either the Samsung Spinpoint F3 or Seagate 7200.12.
HDD cooling: Unnecessary.

All of this is assuming you won't be lazy and will actually build it, as some of the suggestions will not be available.

 

[daggs]

Hi all!

I'm currently looking at this build for my new machine. I'm curious to hear any opinions and advice you might have.
I know I should probably try to build this myself, but I don't feel confident enough in my computer building abilities, so I'm going to order from Cyber Power. (they are 30 mins from my house and I've purchased with them before. Both times were positive experiences.) If I was building it myself, I would choose some different things, but I'm limited by what Cyber Power offers. (in case you were wondering about some of my choices)


(Note: I won't be overclocking anything, and I basically only play World of Warcraft.
I'm sure this machine might be overpowered for what I do, however, I wanted something that can go a good amount of time without needing upgrades.
One thing that does concern me is heat/cooling. I'd really rather not deal with liquid cooling, but want to make sure that what I have here won't have any heat issues.
I've also been debating between the ATI Radeon HD5850 or the GeForce 285. I tend to stick to brands that I have used in the past and not had any issues with, so that leans me towards the Nvidia card even though I think the 5850 is probably the better card/better value. I have a 24" monitor and I play in 1920x1200 resolution.

I know that having 1 large drive is not optimal for gaming, but being that I only really play World of Warcraft, I'm not sure if it will make that big of a difference for me. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me! ^_^
Thanks!





CASE: Cooler Master Storm Sniper
PSU: Corsair 950 Watts CMPSU-950TX - Quad SLI Ready
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-960 3.20 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
COOLING FAN: Xigmatek Thor's Hammer Gaming CPU Cooling Fan
MOBO: (3-Way SLI Support) Asus P6X58D Premium Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3 FCLGA1366 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, SATA-III RAID, 3 Gen2 PCIe, 1 PCIe X1, & 2 PCI
MEMORY: 12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module (Corsair Dominator)
VIDEO CARD:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX285 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA)
or
ATI Radeon HD 5850 PCI-E 16X 1GB Video Card [DirectX 11 Support]

HARD DRIVE: Single Hard Drive (1TB (1TBx1) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
HARD DRIVE COOLING FAN: Vigor iSURF II Hard Disk Drive Cooling System (1 x System)
OPTICAL DRIVE: Sony 20X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
OPTICAL DRIVE 2: SONY 16X DVD-ROM (BLACK COLOR)
*Just going to use onboard sound for now

this computer can eradicate world hunger by calculating how to generate ham sandwich out of plain molecules and you need it to run just wow....
can I get half of you budget please?

 

[MadAdmiral]

I completely skipped all of that text, and based my suggestions off what you listed. If you only need to play WoW, here's a very cheap build:

CPU: X4 620 $100
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 $85 after rebate
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 2x2 GB 1600 mhz CAS Latency 7 $115
HDD: Seagate 7200.12 500 GB $55
PSU: Corsair 450W $55 after rebate
Case: Antec 300 Illusion $50 after rebate
GPU: HD 5770 $150
Optical: 2x Cheapest SATA DVD burner $40 total (assuming you acutally need 2, which you don't)
OS: Windows 7 $105

Total: $700. That would max out WoW at a fraction of the price of what you listed.

 

[Hulia]

I guess you could call me lazy, but in all honesty, I'm just not that confident in building my own rig and dealing with any problems that might arise.

I really appreciate your suggestions and I'd love to look into them, but sadly, a lot of them are not offered by Cyber Power.

I'm going to look into other cases, but they don't offer the HAF.
Do you have any other case recommendations? (hoping one of them will be something they offer)

As far as cooling, after researching everything they offered, the Thor's Hammer seemed to be the best.
They do offer a Cooler Master v8. ( I wasn't impressed with the reviews/benchmarks for it)

I'll definately be bumping down the processor, the ram and the PSU. Sadly, I've never overclocked before and to be honest, I'm scared of doing it. >.> So, will the i7 920 be ok without being overclocked?

As far as I can tell, the 5870 is the highest ATI they have right now.

Thank you again!

 

[Hulia]

this computer can eradicate world hunger by calculating how to generate ham sandwich out of plain molecules and you need it to run just wow....
can I get half of you budget please?

Haha! Yeah, I'm feeling pretty silly right about now.

 

[MadAdmiral]

Building your own is really easy. There is no wrong way to put everything together.

If you went with something more along the lines of my second post (the AMD/HD 5770 build), that would be great for what you've said you will use it for. That would at least be reasonable to buy prebuilt. The build you posted was probably a good $6-10K prebuilt. The second build should be closer to $1,000

 

[Hulia]

Budget: I'm trying to stay in the 2000-2500 range. The build in my original post was going to be about $2700 with tax.

Bumping down the processor and ram alone is going to put me at about 2300-2400.

 

[MadAdmiral]

Ok...

So you want to spend $2K for a machine that plays WoW? Or are you going to do something else with it?

I wouldn't start planning until you decide what you actually want/need to do, and what parts you'll need to do that...

 

[daggs]

like I've said, it seems you want to expend 2k$, okie, take MadAdmiral's build, max it up to 1$k and give me the other 1$k.
you're happy, I'm happy, the world is at peace.