$3000+ build advice please

[PudgyChicken]

Hey guys,
So I have the following build mapped out (all parts from newegg). I know its waaaay over the top but I want it that way.


Core i7 980x
12 GB corsair dominator 1600mhz ddr3 240 pin RAM
ASUS P6X58D Premium LGA 1366 Intel X58 mobo
2x Nvidia GTX 480
Corsair Hydro closed loop liquid cooling system
Kingston HyperX Ram cooler (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835116021&Tpk=kingston%20hyperx%20fan)
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM HDD
64Gb Crucial RealSSD C300 main drive
ABS Majesty series MJ1100-M 1100 watt PSU
Antec 1200 case
LITE-ON iHBS112 - OEM black blu-ray burner
Creative X-fi Fatal1ty Champion PCI-E 2.0 x1 sound card

I hope that's everything. I know its super duper overkill. If I end up not being able to afford it I could drop the sound card because the mobo seems to have good sound. I chose the antec 1200 over the coolermaster haf 932 blue because it seemed to be a better case with more fans, blue leds, and bigger window.

So let me know what you think!

Please note that as much as I would love to do a water cooling system I have neither the expertise or the cash, as I estimate I have just enough to build this rig.

Thanks!

PudgyChicken

 

[banthracis]

Fill out form in sticky, link in my sig.

If this is a gaming rig, then there's a ton of waste. You can build a $2k rig that'll bench better.

Cheap water is worse than good air. If you wanna do water right, you'll need to spend at least $300 for a basic, $500 for a full setup.

 

[PudgyChicken]

I read before I posted and I figured that since I already had the rig pretty much mapped out, I didn't really need to follow the format. Anyway, I chose the hydro for two reasons. 1. its cheap. 2. its not as noisy as good air. As if I would ever need to worry about noise with the two GTX 480s going...

Which good air cooling systems do you recommend?

 

[tecmo34]

Couple of other recommendations...

1) Drop the sound card... Current motherboards provide outstanding sound and if you don't like it, you can always add the sound card later

2) Good Air Cooling... Here are the top three... IMO Newegg Comparison, but with the Thermalright and Prolimatech, you'll need to buy fans (no big deal)

3) I would switch your SSD to either an Intel X25-M G2 or OCZ Vertex 2. These are overall better SSD. SATA III doesn't provide a great impact with the SSD overall (& were it matters!!)

 

[Somebody_007]

I strongly reccomend a good water-cooling setup. I'd drop the 980 for a 930 and spend around 500 on WC.

Water-cooling has nothing to do with noise the fans make the noise and both water cooling and air cooling have fans. I have noctua air cooler with noctua fans which make less noise than any hard drive idles.

And 480's are far from loud. At full stress it matches a seeking HDD. Not to mention HDD's make this annoying sound while fans just have a constant air blow which IMO is more tolerable. Buy a delta 6k rpm and you'll understand the definition of loud

I'd get a higher end psu like corsair, antec.

I'd also opt for a larger ssd and a samsung spinpoint f3 seeing as the 1002faex's fast seek times largly go to waste since it'll be a storage drive.

Also you don't really need 12gb or a ram cooler. And if it's for the coolness factor which I can understand get a waterblock for 60bucks and ad it to your WCS.

And do you need a blu-ray burner? I mean if you need one you can just buy one then they'll probably be quite a bit cheaper.

And if you are dead set on not getting a WCS then get a prolimatech megahelems, titan fenrir or a noctua nh-d14(I wn and love it )

 

[PudgyChicken]

Ok, I can live without the sound card. Very understandable. I mean, I would double the number of sound ports when I will never use all of the ones just included on the mobo.
For the air cooling... Welll... they're not quite as shiny =P lol nbd. With the cash I'm saving on the sound card I may as well do a water cooled system and throw my GTX 480s in the loop. The only issue is that I have no idea what parts to buy for a liquid cooled system.
The SSD I chose because it was rated with far better sequential read times than the SATA II competition. And it was competitively priced. I'll give the other two a look, though.

 

[PudgyChicken]

aaand I know I dont need the 12 gb or RAM cooler. If i do water cooled, then I'll throw em in the loop. But I just wanted all the overkill I could have.

 

[Somebody_007]

Ok, I can live without the sound card. Very understandable. I mean, I would double the number of sound ports when I will never use all of the ones just included on the mobo.
For the air cooling... Welll... they're not quite as shiny =P lol nbd. With the cash I'm saving on the sound card I may as well do a water cooled system and throw my GTX 480s in the loop. The only issue is that I have no idea what parts to buy for a liquid cooled system.
The SSD I chose because it was rated with far better sequential read times than the SATA II competition. And it was competitively priced. I'll give the other two a look, though.

I'm not very knowledged in the area of pumps, reservoirs, ... But you should cool your entire system for heat not to be a factor with a 3.140 radiator or 2.120 + 3.120 or something in those lines.

 

[banthracis]

If you want a Rig that'll bench better in any game for less:

I7-930 $290
Ga x58 UD3R $210
Spinpoint F3 1Tb $80
Intel X25-M 80gb $200
5870 x3 $390 each $1170 total
G Skill Pi 6gb kit DDR3 1600 Cas 7 $170
HAF 922 $90
Corsair 850TX $130
optical $20
Megahalem $62
2 Scythe Sflex or slipstream fans $24

Total: $2446. You can knock a good $200 off of that with combo's and rebates.

 

[Somebody_007]

aaand I know I dont need the 12 gb or RAM cooler. If i do water cooled, then I'll throw em in the loop. But I just wanted all the overkill I could have.

I know the feeling I really do

 

[PudgyChicken]

If you want a Rig that'll bench better in any game for less:

I7-930 $290
Ga x58 UD3R $210
Spinpoint F3 1Tb $80
Intel X25-M 80gb $200
5870 x3 $390 each $1170 total
G Skill Pi 6gb kit DDR3 1600 Cas 7 $170
HAF 922 $90
Corsair 850TX $130
optical $20
Megahalem $62
2 Scythe Sflex or slipstream fans $24

Total: $2446. You can knock a good $200 off of that with combo's and rebates.

I hate ATI due to the millions of issues that I've had with their cards over the years. I also find that nvidia's cards are made of far higher quality components. Same with AMD vs Intel. Intel == good AMD == Cheap and low quality. But ATI cards arent cheap so its not really the same. If I wanted to make the system around the 980X, GTX 480s, and 12 GB ram, then what would you suggest? I may stick with the design I already have, because even though good air>cheap water, I sure as hell am NOT overclocking a $1000 processor. That's just dumb.

 

[mindless728]

I hate ATI due to the millions of issues that I've had with their cards over the years. I also find that nvidia's cards are made of far higher quality components. Same with AMD vs Intel. Intel == good AMD == Cheap and low quality. But ATI cards arent cheap so its not really the same. If I wanted to make the system around the 980X, GTX 480s, and 12 GB ram, then what would you suggest? I may stick with the design I already have, because even though good air>cheap water, I sure as hell am NOT overclocking a $1000 processor. That's just dumb.

so do you not listen to advice other people give you all of the time, because thats what it seems like

and OC'ing a cpu is not going to spontaneously kill it, just stay within the thermal and voltage specifications and it will be fine

though if you don't like the 3x5870's replace them with 2xGTX480's and a bigger PSU (Corsair 1000w)

 

[Somebody_007]

A 980x with the water cooling system I suggested can hit 4.3 stable easily. A mild 3.8 OC will do no harm. You can also wait till the warrenty expires and then OC.

And about that 1000 dollar cpu it's a kind of a waste if you don't want to OC it. You'd be better of with a 930 at 4.0 or something like that.

 

[PudgyChicken]

A 980x with the water cooling system I suggested can hit 4.3 stable easily. A mild 3.8 OC will do no harm. You can also wait till the warrenty expires and then OC.

And about that 1000 dollar cpu it's a kind of a waste if you don't want to OC it. You'd be better of with a 930 at 4.0 or something like that.

Two things that I dont understand: 1. If it costs $1000 why wait till the warranty expires to overclock? wouldnt you want to do the opposite so you could get it replaced. 2. If it is already a tank then why is it a waste not to OC it? If I'm going to pour that much cash into a processor I dont want to overclock it because all that does is lower the life and possibly void the warranty.

Now I'm willing to do the water cooling system I just don't know what parts I need, as I have no experience in this area. I know I need a CPU water block, and GPU water blocks wont hurt especially with the 480s. But I dont know anything about tubing, coolant, or radiators to do this on my own.

 

[mindless728]

Two things that I dont understand: 1. If it costs $1000 why wait till the warranty expires to overclock? wouldnt you want to do the opposite so you could get it replaced. 2. If it is already a tank then why is it a waste not to OC it? If I'm going to pour that much cash into a processor I dont want to overclock it because all that does is lower the life and possibly void the warranty.

Now I'm willing to do the water cooling system I just don't know what parts I need, as I have no experience in this area. I know I need a CPU water block, and GPU water blocks wont hurt especially with the 480s. But I dont know anything about tubing, coolant, or radiators to do this on my own.

1) if you keep the CPU in thermal and voltage specifications the life span really won't shorten (i still have an Ath;on 64 4000+ from Jan 2005 that i OC'ed heavily and it works fine, even with the OC)

2) it may be a tank for multi-threaded apps (5-6+ or 11-12+ if the app works well with Hyper Threading), in lower thread counts anyone's i7-930 (or 920) at or near 4GHz will stomp yours, and from what it seems, you have a bit of money, ad if you game going tri/quad sli you really need you CPU as high as possible

3) for the water cooling, there is a nice sticky in the OC section of TOM's that you can read and get an idea

 

[Somebody_007]

Two things that I dont understand: 1. If it costs $1000 why wait till the warranty expires to overclock? wouldnt you want to do the opposite so you could get it replaced. 2. If it is already a tank then why is it a waste not to OC it? If I'm going to pour that much cash into a processor I dont want to overclock it because all that does is lower the life and possibly void the warranty.

Now I'm willing to do the water cooling system I just don't know what parts I need, as I have no experience in this area. I know I need a CPU water block, and GPU water blocks wont hurt especially with the 480s. But I dont know anything about tubing, coolant, or radiators to do this on my own.

Well because as people already mentioned if you're not a complete idiot OCing is unlikely to do any harm to your system. So the chance that your system fail due to the OC is slim. And if you OC you void your warrenty so even though OCing is very very unlikely to break anything your cpu might still break due to other reasons and then you hav no warrenty.

And well the 980 is dream cpu to OC. And not using it's potential to it's fullest is kind of sad. Then you'd be better of getting a 930 clock it at 4.0 which will be faster in most apps than a stock 980 and even if your 930 fails(very unlikely) it'll still be cheaper than buying a 980.

 

[PudgyChicken]

If you read the article on tomshardware about OCing a 980X to 5ghz, you would realize that Intel is not a bunch of idiots. They actually put the clocks where you get optimal performance and voltage. Also, with turbo boost you get a small overclock, almost to 4.0 (~3.6) with this processor.

I've had bad experiences with overclocking before, but mainly with GPUs with inadequate cooling. I also don't think there would be a need for overclocking this CPU until it becomes out of date and can't compete with anything on the market. However, if I had water cooling I might consider it, but realistically few people actually NEED to OC if any.

 

[Somebody_007]

Well talkong about neccesity here is kind of inadequate. People need no more than a 800dollar computer maybe a 1.2k one for gamers but any thing above that is nothing more than a luxery anyways.

 

[nuke123]

Everything is relative an dof people wnat to have thise luxuries that is up to them. But for that price i would think about time-proffing it as best as you can. So maybe hold off your oc-ing it till your warranty runs out and you have tht perfromance in the future when your more likely to need it.

 

[cygone]

A heavilly OCd 920/930 to 4.4Ghz under water, will kill a 980x at stock with air cooling, in productivity/gameing and benching. AND IT IS ALOT CHEAPER.

Bottom line, you can stick with your over priced, under performing, bankrupcy rig, or take the advice from the people who know what the hell they are talking about and get a super fast, sensibly priced, die hard water cooled rig.

You take your pic!

 

[cygone]

If you OC your CPU, but keep it under Intels specs for volt/temp you have not voided your warranty, anyway no way for the online retailer to know. So they will just credit you.

 

[Somebody_007]

If you OC your CPU, but keep it under Intels specs for volt/temp you have not voided your warranty, anyway no way for the online retailer to know. So they will just credit you.

Are you serious? I thought any alterations would void the warrenty. So if I keep my 930 @ 3.6 on stock voltage I still have a warrenty?

 

[cygone]

Yes, how is the retailer going to know?

 

[Somebody_007]

yeah, I suppose if you look at it that way.