mruk10

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Hello,
Here's what I'm thinking of putting together:

Antec 300 Three Hundred Case
Antec TruePower New 650W Modular PSU - 80plus Bronze and SLI Certified 3x SATA

Asus P7P55D LE P55 Socket 1156 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Socket LGA1156 8MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Ballistix Memory Kit CL7 (7-7-7-24) 1.65V
XFX HD 5770 XXX 875Mhz 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI Display Port Out PCI-E Graphics Card

Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache
Sony AD-5240S 24x DVD±RW & DL SATA - OEM Black

Plexus SATA 2.0 to right angle SATA 7-pin Cable (Red) 46cm / 18"
Xilence Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan - 3&4pin connection
Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound Thermal paste 3.5gram

Windows 7 Pro 64-bit

Have I missed anything?
And what precautions against static electricity do I need to take?
Thanks
Matt
 
Well you could save £15 getting the XFX 650W XXX Edition instead of the Antec Truepower New 650. You could save even more as you don't need that much power for a system with a 5770. Altho for £4 more you can get a very high quality mobo that can support crossfire/SLI: MSI P55-GD65.

As for static electricity, just don't build up static electricity by wearing socks and moving about on carpet too much, and just touch something that is grounded like a metal lamp shade or the case before handling anything that is particularly sensitive: motherboard, RAM, GPU.
 

mruk10

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Thanks Silvune.
Do you think 500-550W would be enough? I'm trying to future-proof a little. Maybe I'll move up to an i7 down the road.

The Asus board does support Crossfire, but not SLI, at least according to it's description.
I'll investigate the MSI board you suggested.
 
I'd probably stick with a 650W if future-proofing is one of your aims, and the XFX in particular is at a very good price imo. Altho a good 550W PSU is the ideal (minimum) wattage amount for two 5770s, however in Britain there are very few PSUs at that wattage that are at a price worth paying for - mostly because of the price of that XFX unit. The only contender is the Be Quiet Pure Power 530 which has had one positive review, the review wasn't to a very high standard, is 80plus certified and made by a company which is known for making good power supplies. I suppose if don't want the XFX for some reason then you could get the Antec Earthwatts 650W PSU or the Corsair TX 550 or Be Quiet 550 Straight Power E7.

The second slot on the Asus LE is quite slow at x4. Most likely not worth adding another 5770 to.
 

mruk10

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I think there's a typo on ebuyers page for the MSI board. It doesn't explicitly say it supports i7, but I've checked at MSI's site and it does :)
That XFX PSU does look tempting.
Thanks for pointing out about the slow second slot on the Asus.
 

mruk10

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OK, so I'm almost sold on the MSI board.
Will it be OK with the memory I listed in my OP?

And another question about PSU placement:
Do I put the PSU fan facing up or down?
 
Yes I am extremely confident that the memory will work exactly how it should do with the MSI motherboard.

You can usually do it either way, altho I think it is better to make it face downwards as this will reduce the amount of dust that falls into it.
 

crackshot101

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Well, the mobo is socket 1156,while almost al i7s are socket 1366 (exceptions for 860, and 870, 875k) so if you ever want to upgrade to the higher end i7 an to be future proofed, i would go with a socket 1366, but as of now, your build is great and i would go with the msi board.
 

mruk10

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Thanks for your reply.
I'll not be doing much gaming. Just some flightsim mainly.
The PC will be used for photo-editing, some video stuff, music (FL studio) and Maple, as well as other mundane tasks like office, web, etc.
So I'm trying to put as much money into CPU/RAM as possible.
I really don't think I'll need SLI/crossfire. Nor do I think I'll be overclocking - just the Intel stock cooling fan.

I could go with:
Intel Core i7 920 D0 2.66GHz Socket 1366
ASUS P6T iX58 Socket 1366 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard

I'm 99% confident the memory will be OK with this board/CPU.
Would the case/PSU be OK with the new CPU?

Now that's getting a bit expensive (but not impossible), so I suppose I could downgrade the GPU and maybe upgrade later.
At least this way I'll have a more future-proof board.

And I though buying a Digital SLR was time-consuming and confusing :cry:
 
Well another extra expense with 1366 is that it uses triple channel RAM, I've heard mentioned a few times - altho not seen any benchmarks for this - that the performance difference between 4 (2x2GB) and 6 (3x2GB) on 1366 is negligible. So maybe you could forgo tri channel memory, but that is what people typically do.
Yea the case and PSU will be fine.

I reckon if you're not going to be getting the 6GB of RAM then it makes more sense to just get the i7-860 for Lynnfield platform, as you don't incur the extra mobo expense and get virtually identical CPU perform.
 

crackshot101

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No, i have seen benchmarks for tri channel memory, a 6gb 1066mhz tri channel set beat a 6gb 1333mhz dual channel setup, if you want future proofing, go with the 1366 socket, but if you wantto forego the expenses, i would try to get the 860, as said above. I really suggest getting the socket 1366 board, 920, 6gb tri channel 1333 mhz memory, and everything else is fine. But inthe futurei would recommend upgrading that gpu.
 

mruk10

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I think I'll forget 1366. The 9xx seem to use more power and I guess they run hotter.
And things start to get a bit over budget with them.
 

crackshot101

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well if you can i would suggest the 875k, its unlocked, so overclocking is a breeze, and you can get some real performance out of this baby.