Help with my new rig plan

[jeremychiam]

Im in Australia
Got double LCD's, gaming mouse and keyboard
Prices are in AUSD from website pcdiy.com.au
Mostly used for gaming, surfing, studies

Thermaltake V5 Black Edition with Window
$77.00

ECS GTX 470 1280MB NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Card NGTX470
$398.00

Corsair TX-650 650W Power Supply
$116.00

G.Skill 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz PC12800 (2x2G) F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ
$142.00

Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Processor 8MB Cache LGA1156 CPU
$248.00

Total $981
I want to point out that I'm missing the mobo, as im unsure which 1 to choose, also my choices of memory and CPU im not entirely 100%, theres so many choices out there nowadays, but what ive read these are decent. PSU also i've read that a bare minimum of 700 to run a GTX 470, and read elsewhere that 520 is fine...so im not sure about PSU either.

This is a rough idea what I want and looking for, i mostly change rigs every 5-6years getting semi decent parts and mostly go for quality for the money perspective. any input or alterations to my plan greatly appreciated, i also want to point out im a noob at overclocking, and i dont want highly technical stuff e.g SLI/Xfire/Raid

 

[WR2]

Hello jeremychiam;

Core i5 750 is an excellent CPU to build your new system around.
What monitor resolution will you be using? (either now, or in the future)
Have you seen any GTX 460s showing up there recently? Its a really attractive price/performance ratio.

 

[WR2]

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3P Motherboard USB 3.0 is a good match for that i5 750.
And that G.Skill RAM is a good set too.

A single GTX 470 will only need a quality 550W PSU. See the Specs of the EVGA GTX 470 webpage

 

[jeremychiam]

Hello jeremychiam;

Core i5 750 is an excellent CPU to build your new system around.
What monitor resolution will you be using? (either now, or in the future)
Have you seen any GTX 460s showing up there recently? Its a really attractive price/performance ratio.

both my monitors are 1920 by 1080

i heard that the 470 was better than the 460... but if the 460 is good enough ill get it instead, i just wanna hear what feedback is out there...

btw 460 1024mb at $279 and 738 at $259
465 1024mb at $339

also when choosing hard drives, 32 or 64mb cache? makes alot of difference?

 

[jeremychiam]

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3P Motherboard USB 3.0 is a good match for that i5 750.
And that G.Skill RAM is a good set too.

A single GTX 470 will only need a quality 550W PSU. See the Specs of the EVGA GTX 470 webpage

could you elaborate why its a good match up? i see TONNES of mobos, i seriously cant tell which from which nowadays...

and also AMD no good anymore? i also hear AMD is better for gaming, i like nvidia in terms of GFX cards because of the drivers, but CPUS amd or intel i dont mind

 

[WR2]

For dual 1920x1080 monitors the GTX 470 certainly is a better choice. Unless you want to talk dual SLI GTX 460s?
Over here the 470s are starting to be phased out and have pretty good sized price reductions. Example
Some gaming benchmarks that show GTX 460/470/480 and HD 5850/5870, along with GTX 460 SLI. No 3840x1080 (3758400 pixels) screen resolutions so use 2560x1600 (4096000 pixels) to gauge things for your setup.

MB Match: Mandatory - socket match - 1156 in this case. Must also support the CPU (not a problem with 1156 CPUs)
Have a good feature set: Things like USB3 / SATA 6GB/s CF/SLI support Good overclocking options.
From a favored MB MFGR like Asus / Gigabyte for support. Getting good reviews in service.
And available from your source of supply.

Now that I know you're pushing dual 1920x1080 monitors and thinking about the possibility of a 2nd Nvidia card in SLI.
That Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3P is a CF board only - not SLI. GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD4P has SLI support as an additional feature.

 

[jeremychiam]

also reading up that in 1 of the articles on this website suggests gtx 460 1gb is pretty good, u think i get the 460 1gb with a mobo with sli support, then maybe get a 2nd card in the future? or stick with 1?

my 3d card blows up every 4 years or so from being overworked, hate to replace 2 rather than 1

 

[WR2]

If you look at all the 2560x1600 benchmarks in the link above it hard to make a good case for the 470 when the 460 is available. I didn't see any game that was playable with the 470 but not playable with 460.
Maybe sharing the workload 2 card could last longer than 1.
And getting GTX 480 (USD$500) performance from 2 GTX 460 (USD$440) means if 1 card failed you'd only be out half your investment.

If you really want to stick with 1 card (not a bad option) I'd stick with the GTX 470 and maybe keep the GA-P55A-UD3P.