$700-$1000 Gaming Rig (Already purchased CPU and mobo)

[Afortunado]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: August 17th

BUDGET RANGE: $750-$1000 Before Rebates

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming, Surfing the Internet, Watching Movies

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: Motherboard, CPU, and Speakers

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: I've been using newegg.com, tigerdirect.com and frozencpu.com for a bit.

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: US

PARTS PREFERENCES: I prefer Radeon for my GPU. Asus is another I like, and my CPU is Intel.

OVERCLOCKING: Yes

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Yes, but probably will add in the second card at a later date.

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1600x1200 or 1920x1200)

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I like my current Antec 900. I won't be reusing it, but I state this just to say that I want a window. I also think I'd like to go with Red LED's and Cold Cathode lights this time around.

Also, I will be overclocking and want to water-cool my CPU at minimum to start. May cool the vid-card(s) later but not at first. Will probably go with Win7 Pro 64bit.

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CURRENTLY SELECTED PARTS

Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80601930
I already have this.

ASUS Rampage III Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
I have this as well.

Crucial Ballistix Tracer 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory w/ Red & Green LEDs Model
No real reason except for the LED's. The latency is 7 so it could be worse, but then again my board supports a much higher MHz, I'm not sure.

ABS Tagan BZ Series (ESA) BZ1100_ESA 1100W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Active PFC Power Supply
Again I picked this primarily for the look. But whatever PSU I end up with I'm assuming I'll need at least 1KW?

Wondering what you all think for cases and water-cooling especially. I'm leaning against a Water-Cooling Kit as I will end up changing the hoses and the resevoir.

Anways, thank you all for any input, and I look forward to your thoughts.

 

[Guest]

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws 3x2GB 2000MHz - $174.99
Very high speed, don't need more than 6GB.

Graphics Card: MSI HD 5850 1GB - $279.99
Great card. No more needs to be said.

Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB - $74.99
Fast, spacious drive. Will be used for storing the majority of your data.

Solid-State Drive: Intel 40GB - $114.99
Not sure if you know any of this so I'll say it anyway. This is a solid-state drive which means it is about 3x faster than a hard drive. However, SSDs are too expensive to be used as the primary means of storage so instead you can install Windows on here and use it for stuff that you use a lot or stuff which you want the fastest access to. Everything else goes on the 1TB hard drive.

Optical Drive: Lite-On 24x DVD RW - $17.99
Cheap, does the job. Don't need to spend more money on this.

Power Supply: Cooler Master GX Series 650W - $59.99
More than enough power and connections for your system, won't have to worry about anything with this. XFX is a reliable company as well.

Case: Coolermaster HAF 922 - $89.98
Great case; looks good and cools very well, spacious too. Comes with some red LED fans so that'll help towards your colour scheme

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM - $99.99
Same old really. No reason to spend more and get Pro or Ultimate.

Total: $912.91

EDIT: DAMNIT. I forgot about the watercooling. To allow moneyspace for it I've stepped down the graphics card a bit. It obviosuly depends how much you want to spend on the water cooling though. I know nothing about water cooling so I'd wait for someone else to post about that.

P.S. 1Kw would be way overkill.

 

[wannaturnuptheheat]

Just chiming in here: Use this:

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

to calculate wattage needed. Add 100 watts for a buffer.

 

[Guest]

Comes to 519W with the CPU overclocked at 3.6GHz @ 1.56v and a "CoolIt Systems Freezone Elite" water cooling system. Like I said, no idea about water cooling so I don't know if that's a super mega kit or some puny little thing. Anyway, add on the 100W buffer and you're still alright with a 650W.

 

[Afortunado]

@dangerman200k:
Isn't the RAM you listed worse off due to the timings? I mean the latency jump isn't astronomical, but going from 7 to 9 is a bit. That being said, does the frequency jump to 2000MHz make up for it?

Your definitely right about the SSD. One thing about them has me a little confused though. Say I splurged for a 10000RPM traditional drive live a WD Velociraptor. Is the transfer rate comparable? I'm wondering as I don't know if any bottle-necking occurs with a SSD that is using say a SATA II instead of a SATA III.

I definitely plan on going with a 5858 after reading a review (I believe it was on here?) that showed a single 5850 a better choice then two 5770 in Xfire. I did use the PSU Calculator (thanks guys for the link) and while I no longer think I need a 1KW PSU I think 750W is the way to go. I came to a little over 600W with my calculations (CPU OC'ed to 4.0GHz, X-Fired 5850's, and a beefier Water-cooling System)

As for the case I've actually looked a couple of times at the COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Black RC-932-KWN3 Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case . Just not sure about Radiator mount placement with it.

Lastly, the reason I wanted Win7 Pro 64bit is due to the inclusion of being able to dual-boot back to XP. Isn't that only included in Pro and Ultimate?

 

[Guest]

The RAM is probably going to be faster than your RAM. Go either way, you can't really go wrong with either of the kits. Have a read through the DDR3-1333 Speed and Latency Shootout to help you. It's a couple of years old but should still apply (I haven't read it myself). Basically, the latency is the time it takes the RAM to respond to any given command. The speed is the rate at which it can perform that command.

A 10k RPM drive will be loads slower than an SSD. In fact, a lot of people have said that modern 7200rpm drives (even just WD Caviar Blues and Seagate Barracudas etc) are faster than Velociraptors. No bottlenecking will occur with an SSD which is only using SATA II apart from I think 1 or 2 drives which are past the $1k range.

I'm surprised that the 5850 was shown as being better than 2 5770s. I could swear I had read that two 5770s just about beat the 5870. Going for 750w is fair enough. You could take a look at the Corsair TX750, or the HX750 if you're looking for a modular PSU to keep your case tidy.

As for the case, I'd stick with the younger brother; the HAF 922. It's classed as a mid-tower case but is only a tiny bit smaller than the 932. I think the height is about 22".

Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate don't give you the ability to dual boot with XP, they give you the ability to run it in a virtual machine using Virtual PC (you're basically running XP as a program INSIDE Windows 7). I've tried it myself and it does work very well but I didn't feel the need for it in the end so I uninstalled it. In order to dual-boot XP and 7 (get and option when you switch on your computer) you would have to buy a copy of both, install 7 and then install XP on a separate partition or hard drive. That would work with any version of 7 and XP.

 

[Afortunado]

So after reading everything you've offered up, I decided on the HAF 932 w/window. I know it's not much of a difference, but I checked youtube for some vids on water-cooling with the two towers and I think I'll appreciate the little extra room of the 932.

I see what you mean about win7. I cbf with the extra for just a shell OS inside Win7. I'll just use a copy of XP if I need the dualboot option.

That being said, I think I'll stick with the flashier Crucial set of RAM (ooooh! Lights!). I maybe getting suckered, and if anyone knows of any faster, lower latency ram sticks, I'd be much indebted. I also could just add aftermarket LEDs or Cold-Cathodes to a different RAM kit I suppose?

I see what you mean about the 10k RPM drives. I think it would be best for me if I went with 2-3 Samsung Spinpoint F3's or WD Caviar's in a RAID 0 setup for storage and a SSD for boot. Is this ideal? Or am I totally off-base?

 

[Guest]

If it's worth it for the water cooling, go for it.

Not sure about the RAM. Maybe you could add LEDs if you're okay with modding or using glue guns etc.

That'd be a great setup but personally I'd go with RAID 1 for reliability.