Building my first gaming computer ever! HELP

[jimbo123]

HELLO!! New to building a gaming pc. Looking forward to it.

I have an hd monitor, harddrive, mouse, keyboard.

Here is what I plan to buy:

CASE-Cooler Master HAF 932 High Air Flow ATX Full Tower Case Black - (RC-932-KKN1-GP)
CPU-Intel Core i7 950 Processor BX80601950 - 3.06GHz, 8MB L3 Cache, 4.8GT/s QPI, HyperThreading, Quad Core, Bloomfield, LGA 1366, Retail, Fan
MOTHERBOARD- ASUS Sabertooth X58 Motherboard
VIDEO CARD-Hmm. Not sure. I may wait to see the new 6900 series in a couple of weeks. I'm looking to spend $350 or less. I may go with 5870. Any recommendations would be helpful.

HARDDRIVE- I HAVE A SEAGATE 640GB ALREADY
POWER SUPPLY-Corsair Professional Series Gold High Performance 850-Watt Power Supply CMPSU-850AX
RAM-Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D Dominator 6 GB 3 x 2 GB PC3-12800 1600MHz 240-Pin DDR3 Core i7 Memory Kit

Right now the price is $910 without a video card. I would like to keep it under $1500. Please make suggestions/improvements. Tell me if a certain item i'm buying is overkill. Are the parts all compatible. I'm interested in alot of GAMING, internet, corel painter, basic usage. ANY HELP WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!


LINKS TO WHAT I INTEND TO BUY:
http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-High-Tower-Black/dp/B001EPUQAE/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1290739405&sr=1-6

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6666331&CatId=4070

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Professional-Performance-850-Watt-CMPSU-850AX/dp/B003PJ6QW4/ref=sr_1_13?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1290730555&sr=1-13#productPromotions

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-TR3X6G1600C8D-Dominator-PC3-12800-1600MHz/dp/B001L4A76G/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1290731344&sr=1-1

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4777384&Sku=I69-0950

 

[Twoboxer]

First of all, please consider waiting for Intel's Sandy Bridge cpus, 1/5/11. The increased performance is significant. Most of us considering builds are waiting.

If you must buy now, an i5 760 is suitable for gaming at 1920. The small performance improvement the 950 offers is useful, but costs more than it should.

If you like the 950 and must build now, you've done pretty well pulling the rig together. The psu is very high quality and will support SLI (and xfire) as will your mobo choice. The case is good.

You do not need 1600 memory unless you plan to OC the cpu. You wouldn't notice any difference in gaming performance using 1333 . . . but the $ difference is small. The 6850, 460, 470, 6870 are all good choices for gaming at 1920, especially since you can add a second card later.

Buying today I'd personally choose a 460 if I were willing to SLI later, I just have more confidence in SLI scaling. If going with a single card, and a 6870 was within my budget, I'd go that route. In which case, you could consider using a 5xxW psu like this to save money:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151094

 

[mianmars]

first off the 850w PSU is definitely an overkill here, a 750w PSU is more then enough but make sure u buy it in gud brand like corsair etc. secondly i would strongly suggest to squeeze in an SSD in ur new build, it is a massive boost, trust me on this.

 

[jimbo123]

Ok thanks guys. I'm still on the fence about sandy bridge. I am worried about the pricing, especially since its going to be a new product. It will not be cheap which is the only thing I'm concerned about.

I have another question. I have a hard drive I'm using now that I plan to use in my new computer. I have windows xp installed. I would like to buy windows 7 64 bit so that I can use 6gbRam. How would I delete windows xp from this harddrive and install 7 when I get my new computer? Is this possible?

I have a 640gb seagate 7200rpm right now. I would like a ssd but I believe it is out of my price range. Thanks.

 

[Twoboxer]

When you build the new PC, you will get into BIOS and set your DVD drive as the first boot device. You insert the Win7 DVD, PC boots from that, and - don't worry - it will force you to wipe the "XP" disk.

Pricing should be comparable to the past month or so, and performance should increase. Mobo price will probably increase in the beginning, yes. But we won't know for sure until then. In any case, prices on current parts should drop a bit, so its win-win.

 

[jimbo123]

Thanks. Yeah thats what I'm thinking. Prices are dropping on everything. The i7 950 that I'm interested has dropped all the way to $280 because of the new stuff coming out. As far as I know the i7 950 is good for gaming.

Will the stuff I had saved on windows xp show up when I boot windows 7? Like game saves and word documents,etc.

 

[Twoboxer]

No. If you use this disk it will be erased. There is no way to upgrade from XP to Win7, a process that would save your games (and data).

You could use a second HD as your new "C" drive, and install your current HD as "D". Any data you have on that drive can now be accessed, copied, moved . . . but no games or apps on that drive will run.