$1500 Gaming Build

[AscendAbove]

Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next couple weeks


Budget Range: ~1500-1600


System Usage from Most to Least Important: Primarily gaming (Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, Starcraft 2 and whatever else catches my interest), a good gaming rig will cover my other needs just fine.


Parts Not Required: keyboard/mouse/monitor etc, just need the case and contents


Preferred Website(s) for Parts: prefer newegg, but wherever is fine really.


Country of Origin: USA


Parts Preferences: None really


Overclocking: Probably some mild OC'ing


SLI or Crossfire: Down the road, Yes.


Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080


Additional Comments: Nothing I can think of.

The build I've assembled looks like this.

CPU: i7-950

Mobo: Asus Sabertooth X58

GPU: GTX 570

Case: NZXT LEXA S

PSU: Antec EA-750

RAM: G.Skill PI 1600 3x2GB

System HDD: OCZ Vertex2 120GB SSD

Storage HDD: Samsung F3 1TB

Optical: Lite-On DVD burner

Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212+

OS: Win7 Home Premium OEM


Overall just trying to be sure I'm getting the most out of my money, not dead set on anything really so any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance

 

[goatsword]

Overall great build. I would probably go with a slightly larger case, like a HAF922 or similar. Also, if you want to SLI down the road, you might want to consider an 850w+ power supply, mainly for breathing room. I run 2 x 5870's on that same Antec PSU, but as I recall the 570's are a little more power hungry than the 5870's. Good luck!

 

[psycho sykes]

I would get a Corsair PSU instead (TX750 maybe)
And a cooler and sometimes better AMD HD 6970
A bigger case as the above comment

Good luck

 

[don_macabre]

Uhm... at what point did everyone stop recommending a wait for Sandy Bridge?

Hold fire, get hold of the i5 2500k in two or three days and you'll save whatever the conversion into $US from roughly £50 is. That's on the CPU. Then, because you use dual-channel memory, you can drop the price of your memory by roughly a third.

You're looking at better performance for less money.

 

[AscendAbove]

Yeah, the case has actually been my toughest decision so far, hours of going through them to find which ones could accommodate 2 large video cards. I'll probably go with the HAF922 as suggested, since that is one I took a long look at while deciding.

As for the HD 6970, it seems like every test I look at between the 6970 vs the GTX 570 has the 570 performing better, on top of that it's $20-30 cheaper. If there is evidence otherwise I'd definitely be interested in seeing it.

As for the PSU, the extreme PSU calculator rates my power needs at ~700 with 2 GTX 570's so 850 seems unnecessary. As for the above comment, is your comment on the Corsair over the Antec personal preference or is there a reason I shouldn't go with the Antec? Everything I've read says they are very reliable.

Appreciate the suggestions, keep em' coming

 

[AscendAbove]

Uhm... at what point did everyone stop recommending a wait for Sandy Bridge?

Hold fire, get hold of the i5 2500k in two or three days and you'll save whatever the conversion into $US from roughly £50 is. That's on the CPU. Then, because you use dual-channel memory, you can drop the price of your memory by roughly a third.

You're looking at better performance for less money.

I've been back and forth on going with the Sandy Bridge processors. Seems like Intel has decided to exploit the OCing enthusiasts by charging a premium for the ability to OC at all which seems really lame. Plus from what I've been hearing the P67 MoBos are going to largely offset any savings I would make on the processor, though if there is disputing info on that I'd be interested.

 

[don_macabre]

If you're saying that the extra cost of the motherboard would offset the savings on the CPU, I'm assuming we're expecting CPU+mobo to cost roughly the same whether you go i7 or SB. If that's the case, then although you don't save money, you get a performance boost.

I honestly cannot see any reason to not go with SB. It's either cheaper with better performance, or the same price with better performance. And don't forget savings you make on RAM.

 

[fruees]

1. the motherboards aren't out so you don't know that

2. X58 motherboards are currently the most expensive - a p67 mobo wouldn't be more expensive than that.

if you look at any reviews, both the 2500k and 2600k outperform the 950, are cooler, more efficient. Why would you ever get x58 over that??? even for xfire/sli I'd still go with a 8x/8x setup on a p67 board.

 

[AscendAbove]

1. the motherboards aren't out so you don't know that

2. X58 motherboards are currently the most expensive - a p67 mobo wouldn't be more expensive than that.

if you look at any reviews, both the 2500k and 2600k outperform the 950, are cooler, more efficient. Why would you ever get x58 over that??? even for xfire/sli I'd still go with a 8x/8x setup on a p67 board.

1. There are some price points on a number of sites around if you do a little research.

2. Considering your answer to 1, how can you speculate that the P67's absolutely won't be more expensive?

That said, I'm still definitely considering waiting on them. Got a link to performance comparisons between the Sandy Bridge CPU's vs the current gens?

 

[AscendAbove]

getting a p67 mobo is bad because you cant use quicksync on it. and its double fast than CUDA/ati stream in video conversion. (though it may not be needed by you)

getting a h67 is bad simply because you cant OC.

you can buy a i5-760 and OC it to 3.8GHZ and p55 mobo and save a lot of cash. for SLI, the difference between x16/x16 and x8/x8 is less than 5%.

or you can wait till z68 comes that has OC+quicksync.

at this point, getting a x58 is not very advisable.

Not really sure what you are trying to say here, let me see if I understand. You're saying to either buy an i5-760 now or wait for a z68, as opposed to buying something P67 or X58?

I'm pretty much certain that the i7-950 outperforms the i5-760 in every way so I really don't understand your advice on that front.

As for not getting a P67 due to the lack of quicksync, yeah, that's not something I really am going to worry about, thanks for the heads up though.

 

[AscendAbove]

I'm pretty much certain that the i7-950 outperforms the i5-760 in every way so I really don't understand your advice on that front.

as you said that build is needed for gaming, an i5-760 if oc to about 3.6ghz is more than sufficient for games as most games are gpu limited. you are better off spending money on faster gpu.

i7-950 is good when you do cpu intensive work like video transcoding, or compression or adobe photoshop/aftereffects etc.

Yeah, but the only realistic step up in the GPU department is a GTX-580 for about $130 more, and I don't think I'd be saving quite that much Thanks for the input though.