Newegg President's Day PC build, help needed

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llamasama

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So I've been planning on building a new pc for a few weeks now, and have been doing a bit of research. Just saw newegg's President's day sale, and decided this was as good a time as any. My reasoning for not waiting on Sandy Bridge, is that with the newegg sale and the price reduction on components, I'll be able to build a comparable, if not better system for the same price as I would if I waited for SB.

More than anything, the reason for this thread is to get a few opinions on the components I hastily chose, and suggestions on how to improve the power and/or price. Haven't built a PC in a few years, so need to make sure I'm not bottlenecking my system with some stupid choices.

General required stuff:

Approximate Purchase Date: By Monday, 2/21, due to newegg's awesome president's day sale


Budget Range: 8-1200 before rebates


System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, movies, and internet, the usual


Parts Not Required: I have a 520w corsair HX power supply in the PC I'm currently on, but not sure if I want to salvage it. Especially with the power supplies newegg has on sale. Don't need keyboard, mouse, or monitor (samsung 226BW <3).


Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg


Country of Origin: USA


Parts Preferences: Intel/Nvidia


Overclocking: Possibly, in the future, depending on future game reqs, and general laziness


SLI or Crossfire: Nope


Monitor Resolution: 1680x1050


Here's my build so far:

Case: NZXT Phantom PHAN-001WT White Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case $139.99 (I'm actually pretty set on the case, more of an aesthetics thing. I absolutely love the look of it. Should I get extra case fans with it? Links to good fans to add would be awesome)

CPU: Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80605I5760 $209.99 (is stock cooling sufficient? I have a beast of a heatsink on my current pc (thermalright ultra-120) which has my q6600 running at 400x9. It looks absolutely terrible in my case (antec 900) though :p.)

MOBO: ASUS P7P55D-E LX LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $129.99 ($119.99 after MIR)

PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ700MXSP 700W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply compatible with core i7 $79.99 ($49.99 after MIR)

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL $99.99

Video Card: EVGA 01G-P3-1372-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Superclocked 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card $209.99 ($179.99 after MIR)
OR SPARKLE Calibre Series X460G GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card $194.99

HDD(s): OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $109.99 ($94.99 after MIR)
Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $79.99

Misc: cheap dvd drive, win7 64bit system builders, artic silver

Total before MIR: $1059.92 (with EVGA card), 1044.92 (with SPARKLE card)
Total after MIR: $974.92 (with EVGA), $989.92 (with SPARKLE)

So yeah, opinions, advice, etc. would be awesome. Thanks.


Edit: Forgot to add the promo codes to the stuff in my cart haha, fixed HDD and PSU prices.
 
Solution
mortonww
This is kind of a bad time. President's Day sales are nice, but building on 1156 right now when 1155 is out and about the same price just seems like a bad idea. I would wait for Sandy Bridge to pop back up in April and take advantage, instead, of an Easter sale.

Also, the next generation of sandforce drives will have been released by then (they've already been benchmarked, they're "hella" fast).

At that time, I'd look at something like this:

Intel Core i5 2500k ($230)
ASUS P8P67 PRO ($190)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB ($60)
GTX 570 ($350)
HAF 912 ($60)
XFX Black Edition 850 Watt ($120 AR)
4 GB of G.Skill DDR3 ($70)
DVD Drive: $20

total: $1100

Spending $140 on a case is a bad idea when you can upgrade graphics from gtx 460 - gtx...
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llamasama

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I'd like to be a bit more futureproof than that though. I'm actually planning on upgrading my monitor sometime this year depending on how sales go. I'm not a big fan of incremental upgrades either, so I'm building a PC I would have to do very little to for the next few years.

The PC I'm using now was built in 2006, and I haven't upgraded once :p (Q6600@3.67, 8800GTS, 4GB ram at 4-4-4-12 etc.) Only now starting to really feel it's age lately with games like Rift and SC2 recommending me low-med settings :(. I'm trying to build something that would play everything on Ultra++ for at least the next year or two with very minimal upgrades necessary. When I built my current PC I spent ~$1000, so I was thinking for a similar price I'd be able to build another machine to stand the test of time for a bit.
 
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llamasama

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I'm looking to buy a full new rig, that will be able to run things on max settings into the foreseeable future. A $500 PC that isn't much faster than my current PC isn't what I'm asking for, nor is a minor upgrade that will just be bottlenecked by my aging components.

I'm looking for constructive feedback on the build I put together and spent an hour meticulously formatting this thread around. You're answering a question I never asked.

Edit: Also just to validate my upgrade decision a bit, there was an article posted about something very similar to this a few months ago. The 2007 system in that article is incredibly similar to mine, and the 2010 build compared to it is strikingly similar in power to the one I'm building. The benchmarks speak for themselves.
 
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batuchka

batuchka

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+1 considering HD 5670 trades blows with the 8800/9800GT series and people now laugh at those we both know what is the best move for TS :lol:
 
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llamasama

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Ok, so I hear your guys opinion, but how about for a moment we pretend I never mentioned the system I'm on. Even better, the CIA needs a PC built from newegg using the general guideline and parts they gave me by Monday. Also Jack Baur is too busy saving the president from a Russian splinter faction of the KGB, so he can't help. It's up to tomshardware forum to save me, Jack Baur, and the the rest of the free world. Go.
 
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llamasama

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So no one has any opinions on this build?

I've got a day left to get this order in, and just some basic help would be awesome.

Like, is the PSU I chose a decent one?

Is it strong enough to be a bit future proof in case at some point I decide throw another GTX 460 inside?

The mobo isn't SLI capable, should I consider changing it?

Does anyone have any firsthand experience with SPARKLE? Their card is a bit more expensive than the evga one after rebate, and the newegg reviews sound pretty good, but evga has the best warranty program of any company I've ever seen. They RMA'd a card for me after 4 years, with no receipt, no card registration, or anything. Just a photograph of the card. Can't beat that.

Has anyone used that NZXT case? Are the supplied fans sufficient, or should I be investing in an extra 200mm or two?

The most important question for me to have answered though is this...

Is everything compatible? Did I make any choices that would bottle neck me?
 
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mortonww

mortonww

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This is kind of a bad time. President's Day sales are nice, but building on 1156 right now when 1155 is out and about the same price just seems like a bad idea. I would wait for Sandy Bridge to pop back up in April and take advantage, instead, of an Easter sale.

Also, the next generation of sandforce drives will have been released by then (they've already been benchmarked, they're "hella" fast).

At that time, I'd look at something like this:

Intel Core i5 2500k ($230)
ASUS P8P67 PRO ($190)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB ($60)
GTX 570 ($350)
HAF 912 ($60)
XFX Black Edition 850 Watt ($120 AR)
4 GB of G.Skill DDR3 ($70)
DVD Drive: $20

total: $1100

Spending $140 on a case is a bad idea when you can upgrade graphics from gtx 460 - gtx 570. HAF 912 is great.
 
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llamasama

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Thanks for the feedback.

My mind's already pretty made up, but just for discussion's sake; how much of an actual performance boost would I see from waiting for SB? Say I ran the i5-760 vs the 2500k both at stock, in 2 of the exact same PCs. Running only games as my benchmark, as that's the only cpu intensive thing I use my PC for, would there be any noticeable difference? If it's only going to be a 1-2 fps difference, I can forgo that to be able to play Rift at launch without having to run the low quality render :p.

Also I'm pretty stuck on that case, I've got my heart set on it at this point. Spending that extra money on a 570 would be nice, but if I feel the itch to upgrade, I can always just add another 460 in SLI sometime down the road.
 
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llamasama

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Well, if you can tell me where I can get a full tower case for $0, that wouldn't be a bad idea, but as it stands I have no case to put the parts in, and after using a mid tower all these years, I can't put all my parts in something that small again, it's just a hassle. The cheapest full towers on newegg are $80, and for a near permanent addition to my room for the next few years, I'd like to have something I don't hate looking at.

You're definitely right about the SB, and I would have waited, but Rift headstart is in 2 days, and the performance boost in GPU heavy games seems to be only about 5-7%. I don't play many cpu intensive games, and with a 60hz monitor, I won't be able to tell the difference between something running at 60fps and 64fps.

Thanks for the advise though, got a ton of research done now, and I feel my build is pretty solid :).
 
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llamasama

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Alright, so instead of starting a new thread, I have a quick question to ask and hope someone here will answer it.

I bought the PC from the newegg wishlist I linked and it's all together, posted first try, and running absolutely beautifully and stable.

When I booted it up for the first time, my bios asked if I wanted to load default values or input my own speeds etc. I told it to load default, and thought nothing of it.

I stress tested it with Prime95 for a bit, and it runs a tiny bit hot (mid 70s) under heavy load after 15ish minutes, but never gets above 65 when I game.

Here's where my question comes in. While stress testing, I took a look as CPU-Z to see what speeds everything was running at, and my CPU is running at 3.3 (133 x 25).

I'm not very worried, actually pretty happy. I'm just curious as to what happened.

Did my mobo bios think that I could handle an OC on stock cooling?
Is that a decent OC over stock for a i5-750?
Taking into account the OC and temps I'm getting on stock air, if I got a decent aftermarket cooler, how high could I easily and stably push this thing without too many headaches?

TL;DR MOBO OC'd the i5-750 to 3.3 on it's own, this normal?
 
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