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[jbm715]

Hey yall,

So I have never built my own computer. I've always had a general idea of everything you would need, but I never took the plunge until now. I've created my list of items on newegg that I'd like to buy. I was hoping someone might be able to take a look at what I have compiled to make sure that I'm not making any blatant mistakes.

newegg public wishlist

Also, I was having difficulties deciding whether I wanted to buy a nice video card or just buy two decent video cards and use SLI. Right now I'm set to buy 2x GTX 560 cards. If you had the choice, which route would you choose?

 

[jasonw223]

First of all, good job building a PC! You'll never go back once you've built one yourself.

Now as for your build, I'll make a couple main suggestions first....

1) Change your motherboard, CPU, and RAM asap! The new Intel chips (socket 1155) destroy the socket 1366 ones, and are very similar in price.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

I'd suggest an i7 2600k, an Asus P67 Deluxe, and 8gb of DDR3 1600 (dual channel, not triple channel for this type of chip). It'll give you quite a bit more performance, and be about the same price.

2) Less HDDs, more SSDs! Drop one of those Caviar Black drives, and add something like an OCZ Solid 3 60gb SSD for your operating system, internet browser, etc. It'll drastically improve performance on your machine, and is well worth it if you're spending that kind of money on a PC.

3) Add a Coolermaster Hyper 212+ (or other CPU cooler). It'll let you overclock and have some fun. It comes with thermal paste, so you don't necessarily need that Arctic Silver stuff if you don't want it.

Personally, I like your choice of SLI 560s. They are nice cards and scale well in pairs. You'll be flying through any sort of game with those.

One thing that I would personally change (not really important, but my opinion) would be to go with a Corsair Graphite 600t instead of your fan controller and Antec 900 (antec 900 has adjustable fans anyway - so ditch the fan controller no matter what). I'd also lean towards a Corsair power supply rather than Thermaltake.

Anyhow, good luck with the build!

 

[bavman]

Hey yall,

So I have never built my own computer. I've always had a general idea of everything you would need, but I never took the plunge until now. I've created my list of items on newegg that I'd like to buy. I was hoping someone might be able to take a look at what I have compiled to make sure that I'm not making any blatant mistakes.

newegg public wishlist

Also, I was having difficulties deciding whether I wanted to buy a nice video card or just buy two decent video cards and use SLI. Right now I'm set to buy 2x GTX 560 cards. If you had the choice, which route would you choose?

Stay away from x58. Sandy bridge is a much better cpu.

Asrock extreme 160
i5-2500k 225
6950 x2 $275 each
g.skill 8gb 100
corsair 750w110
haf 922 case 100
1tb spinpoint f3
monitor 170
hyper 212+ 40

comes to $1530

This leaves you room for a 2tb storage drive like you wanted, and the other accessories you had listed in your wishlist.

 

[jbm715]

Thanks jasonw223 and bavman! I decided to get 1 60 GB SSD and two 1 TB hdds to raid 0 together. I went with an i5 Sandy Bridge because it doesn't seem like I'd need the HyperThreading of the i7. I also switched my motherboard to the Asrock Extreme.

I really appreciate the help. Thanks!

 

[jbm715]

Best answer selected by jbm715.