Thoughts on this build - 07/11/11

Drop the WD 1TB and get the Spinpoint F3...it's also 1TB and onlt $54. You will not see hardly any improvement if any between 3 gb and 6gb sata.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I have talked to some people that have that Asus TUF Sabertooth and they said that they should have gotten something different. Even though the Thermal armor design has shown to keep the board cooler is the problems people run in to when they screw up their bios and have to remove all the thermal design just to reset it...not to mention whatever else you need to get to thats hidden under it.

If you are wanting to overclock i suggest a z68 board like the z68 extreme 4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

or some of the gigabyte z68 boards

Who needs 16GB of Ram? Save some money and drop down to 8 or even 4 GB

Hi there, welcome to the forums.

First thing, it's VERY difficult to help you without knowing more. Please fill out this form: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261222-31-build-advic... It will give us what we need to give you some advice.
Cheers!

8 GB look for the lowest timing
Ditch the Asus grab a MSI board Z68
Change your case to a Raven RV02-E
Get a GTX 470

Thank you all for your feedback I’ve actually had bad luck with a z68 board from Gigabyte. I recently bought one only to find that there is/was an issue with the audio bus being shared causing Blue Screens switched it out for 2 others (same board) with the same result thus me choosing the Asus board which from my experience with ASUS has always been solid on every build over the last 5 years.

Thanks for the tip on the HD I’ll defiantly update my build spec based on that recommendation if you think I won’t see much of an increase in performance it’s probably worth saving the 20 bucks.

As far as the RAM goes i know 16GB is overkill but for 90 bucks I figure I’d be greedy knowing I’ll never ever use that much RAM but wanting to max out my DIMM slots just because i can.. =) the low profile was what drew me to that particular RAM given the clearance issues some aftermarket coolers can cause.

I was looking to overclock to 4.3ghz on the i5 2500K assuming power consumption and cooling was stable enough to run on a machine that will be used daily.

I’ve read many reviews on the Frozer II and like what I see, if I have to clock down for stability I can but as you mentioned the SOC is a bit unreliable from what I’ve read thus far.

I guess I’ll continue to look for a solid z68 motherboard in the $200 range give or take 20-30 bucks but as i mentioned before my experience with those new boards have just been terrible.

Thanks all I appreciate your expertise and insight!

Best answer selected by FutureVp.

Take a look at that Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 or the Arock P67 Extreme 4...both are really good. P67-$158, Z68-$189

I would also drop the case down to a HAF 912, the PSU to a Corsair or XFX 750, and the Cooler to a Hyper 212+. Same with ram down to 8GB.
With the money saved, get a nice 6870 or 6950 Crossfire setup which will beat the snot outta anything else. If your games only support 1 card, a GTX 580.