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Building New PC - Help Review?

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Hello everyone,

I'm looking to build a new PC here in the next week or two and replace my old system. Looking for a pretty beast gaming rig. I'm looking for a second set of eyes / someone to help look over my list and see if all looks good, any possible conflicts, etc. I GREATLY appreciate all that help to assist making this rig the best it can be:


Case - COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 ATX Full Tower:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
-I really like the look of the case, and it looks like it should have VERY good air flow.


Motherboard - ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
-Did quite a bit of reading up and this seemed to have pretty good reviews and recommendations.


CPU - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz [LGA1155]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
-Looks like the best bang for the buck - great reviews.


CPU Cooler - Was looking at some of the Corsair Hydro liquid CPU coolers. Look good at all?


Hard Drive - Crucial 256GB SATA III SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
-I've never owned a SSD hard drive. From what I read it works just like any other drive. Just pop it in and it works with no issues. Please correct me if I'm wrong in my understanding.


Video Card - ASUS ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5 GeForce GTX 590
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
-Like I said, I am a pretty big gamer, and looking for a beast card to handle everything. This card looks pretty sick, and could SLI in the future. Also I am running dual monitors now (One for gaming on a single monitor, second one has random crap up, Steam friends messaging, TV show, etc). Eventually I'd like to get a third monitor up and running.. just throwing that out there.


Memory - Corsair Vengeance 16GB [4 x 4GB] DDR3 1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
-Good reviews.. any other recommendations? Should I look higher than the DDR 1600? Also saw some pictures of memory fan cooling units? Worth looking into?


PSU - COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series 1200W ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
-Needing a powerful enough PSU to handle three hard drives, possible dual 590's in the future, etc.


Sound card - Feel free to provide any recommendations


Bluray drive - Will pull my Bluray burner from my current tower.

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Hi Photon6768!

You have compiled a great rig bud. No compatability issues so no worries. :p 

The only thing I'd do myself to save money is change the 16 gigs to something like 8 gigs of G.Skill sniper ddr3 ram. Nothing now, nor in the next 2 year future will even start to take advantage of 12 gigs, let alone 16.

Also, good choice on the gtx590 it's a greatttt GPU.

Happy gaming

-Circ
Homebuilt system Expert

2 thoughts. You don't need a sound card - onboard audio is very good these days.
Also, you're not going to get anything much out of a i7 2600k over an i5-2500k. Nothing that you'll be using can take advantage of that many threads. I suggest taking the extra 100 and put it into a standard hard drive for saving your data to.
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Sorry long morning so far =/ I really appreciate the opinion / advise from you Circulate - mean it. Was just typing on the fly with the previous post before having to get back with a few projects I was working on.

As for the CPU cooler - I've never used a "water cool block". I am wanting to keep the CPU as cool as possible.. should I for sure look at a water cool CPU block (ex: Corsair Hydro series) etc or should I stick to air? I've never water cooled my PC's before.. would be interested in doing so some day, but as for now just looking to keep the CPU temp as low as possible. IF you do say the water cooled would be better, where would the fan/block go really? Looked at a few pc's, but haven't found a water block picture with the tower I'm currently looking at.

Once again didn't mean to leave anyone out - appreciate everyone's input in helping making this new rig as easy and beastly as possible :) 

water cooling really isn't neccessary IMHO. Just get a nice copper heatsink with a sweet fan and good reviews. I just never been a fan of the water cooling.

And I'm just foolin around with ya, I'm a sarcastic *** hole :) 
Homebuilt system Expert

My opinion about water cooling is that it's just not worth the time, energy, hassle, and inherent danger of liquids in a PC for the very small gains you get in temperature control over air. The cooler that I recommended keeps my cpu in the 30's even at full load for an extended duration. I don't think a water cooling kit can beat that.

Sounds good. Yeah I've always been 'iffy' on water cooling as my PC is on 24/7. I don't feel like having to constantly worry about something happening, water leaking in the pc, and causing a possible fire.. heart attack thinking about it. I'll take a look at the other CPU cooler linked here, and a few others and see what the best bet is.

I know I'm asking question after question.. but wanting to clear up everything before I purchase :)  VIDEO CARDS - 590 vs 580sli vs 570sli. Stick with the 590 and SLI in the future? or better to SLI 580/570 now and POSSIBLY upgrade way in the future?

Thanks!
Homebuilt system Expert

photon6786 said:
VIDEO CARDS - 590 vs 580sli vs 570sli. Stick with the 590 and SLI in the future? or better to SLI 580/570 now and POSSIBLY upgrade way in the future?

Thanks!


Just my opinion, but what makes most sense to me is the first option; 590 now, and then SLI when 590's have come down to commodity prices.
Homebuilt system Expert

Hmmm. I doubt there's an issue here, but some research might be in order. Go to the manuf. website and get the specs to be sure. Or, if you don't feel capable, I can help you out with that. Just reply.
Homebuilt system Expert

I just did some checking. The video card is 11.5" and the case accepts cards up to 10.6". For longer cards, you have to remove one of the hard drive bays. Thankfully it's something that the case was designed for, so no problem there - just something to be aware of.

Thanks! Just got back to my PC and read this. I'll check in to the removable hard drive bays as that sounds pretty interesting and see if I can find a youtube video on it just to see what it's like before I purchase.

Besides that, I think I'm pretty confident in this build. I guess one last thing that I'm curious about. I've done reading up on this.. but would like to hear from people directly on how easy the SSD is easy to set up. Is it like any other hard drive (SATA), just plug up and go? I can't find anything more in depth than that, but just wanted to get a warm fuzzy before purchasing.

What is ideally going to happen is having the 256gb as my OS/gaming drive (tons of games to install, could easily tear up 256gb). Have my old VelociRaptor 300gb as my other older games / MS Office / random apps that I don't care about speed/access time. Then have a 3tb with all of my backup, school docs, music, etc.

Thanks to both of you again for all the assistance - appreciate it more than you know.
Homebuilt system Expert

Go to newegg and watch the video on the Storm Enforcer product page http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168.... They take you through the removable hard drive bay feature.

As for the ssd, yes, you treat it just like a hard drive, except for the fact that you want to configure your system not to do too much writing to it (wear and tear on the nand modules). You do that by saving your data, and pointing your temp environment variables to your standard hard drive.

Great information to hear - I'll have to do some research on that for those procedures. I briefly read up on that when I initially started looking at SSD drives.

I think that's it for now. If I come up with any other questions along the way I'll be sure to ask you guys again. GREATLY appreciate the assistance from the both of you.

You know what? I have one final question about memory. Do the sticks I have there look good? I know all kinds of different people go with different manufacturers. I've had Corsair XMS for quite a while in mine and the new Vengeance sticks look pretty good.. is there any other better alternatives I should look into?
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