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Should I Click "Buy" on New Gaming Build

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Hey everyone,

Been mulling this over for a week or so now and think I have apporximately what I need for a new gaming rig, but even though I might have a rudimentary knowledge of these things, this will be my first build without help and I'm nervous about it . . . and I value the knowledge-base of this community. So here goes

Approximate Purchase Date: Soon . . . this week or next

Budget Range: MAX $2k . . . meaning, I'd like it to be under, but I'm flexible

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming (RTS, FPS, RPG), Surfing, minor video editing (uploading to YouTube and stuff like that)

Parts Not Required: Already have 2 monitors (HANNS-G 30" or 32" I forget which=primary with a Samsung 22" on the side), keyboard, mouse, etc

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg.com

Country of Origin: I live in the UK, but have a US mailing address so USPS is fine

Overclocking: I will overclock, but nothing extreme

SLI or Crossfire: CrossFire . . . see below

Additional Comments: Quiet would be nice, but not super important

Current parts list:

Case: Fractal Design Arc Midi - I'm pretty dead set on this case and would take a lot to convince me not to get it. THIS REVIEW really sold me on it.

Mobo: ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K

PSU: I'm torn between OCZ ZX Series 850W Fully-Modular 80PLUS Gold and Antec High Current Pro HCP-850 850W. Need advice on which to get and if 850w is enough.

GPU: 2 x SAPPHIRE 100312-3SR Radeon HD 6950 Dirt3 Edition 2GB - I'm open to suggestions on different manufacturers or even different cards (I'm not an AMD fan boy) but most of the reviews and benchmarks I've read recently say 2 x 6950s is the way to go.

SSD: Crucial M4 128GB SATA III

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200rpm

CPU Cooling: CORSAIR H100 - Yes, it can fit in the case under the top panel, with enough clearance for Mobo and even tall ram sticks

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB)

ODD: LITE-ON Black 12X BD-ROM

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium

Total cost: $1852 (give or take 20 bucks on the PSU)

Please let me know what you think, what you'd change and why, what I could do to reduce cost while maintaining performance or what I could do to increase performance signifigantly and hit my $2k ceiling. Please be brutally honest!

Thank you in advance for all of your help and I look forward to hearing from you!

-Chris-



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I would double your RAM to 16 gb because it is so cheap.
Buy your hard drive as soon as possible because availability is going down and prices are flying up due to the floods at hard drive factories in Thailand. The Seagate Barracuda can be bought on Amazon for $74.95 at the moment and you should buy it ASAP before the price goes up like all the other hard drives.
If you are in no rush to buy your components, Newegg is having a November sale in which they have a certain percentage off on certain components every day. You can just wait for each of your parts to go on sale because they eventually will. For example, today's sale is 15% off Microsoft peripherals and 10% off flash memory.

Quote:
I would double your RAM to 16 gb because it is so cheap.

True, but would I ever even touch 16 GB of RAM?

Thanks for your comments as well. I might have to just buy the hard drive today if the prices are sky rocketing and wait for sales throughout the month.

You have 2 powerful graphics cards so you might. Again, it is so cheap right now so I would throw in the extra $60 now so you never have to worry about it.
And yes, buy hard drive now because the Wall Street Journal says prices will continue to increase through the New Year and will not stabilize until late next year.
But the sales this month could lead to a lot of savings on such an expensive build.
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Build looks good mate. Out of the two PSU you listed I would go for the Antec as it has a huge amount of amps on the +12v rail and Antec do seem to make better power supplys than OCZ. Have you considerd a Corsair PSU? 850w will be more than enough as long as the PSU has enough amps.

Also as your considering 6950s have you looked at Sapphire Toxics?
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-sapphire-hd-6950-tox...(x16)-5200mhz-gddr5-gpu-880mhz-1408-cores-2x-dvi-hdmi-2x-mini-dis?utm_source=google+shopping&utm_medium=google+shopping

The Sapphire Toxic 6950 comes with the 6970 BIOS with 1536 Shaders instead of a 6950's 1408 Shaders

The reason why Sapphire does not advertise very much that the toxic 6950 has a 6970 bios switch is because there is no guarantee that the extra shaders will work.

Sapphire factory flash the secondary BIOS to an HD 6970 with 1536 Shaders. This then gives people the potential for even greater performance, rivaling a 6970 since the clocks are higher.

Oh and don't bother getting more than 8GB of memory its a waste of money.

I have the same G Skills memory that you have chosen and its great memory. I also have the Crucial M4 128GB SSD and it kicks arse. Crucial have also just released new firmware for it which has made a fast SSD evan faster.
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