Help me with my build, I know just enough to get into trouble

All its fine.

If your only planning on gamming with the computer you probably overspent a little on some of the parts (CPU and memory) but overkill won't hurt you, looks like a beast you got there, have fun with it!

Thanks to both, hope I get more info, and if anyone has questions about why the HAF 942 is awesome, yets sucks, just ask, I will go into details. Can even upload pictures if that is allowed here. I have had to do some mods to the case, and when I actually complete the build, I will pull it apart, and do it all over again, with my anal wire management OCD coming into play.

The time to ask for advice is BEFORE you order, not after.

You overspent on a 2600 for gaming. A 2500K would have been much faster and cost less.

16gb is probably wasted on gaming. No game I know of will use more than 2-3gb of ram. If you will be doing lots of multitasking or using 64 bit enabled apps, then 16gb is fine. Fortunately, there is no performance downside with extra ram.

If you are using only one 1080P monitor, which is what a 55" tv will be, the 6970 should be fine; no need for a second.

Onboard audio is fine. You could always add one later.

A 1050w gold psu is overkill, even for cf 6979 cards.

If your internet access needs to be via wifi, then a n card is ok. But, cable would be better.

Do you need two optical drives? Would not a BD combo drive do?

Well I went with what ASUS said to use, for the PS. I also used an online calculator, and with all the fans, possibly 12 total, it put me at 800w minimum. Living in the Philippines, finding high end gear is hard, near impossible. Also, it is usually way over priced. I got the mobo and CPU here, the case I had to order in the US, and have it shipped, same as the two drives. I bought two for doing copies of disc's, skipping the "create iso" part of the process. The second 6970 is already arrived, so I can't get out of that one, if I find that doing crossfire is too much, I can always do a second build  

The processor cost 11,000 pesos, well over 200 dollars at the current exchange rate. If I bought the k version, I would have had to spend another 4,000 pesos, almost 100 dollars more, and I could not justify the difference in speeds. (native)

I am obviously using 64bit OS, win7ultimate, so the ram won't be wasted, I do have a lot of 64bit programs. I was not aware that games use less ram though, kind of a bummer to find that out.

Thanks for the input, about the audio, the onboard won't effect performance enough to notice is what I am getting from your reply?

One of the reasons for discrete sound cards in the long ago past was to reduce the cpu load.
Today, with much faster cpu's and multi cores, the cpu impact of sound processing is negligible.
Some users will claim that the sound is better with a discrete card. My tin ear says no, but see how you do with the integrated sound first.

$200 for a 2600 does not sound right, they are $300 in the us.

There is no real downside for overprovisioning a psu. The problem with calculators is that we have no idea how to accurately provide good input.
What growth provision?, What capacitor aging factor? How to assess psu quality? I find a rule of thumb is fine, particularly with a quality psu.

If you need more than a 6970, I would look into a 7970, and market the 6950's

Also, for a high end build, see if you can't fit a 80-120gb SSD into the budget. It will make everything feel so much quicker.

For advice, take the time to read the motherboard and case manuals cover to cover first.

Well if you have not figured is out yet, this is a really over-due upgrade. I have lots of hard drives, bought a new WD 1TB caviar black as my C/OS and programs drive, hoping to get the 6GB rate (yeah right) that it purports to support. I have been reluctant to get an SSD drive, just don't trust them yet. When a platter style drive starts to die, you get hints, signs that it is having trouble, and I have never had a hard drive that I could not get to spin up one last time, and retrieve data from. I have learned, recently about RAID, should have learned this long ago, but I am old, and hard to teach an old dog, new tricks. I bought 2, 2TB caviar green, set up in RAID1 for movies, I had a WD world edition NAS (with 2x1TB caviar greens inside). I learned very quickly that the interface, and the speed of this NAS sucked real bad. So I have moved those two drives into the case as well, and I will reformat them to RAID1 for music and documents. Then I have a bunch of 500 GB or smaller drives, that I am not too sure what I will do with. I might put one in the case, as a download directory, to keep it separate from the system and movies/music, in the case of a virus, I can keep it isolated and kill it. I do a LOT of downloading.

As for being in the Philippines, the prices here are usually higher, because of the crappy import taxes. When I bought the processor, I paid 11,000 pesos, at 44 pesos to the dollar, that is 250 bucks, so I got lucky if you say they are 300 in the states right now. The "k" would have been well over 300 dollars. The store I bought this from, also had the V8 cooler, which was another surprise, and I got that for about 50 bucks, which is good. The PS was 8,000 pesos, nearly 200 dollars, and I may have got hosed on that, but not sure.

I used to order a lot from tigerdirect, but their price policies are worse than the stock market, the same products go up and down always, it is illogical. When I saw the HAF932 for 120 dollars, I was impressed, but then they raised it to 130, then 140, now 160 I think, but it will be back on sale at 130 again, in no time. They are idiots when it comes to pricing, once I have seen a low price for an item, there is no way I will go back later, and pay MORE for the same item. I have returned to buying from Amazon.

Anyway, thanks for the information about the audio, I figured the same, but my friend, even older school than me, swore it would eat up resources and slow the machine down, so I thought I would ask.

To give you an idea of how screwed up the Philippines is, all this stuff comes from Asia anyway, so you would think it would cost less than in the US. My TV, and I hate to admit this, but it is the truth. I paid the equivalent of 3,000 US dollars, for a TV that I could have ordered on tiger, and had shipped to my door for 1,500 dollars. But, I did haggle, which is something that you can do here, they wanted over 200 thousand pesos for the TV, I got it down to 143,000 pesos, with a free 3D blu-ray, 3d shrek starter kit, qwerty remote and skype cam thrown in as extras. Then, for some reason, and I did not argue, Samsung sent me a FREE 32inch LCD TV when I registered the 55inch. Philippines, it's crazy here.

If you do not have a lot of experience building, look at these:
Build it yourself:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/274745-13-step-step...

And although this primarily a troubleshooting thread, the first part contains a checklist that will catch most noob mistakes:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-read-postin...

Just one other thing, you said that I would been better off with the i7 2600k, but even on here, when you do a side by side comparison, they rank the same, native speeds. I don't plan to overclock, no need too, so I could not justify the extra expense for the "k", when it is identical by comparison to the regular 2600.

Look here, maybe there is something I am missing, or just don't understand, and you can better explain it to me.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/desktop-cpu-charts...[4786]=on&prod[4785]=on

Thanks again for the response.

My bad, you are correct. I re-read your original post, and indeed you said 2500k. Not sure if you read what I said about gear here, you don't have a lot of choice, I was lucky to find what I did, at the prices I got them for. If I recall, they did not even offer the 2500k model, it was 2600, or 2600k. I went with the former because they were the same. I find it sort of annoying that any gear that is "by nomenclature" lower than another, can some how out perform something that should , by nomenclature alone, be better. Like the HD 6870 getting better scores than the HD6970, that just should NEVER happen. But it does, and if you don't do LOTs of research, you will find out the hard way, as I am doing. But again, my choices are limited. And I have to buy major component here, because they have to test them, they have very limited warranty, and if I order parts from the US, and the are then shipped to the Philippines, and are DOA, I am just out of luck. The customs costs are too high, so when you buy US, it is a one shot deal, if you have a failure, that money is gone.

When you buy in the Philippines, you get a one year warranty, but that is even hard to get working in your favor. They are very slow, if they do anything at all. And forget about RMA's here as well, because you run into the "import" tax, even on RMA items.

Anyway, thanks for the time and advice. Learned some things along the way, and hope I learn more as I continue to visit this site.

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