Hey all,
Its been a looong time since I've built a rig from the ground up(been in lappy land). So I had some questions (building a rig for near ultra setting gaming at 1080p at 50-60 fps though I don't mind sacrificing some insane levels of AA).
1) As there's no 660 GTX comming out any time soon I keep going back and forth between either using a Radeon 7850 or Radeon 7870 (and taking my first stab at non voltage increased overclocking). But the one thing I've noticed is all newer cards are freakin huge, especially with their coolers(and I'm looking at one with dual fans for quietness/more cooling). If I cheap out by going with a microatx board do I need to fear it not fitting in the 3.0 PCIE slot that they keep shoving up against the CPU/Ram(dimensionally)? One of the boards I'm looking at is this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138352
2) Also where should I be aiming on Power Supply roughly for overshoot? I never plan on crossfiring, and everything should be relatively power efficient but I'd like a bigger PSU for future upgrades (600-650Watts) do I need to downsize it to keep it above a certain minimum capacity?
3) Do I need to run sticks in sets of 3 to get the full effect of the DDR3? My reading seems to indicate yes but many computer store websites just list "dual channel" even though its a DDR3 board so I'm confused.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Heart of the System I'm Building
i5 3570k
Z77/Z75 based mother board possibly the one linked above.
Radeon 7850/7870 with mild OC
7200 RPM HD
Standard Optical HD
3 sticks 2 GB RAM DDR3 1600
Thanks in advance for your time!
Its been a looong time since I've built a rig from the ground up(been in lappy land). So I had some questions (building a rig for near ultra setting gaming at 1080p at 50-60 fps though I don't mind sacrificing some insane levels of AA).
1) As there's no 660 GTX comming out any time soon I keep going back and forth between either using a Radeon 7850 or Radeon 7870 (and taking my first stab at non voltage increased overclocking). But the one thing I've noticed is all newer cards are freakin huge, especially with their coolers(and I'm looking at one with dual fans for quietness/more cooling). If I cheap out by going with a microatx board do I need to fear it not fitting in the 3.0 PCIE slot that they keep shoving up against the CPU/Ram(dimensionally)? One of the boards I'm looking at is this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138352
2) Also where should I be aiming on Power Supply roughly for overshoot? I never plan on crossfiring, and everything should be relatively power efficient but I'd like a bigger PSU for future upgrades (600-650Watts) do I need to downsize it to keep it above a certain minimum capacity?
3) Do I need to run sticks in sets of 3 to get the full effect of the DDR3? My reading seems to indicate yes but many computer store websites just list "dual channel" even though its a DDR3 board so I'm confused.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Heart of the System I'm Building
i5 3570k
Z77/Z75 based mother board possibly the one linked above.
Radeon 7850/7870 with mild OC
7200 RPM HD
Standard Optical HD
3 sticks 2 GB RAM DDR3 1600
Thanks in advance for your time!