Upgrading MOBO / CPU / RAM

[Warmacblu]

Hi all,

I am building my parents a computer with my older i7-920, eVGA X58 MOBO, and 12 GB of G.SKILL RAM so I will be needing some new parts for myself. Here is what I have chosen so far:

CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501
RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231568

I am stuck on choosing between 2 motherboards and 2 coolers:

MOBO:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131821
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128552

CPU Cooler:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608018
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118097

The system will be housed in a CoolerMaster COSMOS 1000 so space is not an issue.

Use - the computer will be used for gaming and school (CAD/ArcGIS), and I do not plan on overclocking much.

Budget - I'd like to keep it under 1,000 USD.

Please feel free to recommend any other motherboards / CPU coolers, I am open to anything.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Maxx_Power]

Sabretooth vs. Gigabyte Sniper:

Sabretooth.

It has 5 years warranty vs. 3 years on the Gigabyte. Plus, the ASUS vrm design has been consistently better than Gigabyte, especially in the Z77 generation.

Noctua D14 vs. Zalman Thingy:

Noctua by far. See:

http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2620&page=5

The Noctuas and Thermalrights are head to head competitions, the D14 is very similar to the Silver Arrow (and both are MONSTER air coolers). The Zalman is at least 1 tier performance wise below (by rankings). Plus, I don't understand why Zalman will not allow the use of standard fans, for replacement, or upgrade, or whatever. I think the only glowing review of the Zalman is from Guru3d, but they used a lower power i5 platform to test, whereas FrostyTech tests using both 150W and 85W for the Intel mounts, and 125W for the AMD mounts, and in all cases, the D14 is near top of the pack leaving behind the Zalman.

 

[fpoon]

1. Your memory won't fit under the Noctua... get LP RAM like this.
2. Both of the boards are overpriced. An ASrock Z77 Extreme4 would be a much better deal because it provides all the same features.
For $1000 though, you could get a X79 system:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor ($545.99 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 CPU Cooler ($85.96 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X79 ATX LGA2011 Motherboard ($314.98 @ NCIX US)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($93.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1040.92
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-09-16 12:38 EDT-0400)

 

[Warmacblu]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm not really too interested in a X79 build at the moment, I would prefer a high-end Z77 build instead. I don't think there will be any memory issues, Noctua states that the Ripjaws are compatible with the NH-D14:

http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=compatibility_ram_gen&products_id=34&lng=en#DDR3_G.Skill

I think I will wait for a few more responses but I am leaning towards the Sabertooth and the Noctua simply because I think it looks really clean. I just wanted to get some opinions on whether it's an unstable board or if there are any blatant issues with it, money isn't that big of a deal here.