Building a Gaming PC, Need Guidance

[GTAPC]

I plan on building my first Gaming rig. Here are are some things that you should know:

Budget: $3000, can be more if needed.

Type of PC: liquid cool PC build

Things I'm considering to buy and need help with:

i5 3570K <--Plan on liquid cooling this.
1 X GTX 690 4GB <--Plan on liquid cooling this as well.
Towercase: Don't know any better and elegant Cooling flow tower cases Any Recommendations?
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V
Water Cooling Supplies: No clue , I need the best supplies that look elegant as well.
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 1600 8GB

I need links and helpful tips for building this rig. If you could find the right prices for me I'd appreciate it. Any other information you need from me let me know.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Overall your build looks good. For the case I have the Corsair Graphite 600t sitting next to me and it is a very nice case with lots of room and easy to work with.

For a custom water cooling solution I dont have any advice as I have never done one but for a closed loop cooler you can look at the Corsair H100i should work well for you. For the board if you like Asus I would go with the Asus P8Z77-V and it should work well for you.

On the RAM going with 8GB of DDR 3 1600 for a gaming system is about right were you want to be. I like the Corsair Vengeance low profile memory or the G. Skill Ripjaws 1600 but of them are running at 1.5v which is the voltage that you want to be running with this processor.

Last thing is a PSU (Power Supply Unit), the SeaSonic M12II 650w or Corsair TX650M would be good for you build.

 

[GTAPC]

Overall your build looks good. For the case I have the Corsair Graphite 600t sitting next to me and it is a very nice case with lots of room and easy to work with.

For a custom water cooling solution I dont have any advice as I have never done one but for a closed loop cooler you can look at the Corsair H100i should work well for you. For the board if you like Asus I would go with the Asus P8Z77-V and it should work well for you.

On the RAM going with 8GB of DDR 3 1600 for a gaming system is about right were you want to be. I like the Corsair Vengeance low profile memory or the G. Skill Ripjaws 1600 but of them are running at 1.5v which is the voltage that you want to be running with this processor.

Last thing is a PSU (Power Supply Unit), the SeaSonic M12II 650w or Corsair TX650M would be good for you build.

Thank you for an inciteful tip. I think the Asus P8Z77-V looks nice and priced nice as well, will definitely add that to my list and yes I was thinking along the lines of Corsair Vengeance or the G. Skill ones. I'll lean towards the Corsairs

 

[8350rocks]

Antec Eleven Hundred is a great full tower gaming case, also, look at the Zalman z11plus if you want a mid tower, it comes factory rigged for water cooling (as does the antec). Also the bitfenix Ghost comes rigged for water with a separate compartment for mounting a radiator specifically.

If you're going to shill out all the money for a gaming rig, you might as well go with the i7-3770k so you can atleast get on par performance with the FX8350 (in most things).

Best cooler on the market for liquid system? H100i or H110i from Corsair.

RAM: Yes 8 GB is enough, 16 GB is overkill but you could get it if you wanted for "future proofing". I would recommend no less than 1866 MHz DDR3 from G.Skill or Corsair or Kingston

You'll want the maximum amount of case fans you can put in your case, the Ivy bridge CPUs tend to run VERY hot when OC'ed.

Also, I would look at the HD7970X2 from HIS or the HD 7990 from AMD as a GPU as well...just to compare them. The GTX 690 isn't a bad card, but it tends to run hot, and the AMD cards have more aggressive cooling built in. If you're going to OC those are things to consider.

Motherboard looks fine...

I would recommend a double optical drive setup with a Blu-Ray Burner and a Blu-Ray regular player...that way you could multitask if you wanted.

For a monitor go with nothing less than 1920x1280 resolution keep the refresh rate to 3 ms or less.

With your motherboard you shouldn't need a sound card or ethernet card, though if you plan to use wifi in your home, you may want a USB/PCIe wifi card for about $20-30.

You'll want to get atleast a 1TB HDD 7200 RPM minimum with 64 MB cache, something from Seagate or Western Digital would be great...if you have the cash anyway go with the WD Velociraptor (10K RPM is faster)

SSD would be a good investment, look at offerings from Corsair and Samsung, they tend to be well made. Load your windows OS into the SSD and your games, and leave your HDD for normal storage. Something like a 120GB+ sized SSD should be sufficient.

PSU: Anything by Antec/Corsair/PC Power & Cooling would be good, you'll want a ~750W or similar.

For OS look at Windows 8, it tends to be faster than windows 7 at a lot of applications. If you're adventurous you could also have a partition of ubuntu on your HDD for free and give that OS a try if you want. If you install from windows you can uninstall it later like a windows program and it won't harm anything.

 

[ericjohn004]

+1... If you spending 3000 dollars you at least got to get a 3770k so you can have the best. Especially if you going to get expensive liquid cooling, you might as well be liquid cooling one of the most powerful CPU's there is. I'm not saying the 3570k isn't powerful, it is, I own one. And in a lot of things it's just as powerful as a 3770k. But the 3770k is a fair amount better with anything using more than 4 cores. I just find it hard to believe that out of 3000 dollars you can't find 100 bucks for the best.

You also gotta get the best SSD. Since your spending the money, go with the Samsung 840 Pro SSD. It's the best. For the MoBo, the Gigabyte UD5H is pretty awesome. It overclocks really well, has a lot of capacitors for overclocking. It has a ton of USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0, 6 SATA III ports, and all kinds of other features.

You gotta check this case out. Fractal Design Define r4 w/Window. It's very elegant and you can mount an H100i in it. It screams quality. I really don't recommend spending more on water cooling than the H100i costs. Your not going to get a whole lot better performance than that. Unless you gotta cool your GPU too. But the 690 is powerful enough that your not going to have to overclock it much so it won't be getting that hot.

For you 1TB hard drive, since we're spending money here, you gotta go with a Velocirapter 1TB. It's the fastest HDD there is. And that's pretty much all I got.

Edit: I highly recommend not to get Windows 8. I just got an all in one for my office with windows 8 and a few games, as well as another monitor I tried hooking up to it wouldn't work correctly. And I'm sure there are plenty more things that don't yet work with Windows 8. They are still working out some bugs and the performance incease you get from it is mainly if you use an HDD for your OS. If you use an SSD you won't notice a difference anyways even though it does boot a little faster. As far as application performance, it's pretty much the same. Now I'm really glad I chose Windows 7 for my main rig. Plus it's a whole hell of a lot easier to understand. I couldn't even figure out how to search for a folder when I logged on Windows 8 for the 1st time.

 

[ericjohn004]

I think I mainly don't like Windows 8 because I stick to what I'm used to. So that may be why I'm hating. But the bug issues, even with the latest hardware are prevalant in Windows 8. My brand new BenQ monitor works with Windows 7 but not 8. And I've read that other hardware, old and new, have the same problems. Although I'm sure this will all be fixed shortly, I still love me some Windows 7, and I know it.

So if your really used to Windows 7 and don't really want to change, then don't. If you would like something new, and you like twitter and facebook and all those cute little apps, then go with Windows 8, lol.

 

[8350rocks]

Something like this:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Pk6i

 

[ericjohn004]

Very good choice of parts. The only thing I would do differently would be to go cheaper on the MoBo and power supply. I would spend 200 on the MoBo and 150 on the PSU. And instead I would spend more on the monitor. And I would get the BenQ TL2420TX 24 inch 3D gaming monitor. It's almost 500$ but you look at your monitor ALL DAY. And I much rather look at something beautiful all day than something that just fits the bill. To me, the most important part of your build is your monitor. Afterall, it's what you see. And this monitors colors are beautiful, and it was designed with gaming in mind and by gamers. It has colors that my old monitor never new existed, it's THE brightest monitor I've ever heard of or saw. It's 120hz with 2ms GTG response time. It also has FPS mode and black equalizer for those dark scenes.

I used to have an HP 1920x1200 24 inch monitor. And I saw this BenQ and I really wanted it for gaming. After many weeks of thinking it over, and wondering if the quality would be any better or if the performance would be that much better, I finally pulled the trigger. And it's by far the best purchase I've ever made. I'm lucky I get to stare at this thing for hours while gaming and not a regular old monitor.

Edit: And I didn't even mention the 3D gaming. While 3D gaming all the colors look totally different. Everything is even more bright and colorful. It's quite an experience. And it's all built into this monitor. No cord, and no adjusting an IR emitter. All you gotta do is wear the Nvidia 3D glasses that come with the TX version of the monitor. Don't get the T version as you have to purchase a separate IR emitter. Of course if you want to use this monitor and many others, you'll need to get an Nvidia graphics card. As most monitors I've seen only support Nvidia 3D Vision 2. I haven't found one yet that supports AMD's 3D. But from what I here, Nvidia's 3D Vision 2 with Light Boost is the way to go.

 

[GTAPC]

+1... If you spending 3000 dollars you at least got to get a 3770k so you can have the best. Especially if you going to get expensive liquid cooling, you might as well be liquid cooling one of the most powerful CPU's there is. I'm not saying the 3570k isn't powerful, it is, I own one. And in a lot of things it's just as powerful as a 3770k. But the 3770k is a fair amount better with anything using more than 4 cores. I just find it hard to believe that out of 3000 dollars you can't find 100 bucks for the best.

You also gotta get the best SSD. Since your spending the money, go with the Samsung 840 Pro SSD. It's the best. For the MoBo, the Gigabyte UD5H is pretty awesome. It overclocks really well, has a lot of capacitors for overclocking. It has a ton of USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0, 6 SATA III ports, and all kinds of other features.

You gotta check this case out. Fractal Design Define r4 w/Window. It's very elegant and you can mount an H100i in it. It screams quality. I really don't recommend spending more on water cooling than the H100i costs. Your not going to get a whole lot better performance than that. Unless you gotta cool your GPU too. But the 690 is powerful enough that your not going to have to overclock it much so it won't be getting that hot.

For you 1TB hard drive, since we're spending money here, you gotta go with a Velocirapter 1TB. It's the fastest HDD there is. And that's pretty much all I got.

Edit: I highly recommend not to get Windows 8. I just got an all in one for my office with windows 8 and a few games, as well as another monitor I tried hooking up to it wouldn't work correctly. And I'm sure there are plenty more things that don't yet work with Windows 8. They are still working out some bugs and the performance incease you get from it is mainly if you use an HDD for your OS. If you use an SSD you won't notice a difference anyways even though it does boot a little faster. As far as application performance, it's pretty much the same. Now I'm really glad I chose Windows 7 for my main rig. Plus it's a whole hell of a lot easier to understand. I couldn't even figure out how to search for a folder when I logged on Windows 8 for the 1st time.

Actually the only reason I thought I would go that route was because I heard it was really good for gaming route, I guess I can go for the 3770K, Yes I am going for a decent priced SSD and a 1TB Velociraptor and I'm sticking with Windows 7. Yes the H100i are what I might be considering. I know my budget was stated at $3000, but I can stretch a bit more if needed.

Something like this:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Pk6i

That is not bad at all, but do I really need 1000W Power Supply? I definitely won't be going for a windows 8 anytime soon, What about the Graphics Card, is HD 7990 as applicable to the 690GTX?

Very good choice of parts. The only thing I would do differently would be to go cheaper on the MoBo and power supply. I would spend 200 on the MoBo and 150 on the PSU. And instead I would spend more on the monitor. And I would get the BenQ TL2420TX 24 inch 3D gaming monitor. It's almost 500$ but you look at your monitor ALL DAY. And I much rather look at something beautiful all day than something that just fits the bill. To me, the most important part of your build is your monitor. Afterall, it's what you see. And this monitors colors are beautiful, and it was designed with gaming in mind and by gamers. It has colors that my old monitor never new existed, it's THE brightest monitor I've ever heard of or saw. It's 120hz with 2ms GTG response time. It also has FPS mode and black equalizer for those dark scenes.

I used to have an HP 1920x1200 24 inch monitor. And I saw this BenQ and I really wanted it for gaming. After many weeks of thinking it over, and wondering if the quality would be any better or if the performance would be that much better, I finally pulled the trigger. And it's by far the best purchase I've ever made. I'm lucky I get to stare at this thing for hours while gaming and not a regular old monitor.

Edit: And I didn't even mention the 3D gaming. While 3D gaming all the colors look totally different. Everything is even more bright and colorful. It's quite an experience. And it's all built into this monitor. No cord, and no adjusting an IR emitter. All you gotta do is wear the Nvidia 3D glasses that come with the TX version of the monitor. Don't get the T version as you have to purchase a separate IR emitter. Of course if you want to use this monitor and many others, you'll need to get an Nvidia graphics card. As most monitors I've seen only support Nvidia 3D Vision 2. I haven't found one yet that supports AMD's 3D. But from what I here, Nvidia's 3D Vision 2 with Light Boost is the way to go.

You think the BenQ is good? I was going towards a 3D projector to which I already have but have not got the chance to hook up with my rig, only using it for the movies at this point, but would that be an ideal option or stick with monitors? I'm looking around and the Nvidia 3D Vision 2 kit is separate, Would any time of performance drool over projection or should I take the monitors route

Edit: This is the projector I use: http://www.amazon.com/Epson-PowerLite-Projector-Integrated-V11H421020/dp/B005VONPT8

 

[8350rocks]

The HD 7990 I chose is the Powercolor version, AMD will be releasing their version soon and it should be even better(read: buy the AMD version).

The HD 7990 is more powerful than the GTX 690...tom's reviewed the HIS and Powercolor versions. HIS calls theirs the HD 7970X2 not the HD 7990 btw. Powercolor's HD 7990 draws a LOT of power at peak...I would recommend the 1000w PSU to have the extra power available...the AMD version will be far more efficient though than the powercolor version. I would keep the 1000W PSU, you could get a different brand...I chose that one because antec makes a good one and it's 80 PLUS platinum certified so it will be super efficient, though feel free to ad lib there as you might want. PC Power & Cooling makes good product too with an exceptional warranty also, and Corsair makes a good product as well.

Win7 is fine, I chose win8 just because...

EDIT: Projectors are awesome! The resolution on a Monitor is better though in terms of fine details. Unless you have a really bad@$$ projector with HDMI 1080p/1440p capability.

 

[manofchalk]

I suggest you make a separate thread about the custom water-cooling aspect of the build, it requires a lot of explanation and could turn off people who would otherwise reply to the thread.
Read through this before you make the other thread. It will explain components and concepts in regards to water-cooling and will give you a general idea of what your doing.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky

If your going to be cooling a mainstream chip and a 690, that's roughly 400W you'l need to deal with after overclocking. You will need a case that can at least support a triple radiator.

 

[ericjohn004]

+1... If you spending 3000 dollars you at least got to get a 3770k so you can have the best. Especially if you going to get expensive liquid cooling, you might as well be liquid cooling one of the most powerful CPU's there is. I'm not saying the 3570k isn't powerful, it is, I own one. And in a lot of things it's just as powerful as a 3770k. But the 3770k is a fair amount better with anything using more than 4 cores. I just find it hard to believe that out of 3000 dollars you can't find 100 bucks for the best.

You also gotta get the best SSD. Since your spending the money, go with the Samsung 840 Pro SSD. It's the best. For the MoBo, the Gigabyte UD5H is pretty awesome. It overclocks really well, has a lot of capacitors for overclocking. It has a ton of USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0, 6 SATA III ports, and all kinds of other features.

You gotta check this case out. Fractal Design Define r4 w/Window. It's very elegant and you can mount an H100i in it. It screams quality. I really don't recommend spending more on water cooling than the H100i costs. Your not going to get a whole lot better performance than that. Unless you gotta cool your GPU too. But the 690 is powerful enough that your not going to have to overclock it much so it won't be getting that hot.

For you 1TB hard drive, since we're spending money here, you gotta go with a Velocirapter 1TB. It's the fastest HDD there is. And that's pretty much all I got.

Edit: I highly recommend not to get Windows 8. I just got an all in one for my office with windows 8 and a few games, as well as another monitor I tried hooking up to it wouldn't work correctly. And I'm sure there are plenty more things that don't yet work with Windows 8. They are still working out some bugs and the performance incease you get from it is mainly if you use an HDD for your OS. If you use an SSD you won't notice a difference anyways even though it does boot a little faster. As far as application performance, it's pretty much the same. Now I'm really glad I chose Windows 7 for my main rig. Plus it's a whole hell of a lot easier to understand. I couldn't even figure out how to search for a folder when I logged on Windows 8 for the 1st time.

Actually the only reason I thought I would go that route was because I heard it was really good for gaming route, I guess I can go for the 3770K, Yes I am going for a decent priced SSD and a 1TB Velociraptor and I'm sticking with Windows 7. Yes the H100i are what I might be considering. I know my budget was stated at $3000, but I can stretch a bit more if needed.

Something like this:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Pk6i

That is not bad at all, but do I really need 1000W Power Supply? I definitely won't be going for a windows 8 anytime soon, What about the Graphics Card, is HD 7990 as applicable to the 690GTX?

Very good choice of parts. The only thing I would do differently would be to go cheaper on the MoBo and power supply. I would spend 200 on the MoBo and 150 on the PSU. And instead I would spend more on the monitor. And I would get the BenQ TL2420TX 24 inch 3D gaming monitor. It's almost 500$ but you look at your monitor ALL DAY. And I much rather look at something beautiful all day than something that just fits the bill. To me, the most important part of your build is your monitor. Afterall, it's what you see. And this monitors colors are beautiful, and it was designed with gaming in mind and by gamers. It has colors that my old monitor never new existed, it's THE brightest monitor I've ever heard of or saw. It's 120hz with 2ms GTG response time. It also has FPS mode and black equalizer for those dark scenes.

I used to have an HP 1920x1200 24 inch monitor. And I saw this BenQ and I really wanted it for gaming. After many weeks of thinking it over, and wondering if the quality would be any better or if the performance would be that much better, I finally pulled the trigger. And it's by far the best purchase I've ever made. I'm lucky I get to stare at this thing for hours while gaming and not a regular old monitor.

Edit: And I didn't even mention the 3D gaming. While 3D gaming all the colors look totally different. Everything is even more bright and colorful. It's quite an experience. And it's all built into this monitor. No cord, and no adjusting an IR emitter. All you gotta do is wear the Nvidia 3D glasses that come with the TX version of the monitor. Don't get the T version as you have to purchase a separate IR emitter. Of course if you want to use this monitor and many others, you'll need to get an Nvidia graphics card. As most monitors I've seen only support Nvidia 3D Vision 2. I haven't found one yet that supports AMD's 3D. But from what I here, Nvidia's 3D Vision 2 with Light Boost is the way to go.

You think the BenQ is good? I was going towards a 3D projector to which I already have but have not got the chance to hook up with my rig, only using it for the movies at this point, but would that be an ideal option or stick with monitors? I'm looking around and the Nvidia 3D Vision 2 kit is separate, Would any time of performance drool over projection or should I take the monitors route

Edit: This is the projector I use: http://www.amazon.com/Epson-PowerLite-Projector-Integrated-V11H421020/dp/B005VONPT8

I guess it all depends. I've never seen a projector much less a 3D projector in person so I don't know what kind of quality you can get out of them. If your whole family is watching the 3D movies and stuff, it makes since for a projector or you could always hook up your PC to a big screen TV. I would imagine a monitor is higher quality than a projector although I'm not sure. If no one but yourself is gaming at once or watching movies at once, I'd go with a 24 or 27 inch 3D monitor, preferably the BenQ. If you need perfectly accurate colors this may not be the monitor for you. It makes the colors look really pretty and vibrant and bright, which is why I like it for gaming and other stuff, but if you need 100% accuracy then go with a nice 400$ Dell IPS.

Some reviews don't rate this monitor as high as it should because of color accuracy. But for gaming, who the hell cares? It has everything you could possibly want in a gaming monitor. And you can make it look however you want it to look too. It's SO freaking BRIGHT you just can't imagine. I have to turn it all the way low at night while online. I think the brightness is like 350cdm or however they measure that. And most monitors are 250, some are 300, I haven't seen another that was 350 although I only looked for a few minutes. And I know that a monitor that's 400 just doesn't exist. So it's the brightest you can possibly get. It also has a matte finish so you don't get that annoying mirror look. I can go on and on about it but I'll stop there.

So yeah, I'd go with a monitor if it's just for you, and they also offer a 27 inch version if you want to go bigger. But if it's for your whole family then stick with your projector as I can't imagine an entire family watching a movie off of even a 27 inch monitor. This monitor also is adjustable left, right, up, down, tilt down, tilt up. So every which way you can think of.

Edit: From what I read the AMD 7990 is a little bit better in gaming that a 690. But with AMD you'll have trouble sometimes getting the 3D to be compatible with any monitor. THat's something else you'll need to check. Does that monitor you have support Nvidia 3D Vision 2 or not? THe benq gaming monitor specifically supports Nvidia 3D Vision 2. Also Nvidia is usually a little better with driver updates, and since the 7990 and 690 are both dual GPU cards, driver updates are very important as you won't get good performance at all on dual GPU cards without proper driver. Also a lot more people own GTX690's than 7990's. So for the little extra performance you do get I don't think it's worth it when you consider 3D, Drivers, and performance. Not to mention you get PhysX technology and adaptive Vsync with the Nvidia card too. PhysX is only in a small number of games but it makes the game look 100% better. Popular games like Borderlands 2 and Batman have PhysX.

So it all depends, do you want the max performance, along with some free games possibly, maybe a little better cooling, or do you want updates, better 3D compatability, PhysX, and a more widely accepted card? Nvidia is also known to have less runt/dropped frames when using SLIed cards, which the 7990 and 690 are. So that performance difference may not even exist, but that's a different story entirely.