Another new build

[Grimm Fool]

My current PC is a Q6600 on an ABIT IP35 pro with 4 GB of ram with 4 HDDs and 2 DVD drives (thanks Witcher 2 for being incompatible with some drives), an asus radeon 6870 1 GB, corsair 650 watt supply, in a antech P180 case My parents don't need much of a computer (light gaming: heroes of might and magic and email/internet), so I am going to give them this PC minus some of the hard drives. To this end I need to build another PC.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? Etc

Video games (1080) and watching movies at the same time (for lower graphical games). I'd like this computer to work for 3 years without major upgrades. Another stranger desire is to have the digital and analog sound cards on the CPU separate so I can play games on the analog chip with my logitech Z-5500 and use the fiber output with Foobar2000 to play music on my stereo receiver. Any idea if this is standard? It works my current board that uses a realtek .​

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

~1000 but I'd like to get a good price to performance ratio. I am flexable​

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.

Dallas​

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word

CPU, Motherboard, ram, SSD (maybe but for cache only), PSU, cpu heatsink, video card ​

5)If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especiallyspecificabout the power supply. List make and model.

I currently have an empty Thor v2 case and some 7200rpm hard drives, as well has a a DVD drive
​

6) Will you be overclocking?

I'd like to give it a go.​

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?

1080 (I game on 1 monitor), however I have 2x 24” 1080 monitors, I sometime hook up a 1080 TV to it as well.
​

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

Inside of a week or two for part ordering. I can start ordering parts now​

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? Etc.

I will never use SLI. I might use USB 3.0. Firewire is a non issue as well as wireless. I do need lots of eSATA as I already have 4 HDDs +1 DVD and am looking to add a SSD. I need a fiber audio out and at least 6 (5.1) RCA outputs. ​

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?

yes/win 7​

Parts I am looking into
PSU: Antec High Current Gamer Series HCG-750 It's on sale for $75. Seems to be more than enough.
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge $220 This seems pretty standard for builds.
Heatsink: ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-B 135mm This is just a guess, you folks know better. ~$80
Mboard: Maybe MSI Z77A-G43 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 ~110. I don't need SLI, but I do need it to be stable and have the 6 RCA's and a fiber output.
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB This was recommended here on the forums. Is it correct that games won't need more than 8GB for a few years. I also looked at mushkin Low profile is preferred. $40
SSD:SansDisk ReadyCache I really seek advice here. It looks like the Z77 chipset can do a cache drive on its own, but a dedicated option may be better. Unfortunately this isn't 64 GB. $50
Graphics Card: GIGABYTE GV-R795WF3-3GD Radeon HD 7950 I would probably buy hitman and farcry anyway. $299, This may not be quite as good for price to performance ratio.
For the future could someone recommend a cheaper, PCI/PCI-EX SATA raid card? This would be for adding more storage. Would rosewell work. Seems like these should just be another set of the motherboard's raid controller, but on a PCI Ex bus.

Thanks for the help! I always like to run my build by you folks before I go build it.

 

[tiraides]

Go to the Dallas/Richardson Micro Center and buy the following

$170 - Intel Core i5-3570K (MC in-store special)
$105 - Asus P8Z77-V LK (includes $40 instant discount when purchased alongside processor)
$26 - Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (performs as well as the Zalman for much less)
$190 - Crucial M4 256GB SSD (one of the better SSDs in the market)
=====
$491 - Subtotal from Micro Center (not including any taxes or rebates)

Grab the following from NewEgg:

$75 - Antec HCG-750 (grab this tonight, if nothing else)
$38 - G.Skill Ares 2x4GB DDR3 1600 (a slightly cheaper low-profile RAM option)
$300 - Gigabyte HD 7950 (you did well here)
=====
$413 - Subtotal from NewEgg (not including any shipping, taxes, or rebates)

$904 - Total for this build (not including any shipping, taxes, or rebates)

For what you want to do with your audio, I recommend buying a separate sound card. However, I can't really recommend any specific sound card or SATA/RAID card as I haven't researched them lately. (If it makes any difference, the Asus P8Z77-V LK has 7.1 audio with a digital out and six SATA ports with two of them being SATA 6Gb/s.)

A good SSD like the Crucial M4 can beat any HDD available, so I recommend buying one to use as your primary drive. You do not need a "cache drive" as various benchmarks have shown that an SSD performs best as a primary drive than it does as a "support" drive.

 

[Grimm Fool]

I went ahead and purchased the PSU. I have looked at reviews on newegg for raid cards and there seems to be a lot of negative reviews for the cheaper (non server) cards. Storing more information on mechanical drives shouldn't require a lot out of raid card though. I may need to look for a motherboard with more than 6 sata connections. There doesn't seem to be alot of mboards with that many connections for the intel Z77.ASUS P8Z77-V has them but is fairly pricey. ASRock Z77 Extreme4 has a lot of features, but I am unsure about the brand as far as driver support and what not. The price is right for it though. I am leaning toward a GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-D3H as that brand has been around for a while. Any opinion? Is Asus really necessary for quality?

That's very good to know about the CPU heat sink, and I guess ram is still ram. Get good timing and DDR3 1600.

It would be kind of a shame to get a sound card. A S/PDIF connection to a reciever shouldn't need to be all that good, after all it is just digital bits. The receivers DACs are really where you need the quality. Though there are some sub 50 dollar sound cards.

That leaves me with the SSD. I assume a dedicated opposed to cache SSD is much more speed and worth the investment? Would I be right to guess that the MTBF ratings are BS? They are all about the same reliability? The one you suggested seems to have a lower read and significantly lower sequential write speeds, than say a OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G. Whats up with that?

 

[Dangman]

I have looked at reviews on newegg for raid cards and there seems to be a lot of negative reviews for the cheaper (non server) cards. Storing more information on mechanical drives shouldn't require a lot out of raid card though.

Because those non server cards are all cheaply made. There's a reason why server grade cards cost so much money. In addition, yes storing info does require a lot of the RAID card depending on what RAID type you're going for. It's all very complicated how that handles. As such, cheaply low grade cards can't handle.

I may need to look for a motherboard with more than 6 sata connections. There doesn't seem to be alot of mboards with that many connections for the intel Z77.ASUS P8Z77-V has them but is fairly pricey. ASRock Z77 Extreme4 has a lot of features, but I am unsure about the brand as far as driver support and what not. The price is right for it though. I am leaning toward a GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-D3H as that brand has been around for a while. Any opinion? Is Asus really necessary for quality?

That Asus is indeed pricey. That AsRock mobo does have quite a following. But I generally don't recommend AsRock. Others do though. As for that Gigabyte, that actually would get my vote. Asus isn't necessary for quality.

That leaves me with the SSD. I assume a dedicated opposed to cache SSD is much more speed and worth the investment? Would I be right to guess that the MTBF ratings are BS? They are all about the same reliability? The one you suggested seems to have a lower read and significantly lower sequential write speeds, than say a OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G. Whats up with that?

Yes go for a dedicated SSD. Yes the MTBF ratings are more or less unhelpful. Those speeds really don't tell you the actual noticeable performance of the SSD. It's more or less marketing crap. It's the random read/write speeds that really determines how fast a SSD is. In this case, I wouldn't recommend OCZ due to OCZ's shadyness in the past when it came to SSDs and their poor customer support.

 

[Grimm Fool]

So I got the parts and built it. I went with the GA-Z77X-D3H mother board from gigabyte, the 22nm I5 processor, the gigabyte HD 7950, and kingston hyper X 250 gb HD, HCG-750 PSU. The cooler master hyper 212. There are some other spinning harddrives I kept in the system as well. This was all installed in a THOR case. It didn't work at first, no power or anything when I clicked the power button. I said oh crap and installed a different PSU. It didn't work either. I then re installed the antec PSU and reconnected all the connection I could find. It worked!

I ran TF2 and the new hitman fine no issues. The CPU heat sink was not really even warm. The GPU heatsink wasn't hot, but was warm. I did have one issue. A blue screen preceded by some funny colors on the monitors. I restarted and I was good to go again. I did have some issues and had to repair windows 7 when it tried to boot into an old windows install, but nothing showstopping. So it worked for about a week.

Obviously I am writing this because I do have a serious issue now. I got the funny color video thing again followed by blue screen (no i didn't write down the bluescreen) I restarted again. Windows came up fine. I updated the drivers for the GPU. They installed (no reboot necessary). 10 minutes later (the PC was idle) and it turned off. It wouldn't turn on again (no fans, LEDs). If i unplugged the PSU and plugged it in I could get a brief flash of red LEDs then it wouldn't flash again if the button was pressed. I had to unplug/plug to get again. I uninstalled the GPU and tried it again, nothing changed. I then unplugged everything but some fans from the PSU and did the paper clip trick and the PSU turned on and the fans spun. I pulled out the Bboard and set it up without video card (using internal) on the Mboard box. It now restarts constantly when on. The fans spin up for a sec then it kind of brown outs and tries to spin up again.


Please, anybody have any idea?

 

[Dangman]

What RAM are you using? Did you reset CMOS? Can you try a different set of RAM?

Alos try a different PSU if you can. If different RAM and PSU still exhibit the same issues, it's more than likely the mobo at that point.

 

[Grimm Fool]

I forgot to add I am using Ballistix crucial ram PC12800. I moved the ram and reduced it down to 1x4 opposed to 2x4gb. I tried a different power supply (corsair 650W). There was no change, except it seemed to go into short circuit protection instead of the brown out affect with the larger PSU. (I had to unplug and replug in PSU to get another flash of LED.) I do not have another set of RAM to try.

So it sounds like Mboard? I will try to return it to microcenter. Any idea on whether the GPU is still ok or could it still be bad?

Edit: i did remove the CMOS battery for a few minutes then re-installed. I also turned it on was without a cmos batter (i was worried it would still try to use the not installed GPU)

 

[Dangman]

If the system is still malfunctioning without that dedicated GPU, then that GPU probably isn't the issue. However test it in another PC if you truly want to be sure about its quality.

Sounds like a mobo issue to me.