Another Sandy Bridge Build ~ $1200

[ROCKETR]

After much debate in not wanting to jump in on new hardware until they go through the typical growing pains, I have decided to pull the trigger on a new build. I was planning on waiting for LGA2011, but I figured I can always upgrade later if I wanted.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
- Gaming with Photoshop and some video editing (not enough to justify the $100 for the 2600K in my opinion)
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
- Around $1200 but very flexible
3) Where do you live?
- Florida
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
- CPU, Mobo, GPU, HDD, PSU, case
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
- DVD drive, HDDs (WD Raptor 74GB, 150GB, and Seagate Barracuda 500GB from '07), RAM (8GB (2x4GB) of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600), Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro (PCI)
6) Will you be overclocking?
- Yes.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
- Two 24 inch monitors at 1920x1200.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
- As soon as possible.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? etc.
- SLi. I am considering running two GTX560s.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
- Yes. Windows 7 64-bit

Here is what I have so far. Feel free to change.

$390 - Intel i5-2500K and ASUS P8P67 Pro
$28 - Cooler Master Hyper 212+
$198 (after shipping and no tax it appears) - Cooler Master ATCS 840 Full Tower Case
$170 ($150 after MIR) - CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-850HX 850W

I like the Corsair 800D but $275 is beyond my limit of $200 that I would like to spend on a case. I have also been told that it doesn't have the best air cooling which I would be doing. The ATCS 840 is over 2 years old which begs to question if there will be an update soon. I still have my Cooler Master Cosmos, but it leaves some things to be desired.

For the GPUs, I am looking at the 560s in SLi. I can still use my GTX285 for the time being if there is thought that the 560s may drop due to AMD dropping their prices.

For the HDDs, I will be reusing my current HDDs that are over 3 years old mainly for the fact that I want to wait to see what the new SSDs will be in the next few months. One thing I would like to do is have most of my storage internal. Currently I use my 1TB and 1.5TB as backups but I also house a lot of my video files on them with the 1.5TB being the backup of those. I also feel like they are in large part due to my current system slowdowns at times. Some programs take longer to startup because they wait for the HDDs to spin up after being in sleep. I just missed the 2TB deal last week on NewEgg which would have been nice. Again, I'd like to keep things internal along with backups as the two external drives (WD MyBook Home and Seagate FreeAgent) seem to cause slowdowns unless there is something I can do to change that.

Will the stock fan on the Hyper 212+ be fine? Will having two fans be beneficial? I read in some places that it is recommended to upgrade to something quieter and that will have more airflow.

The ASUS P8P67 PRO seems to be the popular motherboard of choice. Are there better alternatives out there that I am not aware of? I know ASUS recently released their Sabertooth series.

All suggestions are welcome.

 

[Dangman]

Another CPU + mobo combo to check out:
$385 - Intel Core i5-2500K CPU + MSI P67A-GD65 Intel P67 ATX Motherboard Combo

GPU wise, those GTX 560 cards probably won't be dropping in price since they just got released. I'd wait for reviews on GTX 560 SLI VS HD 6870 Crossfire or HD 6950 Crossfire and see which one is the better bang for the price. Right now, as far as single GPU goes, the GTX 560 is a poor choice considering that it trade blows with the much cheaper HD 6870 in performance and costs nearly as much as the faster HD 6950.

HDD wise, I would still recommend a new HDD since those drives are fairly old and would be outperformed significantly by this drive:
$65 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

The stock fan will be fine. Not that loud IMO.

 

[ROCKETR]

Another CPU + mobo combo to check out:
$385 - Intel Core i5-2500K CPU + MSI P67A-GD65 Intel P67 ATX Motherboard Combo

GPU wise, those GTX 560 cards probably won't be dropping in price since they just got released. I'd wait for reviews on GTX 560 SLI VS HD 6870 Crossfire or HD 6950 Crossfire and see which one is the better bang for the price. Right now, as far as single GPU goes, the GTX 560 is a poor choice considering that it trade blows with the much cheaper HD 6870 in performance and costs nearly as much as the faster HD 6950.

HDD wise, I would still recommend a new HDD since those drives are fairly old and would be outperformed significantly by this drive:
$65 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

The stock fan will be fine. Not that loud IMO.

Says that combo deal is no longer available.

I wasn't sure if nVidia might try to combat AMD's price drops since they were a bit unexpected. I'll probably hold out for a few days on the GPU as it doesn't hurt. I don't want to be a fanboy, but I do like CUDA and PhysX when applicable. There are a few games that I have left on my backlog that use it like Mafia II/Mirrors Edge. A friend who is in the same boat as myself said that he read CrossFire cannot use windowed mode and you can't play a game in CrossFire unless AMD releases a profile for it. We're both new to the option of CrossFire.

You would recommend that drive over any 2TB option, etc? You're also saying I should use that as my boot drive instead of my Raptor? I know it's faster, but I guess I was just aiming for something with storage space while leaving the Raptors there for the time being until I get an SSD within a few months. Going with the F3 would be worthwhile?

 

[tiraides]

Unless you have a Velociraptor, the new hard drives that we recommend here would outperform your (first- through third-generation) Raptors. But if you plan on buying the SSD soon -- within the next three months -- I can understand you going with the 2TB drive and a dual-Raptor RAID 0 setup for your Windows OS.

 

[ROCKETR]

Unless you have a Velociraptor, the new hard drives that we recommend here would outperform your (first- through third-generation) Raptors. But if you plan on buying the SSD soon -- within the next three months -- I can understand you going with the 2TB drive and a dual-Raptor RAID 0 setup for your Windows OS.

Right. I completely understand that the drives you recommend are faster. Those Raptors aren't anywhere near what they used to be (years and years ago it seems). I was curious if Danny was recommending that I use the F3 as my boot drive for now and just forget about my Raptors regardless of whether or not I was planning on getting a SSD soon.

 

[tiraides]

I believe that Danny wanted you to forgo the Raptors for the Samsung, but if you need the extra storage space, get the extra storage space. (If you could afford to, however, get both the 2TB hard drive and the SSD.)

 

[Dangman]

I was curious if Danny was recommending that I use the F3 as my boot drive for now and just forget about my Raptors regardless of whether or not I was planning on getting a SSD soon.

That was what I was recommending.

 

[E4g1e]

That was what I was recommending.

I agree. I had a now-retired 74GB first-generation Raptor that's actually substantially slower than even a first-generation 1TB WD Black (which itself is relatively slow by current standards).

 

[ROCKETR]

Okay, that's what I needed to know. Thanks guys. I'll look at picking one of those up.

I'll wait a few days on the GPUs before I order anything. Currently eying how 560s in SLi stack up against 6950s in CF. I'm tempted to buy the 2GB XFX 6950s and hack the BIOS to a 6970. I have no personal experience with CrossFire, but I have heard there are some limitations with it. Such as it does not work in windowed mode (not really a big deal for me) and you can't play certain games in CrossFire until AMD updates it with a game profile. I had also read that the 69xx series are having driver problems currently. Don't always believe what I read but it begs to question. Can anyone confirm or deny that?

Lastly, I have some AS5 from last summer. Would that still be good? Is the paste that comes with the cooler fine or would you recommend another brand? I've seen a couple other recommendations for thermal paste here before. Thanks again, fellas.

 

[Dangman]

Can anyone confirm or deny that?

Haven't heard of any more than usual complaints about drivers and such about AMD or Nvidia.

Lastly, I have some AS5 from last summer. Would that still be good? Is the paste that comes with the cooler fine or would you recommend another brand? I've seen a couple other recommendations for thermal paste here before. Thanks again, fellas.

Yes that AS5 will be fine. The paste that comes with the thermal paste is just fine.

 

[ROCKETR]

Haven't heard of any more than usual complaints about drivers and such about AMD or Nvidia.

Yes that AS5 will be fine. The paste that comes with the thermal paste is just fine.

I appreciate the help, Danny.

 

[ROCKETR]

Received all of my parts earlier this week and my graphics cards on yesterday (went with 2x Gigabyte SOC GTX560s for $265 each). I built the rig last night, but I didn't have time to install Windows so I'll do that today. A buddy of mine just about duplicated my build and found that having the soundcard in between the two cards absolutely kills the top GPU's cooling. I can't say I'm really surprised, but I had seen others apparently pull this off with no problems. My previous rig's onboard sound was awful in comparison to my X-Fi card so I hate to go back to onboard but I have heard they are somewhat better. Should I try to sell my X-Fi (PCI) to get a PCI-E x1 card?

 

[Dangman]

Yes.

 

[ROCKETR]

Yes.

Any recommendations? I know the Titanium HD is recommended by [H]ard but it's also fairly expensive. I'm also not sure if I could use it with my headphones since it has those RCA jacks. I have "surround sound 5.1" headphones (Turtle Beach HPXs) that use the four jacks seen here on the X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro that I currently have. Could I use 3.5mm to RCA adapters?

Edit: Noticed that Creative is running a 30% off deal on their site right now.

 

[ROCKETR]

I see the Auzentech X-Fi Forte has some very good reviews but it looks like it's discontinued.

 

[Dangman]

In general, I do not recommend Creative sound cards due to the company's past actions.

I tend to see this card get recommended a lot:
$90 - Asus Xonar DX 7.1 Channels PCI-E x1 Sound Card

And to answer your earlier question: yes you can use 3.5mm adapters AFAIK.

 

[ROCKETR]

In general, I do not recommend Creative sound cards due to the company's past actions.

I tend to see this card get recommended a lot:
$90 - Asus Xonar DX 7.1 Channels PCI-E x1 Sound Card

And to answer your earlier question: yes you can use 3.5mm adapters AFAIK.

I assume you are referring to the whole Daniel_K driver fiasco. I completely agree with you on that.

I'll take a look at the Xonar and thanks for the help, Danny. As always, it is much appreciated.

 

[Dangman]

I assume you are referring to the whole Daniel_K driver fiasco. I completely agree with you on that.

Pretty much. That and their crap driver support over the past few years.

I'll take a look at the Xonar and thanks for the help, Danny. As always, it is much appreciated.

No prob.