New build - help needed

[Allen K]

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Primarily gaming @ 1920x1080 and photoshop.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
No firm budget, just don't want to waste money. Rough estimate about $1500? Would prefer to minimize tax, but consider it included.

3) Where do you live?
California

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.
Case, CPU, PSU, RAM, video card, mobo

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Nada, pretty much building from scratch.

6) Will you be overclocking?
Minor overclocking at most.

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Samsung 2333SW, 23 inches.

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Within the next 1-2 months.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? etc.
All of the above! xfire/SLI support is prefered along with SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Yes, Win7 64bit.

So I'm pretty much starting from scratch as I've been using an older Sager D901C for the last few years. Long story short the 8800GTX in that thing died and I don't need the mobility anymore so I'm back to desktops.

I'll probably be buying a majority of my items from Amazon to try to circumvent taxes as much as possible. Components I'm currently looking at are as follows:

Case: Cooler-Master Haf X ($189). Size is not an issue so I'd like to have a giant case for better airflow and to make it easier to work on in the future.

CPU: i7 2600k ($315). I'm up in the air between getting the 2600k now or waiting to see what Bulldozer is going to offer. Opinions would be appreciated here

Mobo: P8P67 Deluxe ($250) if I go for the i7 build, and something similar if I went AMD.

Video card: Up in the air - Sapphire 2GB 6970 ($400) or EVGA GTX 580 1.5GB ($500). Would prefer to have one of these cards as opposed to xfire 6950s so I can have the option to add another card in the future. Any opinions on Sapphire/EVGA vs. other competitors? For the 580, is the 3GB worth the extra money?

PSU: Corsair 850TX v2 ($125). Opinions on PSUs are welcome.

RAM: 8GB Corsair Dominator or Vengeance ($100).

Additional cooling: I'm also thinking about picking up a Hydro H70 ($100) to get some easy water cooling. Any thoughts about this particular unit?

For the other stuff, I have a Crucial C300 128GB on the way as well as a LG blu-ray burner so I'm not considering that as part of the budget any longer.

Using rough Amazon pricing, it comes out to $1,579 with the 580 or a $1,479 with the 6970.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Dangman]

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Within the next 1-2 months.

You're planning this build a little too soon considering that Bulldozer is supposedly due out in 1-2 months. Not to mention that our specific hardware recommendations tnd to change virtually every week or so. So your best bet for up-to-date advice would be to bump this thread again 2-3 weeks before your actual buy date.

Case: Cooler-Master Haf X ($189). Size is not an issue so I'd like to have a giant case for better airflow and to make it easier to work on in the future.

Yeah that case isn't worth $190 IMO unless you're planning on doing a quad dual slot Crossfire or SLI setup. There are better cases for the money out there:
$70 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K58W ATX Case
$90 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K56 ATX Case
$90 - Cooler Master CM690 II Advance ATX Case
$100 - Cooler Master HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$90 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K7B ATX Case
$106 - Lian Li PC-7B Plus II ATX Case
$127 - Fractal Design Define R3 Black ATX Case
$110 - NZXT Whisper WHI - 001BK ATX Full Tower Case
$120 - Velocity Micro GX2-W Silver Classic Aluminum Case with Side Window
$140 - NZXT Phantom PHAN-001WT White Full Tower ATX Case
$140 - NZXT Phantom PHAN-001BK Black Full Tower ATX Case
$140 - Cooler Master HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$165 - Corsair Graphite Series 600T ATX Case
$160 - Silverstone RV02B-W ATX case
$220 - Corsair Obsidian Series 650D ATX Case
$220 - Cooler Master ATCS 840 RC-840-KKN1-GP Full Tower ATX Case
$230 - Silverstone FT02B ATX Case
$220 - Lian Li PC-A71F Black ATX Case
$290 - Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW Full Tower ATX Case
$330 - Silverstone Temjin SST-TJ07B Full Tower ATX Case

CPU: i7 2600k ($315). I'm up in the air between getting the 2600k now or waiting to see what Bulldozer is going to offer. Opinions would be appreciated here

Considering that you're only gaming and that Photoshop really isn't that heavily multi-threaded, you'll actually be fine with the Core i5 2500K if you were buing within a month

Mobo: P8P67 Deluxe ($250) if I go for the i7 build, and something similar if I went AMD.

Very very overpriced. If you were buying within a month I would recommend this mobo instead:
$180 - MSI P67A-GD65 Intel P67 ATX Motherboard

Video card: Up in the air - Sapphire 2GB 6970 ($400) or EVGA GTX 580 1.5GB ($500). Would prefer to have one of these cards as opposed to xfire 6950s so I can have the option to add another card in the future. Any opinions on Sapphire/EVGA vs. other competitors? For the 580, is the 3GB worth the extra money?

Unless you're a hardcore gamer who doesn't give a damn about "good value", ditch the GTX 580 altogether. However I would not go with a Sapphire branded video card either due to their short 2-year warranty and relatively poor customer support. I'd go for a Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, or XFX branded HD 6970 2GB.

RAM: 8GB Corsair Dominator or Vengeance ($100).

Yeah Dominator RAM is rarely worth the money as they do not offer a sufficient enough performance increase or capability to justify their price. In fact with the SB CPUs, you do not need more than DDR3 1333 RAM. DDR3 1600 is virtually indistinguishiable from DDR3 1333 RAM in real world performance. So basically you won't notice a difference between the Vengence/Dominaor RAM and this Patriot RAM:
$39 - Patriot PSD34G13332 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM

 

[Allen K]

Thanks for the advice and the list of cases! I've been out of this whole building thing for a quite while I just had a few more questions.

If I'm going to get into more movie editing, would you still choose the i5 over the i7?

If I go with the 6970, would the 850w will be sufficient to run that in crossfire in the future?

Finally, if I would prefer to max settings at 1920, but if I were willing to run it on medium graphics (ambiguous I know), any estimates on how long you think the system would last? I was running that 8800GTXm for about 4 years and towards the 3rd year it really started showing it's age.

The 1-2 month estimate is a bit on the long side. I've already started buying some of the smaller components and could probably start buying the big ticket items in a week or so. I was just going to wait if folks had insight on whether or not Bulldozer was worth waiting for, but that might start a AMD vs. Intel war

 

[Dangman]

If I'm going to get into more movie editing, would you still choose the i5 over the i7?

If you're gonna be doing an extensive amount of video editing, then I would go for the i7 if you were buying within a month.

If I go with the 6970, will the 850w will be sufficient to run that in crossfire?

Yes

Finally, if I would prefer to max settings at 1920, but if I were willing to run it on medium graphics (ambiguous I know), any estimates on how long you think the system would last? I was running that 8800GTXm for about 4 years and towards the 3rd year it really started showing it's age.

I really can't say. Far too many variables to account for me to even provide a half-way decent guess.

 

[Allen K]

Got it. Thanks again for your help, you just saved me gobs of cash