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New build. HELP!

M

Maccco

n00b
Joined
Jan 5, 2011
Messages
16
Guy's i've made numerous threads with idea. Now YOU [H] member's give me your ADVICE please?

I got rought $4000-$4500 AUD to build a TOWER.

Now, I was thinking.

i7 980X,
EVGA X58 Classified3 Motherboard,
12GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM, with RAM cooler,
Duel GTX 580's,
H70 Corsair Hydro CPU Cooler,
HAF X full tower case.
HX - 1000W Corsair PSU etc.

Guy's and girls. Please help me make a decsion so I can finally get my pc.
 
Please answer the stickied 'ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS FIRST!" so that we can help you better.
 
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Hardcore gaming.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$3500 - 4500 really.
3) Where do you live?
Australia.
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.
A whole PC..
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
No reusing.
6) Will you be overclocking?
Most likely.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Currently duel 24" Full HD LCD LED.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
ASAP?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? etc.
To withstand loads of hours of gaming.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
No.
 
Which online store are you buying your parts from?

And is best bang for the value a concern at all? Or are you trying to go balls deep with zero care for good value? I ask because I can set up a build for a 2/3rd (maybe even half ) of the price of your planned setup and still get fairly similar performance.
 
I am willing to spend the 4,000 directly on a tower. I can go the extra $500. But I would love new peripherals, desk and chair. But if not, It will have to wait a tad longer.

Edit: I will also like to buy all the gear from, www.pccasegear.com.au.

And Danny, What the best to max out the money in the tower.. Don't mind about spending it to the cent.
 
nxcess, I plan to watercool the whole system. Just I am not sure if I can afford it yet. This will be my project for the next 6 - 12 months. I plan to put every cent I have to it. Just hard to get money, as I am only 18 and still a student.

Although I did look at that case, I thought the HAF X has the most room for a good price?
 
I'm going against the grain on this, but being a financially responsible person I can't hold my tongue on this one.

Maccco,

You are 18 years old, and still a student. I don't care how rich you are, but throwing $4500 at a computer is a big fat waste of money.

"I plan to put every cent I have to it" - here lies the problem. Technology/computers are an investment. They depreciate incredibly fast. What you buy now, will be 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th best in months time. Not only will something bigger, badder, and newer be out, your computer will be a small fraction of what you paid for it in value. There is no getting around that.

"It's hard to get money" - self explanatory.

If you took into consideration the law of diminishing returns. You are paying premiums of 30-100%+ while typically only increasing your performance in real world scenarios by a fraction of that. Sometimes even as small as 1-2% difference. Hopefully you understand. It's one thing to pay a 100% premium on a product and get 100% better performance, but that isn't the case.

Don't throw your money out the window, and get out of the mindset that dumping more money into it, is a good idea. At least in your shoes.

Save 3000 dollars.

Buy a PC for 1500 dollars in Year 0

Year 1-3, at the end of year 3 determine if it's still good enough for you (likely will be) - software changes extremely slow compared to hardware advancements.

Year 3, you decide to buy a new PC for 1500 dollars (much better technology then you currently have, it will be better)

Year 4-6, repeat process above.

Year 6, repeat process above.

Financially speaking, and as someone who speaks from experience. This route is simply the smarter way to approach a $4500 dollar budget for a PC.

All that being said, it's your money, spend it how you please.
 
Last edited:
Maccco said:
This will be my project for the next 6 - 12 months. I plan to put every cent I have to it. Just hard to get money, as I am only 18 and still a student.
Click to expand...
Wait a minute: How much money do you actually have right now for the PC? Are you planning on building this PC over a period of a few months?
Maccco said:
Although I did look at that case, I thought the HAF X has the most room for a good price?
Click to expand...
Nope. There are roomier, better cooling, better quality, and even better looking cases out there for less than or around the price of the HAF X. The only real good reason to go with the HAF X is if you're doing quad-Crossfire or SLI with four GPUs.
Maccco said:
And Danny, What the best to max out the money in the tower.. Don't mind about spending it to the cent.
Click to expand...

Yeah in light of PrometheuSBoxeR's response, I'm gonna wait till you full adress his post before I do any sort of hardware recommendation. PrometheuSBoxeR does raise many good points.
 
Yeah I'm somewhat of a n00b here also -- but I gotta second the suggestion that you not throw quite so much money at it. From what I've read (and I've done a lot of reading lately) the difference in a PC you can build for around $1500 and what you could get for $4000 for hardcore gaming might just translate into a few fps that you won't notice, but in 2-3 years you could spend $1500 again and be back at the top.
 
PrometheuSBoxeR, that is what I have saved up strictly for a PC. I have saved other amount's of money for my certan necesseties for life, School/Going out/General etc. So after 3 years of saving for a PC I thought 4,000 would be a good amount of money to get my dream PC. And as I said, it's a tad hard to get money as I am currently putting all my money aside of other things.
To sum it all up, that 4,000 has been put aside for a PC.
So this 4,000 is in a box strictly for a PC.
So spending this, wont imapct me as it was for a PC.
And I still have saving's for my other necesseties in life.
 
Well here's a middle ground from what I was plannning and what the OP was planning:
$330 - Intel Core i7 950 CPU
$265 - Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 ATX Motherboard
$238 - 2 x G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$838 - 2 x XFX Radeon HD 6970 2GB PCI-E Video Card
$246 - OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G 2.5" 120GB SSD
$278 - Corsair 1000HX Modular PSU
---
Total: $2195 plus tax and shipping

In case anyone is wondering, I'm only recommending that OCZ SSD since I could not find a non-Sandforce based SSD from the site that the OP linked to.

Cases wise, I recommend these cases over the Coolermaster HAF X:
$200 - Silverstone RV02B-W ATX case
$215 - Corsair Graphite Series 600T ATX Case
$250 - Silverstone FT02S ATX Case

The above build will provide 95%, hell even 99%, of the performance of the build that the OP initally listed in games. HD 6970 Crossfire performs as well, if not better, than GTX 580 yet costs $300 AUD less. In terms of gaming, there is very very little difference between the Core i7 950 and the Core i7 980X. So savings of $869 there.
 
Danny, I don't mean to be a noob lol. Just want to make sure I am doing this right.

On that site, the MSI 580 is $649. A XFX 6970 is $419.

If I were to spend the money, would you reccomend tri 6970 over duel 580's?

And I really appreciate your help, so I should O.C. the 950 instead of a 980X?
 
Maccco said:
If I were to spend the money, would you reccomend tri 6970 over duel 580's?
Click to expand...
I wouldn't recommend either option as both are wastes of money: Games don't scale that well past two GPUs and dual 580s perform roughly the same as dual HD 6970s. So both options would net you similar results in terms of performance, costs, power usage, heat, etc. So yeah, both option are really poor choices. Unless you have more money than brains, stick with HD 6970 Crossfire.
Maccco said:
And I really appreciate your help, so I should O.C. the 950 instead of a 980X?
Click to expand...
Yes.
 
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