New Gaming Build

D

darknite

Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2004
Messages
750
A friend of mine wants me to build his computer since i have alot of hardware experience. But i haven't built a gamer in about 3 years. The list is mainly what he want and I have tried to throw a few options in there with it. I have a few questions that i'll ask at the end. I been working for bout hour or so on this.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming, Mainly FPS and lots of Starcraft
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
Didn't really give me one, but he seems ok to spend around $2200
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Germany, All items will ship to APO
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, RAM, MOBO, Video Card, PSU, Sound Card?, case
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
24in Monitor, HP I think - Keyboard, Mouse
6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
will find out tomorrow for sure resolution, 24in 1920x1080 maybe?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
within the next 3 days
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.
USB 3, SATA 6, Crossfire in future,
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
No, will be getting windows 7 64bit

CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070 Intel Core i7-2600k Sandy Bridge 3.4ghz
MOBO - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131700 Asus Maximus IV Extreme LGA 1155 Intel P67
RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231407 G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (2 sets = 16 GB)
GPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150517 XFX HD-697A-CNFC Radeon HD 6970 2GB 256-bit GDDR5
PSU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139014 CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX1200
HDD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136792 Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache
Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160 COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower
CPU Cooler - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118046 ZALMAN CNPS9900ALED 120mm 2 Ball Low-noise Blue LED CPU Cooler

Need a cheap dvd player
and should i get a external sound card instead of mobo? he uses headphones and surround sound.

Price = about $2100

My main questions are:
Can i get this psu instead and save him about $100? I love corsair and will keep corsair. He might want to Crossfire for multi-monitor gaming later. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009 CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-850TX 850W
With the Hard drives, he doesn't care much about SSD. Should i go with another 1TB Black for OS and 1 for storage? ? or keep the 2TB? Personally i keep OS separate no matter what.
Would a closed water cooler be better? He doesn't maintain equipment too much. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181016 CORSAIR H80 (CWCH80) High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
I have others but it's midnight and there are zombies on the tv...

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
 
1) Yes you can downgrade the PSU. However, that's the wrong Corsair 850TX to go with. Go with the updated V2 version instead:
$135 - Corsair 850TX V2 850W PSU

2) I say seperate OS and storage drives. However, don't bother with the 1TB Black as it's outpeformed by this Hitachi drive:
$77 - Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D HDS721010DLE630 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive

3) Stay with the air-cooling setup.

Other recommendations:
- Ditch the DDR3 2000 RAM. You won't notice an iota of real world difference between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 2000 RAM, even if you're planning on overclocking.

- Ditch the motherboard as well: from what you've said so far, your friend doesn't need such a high-end motherboard. It's more than likely overkill. I recommend getting this RAM + mobo combo:
$230 - MSI Z68A-GD55 Intel Z68 Motherboard + Corsair Vengeance CML16GX3M4A1600C9B 4 x 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM Combo

The above mobo should fit his needs judging from your answer to question 9 and you're still getting 16GB of RAM. Now you've saved him $340 with those two changes alone. And there's still be changes that can be done.

- Considering that your friend is only gaming and not overclocking at all, your friend will be just fine with this Intel CPU:
$190 - Intel Core i5-2400 CPU

Unless your friend is doing a ton of video/3d/audio editing/rendering, he won't notice a difference between the Core i5 2400 and Core i7 2600K.

- Case wise, while that's an ok case, at $160 shipped, that case is a tad overpriced IMO. Have you friend look over any of these other cases and see if he likes them better:
$70 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K58 ATX Case
$80 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K56W ATX Case
$90 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K56 ATX Case
$90 - Cooler Master CM690 II Advance ATX Case
$90 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K7B ATX Case
$100 - Cooler Master CM690 II Advance nVidia Edition ATX Case
$100 - Cooler Master HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$100 - Corsair Carbide Series 400R ATX Case
$100 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K58W ATX Case
$100 - Lian Li PC-7B Plus II ATX Case
$110 - Lian Li PC-60FN ATX Case
$125 - NZXT Phantom PHAN-001WT White Full Tower ATX Case
$125 - NZXT Phantom PHAN-001BK Black Full Tower ATX Case
$125 - NZXT Phantom PHAN-002OR Black Finish w/Orange Trim Full Tower ATX Case
$130 - Corsair Carbide Series 500R ATX Case
$140 - Antec Performance One Series P183 V3 ATX Case
$140 - Cooler Master HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$140 - Lian Li PC-9F ATX Case
$140 - Silverstone RV03B-W ATX case
$160 - Corsair Graphite Series 600TM ATX Case
$160 - Silverstone RV02B-W ATX case
$170 - Corsair Special Edition White Graphite Series 600T ATX Case
$178 - Silverstone RV02B-EW ATX case
$190 - Corsair Obsidian Series 650D ATX Case
 
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Awesome. I will change out the PSU, and the CPU, and see about the hard drive. And that saves money. Then he can get a new monitor :)

Between the i7 and i5, if he does do multiple monitors do you think he will notice a huge difference?
i forgot about the hyper 212, i'm going to add that instead and ditch the water.
I love Asus boards and never had too many issues, do you have any other good ones in that area? maybe with the z68 chipset
With the ram, he wanted 24 and i figured that was too much so i went with 16.
Thank you for the case recommendations. and thank you for all the help
 
You won't see much if any (gaming) performance difference between the i5-2400 and the i7-2600. The i7-2600's key advantages, Hyper Threading support and a better embedded GPU, are non-factors in games.

We normally recommend Gigabyte and MSI boards. Those, along with Asus, are what we consider top tier around here.

Honestly, 16GB of RAM is major overkill for gaming. 8GB, not so much. Most games benefit more from a multi-core processor and a good if not great video card than they do with a lot of RAM.
 
So i made the order. Came to 2200 shipped.
Thats the exact board i was looking at when i asked so i got that one.
Thanks alot for the suggestions and i can't wait to build this thing. :D
 
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