Quiet, powerful, and green build - advice welcome

[PiSquared]

Good evening, fellow [H]ers. I'm trying to make a quiet yet powerful build that also consumes very little power just because I like conserving energy. I already have a few of the components from picking away at random awesome specials, but let me get these out of the way:

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Medium to heavy gaming (EVE, random new games like Skyrim), light video encoding.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
Budget not relevant but super expensive parts will not likely be useful

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

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.
Motherboard, GPU, hard drive (want a 512-ish GB SSD), sound card, DVD +/- RW, CPU cooler (I'd like to use the True Spirit 120 if it ever gets sold anywhere other than Nan's)

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Case (Fractal Design Arc Midi), CPU (i5-2500k), power supply (Kingwin STR-500), RAM (16 GB, 4x4 GB), OS (Windows 7 64-bit)

6) Will you be overclocking?
If anything I'd like to underclock by dropping the voltage down as far as I can get it while keeping it as close to stock as possible,. Green's the name of the game.

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
23",1920x1080

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Over the next 1-2 months; assembling parts as I find good deals

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)? etc.
SATA 6, USB 3 are required at this point. PCI-E 3.0 isn't popular enough unfortunately or I'd want it just to be forward-looking.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
I have Windows 7 64-bit already.

I think I'd like to wait for the ATI 7k series to come out completely so I can pick the best balance of power/efficiency. Unofficially, my goal is to use no more than 4 fans total, but I will not cut out fans at the expense of making my components run hot.

So far, I'm thinking:

Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 (REV 3.1)
GPU: ?
HD: ?
Sound card: ? - good for gaming is nice but I have a 2.1 setup
HD: ? - perhaps Crucial M4? Not sure if another will come out soon

Open to all ideas, suggestions, and critiques. Thanks for reading this far.

 

[Dangman]

I would not go with that Asus P67 mobo on account of the numerous issues in the past that Asus P67 mobos have had. From what you have answered in question 9, you should be fine with this mobo:
$90 - Intel BOXDH67BLB3 Intel H67 mATX Motherboard

HDD wise, I recommend this fast 1TB drive:
$126 - Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D HDS721010DLE630 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive

SSD wise, AFAIK, Crucial doesn't have a new SSD due out anytime soon. The Crucial m4 is a solid choice as is the Samsung 830 series.

 

[wtourist]

Asus P8Z68-V or Z68 Mavimus IV Gene-Z. both offer advantages/disadvantages, see the specs.
I would think you want virtu where video card is bypassed when not needed.
The new AMD HD 7970, review model anyway, idles at 11 watts for one monitor, and seems about as efficient as a top GPU can get. There is also a low usage state compliant no activity.
Bad news is the design is loud at heavy use.
A better fan heatsink or water cooling may be indicated. Too early to tell.

Asus Xonar Sound card DG 5.1 $30 or DX 7.1 ABOUT $60, good clean sound and head phone amp.

How much memory required?
How much do you want to keep on SSD?
Generally a 120 GB SSD will keep OS and 2 or3 games at hand, a green drive hold "other".
I figure you are good for 250 GB anyway, since it is not my money.
Add a green HDD, probably a Hitachi or Samsung 1 OR 2 GB to match an external backup.

Intel, Crucial, Samsung, and arguably several others are very good SSD drives.
The cost of SATA2 SSDs seem to be coming down, so a 128 GB SATA3 drive, a 256 SATA2 DRIVE and a 5400 HDD MIGHT WORK??

 

[PiSquared]

I would not go with that Asus P67 mobo on account of the numerous issues in the past that Asus P67 mobos have had. From what you have answered in question 9, you should be fine with this mobo:
$90 - Intel BOXDH67BLB3 Intel H67 mATX Motherboard

HDD wise, I recommend this fast 1TB drive:
$126 - Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D HDS721010DLE630 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive

SSD wise, AFAIK, Crucial doesn't have a new SSD due out anytime soon. The Crucial m4 is a solid choice as is the Samsung 830 series.

Can that Intel board do undervolting? From a gaming perspective, there's very little functional difference between the i5-2400 and the i5-2500K so I'd like to bring the voltage down as far as possible while going no slower than the 2400.

There will be no mechanical hard drive. I have an external I can use for backups or infrequently accessed info.

Asus P8Z68-V or Z68 Mavimus IV Gene-Z. both offer advantages/disadvantages, see the specs.
I would think you want virtu where video card is bypassed when not needed.
The new AMD HD 7970, review model anyway, idles at 11 watts for one monitor, and seems about as efficient as a top GPU can get. There is also a low usage state compliant no activity.
Bad news is the design is loud at heavy use.
A better fan heatsink or water cooling may be indicated. Too early to tell.

Asus Xonar Sound card DG 5.1 $30 or DX 7.1 ABOUT $60, good clean sound and head phone amp.

How much memory required?
How much do you want to keep on SSD?
Generally a 120 GB SSD will keep OS and 2 or3 games at hand, a green drive hold "other".
I figure you are good for 250 GB anyway, since it is not my money.
Add a green HDD, probably a Hitachi or Samsung 1 OR 2 GB to match an external backup.

Intel, Crucial, Samsung, and arguably several others are very good SSD drives.
The cost of SATA2 SSDs seem to be coming down, so a 128 GB SATA3 drive, a 256 SATA2 DRIVE and a 5400 HDD MIGHT WORK??

No internal mechanical drive - I've been saving up for quite a while and I'm going for at least an internal 512GB drive. My current one is 400 gigs and I haven't filled even half of it yet. But I also frequently erase things I don't use.

Thanks for the the sound card suggestion, will likely get the DG 5.1 card. Price/performance looks perfect from the reviews. I generally hate onboard sound - I wear hearing aids and speech sounds way better with a dedicated card.

For Virtu, the small amount of googling I did shows it being problematic but that's from Feb. Any experience with using it? I'm probably going to wait until the 7k series is out to bite on graphics but perhaps that combined with a 7k card would work best.

Thanks to you both for the ideas so far.

 

[Deleted member 88227]

A 500+ GB SSD is extremely costly. As Danny suggested, go with the Crucial M4 SSD. Here is the link to the 512MB version, again it's very costly.

$736.99 - rucial M4 CT512M4SSD2 2.5" 512GB SATA

Though it's still cheaper to get a single 512GB drive than 2x256GB or 4x128GB drives of the same model.

 

[JoeUser]

AVOID THE XONAR DG...I got one due to it's price, headphone amp, and what would certainly be a better experience than my onboard...nope!

Headphone can only be classified as a volume booster at best and the audio quality was noticeably worse than my onboard...had terrible bass roll-off and over all is just a crap card. Better than no audio? Sure. Better than higher-end onboard? No way.

So either way, get anything other than the DG...you've been warned! ;-)

 

[PiSquared]

A 500+ GB SSD is extremely costly. As Danny suggested, go with the Crucial M4 SSD. Here is the link to the 512MB version, again it's very costly.

$736.99 - rucial M4 CT512M4SSD2 2.5" 512GB SATA

Though it's still cheaper to get a single 512GB drive than 2x256GB or 4x128GB drives of the same model.

Expensive is OK, been saving up for 10 months. Since the HD is by far the slowest component, I'm OK with paying a premium for an extra order of magnitude or three. However, what's the difference between these two other than the transfer kit? They have different performance figures as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148450
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148444

AVOID THE XONAR DG...I got one due to it's price, headphone amp, and what would certainly be a better experience than my onboard...nope!

Headphone can only be classified as a volume booster at best and the audio quality was noticeably worse than my onboard...had terrible bass roll-off and over all is just a crap card. Better than no audio? Sure. Better than higher-end onboard? No way.

So either way, get anything other than the DG...you've been warned! ;-)

Do you have another recommendation? Creative has made me rage with crappy drivers, but that was six years ago...perhaps they've improved.

 

[Dangman]

Expensive is OK, been saving up for 10 months. Since the HD is by far the slowest component, I'm OK with paying a premium for an extra order of magnitude or three. However, what's the difference between these two other than the transfer kit? They have different performance figures as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148450
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148444

Someone at Newegg probably screwed up inputting the numbers. Those SSDs are exactly the same except for the transfer kit.

 

[PiSquared]

Someone at Newegg probably screwed up inputting the numbers. Those SSDs are exactly the same except for the transfer kit.

That's good to hear - model numbers can make your head spin. Any idea if the Intel board does undervolting? Otherwise, I'm thinking of this. Thanks for your thoughts so far.

 

[Dangman]

That's good to hear - model numbers can make your head spin. Any idea if the Intel board does undervolting? Otherwise, I'm thinking of this. Thanks for your thoughts so far.

That MSI motherboard is stupid overkill as well as overpriced for what you're looking for. Unless you like spending unnecessary amounts of money for a larger e-peen, that MSI mobo isn't worth it.

Anyway, yes, that Intel mobo does support undervolting from what I can see so far in the manual.

 

[Ticker305]

good thread, subscribed.

 

[PiSquared]

That MSI motherboard is stupid overkill as well as overpriced for what you're looking for. Unless you like spending unnecessary amounts of money for a larger e-peen, that MSI mobo isn't worth it.

Anyway, yes, that Intel mobo does support undervolting from what I can see so far in the manual.

I'd like to have some USB 3.0 ports on the motherboard if possible - just noticed the Intel didn't though it isn't a deal breaker. Have ye any experience with this board? 10% off + rebate + manufacturer who actually reads the feedback and responds = not bad?

 

[Dangman]

I'd like to have some USB 3.0 ports on the motherboard if possible - just noticed the Intel didn't though it isn't a deal breaker. Have ye any experience with this board? 10% off + rebate + manufacturer who actually reads the feedback and responds = not bad?

I don't factor in rebates until they're actually in your hands. But it's still a good mobo even at regular pricing. However, a big issue for me with that mobo is the lack of onboard video outputs for backup purposes. If that's not an issue for you, go grab it I guess.

 

[Deleted member 88227]

Expensive is OK, been saving up for 10 months. Since the HD is by far the slowest component, I'm OK with paying a premium for an extra order of magnitude or three. However, what's the difference between these two other than the transfer kit? They have different performance figures as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148450
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148444

They are identical drives, despite what Newegg says.

edit
What Danny said.
Reading entire thread > me