Building An i7-870 Rig...

[nashx]

Hey folks,

Just joined with the intention of seeing how the general direction of my latest prospective build sits with the rest of you folks, wiser than I :)

OK, here's what I've decided to go for:

Case: Coolermaster CM690 II Advanced
Mobo: ASUS P7P55D (vanilla edition, not the -E, -LX, Deluxe, etc.)
RAM: 8GB of Corsair XMS3 DDR3
CPU: Intel Core i7-870
PSU: Corsair TX-650W
GPU: nVidia GTX 470 (or a GTX 480/570, depending on what the prices are like next week :p)

Stuff I'll be bringing from my current PC are:
Sound Card: X-Fi XtremeGamer
HDD: A pair of 7,200rpm SATA drives, as well as a trio of USB2.0 externals
Optical Drives: A Sony DVDRW
Keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc.

I will be using the PC mainly for audio and video production, as well as general usage and occasional gaming (although, when gaming, I am a graphics fiend). I'm based in the UK. I have no absolute love of any particular brands, although I definitely will be going for an nVidia card as I use Premiere Pro CS5 and would desperately love to take advantage of MPE. My monitor is 22" and runs at 1650x1050, although I hope to upgrade it within a year or so to a 24/26-incher with a 1920 res.

My questions are:
- Is this build sensible? (ie. are there any glaring bottlenecks apparent, and will all the bits n' pieces fit together nicely?)
- Were I to invest in an aftermarket cooler in future, would overclocking be a possibility?
- Speaking of cooling, are aftermarket coolers recommended in general for the RAM, CPU and/or GPU, running at stock?

Thanks!

[martin_metal_88]

If you didn't bought it already I would wait a few day since Sandy bridge( the intel socket that replace 1156 ) will be on sale tomorrow. So yo will be sure to buy a up to date platform.

[draemn]

Ditto, I wouldn't buy lga 1156 unless there are steep price cuts. It's just not worth it at the current prices and the suggested MSRP of the i5-2500k and the +4GHz clock speed on a stock cooler.

[nashx]

Unfortunately, I've already purchased the Mobo and CPU; I grossly overestimated the cost of going for Sandy Bridge. Nonetheless, I don't really ever tend to upgrade my CPU without upgrading everything (this is my first build in almost 2 years), so the platform is not really an issue. The benchmarks for SB are pretty sweet, though. C'est la vie...

[martin_metal_88]

Ho I see that you are a french folks. Same here. Then if you already got the CPU and mobo I would say keep most of the part but clear the 470 from your mind. The price difference is not really sweet for the difference in overall performance and power use. Also, the 570 overclock better in my experience;) I would buy a good aftermarket cooler for the CPU and OC it if you don't already have one! GL with the build and keep us up to date!

[ZZLEE]

Mabe SSD 60 GB to 120 GB

Windows 7 installs much easer on a fresh drive and SSD give nice snappy feal to your rig.

[nashx]

Aye, I was considering getting an SSD, 'twould definitely be the icing on the cake. However, as much of my work consists of working with HD video, large production applications, etc. I was wondering whether the gains I'd see would last/be worthwhile; if I've got 100-200gb of video files on a regular disk, would the boot speed increase truly be worth the expense, considering that I'd be using regular drives most of the time whilst using the computer?

I think I'll wait for the prices to come down (hoping that they do, of course :p) and then reconsider. As it is, I just want to get buttloads of capacity first, haha.

[ZZLEE]

Old fashond Velosaraptor is same price

Win 7 realy like a nice fresh drive fore installing to.

windows 7 will wipe the drive it installs on or sector it installs on.

There will be 2 partitons on the drive it installs on 9mb kerrnel and the rest of the OS

A fresh drive will save lots of head pain ( my 2 cent )

[nashx]

OK, just sent off for the GTX470 (along with an internal card-reader for convenience sake). Looks like I'm sorted, just got to wait for everything to show up.

Thanks for the input, folks! Shall certainly look into upgrading to an SSD at some point in the future, depending on what the market is looking like. Also planning to eventually max out my 16GB allowance on the motherboard, but probably in stages.