$3000 Gaming Rig Help

[foodtrip2211]

So ive changed my mind because of the suggestions that im receiving. Im going to keep my corsair 800d and 1000w psu so my new question would be what the best build that $3000 can make :)

[Keltron 3030]

I'd say this will be a kick-ass build

Newegg.ca - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K
Newegg.ca - ASUS SABERTOOTH P67 (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Newegg.ca - CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory Model CMZ4GX3M2A1600C9
Newegg.ca - EVGA SuperClocked 015-P3-1582-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card (2 of these)

Subtotal: $1644.35

The rest can go towards a WC loop

[JJThomp]

Watercool an i7 2600k and either gtx 580 (not 590) or HD 6990. The ony draw to the 590 is that it is quieter than the 6990 but under water it doesnt matter so 6990 all the way.

[_dangtx_]

sandy bridge doesnt necessarily do as good as previous chips with watercooling.

a decent air cooler will be fine, you can go passive too with an hr-02 for exemple

[GT7R]

A 2600k with a Corsair H70 is a great combination, no real need to W.C.
But bare in mind that SB works with dual channel(no more than 16 gigs), while the upcoming 1366 replacement will work with 4 channels of ram.
If you can, wait. That's what I'm doing :)

[BrutalGreen]

Originally Posted by GT7R

A 2600k with a Corsair H70 is a great combination, no real need to W.C.
But bare in mind that SB works with dual channel(no more than 16 gigs), while the upcoming 1366 replacement will work with 4 channels of ram.
If you can, wait. That's what I'm doing :)

Why do people still suggest the H70? its such a bad cooler for the price/noise levels...it only looks cool and is only useful in very SFF builds where u cant fit decent air coolers like the nh-d14/silverarrow which are much quieter, cheaper and perform better!

Edit: stop enabling mediocre technology

[JJThomp]

Originally Posted by BrutalGreen

Why do people still suggest the H70? its such a bad cooler for the price/noise levels...it only looks cool and is only useful in very SFF builds where u cant fit decent air coolers like the nh-d14/silverarrow which are much quieter, cheaper and perform better!

Edit: stop enabling mediocre technology

Not to mention with that case the GPU really does need water cooling if you want to push it at all.

[BrutalGreen]

Originally Posted by JJThomp

Not to mention with that case the GPU really does need water cooling if you want to push it at all.

yeah, as ive already mentioned the 800D is a hotbox and not rly suited for air cooling! it has lots of places where u can mount radiators and shove pumps/reservoirs in...it rly was designed with custom water cooling in mind!

And also the H70 doesn't rly help this fact as corsair recommends you to run it in an intake configuration essentially pumping more hot air into ur case...

[draemn]

I'm gonna say that you're better off going i7-2600k over the 980x, unless you can get a 980x for under $550. Especially if you're getting the 590 (sorry, I would take that over the 6990 due to noise and thermals) and don't need dual x16 PCIe lanes... you could always get a NF200 board to enable dual x16 on sandy bo, but I haven't heard anything great about that technology. If you're spending $3k, the best thing to do is the multi-monitor setup! I would possibly look at sizes ranging from 22"-24" and not just 24".

-- i7-2600k and over-clock to 4.6-4.8 Ghz.
-- Powerful air cooling or the corsair H60 is pretty good way to go.
-- 8 GB DDR3... pick whatever suits your needs best... aim for something like DDR3 1600 Mhz CAS 9 or lower @ 1.55v
-- 128 GB SSD or a little larger? Somewhere between 120-160 GB is still in the reasonable price category but offers you the storage to put lots of games on it :D
-- HDD... can get anything since this is just for 'storage.' WD or samsung are pretty good.
-- Personally, I think the Raven RV01 (hope I got that right) is an amazing case and that is now my number one choice when you have the budget... the RV02 is a lot smaller, but cheaper.
-- GTX 590 or CF 6970? I've heard a few complaints about the 6970 in CF, but their FPS is just amazing... will work about 5% slower on dual x8 lanes over x16 lanes.
-- I can't make mobo suggestions as I'm not up to date on the P67 boards... but obviously +230 price range.
-- 3x monitors :D

I really would like to discourage you from the 980x if you are using this as a gaming rig. It's over-priced garbage compared to SNB. The only tests where a stock 980x (or o/c vs o/c) beast the 2600k stock is when the application is true multi-threaded to handle 12 cores (6 real, 6 logical) and not by much! SNB offers better everything other than the 2 physical cores that it's missing.

Originally Posted by GT7R

A 2600k with a Corsair H70 is a great combination, no real need to W.C.
But bare in mind that SB works with dual channel(no more than 16 gigs), while the upcoming 1366 replacement will work with 4 channels of ram.
If you can, wait. That's what I'm doing :)

That's at least 6 months down the road... that's a very long wait for someone who's already been saving up that long. Still, there has been little to suggest that triple channel is any faster than dual channel, and outside of photoshop, final cut, etc, nothing needs more than 8 GB of memory.