3k budget, what specs would you put? (unanswered)

[drumsrule786]

If you are confident in your PC building capabilities you can do some awesome custom liquid cooling on that for a few hundred bucks. Something like a triple rad (which fit nicely on the top of a corsair 800D) and a switftech cpu block. GPU is another story, you can buy EVGA cards with water blocks already on (but they only do NVIDIA) but as far as I know you would have to buy an aftermarket block for an AMD card. Don't really follow AMD too much though so I can't say for sure. Anyway here are my suggestions

Core i7-2600K (going 2011 is a huge waste of money unless you do lots of video editing and stuff like that)
z68 motherboard
16GB 1600 or 1866MHZ memory
4X 2TB 7200RPM hard drives in RAID 5, of course this is a little overkill but I have tons of movies on my computer and you have a nice budget so why not?
120GB vertex 3 max IOPS for system drive
corsair 800D case
AMD: wait for 5970 or go for dual or triple crossfire 6970's
NVIDIA: triple 570's would be cheap and potent for 1920x1080 gaming. or dual 580s if you wanna go with that.
Corsair H100 for cpu, or custom liquid cooling if you feel comfortable doing that.

[Marwan5418]

I would wanna do water cooling but I'm worried about the leaks and how I would drain it with out getting any liquid on my pc

[Masteroderus]

To drain a water cooling loop without making a mess you need to design it properly such that you maximize the flow of water, and you make a t line at the lowest part of your loop with a stop plug or valve. A good loop should drain with minimal case tipping.

[Dzzope]

Considering the res your using, I'm quite surprised at most of the suggestions here.

Single 580 or 7970 would be more than enough.

Personally, if I had that kind of budget I'd get:
$320 ?? i7 2600k (there are none listed on newegg)
$330 Asus ROG z68 Mobo (why not if you want to spend it, go lower and save ~$100)
$150 16 GB Ram (why not with the budget)
$600 ?? Radion 7970 (you have the budget and it kicks ass off everything else out currently. see prices when they are release vs a pair of 580's maybe)
$254 128GB OCZ Synapse (caching drive, really fast and you don't have to choose what to put on it, most used gets cached)
$326 2X 2TB HDD in Raid (personal choice on raid here, data security or speed for your media)
$220 SeaSonic X-SERIES X-1050 (means you can drop in a second card without issue)
$100 If a all in 1 cooler (hydro type) I'd go a H80.. (see issues with H100)
$170 Case, Personal preference, I like the Corsair Graphite 600T Limited Edition White.

Plus

$899 SAMSUNG S27A850D (2560 x 1440) read the review here for the reasoning for this. :)

Total $3369 (prices from newegg)

Note:
Save some bucks in any of many places if you want that monitor (I know I would but it's all choice.)..
1 hdd,
lower end Mobo,
8gb ram
possibly i5 2500k if your not into rendering or encoding or the like (shouldn't see any noticeable difference in anything else)
Different cooler.

P.S I didn't look at any combo deals.

[Marwan5418]

is it true that ocz crash a lot though?

[oOoSMOKEoOo]

you have a nice budget. im building in march hopfuly here is what im going with so far

Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SSD
Corsair Obsidian 800D Case
ASUS Rampage IV Extreme with Battlefield 3
Samsung SH-B123A 12X Blu-ray DVD Combo Drive
Corsair Vengeance CML16GX3M4X1600C8 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 ( may change depens on what latancy comes out )
Corsair Hydro Series H100 CPU Cooler
Intel Core i7 3930K
Antec High Current Pro 1200W Power Supply HCP-1200
HIS Radeon HD6990 4GB

i will most likely change to 7000 series cards when tey com out depending on price
this build is costing me around $3,500 aud with my monitor
i wil be gettig a 30'' myself but you could go with a Samsung S27A350H 27in Widescreen LED Monitor
but running 1080 seems like a aste if your getting a rly high end gpu

[Dzzope]

Sandforce can have issues.. OCZ no worse than others (they are just more popular).

Not sure about the current state of things with it. But OCZ have very good customer support.

There are a few threads here with info as to the issues people see and possible causes / solutions.

[Dzzope]

Originally Posted by oOoSMOKEoOo

i will most likely change to 7000 series cards when tey com out depending on price

i wil be gettig a 30'' myself but you could go with a Samsung S27A350H 27in Widescreen LED Monitor
but running 1080 seems like a aste if your getting a rly high end gpu

Jan the 9th officially, availability may be questionable though (and price if there is a lack of supply)


This is why I suggested the monitor too. :)

[AkG]

With a 3K budget...get a 256GB Solid State Drive. I personally would go with a Crucial m4 or Corsair Performance Pro.

Forget Raid'ing hard drives. Not worth the effort or risk. Get a one or two of the three platter'ed, 3TB Seagate Barracuda's (the new ones WITHOUT the "XT" in the name as they are the older gens). Very fast hdds.

NV 580 (will most likely get a price drop soon as the ATI 7 actually hit stores)...OR ATI 7 series for the GPU (IMHO its over priced right now as its a paper launch...but expect to spend a good 2bills or more for it over the 580).
Sabertooth mobo (still my fav of the SB mobos even if it doesnt have Intel SRT abilities)
i7 2600K
Corsair H80 cooler
Cooler Master HAF-X case
16GB Corsair Vengeance low profile ram
XFX 850 or Corsair PRO Gold 850 or Seasonic X850. No need for a 1kw beast UNLESS you plan on Xfiring.

Monitor...either the 27" sammy OR the Dell U27. Pros and cons to each. Both are great monitors. IF you stick with 1080p 24"ers dont bother getting a high end gpu get a 570GTX or even a 560GTX 448. Anything more is a waste.

[Dzzope]

My point of raid is data security against failures ( I've a tonne of images and vids that I took / made / edited that I'd hate to lose)

Agree to a point on the GPU if sticking with 1080. I'd probably hit a 580GTX with the budget (even at 1080, BF3 will push a 570 at max settings). Why skimp with such a large budget.