First Time Builder!

[Deltron]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Gaming, Coding, a little bit of music editing.

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
$1300 CAD

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
Canada

4. IF YOU have a brand preference.
No Preferences.

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
Will list below.

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
Overclocking.

8. WHEN do you plan to build it?
January.

9. What resolution do you use?
1920x1080

Alright so i want to build a gaming PC to play Diablo 3, BF3, and SWTOR. Iv never overclocked but im pretty sure i can figure it out. I want to run 2 x 27in monitors
(gaming only on one of them and web surfing/ music on the other).

So far i have 2 Asus 27in monitors and a thermaltake v9 blacx case. Other parts i was considering are as follows:

cpu: i5 2500k
mobo: ??? (No idea here. something with usb 3.0)
cpu cooler: Corsair H80
ram: ??? (don't really know which company to go with here. Was thinking 8gb of Corsair)
psu: Corsair 1000 watt
gpu: ??? (was thinking 570 or 6970. Any ideas?)
hdd: 500gb caviar black

So the parts with the ??? i obviously need some advice on,
and with running dual screens will it be a better idea to go SLI or is one card enough.
Also if i do go SLI will 1000 watts be enough?

Thanks for reading and im looking forward to suggestions.

[dandelioneater]

Originally Posted by Deltron

cpu: i5 2500k
mobo: ??? (No idea here. something with usb 3.0)
cpu cooler: Corsair H80
ram: ??? (don't really know which company to go with here. Was thinking 8gb of Corsair)
psu: Corsair 1000 watt
gpu: ??? (was thinking 570 or 6970. Any ideas?)
hdd: 500gb caviar black

So the parts with the ??? i obviously need some advice on,
and with running dual screens will it be a better idea to go SLI or is one card enough.
Also if i do go SLI will 1000 watts be enough?

Some boards to look at (both have usb 3:

MSI P67A-GD65 (B3)
ASUS P8P67 Pro REV3.1

At 1920x1080 resolution, a single GTX 560 Ti or radeon 6950 would be able to run most modern games at high settings. You can always add a second card later on if you need a boost in performance.

MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Hawk

MSI Radeon HD 6950 Twin Frozr III OC

For RAM a 2x4GB kit would be fine for gaming. Corsair, GSkill, Mushkin are always a solid choice in my experience. You dont need to buy the expensive kits because you can usually tweak ram yourself and save money.

For a single video card configuration a good ~600W psu would be fine. For 2 cards an 850W would be good and still have enough headroom.

Silverstone Strider 750 Gold
FSP Aurum Gold 600W

Other suggestions: Maybe look at an ssd for OS drive. You could get a 160GB ssd and then use the 500GB WD black for storage.

Hope this helps and GL with the build

[Deltron]

Thanks for the quick reply. I will look into those video cards. I think for now im just gonna go with the
500gb hdd. I cant justify paying so much for hdd these days especially since i now how much
they used to cost. When prices come back down i will definitely be looking into an ssd.

[Dragonstongue]

60 or 120gb ssd or thereabouts are "reasonably" priced, and tend to be kind of $ in the capacity side sure, but thier value is in the performance side, 120gb are actually decently priced compared to most 60gb if you divide the price per gb, however, 60gb is a perfect size for an OS if you watch how you are using it, a 120gb is ample room, and you can even put a game or 2 on it if you choose(which most games dont benefit from anyways) my OS on 60gb I have 25gb remaining space of 58gb formated on my Agility 3 so it most certainly can be done, anyways, figured I would add my piece there :O

For the HDD, instead of the caviar black 500, go for a 640 caviar black model AALS, they are faster then most of the caviar black lineup except for the new 1tb-1.5 and 2tb models.

Power supply, there are alot of very good ones out there, really depends on how much you have left after you pick out your parts.
HX750, Antec TP gold 750, NZXT Hale and such.

Ram-Corsair XMS3, Vengeance, Kingston HyperX or HyperX Ti, Gskill RipjawX, SniperSE or ECO to name a few, 1600 speed is the best in regards to extra speed, overclocking headroom, and very little price increase over the 1333 based stuff. 8gb is fine for most people in regards to most gamers, even some that do some "work" I would go for a 2x4gb kit with the highest speed, lowest voltage, tightest timings you can find.

Motherboard-Asus z68 V or V-pro or Maximus Gene, all excellent boards, with tons of features, I like full sized boards myself though.

Case- once again many choices, I have a Raven 3 and love it, throw a couple extra fans in there and its rocking, HAF 932, Carbide 500R, Rosewill Thor V2, all depends on your tastes after all.

GPU-hold a few days if you can and go for a Radeon HD7k card, better then what is currently available, course 560 448, 570 or 580 3gb, or if Radeon 6950 2gb or 6970, I recomended to many of my buds XFX dual fan XXX 6950 2gb(830 core clock) at least 3 in my clan have this card, and they love it, very fast, remains very cool, another good choice might be MSI twin Frozr II or III 6950, I am more partial to ASUS and Radeons myself though, might as well get the best you can for the $ you have in the budget, for that you might be able to squeeze in 580 3gb or a 7950 when they come out in a few days.

As for the CPU cooler, I have nothing against the H series coolers, but, I like Air cooling better, less that could go wrong with it, and much better value for the $. my personal choice, Hyper 212+ with a second stock blademaster fan and MX4 paste, cost around $50, its performance is up there, maybe not the top of the pack but the performance difference and the cost difference are well worth it, chips like the 2500k dont need a crap ton of cooling power, and if they did, the H80 still wouldn`t be the greatest choice, for that I would go H60 with push/pull, cheaper, and just as good :)

Also, 1kw is a huge amount of power, you really do not need that much, well, unless you were using dual 6990 or dual 590 or triple 580:P I think 750 for mid range or 850-900 is plenty for all but the sickest of setups. Course, there are really nice 1kw power supplies that are not the much more $ then 850 watters. I like Corsair, Antec, Seasonic(who makes many "branded" power supplies) and of course NZXT has quite a few nice power supplies as well. I would say 52a or higher on the 12v for dual 6950 or dual 560 448 or dual 7900 series cards you should be fine, and minimum of 750 for mentioned.

Also if you are looking for the best pricing, I use NCIX, and shopbot.ca,pricecanada.com or pricebat.ca. This way here you can find exactly what you are looking for, and price it back to NCIX if you want, also, if you really wanted to, NCIX does have the option of building it/testing it for you if you want, costs $50 and they do a pretty good job.

[LordPraetox]

+1 for GTX 560 Ti. I have one, and can max out every game I've played except for Metro 2033 at 1920x1080

[drumsrule786]

If you think you might get more serious with you music editing I would say go with 16GB of ram, its so cheap these days you might as well. I run pro tools and after you start to add in a lot of plug-in's the ram gets chewed up. G-skill and corsair both have very affordable 16GB kits, I would say go for 1600Mhz speed.

[bissa]

another for the 560TI. great card. not quite top of the line but chugs through most of what I throw at it (crysis 2 took a hammer to it though).
RAM, take a look at the computer I have, it's under the "my system specs" drop down button on the right of my user info bar on this post.
if you are fine with gigabyte, check out the motherboard I have. again, it's not top of the line, but it's a good board for the budget. it has USB 3.0 on the back and another as a header on the board if you want to use that. as well as SATA 3 meaning that you can get awesome performance.

[micul]

Originally Posted by Deltron

cpu: i5 2500k
mobo: ??? (No idea here. something with usb 3.0)
cpu cooler: Corsair H80
ram: ??? (don't really know which company to go with here. Was thinking 8gb of Corsair)
psu: Corsair 1000 watt
gpu: ??? (was thinking 570 or 6970. Any ideas?)
hdd: 500gb caviar black

So the parts with the ??? i obviously need some advice on,
and with running dual screens will it be a better idea to go SLI or is one card enough.
Also if i do go SLI will 1000 watts be enough?

Thanks for reading and im looking forward to suggestions.

1 - You will be fine with a 850Watt good quality power supply : Corsair , Seasonic , Silverstone etc
2 - For motherboard you have a few more options :
ASUS : - Asus Sabertooth P67
- Asus P8P67
- Asus P8Z68-V

ASROCK : - P67 Extreme 4
- Z68 Extreme 4
- Z68 Extreme 3

Choose a motherboard according to you're needs . I always look at the price-performance.

3 - Ram - just buy some GSkills 1600MHz 2x4Gb and you should be fine
4 - For video card probably you should wait for a couple weeks. New 7xxx series is comming.

[Deltron]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I think im going to go for the 560 ti. Should i get one with more ram to run the 2x27in monitors or will the standard 1gb be enough? Im assuming they make a 2gb version.

[enaberif]

2500k and sli 560ti would only need a 650 to 700w power supply. a 1000w is beyond your needs.