holy shit naelyan's building a system

No shit guys. The piece of shit computer I've been running with foot pedals for the last eight (plus?) years is finally being replaced. Now I need all of you to rip apart this build and tell me if (what) I'm doing horribly wrong.

This is what I'm looking at so far.

Added to that, I'm probably looking at getting a SSD, and the two that I think are probably going to be my best bets are this and this.

After all that I think about all that's left is my cooling, which is something that I know absolutely nothing about so I'm hoping you all can help with that.

After I've got what I'm buying sorted out I'll start shopping around to see where I can get the best prices, I just did it all on newegg to start off with to make it easy. I want to hopefully end up not too much higher than the $1200-range, though an extra hundred bucks or two for something really worth it isn't going to kill me. Thanks in advance for any and all help and/or just calling me a retard if it's bad.

Edited by Naelyan, 16 October 2011 - 07:26 AM.

Well the first thing you did wrong was fail to post your wish list properly.

Oh god I'm retarded. Wrong link. It's been fixed.

So for cooling I think I've decided to go with this, as I found a really good deal on it. I've made a couple slight tweaks to my wishlist but nothing major... if some of you that are more knowledgeable than I am (pretty much all of you) wouldn't mind taking a look and letting me know if there's anything horrifically wrong with it, I wouldn't mind pulling the trigger and getting this ordered in the next couple of days. <3

Link to wishlist

I've just ordered parts to put together a new system myself, the highlights are:

lian li pc-9f case
2600k
p8z68-v lga mobo
sapphire 6970
corsair 750hx
thermalright archon
8gb g.skill F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM (really overclockable)

I already have hard drives, but it's coming in at about $1200 shipped not counting the monitor or drives. I'm not sure what kind of deal you're getting on the h60, but from the reviews I've seen even the h100 can't beat the top air coolers, and is only really useful if you're planning on running at sub-maximal fan speed for noise reduction.

I don't feel really great about msi for motherboards, gigabyte has some good deals on z68 boards I think. The 2500k is smart to save some cash, but I wouldn't skimp on the video card unless you're trying to make a budget play to wait for the next generation of cards. I won't make any comments on the case because I'm biased for lian li. Other than that, it should be a cool build.

The gigabyte ud4 looks like it's only $25 more, but has a $20 mail in rebate. That's a popular board to get really good overclocks at xtremesystems. The asus p8z68-v lga is $25 more on that site.

Thanks Bard, I appreciate it. A couple of questions for you:

From the reading I've done, the 560 Ti, while definitely not on the high-end, will support pretty much everything that's out right now and is planning on coming out for the next little bit. I'm not planning on getting a monitor that's bigger than my current 23.4" 1080p, though there is the chance I'll get a second one (zero chance I'll ever be doing any 3-monitor gaming or anything though, I'd just use a second monitor for IM/vent/whatever while I game or watch a movie). Is it going to be worth it for me to drop the extra $100 on a higher-end card like the 6970 right now or would I be better off just saving that money now and getting a new card in another generation or two?

I think the reason I went with the MSI board is because of the PCIe 3.0 slots, and another forum I was getting some advice from had a couple of MSI boards on their 'recommended' list. If you're saying they're not as good or reliable, I'll absolutely take that at face value and avoid them. My question then though, is why does it seem like none of the bigger names (asus, gigabyte, etc) have PCIe 3.0 yet? Is it just not entirely stable/useful yet and it's just the crappier boards that are trying to sell some units by pushing it out quicker or something?

And as for the board I'll actually get, I found this for the same price as the MSI, so that seems like what I should go with, yeah?

edit: Or should I go with the LE version of the same board for $25 less? Am I going to notice any major differences between the two other than the missing PCIe x16 slot and bluetooth? I don't have a ton of experience with overclocking but I'd like to get into it with this machine. I read that the LE has 4+2 phase Vs 16 phase on the regular p8z68-V, is that going to hinder me?

Edited by Naelyan, 18 October 2011 - 04:05 PM.

You should be ok saving money and getting the 560. From what I understand you can choose to use the lucid virtu chip on the mobos to have the cpu's gpu do encoding and stuff....but I've read you can also use the cpu's gpu just like another installed graphics card and run another monitor off it.

The only reason you would need pci-e 3.0 is if you're going with high end sli or crossfire. I wouldn't worry too much about it otherwise. The only difference between 2.0 and 3.0 is going from 5GT/s to 8GT/s. They claim it doubles the bandwidth because of optimizations, but you still don't saturate 2.0 with a single card. I think 5GT/s is something like 8GB/s across the 16 lanes. As an anecdotal example, I've read that 8800gt cards only used about half of the 4GB/s in pci-e 1.0. So if you're planning on buying super high end cards, or running crossfire I would shop around for a pci-e 3.0 board.

There's a test of this on hardocp, where they ran gtx480s in sli. They tried them at 16x/16x, 16x/8x, 8x/8x...at different resolutions. Their conclusion was that 8x/8x had a performance impact @ 5760x1200, but 16/8 only had a minuscule effect on performance even at 5760x1200 resolution.

The short answer for mobos is that theoretically, if intel's spec is followed, it doesn't make a big difference how many power phases you have. But, if you're overclocking you'll probably have more success with a decent number of power phases. It will probably make for a more stable voltage to the cpu etc under higher heat conditions, and if you need to supply more voltage to the components.

edit: Also, for what mobo you should get. I got that one because I got $80 off it during a sale, but it was also on my short list anyway. If you want to wait a week, I should have my parts by Thursday, so I can let you know if there are any issues with the board.

Edited by Bard, 18 October 2011 - 07:39 PM.

Put together my new shit today, really smooth build hardware wise. Had to do a new windows install because microsoft can't cope with the awesomeness evidently. The motherboard is good, the case is fucking amazing. The power and hard drive lights look straight out of tron. Other than being an all around beast, it looks sweet as fuck with the black on black on black, with blue and red leds on the mobo and case buttons. The only sound I can really hear from it is the low hum of the video card fan. Right out of the gate my cpu is idling at about 25-26C, and the mobo is at about 27C, the archon is perfect for this build because it almost touches the case cover it's so tall. Fits perfectly.

Got the two monitor thing going with the cpu's gpu running the 2nd one, temps did't budge. The only down side is the new monitor makes my old monitor look like shit.

If I had it to build over again I wouldn't use anything different.

tldr:

get the lian li pc-9f, the thermalright archon, and the p8z68-v if you can afford them.

p8z68-v is already on its way. I went with the corsair carbide 500R for my case, I like the look of it and I really like how corsair does their cable organization crap. I should have all my stuff in the next few days hopefully, I'm so fucking pumped.

Bard said:

I picked up the PC-9F and absolutely love it. Lian-li always makes quality stuff. I still have my first Lian-li case from 10 years ago (use it for wife's computer). I was expecting the aluminium case to be a little on the loud side as was the case (no pun intended) in the past. The PC-9F is so quiet I thought I had some kind of short causing the computer to not turn on. Even when looking at my screens in windows I keep having to look down and make sure its on and still there.

I was considering the HAF as well but I am totally happy I went with the PC-9F.

If my window is open (as in, I'm getting ambient sound from outside, my window opens on to a very quiet, private street) I can't even tell that my computer is on until I slap at my keyboard and see if my monitor wakes up or not. I fucking love it.