Parts List (taking suggestions)

[Featherlight910]

After months of research, this could be my final list! Any suggestions?
Case:
NZXT Hush Series 11-Bay Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Power Supply:
PC Power & Cooling S75QB 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply compatible with core i7

Motherboard:
ASRock X58 Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

Ram:
G.SKILL Perfect Storm 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000) Desktop Memory Model F3-16000CL8T-6GBPS

Processor:
Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz 8M L3 Cache 4.8GT/sec QPI Hyper-Threading Turbo Boost LGA1366 Processor

Processor Cooling:
Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H50 All-In-One High-Performance CPU Cooler

Processor Thermal Compound:
OCZ FreeZe

Graphics Card:
XFX HD489AZDFC Radeon HD 4890 1.0 GB DDR5 PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card

Hard Drive:
Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS

Multi Drive:
Samsung SH-S223Q/BEBS Internal Half Height Supermulti SATA 22X Lightscribe DVD-Writable Drive

Additional Case Cooling:
MASSCOOL FD08025S1M4 80mm Case Fan

[r00ticus]

The system you are wanting to build is quite a nice system. As far as suggestions I have a couple for you to consider. First of all the motherboard; ASRock *can* make a decent board but for the most part the rock solid heavy hitter is an ASUS board. Secondly, I would suggest that you spend a little more and go with a Nvidia graphics card. Don't get me wrong, ATI does make some damn good cards but you are going for an Intel build. Intel and Nvidia combo is the way to go. Now if you were going for a AMD build then an ATI card would be a good buy for it. Also that card your using is still in the 4000 series and not the 5000 series. So... for the price you can get a geforce GTX 260 or GTX275 that is price comparable and will most likely out perform that ATI card.

[mahi poi no ka oi]

r00ticus

The system you are wanting to build is quite a nice system. As far as suggestions I have a couple for you to consider. First of all the motherboard; ASRock *can* make a decent board but for the most part the rock solid heavy hitter is an ASUS board. Secondly, I would suggest that you spend a little more and go with a Nvidia graphics card. Don't get me wrong, ATI does make some damn good cards but you are going for an Intel build. Intel and Nvidia combo is the way to go. Now if you were going for a AMD build then an ATI card would be a good buy for it. Also that card your using is still in the 4000 series and not the 5000 series. So... for the price you can get a geforce GTX 260 or GTX275 that is price comparable and will most likely out perform that ATI card.

I've never had an ASUS motherboard. Mind giving a model as well as brand? I personally use an evga x58 classified motherboard. It works well for me. I would also say that if you're making a gaming com, a solid state drive may be the way to go. Solid states last longer and are accessed faster than hard drives. They generally have a smaller capacity, but for a gamer I think speed is more important.

[albert099]

change ur mobo to ASUS and if possible, get the ATI Radeon HD5800 series

[r00ticus]

mahi poi no ka oi

r00ticus

The system you are wanting to build is quite a nice system. As far as suggestions I have a couple for you to consider. First of all the motherboard; ASRock *can* make a decent board but for the most part the rock solid heavy hitter is an ASUS board. Secondly, I would suggest that you spend a little more and go with a Nvidia graphics card. Don't get me wrong, ATI does make some damn good cards but you are going for an Intel build. Intel and Nvidia combo is the way to go. Now if you were going for a AMD build then an ATI card would be a good buy for it. Also that card your using is still in the 4000 series and not the 5000 series. So... for the price you can get a geforce GTX 260 or GTX275 that is price comparable and will most likely out perform that ATI card.

I've never had an ASUS motherboard. Mind giving a model as well as brand? I personally use an evga x58 classified motherboard. It works well for me. I would also say that if you're making a gaming com, a solid state drive may be the way to go. Solid states last longer and are accessed faster than hard drives. They generally have a smaller capacity, but for a gamer I think speed is more important.

I agree a SSD would be a nice add in to his build but unfortunately the prices on them are still ridiculously high because of new technology and all. So if a SSD is in his price range I would say use it for the OS and *maybe* a few most used game/progs. Then have the 1TB he chose as a storage and everything else drive. Also from my experience Western Digital drives have gone down hill in the past few years. I can't tell you how many WD's I've gone through. I suggest buying a Seagate and for the SSD, OCZ makes some great drives.

As for ASUS boards the new PT6 X58 boards are really nice and their gaming oriented PT6 X58's such as the Rampage II Extreme and WS Revolution are great. Another reason I recommend ASUS too is for thier customer support and software. They provide nice mainboard software for on the fly OC and other utilities and tweakability targeted towards gamers.

[mahi poi no ka oi]

albert099

change ur mobo to ASUS and if possible, get the ATI Radeon HD5800 series

I thought it was already stated that for his build, GTX is the way to go? I would personally suggest a GTX 280 for this build but it's entirely up to the OP.

[Featherlight910]

I got this list from a friend who's helping me build. I'll be sure to tell him.

[Minion4Hire]

What is with this "change to Asus" advice? ASRock is a sister company of Asus. Ultimately it's Asus trying to corner the market by offering various wares under a different brand. Granted, they tend to focus on "value" products, but in the end it's still Asus. However, if you intend to overclock your processor (as it certainly appears) you might want to consider Gigabyte, MSI or EVGA's offerings as well as all of them offer fantastic OCing boards for less than most of Asus's product line.

I don't think SSDs are necessarily too expensive given how greatly it can impact your system's overall performance. No, he's not going to be able to buy a 500GB SSD for any reasonable sum but there's no point in storing vast amounts of data on an SSD when HDDs offer bulk storage for so damn cheap. As mentioned a small OS/app SSD is the way to go, ideally one with TRIM support.

If possible, either from trimming hardware somehow or expanding the budget, A Radeon 5850 or 5870 would be the smart move long term. DX11 brings a lot of features to the table, features you won't be able to tap into with that 4890. Granted, it's a decent jump in price but it should also last you that much longer.

[Minion4Hire]

mahi poi no ka oi

albert099

change ur mobo to ASUS and if possible, get the ATI Radeon HD5800 series

I thought it was already stated that for his build, GTX is the way to go? I would personally suggest a GTX 280 for this build but it's entirely up to the OP.

Question. Why would he spend $350+ on a GTX 285 (the 280 is EOL) when he could spend $300 on a Rade on 5850 which vastly outperforms it?

r00ticus

Secondly, I would suggest that you spend a little more and go with a Nvidia graphics card. Don't get me wrong, ATI does make some damn good cards but you are going for an Intel build. Intel and Nvidia combo is the way to go. Now if you were going for a AMD build then an ATI card would be a good buy for it. Also that card your using is still in the 4000 series and not the 5000 series. So... for the price you can get a geforce GTX 260 or GTX275 that is price comparable and will most likely out perform that ATI card.

No.

The GTX 275 is roughly equivalent with the Radeon 4890 performance wise - the 4890 wins at 1680 and 1920 res while the 275 wins at 2560 res so unless you have a 30" monitor - but price wise the 4890 is ~$30 cheaper. So you'd actually get the same performance from the 4890 for less money.

Looks like ATI wins this round.

[mahi poi no ka oi]

Minion4Hire

you might want to consider Gigabyte, MSI or EVGA's offerings as well as all of them offer fantastic OCing boards for less than most of Asus's product line.

EVGA FTW! Also @your other post: LOL I don't really have that much info on GPUs. I just through a random GTX series card out there (bad idea now that I think about it) razz

[Featherlight910]

Does anybody have links to a 1TB or greater hard drive for a lower price than the one I listed?

[The Last Rydian]

You didn't list a price. razz

[Featherlight910]

Running mostly Valve games, would 6GB of RAM be too much or too little?

[Featherlight910]

bump