[jaiarn]

Hey guys, I am planning on building a new PC mostly for gaming. 
I was hoping you guys could provide me with some advice and feedback. 


OS- Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Retail $349
Case- Antec Nine Hundred Two V3 Case $139
SSD- OCZ Agility 3 60GB SSD $95
HDD- Western Digital Green 2TB WD20EARX $125
GPU- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 3GB $799
CPU- Intel Core i5 2500K $215
ODD- Samsung SH-222BB SATA DVD-RW Drive OEM $22
RAM- 2x Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C8R 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 $158
MOBO- ASUS P8Z77-M PRO Motherboard $149
Pow Sup- Antec High Current Gamer 900W Power Supply HCG-900 $155

My budget is $2200, so I've gone an acceptable $7 over. However, I am not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to computer builds and so was hoping for some valued feedback on this.

[waldojim]

Ok, this is just a personal thought, take it for what it is worth:

The GTX590 is a dual GPU card. This actually brings a few more things to the table than just more powerful graphics. Going this route will end up in a system that is anything BUT a set-it-and-forget-it system. Also worth noting here, is that the 590 is a powerhog - both idle and at load. I wouldn't get into this if there wasn't a decent alternative. The GTX 680 has about 95% of the performance of the 590, while using about 50 watts less idle, and over 100 watts less under a full load. You also eliminate all microtstuttering. Bright side here is that you also free up $100 for use elsewhere (get to it in a moment).

Next, I would ease up on the second set of ram. First, 8GB is plenty for any game on the market. 2nd, it will be easier on the memory controller.

Now - all of this gets you in a sweet place to upgrade that SSD a bit and move to a 240GB model.

With a larger main hard drive, and dropping the SLI card, you can easily move this from a tinkerers machine, to a powerful set and forget gaming machine.

[LiveBrianD]

I agree with waldojim's suggestions here. Also, don't get a retail copy of Windows unless you want to transfer it to another PC (you're just wasting money that way) - OEM versions are cheaper. Also, unless you need more than 16GB RAM or domain support, get Win7 Home Premium 64-bit, not Pro. One last thing - with a PC this nice, are you sure you don't want to spend $30-40 on a nice aftermarket CPU cooler? (less noise under load and you can overclock the CPU if you want)

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 28 April 2012 - 09:43 AM

[coastie65]

jaiarn, on 28 April 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

Hey guys, I am planning on building a new PC mostly for gaming.
I was hoping you guys could provide me with some advice and feedback.


OS- Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Retail $349
Case- Antec Nine Hundred Two V3 Case $139
SSD- OCZ Agility 3 60GB SSD $95
HDD- Western Digital Green 2TB WD20EARX $125
GPU- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 3GB $799
CPU- Intel Core i5 2500K $215
ODD- Samsung SH-222BB SATA DVD-RW Drive OEM $22
RAM- 2x Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C8R 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 $158
MOBO- ASUS P8Z77-M PRO Motherboard $149
Pow Sup- Antec High Current Gamer 900W Power Supply HCG-900 $155

My budget is $2200, so I've gone an acceptable $7 over. However, I am not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to computer builds and so was hoping for some valued feedback on this.

Hi and welcome to the forums. In addtion to what wj has said, I would change out the Hdd selection to this: http://www.pccasegea...oducts_id=19554

AS for memory, You might want to consider these ( the 8 Gb will be plenty, unless you have a specific memory intensive app, such s Video editing, you are planning to run ) http://www.pccasegea...oducts_id=16934 The timings and latentcy are good too.
One other thing, You don't need that much PSU. THis should be fine and it is Modular to boot: http://www.pccasegea...oducts_id=15350

This post has been edited by coastie65: 28 April 2012 - 02:04 PM

[Rommel]

I agree with WJ's suggestion for a larger SSD.
If his suggestion is too pricey, at least spring for a 120 min SSD.
www.newegg.com has some good ones for $120 right now and 128GB ones for close to it.

After the w7 install and possible small designated partition on that thing, how much will you really get on 60GBs?
More you can put on a SSD, the more you can take advantage of it.

I am so close to pulling the trigger on a 120 or 128 GB SSD.

[coastie65]

Rommel, on 28 April 2012 - 04:14 PM, said:

I agree with WJ's suggestion for a larger SSD.
If his suggestion is too pricey, at least spring for a 120 min SSD.
www.newegg.com has some good ones for $120 right now and 128GB ones for close to it.

After the w7 install and possible small designated partition on that thing, how much will you really get on 60GBs?
More you can put on a SSD, the more you can take advantage of it.

I am so close to pulling the trigger on a 120 or 128 GB SSD.

Hey Rommel, I believe he is in Australia, so Newegg won't be of much help.

[Rommel]

coastie65, on 28 April 2012 - 04:29 PM, said:

Hey Rommel, I believe he is in Australia, so Newegg won't be of much help.

Thank you coastie.

I didn't pay attention and notice it said so under "PC CASE GEAR" like you guys did.

Checked out their prices and unfortunitly they are more pricey.

[coastie65]

Rommel, on 28 April 2012 - 04:54 PM, said:

coastie65, on 28 April 2012 - 04:29 PM, said:

Hey Rommel, I believe he is in Australia, so Newegg won't be of much help.

Thank you coastie.

I didn't pay attention and notice it said so under "PC CASE GEAR" like you guys did.

Checked out their prices and unfortunitly they are more pricey.

That's in Australian Dollars, so are in line with the pricing here if you converted it to USD. I checked the processor and he showed a price of $215 but the Site has it at $225. That is Australian Dollars and at $225 it would be $235.35 USD. That is a pricey i5 as they are $220 from Newegg.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 28 April 2012 - 05:19 PM

[LiveBrianD]

Rommel, on 28 April 2012 - 04:14 PM, said:

I agree with WJ's suggestion for a larger SSD.
If his suggestion is too pricey, at least spring for a 120 min SSD.
www.newegg.com has some good ones for $120 right now and 128GB ones for close to it.

After the w7 install and possible small designated partition on that thing, how much will you really get on 60GBs?
More you can put on a SSD, the more you can take advantage of it.

I am so close to pulling the trigger on a 120 or 128 GB SSD.

I have to agree. As it is, I have 75GB of stuff on my main hard drive (excluding the \Users folder). (OK, I could disable hibernate, and the pagefile can probably be shrunk a ton since I have 8GB RAM.) Personally, I'm not convinced that an SSD is really worth it (once my system boots up it's plenty fast, since most things get cached in ram they load almost instantly). That said, for a high-end machine, why not?

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 28 April 2012 - 07:48 PM, said:

Rommel, on 28 April 2012 - 04:14 PM, said:

I agree with WJ's suggestion for a larger SSD.
If his suggestion is too pricey, at least spring for a 120 min SSD.
www.newegg.com has some good ones for $120 right now and 128GB ones for close to it.

After the w7 install and possible small designated partition on that thing, how much will you really get on 60GBs?
More you can put on a SSD, the more you can take advantage of it.

I am so close to pulling the trigger on a 120 or 128 GB SSD.

I have to agree. As it is, I have 75GB of stuff on my main hard drive (excluding the \Users folder). (OK, I could disable hibernate, and the pagefile can probably be shrunk a ton since I have 8GB RAM.) Personally, I'm not convinced that an SSD is really worth it (once my system boots up it's plenty fast, since most things get cached in ram they load almost instantly). That said, for a high-end machine, why not?

Even after using high speed SD cards, I can say they are worth it. The access times are in the micro-seconds not miliseconds. That results in small things loading so quickly it seems like they are loading from ram.

[LiveBrianD]

Except that, as long as you have a decent amount of RAM (4GB or more), they are loading from ram once Windows has cached them. Granted, that doesn't happen for regular files, but how big are those most of the time anyway?

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 28 April 2012 - 09:41 PM, said:

Except that, as long as you have a decent amount of RAM (4GB or more), they are loading from ram once Windows has cached them. Granted, that doesn't happen for regular files, but how big are those most of the time anyway?

You can't cache an entire 250GB hard drive. Everything on that drive gains unbelievable speeds.

This post has been edited by waldojim: 28 April 2012 - 10:07 PM

[coastie65]

Let's not let this thread wander too far from the subject at hand.

[LiveBrianD]

waldojim, on 28 April 2012 - 10:07 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 28 April 2012 - 09:41 PM, said:

Except that, as long as you have a decent amount of RAM (4GB or more), they are loading from ram once Windows has cached them. Granted, that doesn't happen for regular files, but how big are those most of the time anyway?

You can't cache an entire 250GB hard drive. Everything on that drive gains unbelievable speeds.

Yes, but the programs I use (live mail, word, chrome) get cached, and load instantly. For my files, well, does it really take that long to load an 8MB mp3 off the hard drive? It really isn't a realistic issue. The only case where an SSD might be handy is for loading game stuff, booting the OS (and you only do that once a day most likely), and perhaps for video editing. (adobe premiere loves to recreate thumbnails of stuff as I scroll through the timeline, torturing the hard drive but leaving the CPU nearly idle)

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 29 April 2012 - 11:15 AM, said:

waldojim, on 28 April 2012 - 10:07 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 28 April 2012 - 09:41 PM, said:

Except that, as long as you have a decent amount of RAM (4GB or more), they are loading from ram once Windows has cached them. Granted, that doesn't happen for regular files, but how big are those most of the time anyway?

You can't cache an entire 250GB hard drive. Everything on that drive gains unbelievable speeds.

Yes, but the programs I use (live mail, word, chrome) get cached, and load instantly. For my files, well, does it really take that long to load an 8MB mp3 off the hard drive? It really isn't a realistic issue. The only case where an SSD might be handy is for loading game stuff, booting the OS (and you only do that once a day most likely), and perhaps for video editing. (adobe premiere loves to recreate thumbnails of stuff as I scroll through the timeline, torturing the hard drive but leaving the CPU nearly idle)

Calm down a bit - it has been proven time and time again, they are well worth it. If the op wants a SSD in his machine, the best thing for us is to give solid advice on what to get. Not try to talk him out of it on the basis of you don't use one - and never have tried one either. As Coastie suggested, move on to giving appropriate advice, not muddying the issues.

This post has been edited by waldojim: 29 April 2012 - 12:08 PM

[LiveBrianD]

I'm not saying the OP shouldn't get an SSD. (As I said, with games, it might be worth it.) I'm just saying that, personally, I don't see a huge gain with them with a lot of other things. It's a bit hard to load things like Microsoft Word faster than, well, instantly, isn't it? (that's realistically how long it takes, about 1 second at most)

[coastie65]

LiveBrianD, on 29 April 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

I'm not saying the OP shouldn't get an SSD. (As I said, with games, it might be worth it.) I'm just saying that, personally, I don't see a huge gain with them with a lot of other things. It's a bit hard to load things like Microsoft Word faster than, well, instantly, isn't it? (that's realistically how long it takes, about 1 second at most)

Well, I wasn't sold on them either until I put that 256 Gb Samsung in here. I am enjoying the heck out that thing.

[LiveBrianD]

coastie65, on 29 April 2012 - 03:07 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 29 April 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

I'm not saying the OP shouldn't get an SSD. (As I said, with games, it might be worth it.) I'm just saying that, personally, I don't see a huge gain with them with a lot of other things. It's a bit hard to load things like Microsoft Word faster than, well, instantly, isn't it? (that's realistically how long it takes, about 1 second at most)

Well, I wasn't sold on them either until I put that 256 Gb Samsung in here. I am enjoying the heck out that thing.

Where do you notice the most improvement from it?

[coastie65]

Everywhere. It is 256Gb and I am running 100% from it ( everything I use is on it ). It isn't just about a quick boot, but accessing everything is so much faster. Installs are faster. That Windows Experince thing went from 5.9 to 7.8 ( processor is holding it back ). In short, everything is improved as it is my primary drive due to it's size.

[LiveBrianD]

The only thing is, how much do you install something or boot the computer? When launching programs or opening files, does it make a significant difference? (after all, that's already plenty fast with my WD Black it seems) I'm not saying that SSDs are bad or anything, but if the budget is tight an SSD isn't the best thing to spend it on it seems.

On the other hand, games are a bit slow to load here, I'll admit. (Since you do quite a bit of gaming, I can see how you'd benefit. I haven't really had time to play many games lately.)

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 29 April 2012 - 06:20 PM