New Gaming Rig

City Of Reign

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CM Storm Stryker case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119260&Tpk=storm stryker

i7 3770k 3.5ghz 1155 LGA (NZXT Kraken x60 w/ Akasa apache fans)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501

ASUS Z77 Sabertooth ATX motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131821

Corsair Dominator 16GB (2 x 8) 1866mhz dual channel memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233336

EVGA 670 FTW+ 4GB PCIE 3.0 x16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130824

2x Samsung 840 pro series sata 3.0 256gb ssd
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193

Corsair AX1200i power supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139039

I do know that the 1200watts is a bit overkill, but I'm trying to future proof with it. Everytime I've built a pc and then wanted to expand I've been limited by the PSU I had selected prior, no longer I say !!!!! :p lol

with the memory, that's one of my main questions, I've heard and read that two sticks perform better than filling all your dimm slots; any truth to this?
 

RolandDeschain

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Go with PC Power & Cooling for your power supply brand. They make the best in the business, and have been for many years. Their PSUs consistently top, or are right near the top, all power supply quality benchmark tests for clean/reliable power through the rail, etc. Here's their 1200-watt one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817703037

As for the SSDs, one of mine right now is a Samsung 840 series and I like it, but I only bought it because it was at a supremely low price point on a 24-hour flash sale on Newegg at the time. I recommend to anyone and everyone that they go with Intel for SSDs. They aren't the fastest for the price point, and they are generally a little more expensive, but Intel is still the only manufacturer as far as I know that makes long-lasting consumer-grade SSDs. See, the type of manufacturing process used in SSDs that are in a normal person's price range use MLC memory. Multi-level cell is what it stands for. Basically, it's cramming extra data bits per cell on the memory itself. This not only speeds up performance, but makes it much cheaper per gigabyte to manufacture. The problem is, it's inherently a lot less reliable. The drives tend to fail over time, and most of the time when an SSD fails, you lose everything and it's not recoverable, unlike traditional spindle hard drives.

A couple years ago, a company did a study where they checked the reliability of SSDs in servers of all kinds of brands in data centers. Many of the drives were regular consumer-level ones, not enterprise-level. What they found was that every manufacturer had a 3%+ failure rate except Intel, who was less than 1%. Nobody's exactly sure how Intel does their manufacturing process for SSDs, as far as I know, but whatever they do, it sacrifices a bit of performance in favor of much better long-term reliability, for MLC SSD drives. SLC ones are prohibitively expensive to use in a home computer, even a top-end $3,000 gaming rig, so don't even bother checking. Fusion IO makes the best ones in the world, and some of their drives go into the 6-figure price range, lol.

Long story short, buy Intel SSDs, IMO.

Now, the video card - I wouldn't bother paying for a 4GB card. Video cards automatically use system RAM as needed for extra money, and there's very little performance loss to that. You're paying a hefty premium for that. You're better off getting a 2GB 680 instead of a 4GB 670. You'll get better performance in 100% of games you play with a 2GB 680, instead; and it's the same price as the 670 you linked.

Motherboard - one thing I have come to regret is the size of my motherboard. It supports 3 PCI-Express 16X slots, but you can fit nothing else in there if you actually have three GPUs in it. Trust me when I say for the future, you want to be able to add two more 680s in and go triple-SLI, but still have room for a sound card, or TV card, etc. I ran triple-Crossfire for a while, but couldn't have my TV card or sound card installed, and it was annoying so I stopped. These are really the only two available:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128552
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131822

I'd probably recommend the Gigabyte one, but you can't go wrong with either, frankly. The Gigabyte one has better integrated sound and probably a better LAN chipset, but it also has a regular PCI slot for older peripherals, (there are still plenty of high-quality peripherals being made for regular PCI slots, but this is slowly changing, thankfully) but these are minor points.

RAM - nothing wrong with the brand. My top 3 are Mushkin, Crucial, and Corsair. Probably in that order, but it's pretty much irrelevant. All three are U.S. companies, and make excellent quality RAM. Why only PC1866 speed, though? Also, why 8GB sticks? You want to keep 2 open RAM slots, that's fine, but if you're starting with 16GB of RAM, frankly that's more than enough for anything you're ever going to need it for for gaming. You should get 4GB sticks. Not only are they cheaper, but they have tighter (better) timings on them compared to their 8GB counterparts. Better performance, in other words. I'd go with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820226275 However, regardless of what you decide, get PC2133 instead of PC1866; and get the tightest timings you can of the three manufacturers I mentioned.

Any higher than PC2133 speed, and the timings start getting a lot slower. In highly responsive-sensitive applications such as video games, tighter (shorter) timings are more important than max speed in megahertz.

Case - that's fine. Get any case you want, as long as it's full tower-sized, which that one is.
 
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City Of Reign

City Of Reign

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Thanks for the reply Roland. Has helped a lot. The question I still have is about the gpu. I was set to get the 4gb 670 because in my research I've heard the it performs on par with the 680; and went with 4gb because I've read 4gb cards are more stable in SLI, for when I choose to go that route. As far as the 1833mhz RAM; I wasn't fully researched on the meanings of "(oc)" on motherboard specs. Thank you for making me dig deeper on that, lol. I'll be choosing a 2133 dim.
 

RolandDeschain

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Amount of VRAM (video ram) on a video card has nothing to do with SLI/Crossfire stability. The 680 2GB performs better than the 670 4GB in virtually all scenarios. If you want to get a 670 OC (overclocked) edition, that will perform as well as a 680 or slightly better; but there is no reason to get a 4GB 670, to be honest.
 
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City Of Reign

City Of Reign

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Finally have my rig setup and going. I listened to a lot of what you had to say, like the 2133mhz ram, intel ssd, and the 2gb GPU, but I also stuck with some of the prior stuff I'd chosen. what can I say I've been turned into a Corsair fanboy with the way their products have treated me and lasted for me :p
ty for the help roland.

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