Building Custom Gaming Desktop, Advice Appreciated

so you are building it yourself? i'm confused.

i'd switch the h70 to the noctua d14 or up12 (or something round there always forget the exact name)

that many hdds? ok... lol go with intel ssds. they last longer and have better performance.

go with the new corsair tx 750 it has longer cables and is the same price. also slightly better efficianncy. also i've heard the original might make a high pitched noise... i wouldn't know i got v2.

with the hdds i'd upgrade when you need it and save some money there. raid 0 is just dumb. just saying it. putting 2 ssds in raid 0 ok i can see it but a hdd is just dumb. if you want a faster hdd get a ssd don't waste money on getting 2x hdd to use the space of one and performance gains (that aren't exactly great compared to ssds).
sound card depends on what speakers/headset you have. many headsets are usb and won't use sound cards. others will...
this build is ok but heres what i'd change. ditch a few hdds change to a cheaper air cooler that does just as well as the lclc by corsair its just bigger and slightly more of a pain to put stuff in and move stuff around (i've cut myself over 10 times on my hyper212+ which is a great cooler and if you put 2 fans on it will get you around 4.5ghz and its only $25!

your rig is a little exessive and where it matters your skimping. the most important part of any gaming rig is the gpu and cpu. the cpu you have is great but the gpu so so... the 550 is a good card for below 1080p gaming in 1080p you need at least the 560 ti (note at the very least) it will get you a lot of power but not enough to run max settings on even games nowdays... With your budget i would reccomend amd graphics. from my experiance they are more of a pita with drivers but are much cheaper than nvidia. but they also don't have cuda encoding (using the gpu in premire to speed up encoding)
the radeon 6950 2gb is a very good card (its what i got) and very overclockable (but if your overclocking you might want to look into getting the twin frozr 3 by msi) . I like that you are going the route of building your own. i did too a few months ago. its very fun. i was up till 1am making mine but it was fun lol and interesting.
if i were you i'd ditch about half of the hdds you had and get a better gpu. because for 75% gaming the gpu is the most important component, and in your rig its the weakest. the goal in building a computer isn't to make the best of one thing and ok with something else, its to make the most well ballanced rig you can, and right now yours is a bit offballence. btw sorry for misspellings i blame chrome's spell check and can't use firefox since it has a memory leak that uses 6 of my 8gb of ram...

I got to be honest, I would never recommend that ticket number, its not optimized at all.

what res you gaming at?

those so called lc systems like the H70 and aseteck and etc are not real lc systems, as in you can't get real lc performance out of them, a noctua nh u12 or D14 or the A70 can give you better performance.

I get hdd2 in raid 1+0, keep in mind its still not a 100% full proof, I see you know you need 4 hdds to do that. Personally I just clone twice a week, it takes 2 drives (one is the source drive the other is the destination), its not instant upto date but at worst I'm 2 or 3 days behind.

all ssds are not the same, the one you want is intel 320, normally you put the os/app/games on the ssd cause they benefit from it, a 120GB should be enough for all that, the rest gets saved on a larger slower drive as hdd2.

lol I'm dying to see you put the 2600K on that mobo, it would be magic.

I see your res now, 1900 x 1050, for that res go single 570, and chose the 850w corsair hx so you can go sli 570 down the road, that psu is like a 1000w, you can do sli 580 if you wanted to with it.

@ DST4ME

I got to be honest, I would never recommend that ticket number, its not optimized at all.
- Hard to optimize with a low budget (for custom gaming computers)

what res you gaming at?
-Whatever the monitor/equipment I get new for the computer can support (higher=better i thought...)

those so called lc systems like the H70 and aseteck and etc are not real lc systems, as in you can't get real lc performance out of them, a noctua nh u12 or D14 or the A70 can give you better performance.
-I will check the Noctua, price has been an issue for Liquid cooling, and for some reason air cooling seems uncool (LC = coolness?) :p

-I am not sure what you mean by HDD2, two HDD's or something else?

all ssds are not the same, the one you want is intel 320, normally you put the os/app/games on the ssd cause they benefit from it, a 120GB should be enough for all that, the rest gets saved on a larger slower drive as hdd2.
-Between two laptops we are maxing out our 640GB of space between gaming, music, photos, and video stuff. So 320 GB SSD for some and then maybe a 2TB + cloning for everything else?

lol I'm dying to see you put the 2600K on that mobo, it would be magic
-lulz because they aren't compatible, its a match made in heaven, the universe will implode if they touch?

I see your res now, 1900 x 1050, for that res go single 570, and chose the 850w corsair hx so you can go sli 570 down the road, that psu is like a 1000w, you can do sli 580 if you wanted to with it.
-uh...ok, I really don't understand video cards to save my life. If you could spell that out in stupid (my) speak it would be appreciated :)

:(  as I think of all the hours that I spent slaving over the internets trying to be informed and not get ripped to threads on the forums.

lol

Anyhow, in terms of the mobo, how should I work to narrow down my choices? With video cards higher number = better, but all the mobo's contain lots of options.
 
What is the MSI mobo?

For the record, I am guessing that I picked a mobo incomparable with the i 2600k?

*groans* (while realizing I am noob in training when it comes to customizing computers)

I by no means want to have other people do the leg work for me, but as you can see I know very little when it comes to building PC's. I am working within a budget (aren't we all) and it seems like building one myself (which given compatible parts ) I can do.

Since there is no "build your own custom PC from scratch" customizer, are there any good resources for doing this sort of thing? Most internet searches for this sort of thing turn up guides that are either too specific or not enough.

I am happy to keep bouncing ideas of the community, but I hate to waste other peoples time over questions that I am sure have been answered 1,000's of times before.

Thanks for the help so far.

I have not looked for a guide for a long time now to be honest.

In terms of cooling a (mildly) overclocked i7 2600k (maybe GPU and/or memory) will the Noctura d14 and the Coolmaster HAF932 be able to handle the heat generated?

Question still stands, how can I narrow my mobo choices down? The link provided has quite a few to choose although I was leaning toward ASUS since I have read that they make good mobos and overclockings pretty easy. But how to even further choose between the 20 ASUS that fit the i7?

Just rereading the earlier posts for the video card.

If I understand correctly, I should look to SLI/Crossfire two nVidia 570gtx or two Radeon 6850 cards together? If so that seems a bit pricey, but perhaps I can look to drop some stuff.

Also, do I need to snag a bluetooth usb adapter, or does that come with the mobo?

thats the mobo i should have gotten... mine was only $150 though (i found out why :P)

don't like the gpu choice. the 6850 has been outdone with the 6950. going single 6950 would be fine. but dst's and my standards are differant.
and with the ram 8gb is perfect for after fx and premire. to use multicore ram preview rendering on all cores you need 6gb free so if you have 8 that leaves 2 for the os and other apps.

ur prob right about the guide. you have to take it very lightly.

Actually 6 of them are new, ssd/ 4 x 500GB and 1 x 1TB BC, the other 4 I have been waiting for them to die but they won't, that 60GB is over 9 years old.

Here, thought you might like to partake in this:



EDIT: That ad links to this drive, not sure if it works any other versions.


Edited by Dragoonseal - 01 Jun 2011 at 3:37pm

Originally posted by KLPATS The Corsair A70 is $46.24 with a $15 mail-in rebate and can be combined with the 2600k for $10 more off. With that kind of price difference it may be worth considering the A70 over the Noctua.

I agree. I love my Noctua D14, but it is kind of overqualified for a budget 2600K build. A Corsair A70 or the smaller Noctua U12P will perform similarly for much cheaper.