Building My Own Computer. need advice.

before I respond to all your questions, I'm gonna give you some info or ask you a question on it, as its not making sense to me now.

As far as HTPC goes, that pretty much is just about any pc.

1. your hdd choice is not making sense to me, the preferred setup is like this:

HDD1 = fast small drive: os/apps/games

HDD2 = regular large drive: media/personal/work file storage

in other words ssd for hdd1 and 1TB BC or 2TB BC for storage as hdd2, or instead of that, one of your externals as hdd2.

2. the brain of your pc is the cpu, its the first and most important part of your overall performance, no matter what your needs are, I would go with a 2600k, multitasking/multi apps environment hands down the 2600K wins.

Also one mistake everybody makes is that they look at benches and assume that is the performance they get, which is not true, a bench is not running the same things as our pc, we have got many other things running in the background, however much a 2600K beats the 2100 at in multi tasking on a test bench, you can be sure that the difference will be bigger on our pc with our use.

Another mistake is thinking the results you see from the bench is how your pc will perform for a few years, not true, you have to take into account that apps/games/etc will be come more demanding and need more power, as this happens you will see a bigger and bigger difference between say a 2500k and 2600k, so don't think hey these 2 cpus are looking like they do the same in this game, so that should stay the same, not true, other stuff running in the background will make a difference and as resource demands becomes higher, your performance will drop, the stronger brain you chose, the less performance drop you will notice.

3. Home Premium is just fine unless:

a. you need remote connection to your pc

b. you need to use more then 16GB of ram total, this includes your vram , so say one needs 16GB of ram and have sli 570 gtx, the sli 570 has total of 3GB of ram and that plus the 16GB system ram brings us to a total of 19GB of ram, with Home Premium 64bit you only 16GB total, Pro and ultimate see 128GB total.

c. you need xpmode to run some apps that you can only run in a 32bit xp.

4. pro is fine, you would want a 3.9GHz - 4.4GHZ oc anyways for your use.

5. you got some flaws with your plan:

a. 460 is not a great choice now indays.

b. by the time you are ready to go sli with that gpu, you won't find it on the market, after about 2 years or so now in-days, gpus are discontinued.

6. Don't get the 850tx, get the AX or HX, with those you can run sli 580 if you wanted, the TX is not that great of a line for the 850, the HX and AX are the ones known around for their performance/quality/reliability.

7. checkout mushkin and see if you can get the same specs or better for same price or lower, 1600MHz is the choice spot, latency of 8 or better is what you are looking for, but keep in mind you won't notice the difference in latency for your use.

So for the ones that you need more info on, respond to my comment on it and tell me what you think about what I said, and we will take it from there, and get you where you need to go.

ok but how long you want to play those games? as I mentioned as the need for other apps running on your pc gets higher and they will, your performance drops.

As far as psu goes, I never mentioned it was cheap, as I said the 850w AX and HX are known for performance/quality/reliability, the 850 tx is not known for that.

I think the point is the build a reliable pc for teh cheapest possible, and not just the cheapest possible, otherwise you gonna endup with a headache, and not a pc.

what res are you gonna be gaming at?

I don't know if 460 is too low or too high, a 560 is a better choice then the 460, in the long run, but I assume either is enough cause those games don't need lot of juice.

I think your best bet to save a little more and build something that will run most of the time instead of headache most of the time.

you didn't comment on the hdd situation, which seems like a place some money can be saved, what mobo you going with? and dont' say msi.

We will probably use the computer for the next three years at the least.... In the long run, what you say makes sense, but due to amazon's prices I really couldn't add all of that... I tried newegg and a couple of others the prices were either the same or higher. Where did you shop?

As for HDD, I would like to get a 40GB ssd for the OS and a 1-2TB drive for everything else. But once again, expensive.

As for Mobo, I've selected the ASUS P8P67 PRO (as there was no real difference with the pro and deluxe) which does support SLI as far as I know.

I would like to get a GTX 560 but they are nearly double the price of the 460 on Amazon. Again, Where were you shopping at? The prices I saw looked really good!

2560X1600 is preferable for the res. This would mainly be for the Need For Speed games and a couple of others.

With Newegg it is all about taking advantage of the discounts, combos, and promo codes. Some of the combos and promo codes stack and some do not. Sign up for their e-mail newsletter for sure.

DST can give a thumbs up or down on the brands. Just as an example, right now with power supplies COUGARMAY11 takes off 15% for Cougar brand PSUs, and PCPOWER15FS takes 15% off PC Power and Cooling. Corsairs will have deals and codes pretty often as well. Those two in particular stack with combo deals. Just scroll to the bottom of the item page to where it says buy together and save and click browse more combos. Just a few weeks ago you could combine the HAF 922 with a fair amount of options. Although that isn't the case right now, it changes often.

This Newegg cart is for example's sake. The grand total that is not in the picture at the bottom of the page is $923.18. That total is with two promo codes. EMCKEGJ47 takes $10.00 off the graphics card and PCPOWER15FS takes $18.00 off the PSU. There are also $40.00 in rebate cards that would be added onto the savings.

Again, this is purely an example. I will be on here in a few months asking for advice on a DS build myself, so I am not an authority on the quality of a particular product. I am not giving a stamp of approval or disapproval to any of those products. I am just showing the level of discount that can be had on a case that is near the HAF922's price, and the same goes for the ram and other items. You can also wait on open box items like the MB in DST's posted picture. That opens up the opportunity to pair up the processor, or case, or ram, or whatever with something else.

If you were to get a full cart like this and then go through the checkout and certain discounts disappear, the solution to that would be to just place multiple orders. I would imagine that would work.



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Thank you guys so much for your input. I'll be attempting to put together a PC on Newegg.

I have but one more question. More one of curiosity then anything else (as I prefer the 2600K myself) but what are your thoughts on Core i5 second gen? I've read reviews of average consumers and gamers and they all give it decent reviews but I've never been to sure about processors under the Core i7.