Rate my Config! (plz!)

Is this what you are building yourself?

I don't like most of your parts.

Well you should post this in the hardware section then.

I have not played around with amd for a long time, so I'm not upto date on the mobo and etc. I know you get lot more power from intel tho.

It looks like you are an amd fan and thats all good, personally I'm a fan of nvidia but first and foremost I'm a fan of most performance for my money, so if ati or amd gives me that then I will go for that.

Now keep that in mind as I tell you this stuff please, and remember I'm coming from performance point of view and not nvidia.

1. gpu for $50 more you can get extra 12fps where it counts, for example in bf3 6870 gets 25 fps and for $50 more 570 gets you 37 fps, I don't have to tell you what a big difference there is between 25 and 37 fps.

Also xfx is not a company I would go with or recommend to anybody based on their record of reliability and service. So if you are gonna stick with ati, at least forget xfx.

2. cpu cooling, thats not a great cooler, but again I don't 'know if you plan on ocing or anything like that and if yes then to what extent.

3. ssd, when it comes to ssds, not all are the same and there is lot of bs info and bs advertising, vertex by no means is the fastest ssd or anywhere near close to best ssd out there when it comes to reliability and performance. look at intel 320 or crucial m4 they have a better track record in reliability and perfomrance, tho for both make sure you have the latest firmware which fixes an issue they each had.

4. psu, don't like it, Thermaltake is not known for having best/most reliable psus out there, I prefer corsair hx and ax series, or you should look around for a good seasonic psu.

5. hdd, that hdd spins slower then a regular drive, either get a 1TB black caviar for its speed, or get something else.

I don't care for gskill in ram nor do I like your case, but I'm gonna assume you are on a tight budget, if not then IMHO you are not making the best decisions for your money.

When I build a system, I like to build one that lasts a good time and stays powerful for a long time with the least amount of headache, I can't say that your config falls in that category.

If budget is tight and you have to go that route I understand, been there myself, but if budget is not that tight then I would change a few things so that I have more power/reliability for my money.

Edited by DST4ME - 27 Jan 2012 at 12:19pm

2. if you are not going to oc then the stock cooler is fine. However some info for you, if a cpu is oced properly, and pushed only to have vcore of 1.4 or lower, with the oc the cpu will out live the pc itself, I'm talking about over 8 years easy. Life of cpu is based on vcore and usage, once above 1.4 you accelerate the death of cpu, around 1.5 you looking at about year before death, around 1.7 you looking at practically instant death, long story short oc is just fine, just make sure settings are correct and vcore is below 1.4 and you are good, of course load temps need to be below 80c - 85c.

3. depends on the drive, for example a ssd is very fast in many ways, read/write/random access speeds, you can raid 10 hdds and you still wont' get 4k speeds of a one ssd. Generally when we say fast drive here, we base that on its speeds for our use, for example as a regular user most of our speed is based on 4k use, so here the fastest drive is the one that has the fastest 4k speeds, if the drive is for large file storage and transfer then we look at its size and its transfer/write/read speeds on the large file scale.

Now when I say faster drive then green caviar I mean a drive that has faster/better read/write speeds for its purpose, in this case If I'm not mistaken the 1TB black caviar is faster in every aspect from the green and has a good track record, and when you finally upgrade to a good ssd for os/apps/games, the 1TB BC will do great as hdd2 for storage, remember:

HDD1 = fast small drive: os/apps/games

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

In this case HDD1 = SSD and HDD2 = 1TB BC

4. again I'm not upto date on amd but I'm gong to assume no it will be fine, I just like mushkin better.

5. if you want a good case checkout the haf 922, it costs more but has great airflow.

6. I'm not quiet sure what you meant here, vendor difference between what? the parts you mean? for example asus mobo with mushkin ram? if thats what you mean then as long as the parts are compatible there should not be a problem, but with things like xfx you can expect your parts to fail faster and/or more often.

Edited by DST4ME - 28 Jan 2012 at 7:52am

Personally I would much rather wait and spend $2500 on a good quality rig from DS as opposed to spending the $1125 now on cheap parts.  Up to you though, just trying to be direct about it.