So I have absolutely no experience building computers, or handling/picking hardware. I blame it on being pretty poor and never getting much of a chance to be around it.

Anyway I'd like to get some opinions on this computer part build, if you could help me determine if this is okay, how well it will perform, what can be replaced, or if I'm getting ripped off it would be very much appreciated.



Motherboard
ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 Intel Z68 Motherboard ($175)
CPU
Intel Core i7-2600K ($320)
CPU Cooler
Corsair Hydro H100 CPU Liquid Cooler ($100)
RAM
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz 16GB (4 x 4GB) ($105)
Video Card
EVGA GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB GDDR5) ($405)
Sound Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer ($40)
Hard Drives
Seagate Barracuda 1TB (7200rpm, 64MB cache) ($115)
OCZ Agility 3 Series Solid State Drive 120GB ($130)
Optical Drive
Lite-On Internal Blu-Ray Burner ($80)
Case
Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower ($130)
Power Supply
OCZ ZX Series Modular Power Supply 850W ($125)

Total Cost: $1725 (USD)

Keep in mind, this is just my basic "template" and I'm looking to see what needs/can be replaced in order to make a top-performance gaming desktop that'll last me a decent amount of time. My budget at absolute tops would be a little over $2000, just to say.

I personally am not a fan of liquid cooling. Anyways, heres a http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-pc,2601-10.html, something you can reference when you actually get parts.

Unnecessary. The i5-2500k is more than enough for your gaming needs, and is ~$100 less expensive.


6-8 GB is enough.


The 560 Ti would be much cheaper, and you could still max out your games.


A little steep, yet again. With the suggestions I've made, a 650-700W PSU is sufficient.

Only thing I would suggest is to get a I5 2500k rather then a I7 2600k saves you a good amount the cost to performance ratio is poor for a I7 because one the multithreading functionality is only used in a minority of games I only know of 1 (possibly 2 that use such) and the ones that do use it are not worth it not much of a performance gained good for heavy video editing.

The rest if you have i5 2500k is what I have pretty much and it costed me around the same price.

Thanks! I'll make sure to update my build accordingly.

I personally would say dump the sound card (unless you have a very expensive pair of headphones that you may actually notice the difference with)
Unless you plan on doing video editing or anything that will benefit from the extra threads of the i7, I would drop down to a 2500k.
8GB of RAM is plenty for a gaming system.

As to the GTX 580, those are last generation high end cards, if you can, I personally would say go with a 7950 if you are willing to spend that much money. Or you could drop down to a GTX 570 and save a bit of money and hardly notice a performance loss at 1920x1080 or below.

I am not a fan of water cooling either.

Additionally, you don't have to go exactly with what I chose. I'm just showing you that you can have great performance with good looking games for far less money than you think. I know your first instinct is to pick the highest numbers and such, but there's a limit to how much power these modern games will use to their advantage. Also, while it may be tempting to build a PC "to last a long time", this is only a good idea if you're really confident in your financial situation, plus there's the fact that the price of hardware is almost constantly going down, and something like the GTX 580 or higher won't see much use right now other than from hardcoe benchmarkers who like to cool their superclocked computers with liquid nitrogen.

Just look around, educate yourself on how this hardware works, but you don't have to go too far into the details. If you're in the market for a CPU or GPU, there are countless benchmarks for nearly all of them, and you can make your decision based on how they perform for games. As for stuff like sound cards, additional hard drives and optical drives, that is entirely up to you.

I agree with this notion. Unless you're a sound engineer it's very difficult to tell the difference between integrated audio et cetera. All you really need is a nice pair of speakers and you'll be good to go.

I don't know if you'd be willing to wait, but I'm personally waiting for the Ivy Bridge CPUs to release this summer before buying hardware. Both the AMD 7XXX series of GPUs and nVidia's GTX 6XX series of GPUs are likely to be cheaper by then as well.


The main reasons (IMO) to use an actual sound card are 1.) if you plan to use Dolby Digital Live to output surround game audio via SPDIF (otherwise you only get stereo via the digital connector), 2.) you're a stickler about using the CPU for audio processing and you want something with an integrated DSP, or 3.) you're going to use your PC for audio mastering. I know that some integrated chipsets will do Dolby Digital Live using the CPU, but a lot of people don't have very good luck with it.

The closed loop systems are a good, cheap option. (Compared to custom WCing loops.) I own the H50 from years ago, and it's doing very well with my 4.2GHz OC'd I7 950. I look at it more like "high end air". I find it cleaner looking than towers in my towers.

I've never liked any on-board solution. They sound like crap compared to my Creative sound cards that I've used over the years. I use fairly decent speakers though. Nothing high end, but not "$10 specials" either. It's a 6.1 system.

Ah well, to each their own as they say. (Food for thought.)

Thanks guys, definitely taking notes here. Like I said, I'm extremely inexperienced with the specifics in hardware and such in computers. You guys sure are helping a lot

Same here. I don't even use 6.1 speakers and I don't have uber headphones (not even close). But on-board still sounds horrible to me even so. Also, I tend to have more tech issues with them for some reason (programs not liking the onboard drivers, crashes, etc). Maybe it's just the way I set stuff up, dunno.

To the OP...if you live in a very hot area/poorly ventilated room, water cooling might make sense. Otherwise I'd skip water cooling as well...fans and maybe a small room A/C unit for the occasional heat wave (if you get any) is more than enough for most.

Take this advice with a grain of salt. Unless your willing to take a chance on breaking something or recieving broken parts and dealing with RMA. Your better of finding a local MOM and POP computer store and buying your PC there. Because they will guarentee the parts and labor for 1+ years and it will still be a custom PC.

Greg

I suggest against that

pre-built = more cash. Even I who has never put a PC together by myself prior to my current rig and literally watched a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUY0tP5jYIo going through the steps got it working fine. If you can put together a lego kit from a book then you can put together a PC every thing is color coded or have a slot matching it. Also putting together a PC by yourself allows you familiarize yourself with it that way if you need to hotfix something or even clean PC out you can feel confident to so alone without paying $20-50 each time. Just know the basics such as don't touch the exposed areas like the face of the Mobo, GPU, or CPU hold such by the sides and try to create and be in a area with the least amount of static such as a wooden floor or tile or have rubber soles on.

My local Mom and pop store put my PC together for $100 more then it would have cost me to do it myself. And guess what if anything happens during the first year they fix it for FREE. I do not have to go through the hassel of sending in a RMA. I will pay the $100 to sleep good at night!

Greg

P.S. over the years I have built 16 PC's for myself and family members. How ever I just dont think its worth it anymore when I can get a year warranty for $100.

I have to agree with everything in this post. I just built a 2500k with 8gb of memory and a 2gb 560 Ti. There really isn't anything out right now that's going to thrash a system like that. By the time they do really start releasing games that strain it you'll be able to upgrade at a much better price. All you'll likely have to do is add some memory and get a new video card. I've got a PCI-E 2.0 card, but my motherboard has dual PCI-E 3.0 slots. The idea is that in a couple of years I can upgrade to better stuff at a fraction of the cost of doing so now.

As I said, I just built a rig, from the bottom up, including literally everything. It cost me less than $1300 and that's including tax & shipping. In two years I'll probably buy a Blu-Ray burner and a new video card.
This will matter differently depending on the individual. For the most part, I couldn't care less about warranties (especially of the "extended" variety). Still, if you can find someone to build the exact same rig, or better, and they only charge you $100 while giving a guarantee that can actually be recovered, then fine. Personally, I've never found any place like that. I know tons of shops that will gladly build their own version for you, and it usually either isn't up to the standards I want or else it costs way more than I'm willing to pay. I've never known a shop that will bill a $1200 rig and than guarantee the labor and all the parts for 365 days for a mere $100. If you know one, you are likely a very lucky individual.

Regardless, building a pc is really simple. Just read everything very carefully and go very slow when building your first one. After that, it really does come easily. By far and away the most stressing parts are 1) making sure you put the motherboard risers in the right spots and 2) carefully putting the cpu into the socket and fastening it down. I always break a sweat on the latter... but I've yet to have a mishap.

Last, but not least, building a computer is just plain fun.

I have the Twin Frozr GTX 560 Ti 1.2 GB and in my opinion it's a little weak.

It's not bad, it's a good medium range card but I like my games maxed out at 1920 x 1080 at a minimum of 60fps, so you might want to consider getting the 580 you mentioned if you're as obsessed with graphics and performance as I am.

The Mom and POP PC store I have been dealing with are good people they often cut me deals.

You are right building a PC is very very easy as long as you take your time and not rush it and screw something up. Although I never had any parts DOA, I have had plenty of parts go with in the first year over the years. And like I say the bad part about it when that happens you are stuck doing a RMA or buying a new part out of pocket.

Greg

I wouldnt call the 560ti weak, I do not have any problem maxing out any game @1920 X1080. But I do not expect it to max out next years games.

Greg

Edit: except for Crysis amd Metro 2033

So I'm definitely getting a lot of help with this, I think I've got my parts down to the final organization stage. Now where should I get this thing? I'm in New York, and I haven't heard anything about MOM and Pops ever. Preferably is there a specific site/store that's 'widely known' where they can build it for me? I don't trust myself, I'll probably mess something up, as simple as it is. If there aren't any sites/stores I can just put it together myself. I know I have the ability to, I just don't trust myself (a novice) with a system like this

Otherwise, I've learned a lot of stuff in the past couple days, thanks a ton guys

There's a lot of useful links in the first post of the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1358707-the-community-tech-thread-no-113/. The "how to build" videos, for instance.

http://www.newegg.com

That is a great place to get computer parts, as I have built 2 computers so far with parts from them. As far as a place to help you build it? I don't know of any. I can say this, it's really hard to mess it up. If you follow the instructions that come with all the parts there really isn't anything to mess up. Watch the tutorials on YouTube and you should be fine.

As far as your build, I would most definitly lose the liquid cooling. If you get a very good 3rd party CPU Heat Sink than it will keep it plenty cool. I also would most DEFINITLY get a separate sound card. Onboard audio does increase your CPU usage, while maybe not enough to notice I just don't like it. It's my personal preferance. PLUS, a SoundBlaster sound card is so much better. Even the cheapest SoundBlaster card is much better than anything you can get with onboard audio. I would also leave the power supply as is because this way you have overhead in case you want to upgrade in the future. Having too much power it better than now having enough.

Most E-tailers have options for them to put the parts you bought together for a fee. Mine charges $50. They'll install Windows, even if you didn't buy it, to test it. Then they will remove it if all is good. They then ship you the PC in one box verses multiple smaller boxes.

P.S.

I'm going to make a stand for the "Water cooling". It's not like they are building a $600 custom loop. It's cheaper close loop system. A proven one at that.

OP, get what you want. As mentioned, I prefer them because they look good in my case, as well as work great.

Actually, it occurs to me that the real question on water cooling is..... will the OP (who admits to no/little experience building computers and messing with hardware) be doing the kind of overclocking that requires additional cooling to begin with?


OP: If you're not planning to do lots of overclocking, spending a bunch of $ on fancy extra cooling systems might be a waste. Just a thought.

What site do you use? I know it's hard to mess up but I'm just curious. Just in case.