Im looking to build a new PC here in the next week or two and replace my old system. Looking for a pretty beast gaming rig. Im looking for a second set of eyes / someone to help look over my list and see if all looks good, any possible conflicts, etc. I GREATLY appreciate all that help to assist making this rig the best it can be:
Case - COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 ATX Full Tower:
newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119225
-I really like the look of the case, and it looks like it should have VERY good air flow.
Motherboard - ASUSMaximus IV Extreme-Z
newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131760
-Did quite a bit of reading up and this seemed to have pretty good reviews and recommendations.
CPU - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz [LGA1155]
newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070
-Looks like the best bang for the buck - great reviews.
CPU Cooler - Was looking at some of the Corsair Hydro liquid CPU coolers. Look good at all?
Hard Drive - Crucial 256GB SATA III SSD
newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443
-Ive never owned a SSD hard drive. From what I read it works just like any other drive. Just pop it in and it works with no issues. Please correct me if Im wrong in my understanding.
Video Card - ASUS ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5 GeForce GTX 590
newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121436
-Like I said, I am a pretty big gamer, and looking for a beast card to handle everything. This card looks pretty sick, and could SLI in the future. Also I am running dual monitors now (One for gaming on a single monitor, second one has random crap up, Steam friends messaging, TV show, etc). Eventually Id like to get a third monitor up and running.. just throwing that out there.
Memory - Corsair Vengeance 16GB [4 x 4GB] DDR3 1600
newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233143
-Good reviews.. any other recommendations? Should I look higher than the DDR 1600? Also saw some pictures of memory fan cooling units? Worth looking into?
PSU - COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series 1200W ATX
newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171055
-Needing a powerful enough PSU to handle three hard drives, possible dual 590s in the future, etc.
Sound card - Feel free to provide any recommendations
Bluray drive - Will pull my Bluray burner from my current tower.
Seems like a pretty expensive build, everything seems to be up to a very good if not good spec and should go well together.
Your motherboard already has an 8-channel High Definition Audio feature, I personally wouldn't bother with an additional sound card.
A liquid cooling system would really only be necessary if you were looking to overclock your CPU at some point, if you're not going to a fan based cooling system with a heat sink would be more than sufficient.
Personally having such a quality build and only to have installed 256gb of hard drive memory would be a disappointment I would advice at least 512gb of hard drive memory. Games, movies, music and pictures all eat up a fair bit of memory.
Should have no problems with your build, good luck
The CPU Cooler you are considering, I've heard, can reach a TDP limit and kind of top out, losing its ability to cool your CPU. Also, a self enclosed Liq. Cooler seems kind of gimmicky to me, but thats me. Check FrostyTech for comparison of air-based CPU coolers.
The SSD if maintained right, can last a while. But you can lose speed or function by improper care. Some people say that SSD's dont last that long. IDK if that is true or not. google for MTBF of the ssd your interested in.
Have a platter drive for holding other programs you dont need to have on the Solid State. More than 512GB would probably suffice.
HAF X are nice. I think dust can build up easier since its pretty much open all over, have a can of duster available for cleanup.
ASUS is nice, at least to me, but that board is expensive. It looks like the chipset is why it is so expensive; is Z68 chipset better than P67? I don't know. I don't want to convince you not to buy it, just you should make sure you need the features that board offers.
CPU - Good.
Video Card - is this a single GPU offering? I like how it has three DVI ports.
Memory - "Should I look higher than the DDR 1600?" If you max out the capacity of the board, probably you wont be able to push it *too* much farther in terms of mhz if you did get higher clocked ram. Also, at least on what I know, there is a correlation between CPU clock and memory clock; more so when you have filled the memory banks. Keep it in mind, if you plan to overclock- which, from the looks of it you are planning/considering on doing in the future. I know I would.
"Also saw some pictures of memory fan cooling units? Worth looking into?" Not really, unless you like added noise or are pushing high voltage through the sticks. take a pass for now.
