BleepingComputer.com: Putting together gaming rig, give opinions please.

Okay so I've put together a rig and I'm wondering if its good I would like some opinions, if you could also tell me if there is something out there that's better I would appreciate it. Not trying to go past 1800$, also I do not have a video card selected yet I'm waiting possibly around Christmas time see if anything new comes out. No AMD, not sure if I wanna do ATI or NVIDIA tho.

Newegg has a deal with the Antec 1200 and the Samsung hard drive 30$ off, is this a good deal and is the hard drive good?
Case: Antec 1200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811129043

Hard drive: SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI 1.5TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822152175

CPU: Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115202

Motherboard: ASUS Rampage II GENE LGA 1366 Intel X58 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131371

RAM: CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C8D - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820145224

CPU Heat Sink: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16835103055 COOLER MASTER Intel Core i7 compatible V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler - Retail or ZALMAN CNPS9900LED 120mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16835118046

Power Supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817139009

DVD Drive: PLEXTOR 24X DVD/CD Writer Black SATA Model PX-880SA LightScribe Support - OEM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16827249054

OS: Windows 7 Professional- hopefully that's a good choice.

Thanks for your time.

Hey.

I've gona over the parts there and added them to my cart to check prices. You have a good budget and all them parts are great, but if I was you; I'd change the RAM, it's very espensive and honestly you won't notice a difference from it and a cheaper set like OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 . This leaves a good $100 to beef up another part.

Also, personal preference here. But I don't like Antec cases, I had a 900 myself and it failed epicly. I'd change the case to a CM HAF full tower. If you want the Antec you can keep it, it will work fine, but the HAF will do the same job and I think it looks nicer not to mention it's like $20 cheaper.

The HDD, I know you get a combo deal or whatever with it. But I would much rather use the fast Caviar Black 750Gb/1TB . I have a 500GB Black myself and it's very fast, and I like it alot. Although my SSD is ftw.

Also, personal preference for me is to change the mobo aswell. I must admit, I love my P6T Deluxe V2 alot. But this really is up to you to change, so I won't put it in the cart.

The cooler though, this is something I'd change right away. I know the CM looks cool. But I gotta say, the Noctua NH U12p is rock steady, I have it myself and I love it. Make sure you add the 1366 version, as there is a 775 one which isn't compatible. Also the Mugen 2 / Xigmatek Dark night are good too.

I also put in Windows 7 Ultimate too.

For the GPU, I know you will wait till christmas to see what comes out. The only thing I can think of that might come around then is the Nvidia GF100, but I don't know when this will come out, I do know it will the best card around but it's gonna be a steep price. Also, the ATI 5870x2 will be due out then aswell, it should be anyway.

For now though a single 5870 which is DX11, first DX11 card out, is immensly powerful.

You can keep you current setup though as it is fine, but that's what I would do

Thanks for the response, its funny I too was also looking at every other product you showed me as well but I figured maybe if the parts are more they might be better lol. By any chance is this RAM any better its a little more its OCZ thou http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820227388. Also what is wrong with the motherboard I know you said it was a personal thing but why do you not prefer it, I don't know much about pc's sorry. One more thing should I too get ultimate version of windows 7 or should I stick with professional, I only know English unfortunately lol, but is there anything good that it actually comes with because I haven't seen anything I would actually use. Thanks for all the help reaper. Random I know but I checked your profile out and I was born February 4th, 1988 pretty close lol.

Well, that RAM is slightly better but you wouldn't notice a differen in performance either.

And about the mobo, my preference is that I have used the one I suggested, or well... I'm using it atm and it's great never a bother with it.

Also, the Ultimate has some extras not really sure what though I always go for the Home Premium as it's alot cheaper. I think the Ultimate isn't much more than the Professional either.

You older by 4 days haha, goodman!

....don't bother with Ultimate. The layout of the Windows 7 product editions vary from those of Vista. For instance, in 7, you get Media Center with Home Premium, it is then included in every other edition of 7 right up through Ultimate. This differs from how Vista handled the product SKUs. Ultimate contains everything that Windows 7 Professional has with all the Enterprise stuff combined, so unless you're running a major corporation, you don't need Ultimate. Windows 7 Home Premium is more than enough for most users, unless you want the XP mode (which is 32-bit only and will not run games well in a stripped-down virtual PC) and EFS, Professional may also not be a good option. For computer cases, I prefer the COOLER MASTER COSMOS 1000 RC-1000-KSN1-GP as it is large, elegant, and well built. I don't suggest getting such a huge single drive for your PC. I would get two, one with lower capacity that will store your OS and games, and another large drive that will contain your data, like music and movies. You could even get an ultra fast SSD, like the Kingston SSDNow V-Series SNV125-S2BN/128GB to install the OS and applications on and then get the Western Digital Caviar Green WD7500AADS 750GB to store all your media on. Now to your motherboard, for a gaming PC a micro-ATX board isn't a good choice given the smaller size and compact nature of the components. I suggest getting a full ATX motherboard, like the ASRock X58 Deluxe LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard which costs the same and has a few more options. For right now, the Radeon 5 series is best, though we may not see anything new in stores from NVidia until after the holidays. I never understood brand loyalty with computers, if a component offers the best price to performance for what you want to do, go for it. Who made that component is largely unimportant unless the company has a history of poorly made equipment.

Looks pretty good so far, is DDR3 really worth it thought? Iv read that it would be better to go with DDR2 for the time being, maybe you should take that into consideration

Well, he wants to go with an i7 it seems. And the i7 only uses DDR3. Besides he's put a good budget to it, so he may aswell get a kick ass computer now. DDR3 is the way to go.

Also, if you want to go with the SSD(Solid State Drive) route, I advise this. Intel X25M - G2 80GB . Although it has a smaller capacity than the one DJBPace posted, it supports TRIM with Windows 7, which upon reading up on the Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB SSD , they can't support TRIM.

You might not know what TRIM is, but I'll give you a brief summary, it's the equivalent of De-fragmentation on a Hard Dive, regular defrag tools on Windows do not work with SSD's. Here is what TRIM is all about. With articles like that, I really wouldn't get a non TRIM SSD.

If you do get an SSD, a few things you'll want to do to save space and general things.

Move your pagefile, get a second Hard Drive like the WD, and move the pagefile to it.

Disable drive indexing for the SSD.

Disable restore points too.

Download Ccleaner, run it and constantly use it to get some space back, it works fast on an SSD so it's wont be a problem to use.

Also, perform a Disk Cleanup aswell. I had about 2GB of Hibernation files after I installed Vista on it.

But now I have an awesome SSD, that took me 15 minutes to install Vista Ultimate on.

TRIM is supported on some SSD's from Crucial, AData, and OCZ, but not Kingston. The Crucial CT128M225 2.5" 128GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) does support TRIM and has a higher capacity than the Intel, but is more expensive for obvious reasons.

Thanks for all the feedback, now I was wondering some other things will the 5870x2 be better than 2 5870's? Will this computer still be good say in about 3 years considering DX11 is upon us even tho I know there is not a game that supports it yet. Also Western Digital Caviar Green WD7500AADS 750GB, which is better the black or green or does it not matter? Which mobo is better the one reaper posted or the one pace posted I know its all about personal preference but I'm stuck so I don't really have a personal opinion on something I know nothing about lol, I don't even know if I will ever crossfire 3 cards tho, I don't think? With RAM should I get DDR3 2000 or is 1600 fine and is 6gb's enough? Is the 850w PSU enough for everything I have mentioned or should I go higher? How big should the hard drives be if I get two instead of one. One last thing what exactly is a SSD? Thanks for your time.

Also could someone point me in the way of a good monitor lol, I don't know if I want really big one or not. Thanks

wweezzyy, on Oct 20 2009, 09:49 PM, said:

5870x2 and 2x5870 are essentially the same, but space-wise a single 5870x2 would be better. You can't really say how long it will be top range for, 3 years is a long time. But I'd say it should last the 3. The 8800 Nvidia cards are like 3 years old now and they still perform good on games.

The Green WD's are more eco friendly but are slightly slower than the Blacks, probably not much noticeable of a difference. Either one is fine, but I like my drives to be as fast as possible. Also, I hear the Greens are a little noisy, my Black is quest as hell.

The difference between the Asus P6T Deluxe V2, and the Asrock mobo is the quality of them. FYI Asus actually is Asrock, it's just a side division that is made for budget parts, so the build quality isn't as good as the parts are cheaper. But I must say that Asrock mobo posted is pretty great looking, I'd probably get it looking at it now. Asus for quality, Asrock for budget I think. It does have a bundle of PCI-E/PCI slots though that the Asus doesn't have, but the PCI-E Lanes operate at slow enough speeds so it's probably gonna bottleneck High end GPU systems Namely CF 5870.

For the RAM, 1600 is more than fine it's fast enough. People who get 2000 or whatever are usually running benchmarks and trying to get a really high mark. And 6Gb is loads, you'll want 6Gb/12Gb for Tri Chanell mode anyway. the 850 Watt PSU should be enough for everything, but if I was gonna go CF/Sli i'd probably get a 1k Watt or 850 Watt Enermax Revolution 85(these are pricey PSU's).

The Hard drives need to be whatever size you will use, 500Gb is plenty in my books, what I would do is get maybe.. a 500GB Black and use it for games and you operating system, and then get a cheaper 1TB Green and put music and videos on it, you won't be needing speed for data storage.

Also, what an SSD is: Solid State Drive. It's has the same use as a normal Hard Drive, except they have no moving parts in them. So, they are quieter, alot faster as it doesn't need to spin to access files. They are better than a normal HDD in every aspect except price, SSD's are very expensive and very new technology. the price will come down over time, but for now anyone who wants one is better off getting a small capacity one maybe 40gb-80gb and use it for their Operating System.

Edit: Also a great moniter is the Samsung T220 HD, pretty good price too.

Damn dude you are a beast lol. Thanks for all the info, if you have xfire add me its bigdizzl3.

ASRock isn't Asus, it is an entirely different company with its own IPO. It was founded by Asus ex-pats. The Samsung T220 HD is good, but there are less expensive models. There are many choices for monitors, like the Acer X193W+BD Black 19" 5ms if you want a 19-inch, ASUS VW224U Black 22" 2ms(GTG) for a 22-inch, or a 24-inch ASUS VW246H Black 24" 2ms. The X2 models of cards are very powerful, but if you already have a motherboard capable of Crossfiring two of those cards, it is usually less expensive to do so. That is, unless you want a quad Crossfire system.

Every link I can find on Google seems to indicate Asus owns them. Even the wiki entry on Asrock says Asus is it's parent company, so it looks like Asus does indeed own it.

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Asus competes in the high end quality parts; Asrock was made by Asus to compete in the low/medium end.

While searching, I see some people mention "rogue" engineers, but I can't find proof of it(and the wiki seems to disregard that) maybe I'm not looking hard enough? And I find that a bit hard to believe.

But looking at my post I should have said

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Okay so which mobo should I get? lol sorry thanks for the feedback again guys later.