BleepingComputer.com: Building Thermaltake XaserIII SuperTower v1000 Series

So here's the thing: this thing belonged to my dad. The MB got fried and he used that as an excuse to get himself a new 'puter. I liberated the Thermaltake from him. I'm going to be doing this pretty much by myself with some limited help from my dad in case I get stuck somewhere. As you can tell via the pics, this thing has been gutted:







My goal is to make it a pretty powerful machine. It will not be primarily used for gaming, but there will be some of that (I have zero overclocking experience). Here's the hardware I've selected thus far:

CPU (purchased): Intel® Core i7 920 2.66GHz - comes w/ heatsink & fan. got it the other day. It's gorgeous!

MB (unpurchased): ASUS P6T LGA 1366

RAM (unpurchased): Crucial 6GB

Any thoughts on the above is much appreciated. The following is what I'm still having trouble with deciding, mostly because of cost (as you can see, I'm splurging on the above...). I want to see if anyone has a better suggestion for me that's a little nicer to my wallet but still a good match for my other hardware.

Video Card: Was thinking about NVIDIA GeForceGTX 480 but a decent price for this thing is hard to find. I have a spare vid card that's not too old lying around that I can use until I decide this. Ideas?

PSU : All I know is that I want a 1000w PSU. 750w is my minimum. If anyone thinks I can get away with something else, let me know. Antec and Thermaltake are really expensive. PSU's important, I know, but I was hoping to save some money here so I need a recommendation for another manufacturer because I'm not familiar with anything but Antec & Thermaltake PSU's.

HDD's: I'm thinking two 1TB's since I'm not looking to make this into an extreme gaming machine yet. I need feedback on who's a reliable manufacturer for a good price

Cooling Fans: I need to replace 3 of the 7. Dimensions of the fans must be: 80x80x25mm. I've gotten a lot of conflicting advice but Corsair seems to be the favorite. What say you?


That about covers it. I DON'T need a DVD-RW. My current PC has 2 that are a few months old. I'm going to swap out 1 of them because I really don't need 2 of them on one PC.I am planning on keeping my current PC but I'm still not sure if I'm going to set up a dual monitor system or not. I'm either going to hook both of them up to a KVM switch or buy another monitor. Let me know if you think I should. I'm planning on running W7 on the new one (yes I have tried it, have it on my laptop). Not sure if I should do 32-bit or 64-bit so I want to know what you would run if you were building this PC.

Thanks in advance!

Looks good, my concerns are. Why 6 gigs of memory unless your rendering 3d animation or using Adobe CS4 will you won't utilize it. Also unless you use a 64 bit OS windows won't recognize all of the memory either. For a PSU I have had good luck with Rosewill, Coolermaster. HDD I generally use Seagate or Western Digital. I am all for the Nvidia card but for the casual gamer 300 is a bit overkill Take a look at this thread on Tomshardware.com

This post has been edited by Sneakycyber: 05 June 2010 - 11:56 AM

I chose the 6GB because it was a really good price. I want to get Crucial memory, been very happy with it. The 4GB for the MB I want is over $200 and the 6GB is $170. It was a price thing. I didn't know that about the OS so thanks for telling me that. My dad completely failed to mention it and I've been running everything by him so far as well. Thanks for the rec's! I really appreciate it since all my other advice has come from my game-obsessed buddies lol. I'm taking a look at that thread right now. THANK YOU!

No problem happy building

what speed of RAM are you using? Crucial is good but sometimes depending on the speed you want they come with only heat sink packages. like the case of mine I have 1333 DDR3. I could go with 1600 but those are all heatsink packages.

I'm not sure what you mean by heat sink packages? If your referring to the Memory with heat spreaders there is no drawback to having them (although. They are there to keep the memory cooler.

There is one drawback Sneakycyber, depending on the size of the heat spreaders, and what type of heatsink/fan is used.
Sometimes they don't fit, when using certain aftermarket HSF's.

Now I'm confused?

If there's a way for me to tell the speed of the RAM I'm buying without putting it in a MB first please tell me. If you click on the link I posted these are the specs:

Module Size: 6GB kit (2GBx3)
Package: 240-pin DIMM
Feature: DDR3 PC3-8500
Specs: DDR3 PC3-8500 • CL=7 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1066 • 1.5V • 256Meg x 64 •

So I suppose, according to this I'll have DDR3 1066. Right?

Correct.

in your motherboard manual it should tell what RAM the motherboard will take from the highest to the lowest and list which brands each ones support for that particular speed. as far as I understood about heat sink packaging those are usualy only used if you are overclocking...or at least thats what I was told anyway.

Thanks for the heads up TG1911 . @Rage Skywolfe It used to be that way, most of the faster overclocked or overclock worthy memory had heat spreaders. With the increase is FSB and Core i7 transfer speeds memory chips are running much faster then before and transfer rates have increased dramatically and that all causes heat.

Ah, I <3 you people.

Rage, that memory I got was recommended. Since I don't have the MB yet, I called up Crucial and double-checked with them before buying the 6GB. Everything's compatible in that area...I know it's kinda confusing because I did say that I wasn't looking to make this into a gaming PC, but it will turn into that when I have more time to actually play games :D So that's why I'm trying to beef up now so I won't have to later.

Haven't been able to get onto here in some time. Lot's of issues. But I've got a power supply of 850w en route to my house as well as that ASUS. All really good prices. I'll let you all know how it turns out and thanks for all the info! You all helped me out!

This post has been edited by xspankyx: 16 June 2010 - 06:56 PM