www.renegadeheroes.com

Howdy everyone, I finally have cash money for a new computer and wanted to ask for your thoughts before I buy everything in a week (if not sooner).

Case: Themaltake Level 10 GT
Motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Extreme w/ Battlefield 3
CPU: Intel Core i7-3930k
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 580
CPU Cooling: Corsair H80
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB)
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SATA3-120GB
Power Supply: Corsair TX750 V2 750W
DVD Drive: ASUS 24X DVD Burner
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp U2412M
Keyboard: Logitech Gaming Keyboard G510
Mouse: Logitech VX Nano
Headset (when it comes out): Razer 7.1 Tiamat

I'm not the most knowledgable person on RAM, SSDs, power supplies and monitors so please throw any advice my way for improving them. I already own the mouse and in week or two I'll be getting my 320GB external HDD from Arizona. I plan to buy soon so praise or criticise now!

Unless you are going to go to 32GB or RAM, that Proc, though good, won't do much more in gaming vs a 2600K. Just comparing Crysis 2 between a variety of Procs...Crysis II Processor Performance. As you can see, games, such as this, are more reliant upon the Graphics Card. So, my recommendation is save your money and go with the 2600K or 2700K and save money on the Proc and use the savings on going with the GTX 590 card. I would also recommend that you go with 16GB of ram. Other that that, I think your build is good...based on your personal preferences (NVIDIA, cough, cough...).

Lastly, do NOT go with that monitor...great for Photoshop, horrible for gaming... It has a 8ms refresh speed and I guarantee you will see graphical tearing when playing games. I see tearing on monitors that advertise a 5ms refresh. Look for a LED backlit, LCD with 1 - 2ms refresh. If you are looking at 24" panels, look at these: ASUS VS248H-P or SAMSUNG S24A350H. I would recommend going w/a 27" such as these: SAMSUNG P2770FH or ViewSonic VX2753mh-LED

I would recommend getting a regular old internal hard drive to go with that (Newegg is a good reference for price and reviews), as 120GB is going to feel cramped awfully fast--you definitely don't want to be installing programs on an external drive. I got an SSD with my setup, and what I've done is put games I'm currently playing frequently on the SSD and the rest on the old HD. This should help with that (haven't tried it myself, but it's recommended by the Steam forums). Also, look up the mklink command for Windows, it will help in offloading files that don't really need to be on the SSD.

that dell is way over priced,i just got this monitor a couple of weeks ago and love playing BF3 on it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824236174

also are you planning on over clocking? if not the that mobo is a big waste plus 6 cores is kinda a waste of money as software barley takes advantage of dual core and quad core let alone a six core,top that with the x79 chipset has been very bugy. i would save 300-500 and get a x58 mobo with a Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz LGA 1366 ,its just as fast with 2 less cores, and the only major difference with the mobo other then the x58 has a proven track record is it uses tri channel ram instead of a quad channel which makes no real world difference.

the rest of the build is fine.

oh by the way for anybody that is interested or knows someone who is i still have a EVGA GTX 275 for sale

MATRIX wrote:that dell is way over priced,i just got this monitor a couple of weeks ago and love playing BF3 on it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824236174

Actually, I'd say it's underpriced for the type of IPS panel it has.

I guess I should explain my reasoning for a few items that have been discussed. I put four 2GB sticks (8GB total) down because I plan on upgrading to 32GB of RAM when it actually would be needed in the future (as well when it isn't so darn expensive).

For processor, I am thinking that within a year or two games and software in general will start to utilize cores much more than then they do right now. I would like to stay ahead of that curve as long as possible by getting a hexicore processor instead of a quadcore one.

Speaking of the future. I guess I should detail my plan so better advice can be given, I plan to get a second gtx 580 in the future when the price becomes reasonable for a second one. As stated above I plan on upgrading from 8 to 32GB of RAM when the price goes down as well. And what Moniker was suggesting (adding a high capacity HDD) is why I am going to be getting my external 320GB drive in a few weeks (probably when all the parts start arriving in the mail). After that I plan on picking up one or two HDD to use as a dump drive for non important files (aka anything other than Win 7 Ultimate and Steam games) and the other to use as RAID drives. Hopefully using RAID 5 or similar at some point.

Which brings me back around to a question I asked in the initital post. Are the brands I'm using for the RAM and SSD good? I don't know a darn thing about RAM and want to make sure it works out of the box with the rest of the comptuer. As for the SSD, should I go with a different brand like Samsung or is the one I put down perfect...I just don't want it to fail in 3 weeks and have to buy a brand new one. Finally, do I have a high enough watt power supply? I rather be on the safe side than down the line where I have to buy a brand new one with a higher wattage.

Again, thank you everyone for your thoughts! The more discussion whether it be positive or negative helps tremendously when I finally start purchasing everything. Now if only the i7-3930k would be in stock anywhere

what are you planning to use this computer primarly for? i only ask this cause the way things are now we are probably 5-10 before we even take full advantage of quad core let alon 6 core unless you are a power user or trying to set up a server and are asigning programs to each core, just to give you an idea the computer i bought 2 years ago i got a I7 920 quad and 6 gigs of ram with a SSD, things like bf3,crysis,photo shop and av programs i never break 15% cpu compacity on just 2 cores and rarely exceed 3 gigs of ram usage and normally windows will use the first 2 physical core first and if the load starts getting a little high it will shift some of the load off to the virtual cores(aka hyper threading) and wont tap the other physical codes till needed.

as for games today they are more driven by the gpu then cpu so getting a bigger cpu is mute a point over the next one down and you are just throwing money away unless you dont care about cost. this brings me to my next point about SLi you mentioned as a upgrade. sli is the worst option you can do for a upgrade unless you are buying both cards at the same time cause by the time you get that 2nd card they will be some new mid range card in a single card setup that would out performe your sli setup


as for ram anthing over 8 is over kill unless your a power user or runing a server,how this is not a big deal because ram so cheap and usually only a few dollars more between 6 and 8 gigs

personally i say take the added saving i mentioned before and put toward the extra hard drive or better yet a dedicated sound card(which is still better then onboard sound)

i have attatched a screen shot of my task manager with bf3 running the first 4 boxes are the physical core and the last for are virtual cors the cpu% drops to like 2% when i minimize the game but while in game its like 15% and primary stays with in the 2 physical and 2 virtual cores

Sorry for not replying right away Matrix. Right now mostly gaming ...but I'll find someway to use the processor to its fullest (if not right now, in time). Right now I am using this computer as my gaming/main/only machine and for the most part can't even run TF2 anymore: http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-x83vb-x1/4505-3121_7-33309982.html

I'm changing the build just slightly and waiting for newegg to have this combo to come in stock: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.769181

The one thing I don't like in that combo is the case....and I don't want it. I still want the Thermaltake Level 10 GT, so if anyone would like to buy that case whenever I am able to buy/get it just let me know. Some people have spoken about the mouse to me and I will be upgrading my mouse to the Level 10 M mouse whenever it comes out. The one thing I've been looking at now is buying a sound card for the 7.1 headset I'll be buying when it comes out, but I really can not find a good/great soundcard that takes the 5 3.5mm jacks and supports 7.1 sound. If anyone knows a soundcard that does both please let me know as well. So newegg hurry up and get that processor in stock so I can buy that combo!

here you go, and HT OMEGA dont have the driver issue like creative does with vista or win 7 and software not as bloated

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829271001

+1 to HT OMEGA.

Well, everything is purchased and the parts have started to arrive.

I'll post pictures as everything comes in, but the final list is as follows:
Case: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Black Steel
CPU: Intel i7-3930k
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Superclocked
CPU Cooling: Corsair H80
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3 1600 (for some reason you can not find the four pack on Corsair's website)
SSD: Corsair Force Series 3 180GB
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050W 80 Plus Gold
Optical Storage: Asus Model BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS (Note it actually looks like this)
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp U2412M
Keyboard: Logitech Gaming Keyboard G510
Mouse: Logitech VX Nano (waiting for this)
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series
and finally headset: Razer Tiamat 7.1

'Tis a lot of stuff and hopefully it works out of the box!

X-Fi nooooooooooooooooooo.........

Awesome Al, maybe you'll be up and running for FNF this week?