Help Building New Gaming PC

CM storm trooper case
Asus z77 sabertooth MB
Gskill 8gigs Ram
Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz
Corsair H100
Corsair HX850 PSU
EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB 256-bit
1TB HDD
Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F120GBGT-BK 2.5" 120GB SATA III

I still don't understand why people drool so much over the H100.
It's a very thin RAD and IMO pre-filled loops are a waste of money since you can't expand on them.

because it was cheap and keeps my cpu really cool... and its out of the way instead of having a huge heatsink hanging off the MB.

Edit: I mean my temps have been at 29C constantly.... Granted i have yet to OC.

I think hes trying to indicate that in his opinion a custom loop is far better than what the H100 is offering. However, I can see why people go with H100, its cheap and allows you to overclock your cpu right away np. There may not be any upgrade path but Ive seen builds with the h100 on cpu + custom loop on the GPUs and it looks clean and nice.

*side note* if you are going to OC the CPU, I wouldnt go passed 4.2-4.3 unless you know what you are doing as you might need to adjust the volts passed that and anything higher than 4.5 is kinda hit or miss with the Ivy structure since at that point it tends run very hot even with custom loops but each chip is different so yea, just a heads up.

Ya i figured OCing to 4.2 would be perfect. and i think 1.25 volts is what is needed for the cpu to run at 4.2 but i will check for my specific one. but so far this thing is fast... restart in like 15 seconds xD would be faster but i have a disk in the tray and it always asks me if i want to boot from that. might upgrade to 16gigs of ram though since its only like 40bucks. but idk 8gigs does it for now.

convenience is mainly it, i'd say.

Same price and performance as a high end air cooler and you don't have a 2 pound heatsink trying to bend your mobo in two. Well that's the reasoning I had when I got an H-80.

Thanks everyone for your help. everything seems up to date and is running great. last question. is there a certain website that has all the latest game mods? was going to play a few pc games and i know theres lots of cool mods for them

Quick question. the SSD i have only has like 30 gigs left.. been downloading games to it. does an SSD make games load a lot faster? or can i start downloading games to my HDD? i was thinking about getting another SSd since newegg has a 240Gig for $169.99... but it didnt know if it would be worth it.

i will be getting ffxiv so i was curious if having that on a SSD would be smarter than a HDD. if so i will probably get the 240Gig

Isn't the allure of SSDs that they can access files and memory faster? So just based off that I would assume they would make games, load times, etc. faster. Maybe not noticeably, but still.

Yes but i wanted to know if it was noticeably better. also would it help zoning times? would it help lag? if its a small step above a HDD than i will just stick with the 1tb Hdd i have. which is should get another to raid with it xD or an external to back everything up on..

I have no proof or evidence or much knowledge on this, but based on what I know and what I know of how these work I would assume yes it would help. But I'd wait for someone who knew what they're talking about first.

SSDs are currently considered one of the most (if not the most) potent upgrades you can make to a computer. I recently installed an SSD and moved my OS and some programs to it. One program in particular that needs to read a lot of files before opening used to take ~3 minutes to open. It now takes only 20 seconds.

If you are starting from scratch it is highly recommended that you install your OS from scratch directly to your SSD and not cloning your OS from an existing installation. Windows 7 will recognize the SSD and make sure that the sectors are properly aligned and all of the windows settings are set correctly for an SSD. If you clone from an existing HDD you might have to re-align the sectors using Gparted afterwards in order to get optimal performance, and you will also have to change your windows settings (such as disabling scheduled defrags).

Notes. I do have my OS and all my other crap on a SSD. my entire computer and games are all saved to my SSD. which is now at 30gigs of memory left. I was just curious if i should buy another SSD to continue downloading my video games to it or if i should just install them on my HDD.

I know SSDs really improve the OS speed but i didnt know if it really improves a games playability. especially one like ffxi or ffxiv.

so i guess what im asking is. Is it worth it to buy another SSD for future video games like Battlefield 3, FFxiv,ravaged, etc. or will a HDD be just as good?

itll improve loading times off the hd only. if you're loading an area with a lot of unique geometry, itll help. most games now are probably bogged down more by nextwork transfer however, you'll be waiting more on that, than anything.

I'm about to order an SSD right now, which one should I get?

That one

from what I hear, intel or crucial, I've been buying crucial ram for years, no issues.


oh and btw Scragg, the more I do assignments that have to deal with web pages, and try to get a grasp of what you do, the more I'm amazed, kudos sir, kudos. (random, but I never see you on :P)


edit: didn't even read the OP yet when I posted, Corsair makes impressive ram, I wouldn't probably say to not get a corsair ssd, but I'd probably stick with Crucial personally, but anything outside of those 3 I'd be weary.



As to the person who asked if it's worth it, I'm not familiar with the games, but if they load a lot of data from the HDD, then yeah I'd say it's worth it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239046

That is the one i will be getting. its 240gigs for $170. my 120gig is the corsair Gt series which is great but a bit more expensive. The only thing i heard bad about this SSD is that you have to update the firmware. but shouldnt be too bad.

Edit: also thanks to everyone who replied. it was very helpful and appreciated.

@Jetackuu

Thanks.

I'm thinking about getting this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148525

Generally I find Intel SSD more expensive, but the reviews have been better than any other SSD.

I was considering getting one for my laptop, but it would void the warranty. I do a lot of data processing from the instruments I use and carry it around a lot. Some times the HD makes a horrible noise.

My SSD was a 240GB OCZ on sale at 180$. I've had no issue with it so far, and from what I can tell it was very cheap for the size.

Worth Noting: Always leave some extra space on your SSD, filling up more than ~80% can cause the performance to drop.

wow I haven't checked the prices in awhile, they're finally down below $1/gb, too bad I'd want 200gb or so on my main drive, I think I'll just wait until I can get another laptop, not so worried about it on this one with it's heating issues, If I were to build a desktop I'd totally get one though :D

/needs more $

I've heard some good things about them too.


can it boot off an external?

(duct tape? :P)

Instead of making a new thread - I'm just going to post in here.. I'm looking at getting an AIO, preferably touch screen, PC for my casual gaming. Any good ones out there?

If I can't find a decent one that can handle FFXI dualboxed at decent settings, I will probably go with the asus g74 or g75 I was looking at a few months back.

This helped me btw. it has really nice info on SSDs and what to look for when buying them, hope it helps you guys as well

http://www.storagereview.com/best_drives

Also you can click the links for the brands. i chose to read the kingston hyperX3k SSD and read a full review of it. and at the bottom they give the conclusion and pros/cons. it is very informative. they do that with all brands. crucial/intel/samsung. so check it out!

also here is there top 10 brands.
http://www.storagereview.com/buying_ssd_brand_matters

This is a great site to help compare the benchmarks on items:

CPU's --
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

And GPU's -
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

And HD's-
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html



I have 2 of those exact SSD's; bought at $200 and worth every penny. $120 is a steal!

Either Crucial M4, Intel 520, or OCZ Vertex 4.

I'm probably going to pick up a Vertex 4 if I build a new computer in the near future.

hey Bekisa, you want to read something troubling?


I know a particular hospital that as a policy uses IE7, can't upgrade to 9, and 8 is incompatible with their other software, and won't even let people use Firefox (or any other browser), I mean they have firewalls and such, but still... could you imagine?