I'm officially building my Rig! one part at a time, help required

[Spock]

Even with a lot of money I probably wouldn't go water cooling, I'm just not comfortable with having water in my case.

I don't know your exact setup but usually those side outtakes are far enough to the back to not hurt your airflow with a good cooler on the CPU. I mean that Noctua cooler is large, it should take the air of the front intake. It might block the height of the cooler though.

You could also swap the case fans for Noctua fans, they make quite a difference. But it can be fiddly depending on your case setup and you should check for the implications first. It might take some tinkering.

[z929669]

I would underscore that there is no point in buying a HDD except for backup. Games and OS should run on a SSD (huge difference). Get at least one very large SSD, or even better, two, and set up RAID1 for data integrity (RAID0 has a few speed advantages, but not really for gaming and OS).

 

Also, I have not seen anyone in here advocating off-board sound (i.e., a sound card). Sound is hugely important to me in Skyrim and many games. From what I have researched in the past, a sound card can free up mobo resources and increase general performance. Just get a decent HD sound card, but don't get the high end. This should cost no more than $100 US. ... and get some decent 5.1 speakers, again, not top of the line, just mid range will do nicely. (and with your case, this little card will not block any air flow at all).

 

I would not get a mobo with onboard sound (or disable it), and I would be sure to get something with SATA rev 3 and PCIe 3.0. This pretty much guarantees that you will have something with the most relevant technology. I am not sure what brands are best at the moment, but Gigabyte and Asus stand out in my mind. Intel brand can be decent too as a less costly alternative. Your case is like mine (I have a Cooler Master HAF 932) ... big 6-inch fans all over. Plenty of cooling and quiet and space (just get a good CPU cooler).

 

8 GB of RAM is all you need for gaming (I would get the fastest Corsair you can find for the mobo). I would also consider the Intel Core i5-3570K over any other processor ... best bang for much less the buck.

 

I am an AMD GPU guy, because NVIDIA is a damn rip off (but probably just a tad bit better in some cases). I got a Radeon HD 7970 for $280 and I am very pleased. The latest generation AMD are likely better, but I am not keeping up with the current GPU races ... too depressing.

[Spock]

  Quote

Also, I have not seen anyone in here advocating off-board sound (i.e., a sound card). Sound is hugely important to me in Skyrim and many games. From what I have researched in the past, a sound card can free up mobo resources and increase general performance. Just get a decent HD sound card, but don't get the high end. This should cost no more than $100 US. ... and get some decent 5.1 speakers, again, not top of the line, just mid range will do nicely. (and with your case, this little card will not block any air flow at all).

 

I did ;) TerraTec Aureon 7.1 PCIe is probably the best bang for your buck card out there. It was some time ago but I once found a review showing that the actual circuitry shielding of the TerraTec PCI when built into a case was miles ahead of the Audigy at that time. There currently is no professional review of the Aureon 7.1 PCIe but you probably have to buy a professional sound card to get better sound.

 

For the RAM thing, this speaks for itself:

https://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?286121-The-Official-Memory-Frequency-WR-List

The top ones are all G.Skill, especially at lower latencies. And usually G.Skill is cheaper then Corsair.

[deathneko11]

For sound card? I bought a soundblaster, the champion edition. Best sound decision of my life, and I paid $90 bucks for it. Cheap and high quality.

[phazer11]

For just playback I use the HDMI output on my graphics card and bitstream everything through HDMI and WASAPI whenever it's not a strictly bitstream compatible format, I also have a nice Onkyo Home Theatre Setup that's attached to my Desktop, PS3, with a extra cord for my laptop and then an extra port open for whatever. I'm extremely jealous of my cousin's husband (of course he's a ER surgeon and she's a nurse) he has a Xonar card, a 3D Projector, and an 11.4 Surround Sound setup and about 20-30 TB of storage (so he can backup his BD's and not worry about scratching them lol). I'm thinking of either a Sound Blaster Z series (if I can't get the sound of my voice right on my desktop's onboard) or a Xonar myself, of course only after I bite the bullet and get that GTX 780 or 770 4GB (still haven't decided if the extra horsepower is worth the 1GB decrease).

[Spock]

If you are planning on spending that amount of money I'd consider the Asus r9 290x directcu II TOP.

[phazer11]

I have money with EVGA ^v^.

[mothergoose729]

A sound card is a good investment, but only if you have high end audio equipment or software to take advantage of it. It is true that sound cards can process audio freeing up CPU resources, but only in about a handful of game titles ever, and it never made much of a difference even then. The built in audio in motherboards is actually really good. Don't get me wrong, an Asus Xonar or a turtle beach card is definitely better, but you won't notice the difference in audio quality unless you have some very good headphones. The main advantage to these sound cards is for audio recording and other similar applications, not necessarily audio fidelity (if you are really serious about audio quality you would get a high end receiver anyway). If you are going to get a sound card, you should invest in a really good one, and you should have a really good reason for spending 150+ dollar on it if you do.

 

As for a CPU cooler, if you aren't going to overclock, then you won't need one. I have been building computers for a long time, and recently I have become more and more accepting of stock coolers. The average intel or AMD stock cooler is pretty quite, handles heat well enough under typical load, and best part of all, not extra cost :). Just keep all that in mind, don't spend money on stuff if you don't have too.

 

If you want to waste some money on something you don't need, buy a really nice computer case. Nothing more satisfying than that new computer smell in an all aluminum chassy :D.

[Spock]

On a quick note: I have to step back from hyping the DirectCU II cooler from Asus. It definitely is very good on many cards but not all. The 290x DirectCU II seems to have some problems because of the chips size (Sapphire seems to have done a better job on their tri-x cooler but there are not enough reviews for a definite conclusion).

Hopefully the 290 will be better because I like a custom cooler that still vents some heat out of the case.