Hi,

So I've recently attempted to build my first pc. I'm coming from an Alienware 7500. that has a q6600, 4gb ram, used to have sli 8800's but they burnt out and now i'm hobbling along with a 8600 that a friend gave me. needless to say I think its about time I upgrade. I'm really looking forward to playing the new bioshock this next week on my comp instead of console. but anyways my budget is around 1500-2000$. I want it silient. I have a single 1600p 30" monitor that could turn into more someday but i'm not counting on it. I don't do serious computing but I do multitask and can't stand lag of any kind. drives me nuts, doesn't it us all? I digress....heres my build


SilverStone Fortress Series SST-FT02S-W-USB3.0 Silver 4.5mm aluminum unibody frame, 0.8mm steel body ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $253.99
SilverStone SST-FP58S 5.25" Aluminum Cover Bay for Slot-load Slim ODD and 4 x 2.5" HDD/SSD -Silver $22.99 (There are no silver optical drives so I went with this cover and a slim blu ray burner)
MSI N670 PE 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 670 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card $389.99
SeaSonic Platinum Platinum-860 860W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply $199.99
Kingston HyperX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory HyperX Plug n Play Model $129.99
Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler $91.99
ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 $239.99
Panasonic UJ240 6x Blu-ray Burner BD-RE/8x DVD±RW DL SATA Drive (Black) 60.25
Intel Core i7 3770K $229.99
total=1664.19
OOOOO I forgot to mention I plan on going sli in the near future when I finish paying most of this off on my credit card. I don't care what games I play I want my options open when I decide to play them with settings maxed of course.
Thanks in Advance! I'm open to all suggestions!!

Weren't the Alienware PCs of that era pretty effing loud?

If you haven't already, read Silverstone's FAQ on heatpipe orientation in the FT-02. You can find it in the Q&A section at the bottom of the product page. There'a also a thread on it in the Overclockers UK forum. Not trying to push you away from this case - just want to make sure you buy the right stuff for it.

$230 for the i7? did you mean $230 for the i5-3570K or $330 for the i7-3770K? In general, an i7 is a waste of money for a gaming rig as most games don't make use of hyperthreading and just use the physical cores.

You don't show any storage...SSD or HDD.

mobo: I think the whole "armoring" thing on the Sabertooth is just marketing drama. You'd do just as well with a Z77 V variant. Again, make sure the heatpipe orientation works for the case...and if you do plan to go SLI, look for a mobo with enough space between the PCIe slots for the 2x+ wide gfx cards to breathe.

gfx card: I like MSI. I think it's got the correct orientation for the FT-02 - make sure you double check. GTX 670 @ 1600p...is great for some games and not enough for others. Lots of benchmarks out there for the specific games you might want to play.

RAM: stay away from tall heatspreader ram - useless adder and just gets in the way of CPU fans. Unless you do photo or video editing, you don't need 16GB. Heck, most games are great with <4GB. 8GB is enough for today and any games you might play in the future on this platform.

PSU: If you don't plan to overclock or overvolt, your stressed load power with one GTX 670 is ~ 300W. With two, it's ~470W...and likely to be in the 400W range while gaming. I'd look for a PSU that's quieter than the video cards while gaming and it doesn't need to be a 860W PSU...however, you will need four PCIe graphics connectors. Seasonic Platinum 660W, Kingwin LZP 650, Be Quiet DPP 10 650W come to mind.

Case: The FT-02 is very big. Unless you are going to have many drives (which you haven't listed) then it is going to be over the top for your requirements.

Mobo: Agree with Steve that the Sabertooth is marketing nonsense. If that stuff really was important, don't you think workstation and server motherboards might also have it? They don't, hence it can't be of any functional use unless you tend to be really clumsy/haphazard when handling computer components. It's a case of charging a lot more money for some very cheap to manufacture, gimmicky features that certain groups will buy just because they are more expensive.

Graphics card: I don't go with the whole theory of upgrading to SLI at a later date. You won't get double the performance for a start but also by the time you do make such an upgrade, newer, faster cards will be available for the same money. Old high end cards don't drop in price by much so unless you're going to buy an eBay cast off with a questionable past, getting one new next generation card would be a more sensible upgrade.

Slimline optical drive adaptor: You can buy silver faceplates for standard sized optical drives. This might be another solution.

I did mean 230$ for a 3770k. I can get a 3570k for 190$. I'm in the states and I am close to a Microcenter and they have an in store price of 230 for the i7 and 190 for the i5.

sorry about not including the storage. I'm sporting a samsung 840 pro 256gb.

the ram I choose is at stock height. I already know about those restrictions.
I just like the case.....its all shiny. I like shiny...... something about the look of raw metal that I dig. anyways...I was curious about the psu...but after using newegg and thermaltakes psu calculator it kept telling me for sli 670's and peripherals to get around an 800w. not that i'm saying youre wrong. I don't know thats why i'm here asking. i'll look into that seasonic 650. I just liked that hybrid cooling where the fan doesn't kick on until 75% load. does the 650 do that too?

I switched to the MSI from the Asus DC line cause of that very fact with flow in the case.

also I should have mentioned that I'd like to keep this rig for about 3-5 years before having to upgrade again...if possible.

I know the case is big....I can deal with that. My alieneware was HUGE...so i'm not too put out about that. and yes i'm a media junky...so I collect movies and such so I will use all the drive bays eventually.

I looked for quite a while for aluminum face plates for optical drives and had no luck. if you could kindly link me in the right direction I would be most grateful.

about the gpu- on the whole I can agree with you. but I wasn't thinking getting the second card like way down the road when 700 series comes out. i'm thinking in the next couple months following this purchase. finances just got a little too tight recently so I had to hold off on any "extras". and besides unless 700 series is amazing I think coming from sli 8800's to sli 670's will do me fine for many years to come. I may be wrong, but thats just what it seems like to me.

OMG were they loud like not even funny.....jet engine style!
I used to live near a cabinet making place and they had this huge wind turbine to collect all the dust from their wood work and my comp could keep pace with it in my house....ugh!

Its like my comp still works... but its like a leaky faucet in your house. sure it still WORKS, but you'd REALLY like to replace it.

sorry for the fragmented responses.....I understand this. but I don't just game on this machine. does the i7 not show any real word difference over the i5 in daily computing and desktop tasks?

what do you mean by this? not enough for others...are you talking about vram? for some games like skyrim with heavy mods? wouldn't sli fix that problem? when you sli two cards that are 2gb does it double the total vram or just the bandwidth? or have I got it all wrong?

update: changed PSU to a Seasonic platinum 660

will I really see no real word difference between 8gb and 16 gb? for games and average multi tasking and computing?

The i7 can be useful if you do video editing/encoding. For everyday tasks, most of the cores will be idling on an i5. Here's a couple of benchmarks:
Anand Bench i5 vs i7 and to put it into context Q6600 vs i5

Regarding the GTX 670, I wasn't talking about VRAM. I meant gaming fps at 1600p. It'll rock some games and for others you might need to turn down the eye candy. Here's Techpowerup's review of one of the MSI PE cards.

I'll have to say, I'm not a fan of SLI either. I'd rather get a heftier single card and replace it later. Then again, I'm gaming at 1080p. Here's X-Bit Labs review of SLI performance from last summer. Looks pretty good and drivers improve over time. I'd expect better fps today for these games than what's shown here.

RAM: no

So between these two V boards, which I can get at a 5$ difference, which would you choose? or would you choose something else?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131819

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131853

i'll be getting it from a local micro center not newegg so don't go on price difference. Micro center has them listed at 204$ and 209$. They Also just have the V model for 184$....hmm the heat sinks on a board always through me off. I want to always get a board that has the nice looking ones. with heat pipes if possible. Am I being suckered in by marketing?
whats up with those gigabyte up5 or up4 boards? worth it compared to the asus? my friend says he likes evga but it doesn't look like they have more than one or two boards...and the one atx has a north bridge fan....eww!

Once you decide on the -V boards...it's just feature set. If you think you'll want to use Thunderbolt, then get it. If not, don't

Not to sound like a repeating record...but make sure the heatpipe orientation works for the FT-02.

Gigbyte makes decent boards. You'll see Asus mentioned here more often because:
- Gigabyte's UEFI implementation is not stellar and their fan management is crappy. If you don't care about the UEFI GUI and plan to use Smartfan or another utility for fan management, go for Gygabyte.
- I'll throw MSI in here, too. Very frugal power management.

update:
changing case to RV02-ew-usb 3.0 178$
changing RAM to Kingston Hyperx blue 2x4gb kit 54.99
and a P8z77 v @ 184$
heck with all the money youre helping me save so far I can get the second 670 maybe....

Well if you are moving away from the FT02, there's always the Fractal Define R4 or Corsair 550D or Antec P183 V3. There's a few more bucks.

so with the gpu it seems like whats going on is with a 670 I can handle damn near everything full bore...and buy the time I NEED a second one there will be a new single card thats a better value for my money? instead of going sli with the 670?

I wouldn't mind per se. The r4 is nice. Needs a hinge style panel though. But a white window r4 is sexy. I thought the ft02 was tops in air cooling and silience. With the rv02 close behind.

I don't think a plastic window is good for silencing...

Not a fan of the Raven's looks.

Puget Systems shows what you can do with a P183 v3 if you put your mind to it.

Can't have silence and sexy too?
I mean the r4 is sexy. But I meant being able to see your components.
I don't like the interior of the p183. The p280 I've tried. But u don't like how the front fans only have to mount holes...

How useful is being able to see components? Does it really help in any way? ...and does it really look good? This is subjective I know but imagine you have non-technical friends round and they see your computer. Do you really want to have to explain to them why you have a window on the side of your computer? Let's say that it's a member of the opposite sex: nothing works as well contraceptively as having to talk about your computer.

If on the other hand you have a high end case without a window, they'll just see it and assume it's an Apple and you don't have to do any explanation of what it is.

Most of the people i've met who have their PC windowed will also want to hear what they bought for their money. And unfortunately most of the bling-bling parts cannot be made silent enough for my liking. Take LED-fans for example, they used to be made of a different kind of plastic and as far as i remember, no LED fan has come close to being as useful and silent as our reference fans.

So you'll find a case that will match your optical needs, if this particular case is the best choice from spcr-view is more than doubtful.

its pretty much a decision between a define r4 or a define xl r2.....hmmm

no lights no flashy flashy....my alienware had soo much lights...i'm over the widow aspect you guys are totally right function over asthetics....even thought the define series looks very nice

Which gtx 670 is going to offer me the best performance and lowest sound? I was going to go with the MSI pe but the Asus DC2og is looking nice too.
heard msi is more stable of a card...

toss up. Asus tends to be quieter, MSI tends to run cooler.

I would change the case to:
Fractal Design Define R4 with Window
Window and silencing together is hard to beat.

If you play a resolution of 2560x1600 you should get a card with 4GB vram. I bought aEvga 670 FTW+ 4GB to play at 1920x1080, Max Payne 3 and Skyrim mods mostly. For SLI I would definitely go with a Gtx 670 4GB. Evga's warranty isn't voided when you swap the cooler (unless you damage the card in doing so, obviously). My card has the 680's standard cooler which is not silent, but just a low whooshing sound at idle. In 3d mode it gets loud, but the game sound drowns it out. I don't have a dampened case like the above mentioned Fractal R4 (yet).
If you want to keep the stock cooler I suggest Asus, if you want to swap it Evga. ARCTIC Accelero Twin Turbo II fits even with the stacked power connectors and runs cooler and quieter than Asus' cooler. It will SLI in the Z77-V, but it blocks three slots and with two of them there will be only a single PCIe 1x slot left.

The 3770k isn't worth the extra money over the 3570k, Hyper-threading doesn't help in games, increases temperature and holds back the overclock. How high any k CPU overclocks is the luck of draw, no difference between 3570k and 3770k. A good k CPU will do 4.5Ghz below 1.18V a bad one needs >1.3V. Between 1.25V and 1.3V you reach the point where the CPU will heat up and throttle, no matter what cooler you use. My 3570k runs 4.4GHz at 1.2V with a modest Antec cooler.
I wouldn't buy the most expensive cooler for Ivy Bridge. A Scythe Mugen 3 is very good, but availability in the US might be a problem. Thermalright HR-02 Macho is also very good and should cost half of the NH-D14.

While i dont disagree with the post in that page, i think 4gb is too much for a single monitor.... i do struggle sometime with 1.5gb on a 2560x1440 monitor, specially when i have couple of games open, and while i dont play two games at the same time, i do check the AH on Diablo 3 while playing other games, for example LOL has a long Q time and long champ selection, and with both games open i do cap the 1.5gb. In my paticular case, im looking foward for 2gb+ gpu, hopping to get 3gb gtx780 or something like that at years end.

In the distant future we also have the 4k monitors, with sharp releasing theirs this year, still a huge price $5k, but i expect to see more entering the wagon by next year, so more memory might become of some use, even though you will need some serious gpu power to move those res, you can get a second card for sli/xfire... etc.

The only unmodded game currently bouncing against a Vram with 2GB in 1080p is Max Payne 2. I specified said game as one of two reasons for my decision to buy a 4GB card, the other being Skyrim with mods, which uses more than 2GB at 1920X1200 according to GPU-Z. Battlefield 3 also uses 2GB easily. If you enable custom antialiasing settings (two cards should have enough performace for this) another several hundred MB gone.