Recent content by mikeh1981

Had a little delay but finally got all of the parts ordered and put together. Some of them are a little different as the rebates and sales had changed from the time I was initially configuring the machine until when I actually got around to purchasing. Also picked up a cpu cooler from a local...

OK, building out the shopping cart. Looks like NewEgg has best price on everything but the video card. Amazon is cheaper for the GPU. Made 2 small changes, hopefully not bad ones. Changed from the intel 120Gb 320 series to the 510 series. I noticed that the 320 is SATA 2. If I am...

Alright, going to need to pull the trigger on this one. After more research and strong opposition to my processor and motherboard choice in this forum (especially from mfenn :) ), I have decided to switch to the ASRock Pro 3 Z68 motherboard and a I5 2500K processor. I have to say the move...

Do you mean this one? PA246Q

My wife says she would rather have a single large monitor. It will probably be better for playing games too. Someone said IPS is the way to go for photo work and I am not sure the U2711 is IPS. I am looking in to it more. Any other suggestions for a 27-30" monitor? There is some talk about...

Switched to Antec 300 case. Don't think I really want the side window. It still has washable filters and the layout seems good. It has a lot of high ratings on new egg. Only thing I really liked on the 900 v3 was the front usb port. Don't think it is worth $50 dollars just for that.

I agree. I may still hold off on going 16gb for right now. Memory is easy to add later but I don't want to have to swap processors. Thanks, very informative! I think I have a couple of 500+ gb hard drives hanging around. I plan to use them for secondary drives for a while. Eventually...

OK, still refining things here. I will be doing more photo/video editing and programming on this machine than gaming. I completely forgot to mention that I do my programming in a VM and it is likely that I will at times have at least 2 virtual machines spun up at the same time (I am sorry I...

Ok, mfenn, you are right, especially about overdoing it in the memory department. I guess it is silly to buy what I don't need today at a higher price than it will be when I need it. I will back down to 8Gb and look at upgrading in the future on an as needed basis. I am a little worried...

Lot of talk about power supplies here. I am just a little worried about going less than 650W. I will probably add at least 1 large hard drive some time in the future as well as a second graphics card. The case I have chosen also has 3 big fans with led. When I add it up using various wattage...

16 is a lot I agree but I am willing to spend the money now and it fits in my budget so why not. I tend to use computers for 10+ years, maybe this will future proof me a bit. Agreed but I am holding out hope that within the lifetime of this machine we will start to see many more...

Thank you everyone for your input so far. I have taken your advice, done some more research and put together a new build. I managed to include a case, double my ram, and still come in under budget. Take a look and see what you think. Instead of linking to each part in the post I will let...

Monitors are a very personal choice. No right or wrong answer really. As far as the memory goes I have made some revisions to my build, really a complete overhaul. I chose some different memory, still GSkill but a little cheaper and 1.5v. As soon as new egg gets my public wishlist up...

I should add that I am a software developer and I will be using this pc for that purpose too. I omitted that before because I find photo editing to be much more demanding on the pc than writing and compiling code (at least the code I write anyway). As a dev dual monitors are indispensable and...

I would like to build a quiet PC for photo editing and moderate gaming. I am not looking for a hardcore gaming pc but would like something that will handle flight simulator and strategy/simulation games well (MS Flight Simulator X, Sim City, Civilization, etc...). I want support for 2 monitors...