Building a Desktop for FFXIV.

ZLanDRy18

Junior Member
Oct 16, 2010
13
0
0
I am building a desktop computer for Final Fantasy XIV. I also plan to play other games such as WoW, and possibly other mmorpg titles. I plan to do the usual web-surfing, such as facebook, online shopping, forum browsing, and youtube, etc.

My budget is around $1500. (American)
I have bought some parts already; they will be listed further below.

I am going to be buying from NA. All the parts i have bought so far were from tigerdirect.com

Don't really have a preference towards brand. Although it seems i am drawn to Intel, nVidia, etc.

**These are the parts that i have already purchased; and plan to use in my computer.**The price in red is the total, including S&H, and tax,etc.
Price in blue is the price of the components i plan to purchase, without S&H, tax, etc.
Case - XION Vantage Mid-Tower Case AXP100-001BK - ATX, mATX
59.58
Operating System - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit DVD OEM
104.78
Sound Card - Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy SE
35.86
Power Supply - Ultra X4 1050-Watt Modular Power Supply
238.14
DVD RW Drive - Lite On 24X SATA w/Lightscribe OEM
24.95

Motherboard - ASUS P6X58D Premium Motherboard
299.99
Intel Core i7 950 Processor
299.99
Western Digital WD2OEADS Cavair Green Hard Drive - 2TB
109.99
Ram - I am still looking for it. I would think it should be atleast 8GB.
Graphics Card - Everything looks so close i can't tell the difference and need some advice on this.

The only place i got input on for this topic are other FFXIV forums.

Based on the fact, that i do not have time to learn how to overclock or actually overclock, i plan to on running at default speeds.

I will probably play at 1280 x 720

I plan to build it as soon as i get all the parts. This month as of October 2010
 

dmoney1980

Platinum Member
Jan 17, 2008
2,471
38
91
Hey there ! Nice build, but if your going to spend that much money, get yourself a better power supply. Ultra is not known to be a reliable PSU, something like a Corsair 650 watt would be great. Also, if your shelling out over a G on a PC get yourself a high def monitor - tiger actually sells a monitor from a brand called i-inc, not a well known brand but they get good reviews and you could get a 1920x1200 res monitor for a great price. Fact is that if your going to play games on a 1280x720 monitor, you will not need a very fast video card or processor and that eliminates the need for a 1000w power supply, even a 600w power supply will do on a top line card as long as your not multiple graphics cards.

For the motherboard you picked, be sure to pick up triple channel RAM, go to the ASUS site and look up what model RAM is accepted on that board. 6 gigs should be plenty. For the hard drive, the green series is good for storing movies / media, but not the fastest for gaming. I would recommend a Samsung F4 or F3 1TB drive, and you can get a solid state drive for the OS....

Hard drive (great for storage and gaming) - http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6448061&CatId=8

Monitor - http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4938558&CatId=3774

PSU this -http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4352342&CatId=106

or this if you want modular - http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4668506&CatId=106

final note- make sure you get yourself a good aftermarket cpu cooler. the corsair h50 works well, but you can always get a cooler master hyper plus, its cheap about $30 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4950641&CatId=99
 
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mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
5
71
www.mfenn.com
Please please do yourself a favor and send that PSU back. Not only is it ludicrously expensive, but Ultra is pretty much crap. The 650TX is a good recommendation.

Also ditch the 950 and accompanying $300 mobo. An i5 760 will perform similarly in games and you can get it along with an ASUS P7P55 LX in a combo for $290.

You'll also want to forget about using a Green drive as your OS drive. The F3 that dmoney suggested is very good.

You'll probably want something like a GTX 460 1GB and a 1080P monitor like this ASUS.

If you're not going to overclock, the HSF that comes with the CPU is fine.
 

RavenSEAL

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2010
8,661
3
0
GTX460? If you wanna run FFXIV @ 1080p and all eye candy, you're gonna need a GTX 480. That shit is horribly coded...it takes a lot out of a GPU. You will need 8GB of ram if possible and yes, get an i5 instead of the i7 and get a corsair 650 instead of that ultra supply, you don't need a 1050w supply unless you're gonna be doing tri-Xfire or SLI.
 

dmoney1980

Platinum Member
Jan 17, 2008
2,471
38
91
GTX460? If you wanna run FFXIV @ 1080p and all eye candy, you're gonna need a GTX 480. That shit is horribly coded...it takes a lot out of a GPU. You will need 8GB of ram if possible and yes, get an i5 instead of the i7 and get a corsair 650 instead of that ultra supply, you don't need a 1050w supply unless you're gonna be doing tri-Xfire or SLI.

what do you think of the gskill eco ram ? I heard its the best set for socket 1156 builds

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231321&cm_re=eco_ram-_-20-231-321-_-Product
 

RavenSEAL

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2010
8,661
3
0

RavenSEAL

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2010
8,661
3
0
I thought that the low latency of the Eco series helped in games ?

That is true, but as i posted above, its all about value for the money. The latency stuff, while it matters, doesn't have as big of an impact as the GPU. I would rather have the OP(who said he wanted 8gb of ram) to save the extra $40 it would cost to buy 2 sets of eco series and add them to grab a GTX 480.
 

mwmorph

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2004
8,877
1
81
Sorry, but there's some changes that really need to be made.

Sound Card - Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Not needed, especially the weak audigy. Since EAX went away, there's no reason to go dedicated sound card unless you are going for a high end studio-moitor specialty sound card like a M Audio Audiphile to record and play music and movies. For gaming, sound cards like are useless Audigy don't contribute anything.

Power Supply - Ultra X4 1050-Watt Modular Power Supply
Firstly 1050W is way too much unless you will be running 4x HD5870 Video cards in CrossfireX or 3 way SLI wih GTX480s. You'll be running at a much lower efficiency because you won't hit pthe sweet spot in the PSU loads.

Secondly, Ultra makes terrible PSUs check Johnnyguru or the Anandtech power supply forums for recommendations. Ultra is one of the lower tier of manufacturers, really very little different from generic brands. Corsair, Silverstone, Antec are excellent quality manufacturers. Ultra has always made system component frying crap.
Review:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/11/24/ultra_x4_850w_1050w_power_supplies_review/8
The Ultra X4 line of power supplies represent something of a Phoenix rising from the ashes of the Ultra X2 750W Extreme Edition. Unfortunately, someone shot down that Phoenix before it could rise far enough from the X2's ashes to really signal a rebirth for Ultra.

As such, while not out right failures because they did not violate the ATX12v specifications or blow up, the X4 line is hardly the rebirth that Ultra needed and more like slightly warmed over leftovers on the day after Christmas.

HardOCP: X Fail rating

Case - XION Vantage Mid-Tower Case AXP100-001BK - ATX, mATX
No professional reviews of this product, but user reviews commonly complain that this case has low quality control and workmanship as well as being quite loud. Many complaints of cheap metal, unrolled steel edges, misaligned screw holes, shddy paint, manufacturing defects in things actually fitting together or even being attached at all, missing mounting components...

Skip it, unless you really need shiny blue lights and a big X, get a quality case.

Intel Core i7 950 Processor
Why? Either go for the i970 six core to justify the cost of a LGA 1366 motherboard or go for a i5 Quad core and a cheaper LGA 1156 board. Buying expensive + lower physical cores is a bad value. If you spend a little time to learn to overclock, 3.8-4 GHZ is not an issue for for i7 or i5 processors, so spend extra money on higher frequency is a waste, spend it on things you can't get for free like larger cache or more physical cores.

ASUS P6X58D Premium Motherboard
Not a bad choice, but not good value for money.

Western Digital WD2OEADS Cavair Green Hard Drive
Not bad, WD Caviar are quality hard drives, but you should focus on the Caviar Black series. Those are very, very good HDDS.

Honestly, return that stuff you already bought if you can, especially the PSU. A bad PSU will cause a system to under-perform, freeze and die. The Windows and DVD burner are fine, the others, there's much better choices out there.

Also TigerDirect used to have terrible service, I haven't dealt with them recently so it might have improved, but Newegg usually has lower prices and much, much better customer service if something goes wrong.

I'll outline 2 builds that would work better in a Group A and Group B form, A being an AMD build and B being an intel build. Either one will be massive overkill for what you want it to do, but you get a choice, more cores for better multitasking or more pure cpu grunt?

CPU
Intel Core i5-760
$209
Clock for clock, identical to 4 core Core i7 performance in applications with up to 4 threads (99% of apps) for much less money. Easily hits 3.8-4ghz when overclocked.

Motherboard
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro
$180

Excellent over-clocking board, excellent reliability, quality and lots of features too.

CPU cooler
Scythe SCMG-2100 Sleeve CPU Cooler
$40

Amazing cooler for the price

Ram
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB DDR1600 CAS9
$155 after EMCZYZR54 promo code

Great value, G.Skill makes very, very high quality enthusiast ram. The 1600mhz Cas 9 is $8 more than the 1333 Cas 9, so might as well go for 1600mhz.

Case
Antec Nine Hundred
$110

You can drop to an Antec 300 for about $60-$70 if you like, but the 900 offers a bit better airflow for lower temperatures. It's the most popular case for a very good reason, but the 300 is also a very, very good choice.

Power supply
CORSAIR Professional Series AX850 850W
$180

80+ gold efficiency rating, rock solid output voltages, ability to deliver stable power even if your home outlet comes out to as low as 90V, minimal noise and ripple to interfere with your pc components, barely audible when running, just has everything anyone needs in a power supply.

Hard Drive:
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 64mb Cache
$90

One of the fastest hard drives available

GPU
ZOTAC Geforce GTX 460 1gB
$200 after mail in rebate X 2 (Make sure to fill out 1 rebate for both cards to get $40 back)

Best value for the money gaming card right now, lifetime warranty also. Sli 2x GTX460 is faster than a single GTX480. Also while SLI GTX460 post very similar power draw for load when compared to a single GTX480, idle the GTX460s draw much, much less power (80+ watts) so it's actually more power efficient and cooler running too.

Total Cost:
Shipped
$1442.50
After Rebates
$1382.50
Adding your DVD burned and windows you kept
$1512.23

You could shave a little more money by returning the dvd drive and windows and buying it from newegg to get it squarely under $1500 if you really wanted to.

This system after building and a couple hours of overclocking would be more powerful than required to FF IV or World of Warcraft by a huge margin (You'd be looking more at Metro 2033 and Crysis at 1920x1080 playability here). The gaming experience will be more than smooth for those games at 1920x1080 much less 1280x720 unless FF IV come out and is absolutely terribly programmed and even then you'd have 2x the GPU power, 2x the ram recommended and once overclocked 150% of the CPU power recommended.

edit: forgot to mention, don't play a MMORPG at 1280x720. I used to play WoW at 1280x1024 and it's just too crowded. Once you get all the addons you need like threat meters and healbot or dps/heal meters, macros on the bars, deadly boss mod, atlasloot, etc, it becomes way too crowded. As a healer it becomes an incredible problem since healbot takes up so much screen real estate, GRID takes much more work to get right and never feels as natural as healbot and the regular click+keyboard layout is resistant and slow to effective raid healing (especially as a main healer) on real high level raids with a good guild. You'll just end up disappointing your friends since healing is so reaction sensitive and so easily leads to dying when you're not at 100% efficency. With tanking you can see more, but it still becomes an issue because of the massive amount of situational awareness you need to tank at high levels. DPS, you may be okay, but even then moving onto a 1920x1080 screen made a big difference with combo points and energy control, letting my cat finally hit the top spots in dps meters after I upgraded.

My experiences are all from a Druid though, which required much more finesse and work to get to the top level of play compared to the other more focused classes back in Burning Crusade.
 
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dmoney1980

Platinum Member
Jan 17, 2008
2,471
38
91
That is true, but as i posted above, its all about value for the money. The latency stuff, while it matters, doesn't have as big of an impact as the GPU. I would rather have the OP(who said he wanted 8gb of ram) to save the extra $40 it would cost to buy 2 sets of eco series and add them to grab a GTX 480.

yeah I guess your right, good value and good reputation for the ripjaws. Of all the components on his list, that ultra psu needs to go
 
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RavenSEAL

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2010
8,661
3
0
Sorry, but there's some changes that really need to be made.

Sound Card - Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Not needed, especially the weak audigy. Since EAX went away, there's no reason to go dedicated sound card unless you are going for a high end studio-moitor specialty sound card like a M Audio Audiphile to record and play music and movies. For gaming, sound cards like are useless Audigy don't contribute anything.

Power Supply - Ultra X4 1050-Watt Modular Power Supply
Firstly 1050W is way too much unless you will be running 4x HD5870 Video cards in CrossfireX or 3 way SLI wih GTX480s. You'll be running at a much lower efficiency because you won't hit pthe sweet spot in the PSU loads.

Secondly, Ultra makes terrible PSUs check Johnnyguru or the Anandtech power supply forums for recommendations. Ultra is one of the lower tier of manufacturers, really very little different from generic brands. Corsair, Silverstone, Antec are excellent quality manufacturers. Ultra has always made system component frying crap.
Review:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/11/24/ultra_x4_850w_1050w_power_supplies_review/8


Case - XION Vantage Mid-Tower Case AXP100-001BK - ATX, mATX
No professional reviews of this product, but user reviews commonly complain that this case has low quality control and workmanship as well as being quite loud. Many complaints of cheap metal, unrolled steel edges, misaligned screw holes, shddy paint, manufacturing defects in things actually fitting together or even being attached at all, missing mounting components...

Skip it, unless you really need shiny blue lights and a big X, get a quality case.

Intel Core i7 950 Processor
Why? Either go for the i970 six core to justify the cost of a LGA 1366 motherboard or go for a i5 Quad core and a cheaper LGA 1156 board. Buying expensive + lower physical cores is a bad value. If you spend a little time to learn to overclock, 3.8-4 GHZ is not an issue for for i7 or i5 processors, so spend extra money on higher frequency is a waste, spend it on things you can't get for free like larger cache or more physical cores.

ASUS P6X58D Premium Motherboard
Not a bad choice, but not good value for money.

Western Digital WD2OEADS Cavair Green Hard Drive
Not bad, WD Caviar are quality hard drives, but you should focus on the Caviar Black series. Those are very, very good HDDS.

Honestly, return that stuff you already bought if you can, especially the PSU. A bad PSU will cause a system to under-perform, freeze and die. The Windows and DVD burner are fine, the others, there's much better choices out there.

Also TigerDirect used to have terrible service, I haven't dealt with them recently so it might have improved, but Newegg usually has lower prices and much, much better customer service if something goes wrong.

I'll outline 2 builds that would work better in a Group A and Group B form, A being an AMD build and B being an intel build. Either one will be massive overkill for what you want it to do, but you get a choice, more cores for better multitasking or more pure cpu grunt?

CPU
Intel Core i5-760
$209
Clock for clock, identical to 4 core Core i7 performance in applications with up to 4 threads (99% of apps) for much less money. Easily hits 3.8-4ghz when overclocked.

Motherboard
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro
$180

Excellent over-clocking board, excellent reliability, quality and lots of features too.

CPU cooler
Scythe SCMG-2100 Sleeve CPU Cooler
$40

Amazing cooler for the price

Ram
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB DDR1600 CAS9
$155 after EMCZYZR54 promo code

Great value, G.Skill makes very, very high quality enthusiast ram.

Case
Antec Nine Hundred
$110

You can drop to an Antec 300 for about $60-$70 if you like, but the 900 offers a bit better airflow for lower temperatures. It's the most popular case for a very good reason, but the 300 is also a very, very good choice.

Power supply
CORSAIR Professional Series AX850 850W
$180

80+ gold efficiency rating, rock solid output voltages, ability to deliver stable power even if your home outlet comes out to as low as 90V, minimal noise and ripple to interfere with your pc components, barely audible when running, just has everything anyone needs in a power supply.

Hard Drive:
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 64mb Cache
$90

One of the fastest hard drives available

GPU
ZOTAC Geforce GTX 460 1gB
$200 after mail in rebate X 2 (Make sure to fill out 1 rebate for both cards to get $40 back)

Best value for the money gaming card right now, lifetime warranty also. Sli GTX460 is faster than a single GTX480.

Total Cost:
Shipped
$1442.50
After Rebates
$1382.50
Adding your DVD burned and windows you kept
$1512.23

You could shave a little more money by returning the dvd drive and windows and buying it from newegg to get it squarely under $1500 if you really wanted to.

This system after building and a couple hours of overclocking would be more powerful than required to FF IV or World of Warcraft by a huge margin (You'd be looking more at Metro 2033 and Crysis at 1920x1080 playability here). The gaming experience will be more than smooth for those games at 1920x1080 much less 1280x720 unless FF IV come out and is absolutely terribly programmed and even then you'd have 2x the GPU power, 2x the ram recommended and once overclocked 150% of the CPU power recommended.

Great build there...but instead of 2x GTX460s i would suggest a GTX480. Drop the 850w and get a 650w from corsair.

Drop the 1Tb HDD and get a 500GB HDD for half the price, or even better, get a 320GB for a third of the price. Again..HDD speed isn't as big of a deal compared to the GPU when dealing with FFXIV, unless the OP prefers to buy an SSD.

Also, get a cheaper case. As much as i love my antec 900, $110 is an over kill, You can get an equal quality case for $70-80.

Ram isn't as big of a deal when you have such a huge amount, but for only 150, i'm not gonna complain.

and for the motherboard, since i suggested a GTX480, simply get an ASUS P7P55 LX.

All that money can go towards THIS gtx480

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-319-_-Product
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
5
71
www.mfenn.com
GTX460? If you wanna run FFXIV @ 1080p and all eye candy, you're gonna need a GTX 480. That shit is horribly coded...it takes a lot out of a GPU. You will need 8GB of ram if possible and yes, get an i5 instead of the i7 and get a corsair 650 instead of that ultra supply, you don't need a 1050w supply unless you're gonna be doing tri-Xfire or SLI.

True, but I assumed that if the guy was currently running at 1280x720, that he wasn't interested in maxing out the graphics.
 

RavenSEAL

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2010
8,661
3
0
True, but I assumed that if the guy was currently running at 1280x720, that he wasn't interested in maxing out the graphics.

Even w/o maxing out the graphics, the game gives very bad FPS at times. Not to mention the GTX480 is extremely future proof. It's better to have a GPU can can handle everything thrown at it. Even at low resolution. SE did a horrible job coding it from the start.
 

mwmorph

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2004
8,877
1
81
Great build there...but instead of 2x GTX460s i would suggest a GTX480. Drop the 850w and get a 650w from corsair.

Drop the 1Tb HDD and get a 500GB HDD for half the price, or even better, get a 320GB for a third of the price. Again..HDD speed isn't as big of a deal compared to the GPU when dealing with FFXIV, unless the OP prefers to buy an SSD.

Also, get a cheaper case. As much as i love my antec 900, $110 is an over kill, You can get an equal quality case for $70-80.

Ram isn't as big of a deal when you have such a huge amount, but for only 150, i'm not gonna complain.

and for the motherboard, since i suggested a GTX480, simply get an ASUS P7P55 LX.

All that money can go towards THIS gtx480

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-319-_-Product

The issue is why? The GTX480 is slower than GTX460 1GB in any benchmark, uses more power at idle (80W more than 2 GTX460 combined) uses comparable power at peak, runs hotter and louder.

Unless you absolutely need a money is no object, dual or Tri SLI max performance build, the GTX 480 is a terrible choice.

http://www.techspot.com/review/309-geforce-gtx-460-sli-performance/page10.html
In the dozen games that we tested the GeForce GTX 460 [1GB] SLI graphics cards were on average 16% faster than the GeForce GTX 480. This is a big deal not just because the GeForce GTX 480 is the fastest single GPU graphics card you can buy, but because you will likely end up paying less for the GTX 460 [1GB] duo.

There are more advantages favoring the GeForce GTX 460 SLI configuration over a single GeForce GTX 480. While the SLI cards use 5% more power under full load, they also consume 37% less power at idle, a critical figure.

Another major advantage to using a pair of GeForce GTX 460 1gb SLI graphics cards is heat. Especially at idle, using a GeForce GTX 480, it will never drop below 60 degrees whereas most GeForce GTX 460 cards idle at half that.

The GTX480 is a terrible card and almost always a bad choice. The GTX460 1gb SLI is more future proof than a GTX480 since it actually scales better with resolution, increasing its percentage lead as the load goes up. Cheaper, faster, cooler, lower power, more scalable, there is no downside to a $400 GTX460 SLI setup v.s. a single, more expensive $450 GTX480. Of course th AMD 6000 series are launching next week so it's a good time to put off the purchase to see the performance results of the 6870 (5750/5770 price point replacement, supposedly 5850-5870 levels of performance) and price drops on Nvidia cards.
 
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RavenSEAL

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2010
8,661
3
0
The issue is why? The GTX480 is slower than GTX460 1GB in any benchmark, uses more power at idle (80W more than 2 GTX460 combined) uses comparable power at peak, runs hotter and louder.

Unless you absolutely need a money is no object, dual or Tri SLI max performance build, the GTX 480 is a terrible choice.

http://www.techspot.com/review/309-geforce-gtx-460-sli-performance/page10.html


The GTX480 is a terrible card and almost always a bad choice. The GTX460 1gb SLI is more future proof than a GTX480 since it actually scales better with resolution, increasing its percentage lead as the load goes up. Cheaper, faster, cooler, lower power, more scalable, there is no downside to a $400 GTX460 SLI setup v.s. a single, more expensive $450 GTX480. Of course th AMD 6000 series are launching next week so it's a good time to put off the purchase to see the performance results of the 6870 (5750/5770 price point replacement, supposedly 5850-5870 levels of performance) and price drops on Nvidia cards.

I would gladly pay an extra $50 for a 16% increase...GTX480 is a very good card by the way. As much as other people might want to bash it, my experience with it was awesome.
 

mwmorph

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2004
8,877
1
81
I would gladly pay an extra $50 for a 16% increase...GTX480 is a very good card by the way. As much as other people might want to bash it, my experience with it was awesome.

No the $50 gets a 16% decrease in performance. The SLI GTX460 1GB are 16% faster AND $50 cheaper. There is no winning proposition with a GTX480, slower, hotter, more power hungry, more expensive.
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
5
71
www.mfenn.com
No the $50 gets a 16% decrease in performance. The SLI GTX460 1GB are 16% faster AND $50 cheaper. There is no winning proposition with a GTX480, slower, hotter, more power hungry, more expensive.

You also have to keep in mind that the board that Techspot used keeps the GTX 460's well separated (2 slots). Most boards do not do this, causing the top GTX 460 to get very hot and loud indeed.

Another thing to factor into the equation is the higher cost of an SLI-capable platform. When you add in the extra $50 or so of an SLI-capable LGA 1156 board, the pricing is pretty much the same.

Finally, there are the normal SLI gremlins to consider: profiles, microstutter, etc.

I'm not saying that SLI GTX 460's aren't great performers, I'm just pointing out that it's not as cut-and-dry as the raw numbers from that review make it seem.
 

ZLanDRy18

Junior Member
Oct 16, 2010
13
0
0
Power Supply - I am thinking Corsair 650TX 650 Watt.

Video Card - GTX 460, possibly 2 SLI if i can get the money.

RAM - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB

Hard Drive - still in the bushes. either the WD Caviar Black 1 TB or the Samsung F3 1TB

Mobo - Asus P7P55 LX

CPU - i5 760

CPU Cooler - if i need one, still rather unclear, Scythe SCMG-2100 Sleeve

Also, would the case i have really be such a bad choice, although i may actually get the Antec Nine Hundred.

Would i be ok in using the sound card that i have bought?
 
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mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
5
71
www.mfenn.com
Well, my first question is, would those parts play better without overclocking, because to be completely honest, i don't plan to overclock, as i have no idea to. Although at a later time i may learn. But for the time being, i don't plan to.

Yeah, well based on what is said about the PSU, i'll see if i can return it. It was just my assumption and was advised to get a 1000+watt psu.

The case, well. im a bit of a kid and am a sucker for the lights lmao. Do you think it will actually hold up and do its job?

Based on everything that is said. GTX 460 seems like the best bet.

Well, would the sound card really make a difference, i mean i bought it, so why not put it in. like would it be fine if i were to put it in?

Im guessing; i5 760. Would it hold up well without overclocking?

Motherboard. Still rather unclear.

What kind of cooling should i use. i mean dont some of these parts come with cooling systems?

If you can get a refund on the sound card, that's $35 back in your pocket. An original Audigy isn't worth using over the integrated audio IMHO. It'll just take up a slot and potentially impede airflow.

Without overclocking, the 760 is actually better than the 950 because the Turbo Boost will automatically OC the CPU for you.

As for cooling, if you're not gonna OC, then the stock HSF that comes with the CPU is fine. If your case didn't come with at least 1 intake and 1 exhaust fan, you'll probably want to buy fans so that you reach that number.
 

mwmorph

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2004
8,877
1
81
Well, my first question is, would those parts play better without overclocking, because to be completely honest, i don't plan to overclock, as i have no idea to. Although at a later time i may learn. But for the time being, i don't plan to.

Yeah, well based on what is said about the PSU, i'll see if i can return it. It was just my assumption and was advised to get a 1000+watt psu.

The case, well. im a bit of a kid and am a sucker for the lights lmao. Do you think it will actually hold up and do its job?

Based on everything that is said. GTX 460 seems like the best bet.

Well, would the sound card really make a difference, i mean i bought it, so why not put it in. like would it be fine if i were to put it in?

Im guessing; i5 760. Would it hold up well without overclocking?

Motherboard. Still rather unclear.

What kind of cooling should i use. i mean dont some of these parts come with cooling systems?


The i5 would hold up fine without overclocking, but MMOs like WoW tend to be pretty CPU dependent, especially as you do 25 man raids with a full set of addons. As of now, it'd only be about 8-9% slower (and about 40% cheaper) than a Core i7 950 in WoW. With over-clocking, you could be having 50% more cpu power

One thing people don't think about lights is it gets bright. Uncomfortably bright. It's quite annoying when I had a light up case in my bedroom.

The Xion case would work, but even then, I can only say probably. As mentioned before, many people complained of screw mounting holes in the wrong place and the front panel not even being attached from the factory. If you really want to, go ahead, but don't be surprised if your heavy video card is unsupported by mounting screws (slowly bending and failing over time) or your motherboard just doesn't fit right.

The Antec 900 has lights too and so does the Antec Three Hundred Illusion $70 if you really need them. If you can't fit them in your budget because you cant return your case, then it's okay to use the Xion but those are much better choices in keeping your components cool because of better airflow through the case, giving more reliable, longer life to your pc. Xion is one of those brands that generally makes cheap, very low quality products.

Your sound card , if you feel an absolute need to, put it in, but it won't make a difference whether you plug in the speakers to the motherboard or sound card. You're going to get pretty much the same quality and features from either.

The Asus motherboard linked accepts SLI, Crossfire, has onboard audio and does what you would need it to do as far as input and connectivity options go.

Cooling is taken care of. The Case fans exhaust air. The PSU exhausts air, the GPUs have their own cooling and the CPU comes with its own (very tiny and weak) cooler or you can use the one I specced which would decrease temperatures at load by 20-30 degrees Celsius. Beyond the CPU cooler if you wanted to ever overclock, there no additional cooling required.
 
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