Component recommendations wanted...

[David_]

Unless there it's very advantageous to wait a month or two, I plan to build a new PC in January 2012 to be used for gaming and programming.

I have a budget of $2000 CAD +/- $400, and I'll be buying from Canadian online retailers. I do not need to purchase a keyboard, mouse, optical drive, or monitor. A thread with a similar budget to mine was just posted, but I'm maybe a little more inflexible on a few of the component choices and would like some advice.

The parts I am waffling over right now...

Processor: i5-2500k ($230) or i7-2600k ($320, I prefer the 2600k if I can save money elsewhere)

Video Card: EVGA GTX 580 Classified Ultra ($620, not interested in SLI. Prefer high RAM video cards)

Motherboard: the number of LGA1155 boards intimidates me! Something reliable with USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, PCIE 3.0, Intel NIC (not super important)

Power Supply: Even after reading reviews, I'm still without confidence in my knowledge of power supplies. What might be the wattage of this PC and what would be a safe PSU choice to accommodate it?

Storage (1 SSD, 1 HDD): Also not confident in my SSD knowledge... OCZ drives seem to be top performers, but a lot of buyer feedback contains horror stories about their reliability. Prefer toggle NAND based SSD.

Case: THOR V2, or if that's oversized, a case with similarly good cooling. Case looks and noise are not important to me.

RAM: 8 or 16 GB of whatever CL9 DDR3-1600

Thanks for reading.

edit: native resolution is 1920x1200

 

[pitz]

I don't know how accurate this chart ranking the video cards is:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

But that video card is certainly killing you on the overall cost of the system.

PCI-E 3.0 isn't found on the current Socket 1155 boards. Its a chipset feature that's not present on the Cougar Point chipsets.

Most of the top SSDs have similar real-world performance. Benchmarketeers might try to convince you otherwise, but quite frankly, reliability should be the name of the game. 160gb Intel 320 SSDs can be had for $160 right now from many of the major Canadian online retaillers.

If you're not going to do SLI, then there's tons of boards out there. In theory, you could probably get away with a H61 or H67 -- but I'd personally suggest going with the Z68 chipset, ie: the Asus P8Z68-V board (~$120).

Power-supply wise, if you aren't going to go SLI or the ATI equivalent, then a good quality unit like an Antec Trupower 650W would be perfectly good for you. The Sandy Bridge platform is incredibly energy efficient, so really, its the video cards that drive much of the power requirements these days.

I think you could build yourself an extremely nice system for $1000, and have some cash left over to buy a second 1920x1200 monitor (which certainly would help you on the programming front!).

 

[fralexandr]

SSD performance isn't too important, since their main purpose is fast random read/writes thus reliable SSDs are often recommended such as the crucial m4 or samsung 830

PSU wise, a typical build using the GTX 580 is ~490w, so a 600-700w PSU is recommended (with no intention of SLI) http://www.anandtech.com/show/4008/nvidias-geforce-gtx-580/17
Seasonic, Corsair, XFX, EVGA, and Antec are all good PSU brands

the GTX 570 is usually recommended as a better price/performance GPU although if you want to spend $600 on the 580, you might want to wait for the amd 7970 official launch
570 performance
you can go with a 550-650w psu for the 570
7970 review
you'll need a 500-600w PSU for the 7970
the 2500k is often recommended as it provides near 2600k performance in almost all situations (it loses mostly in HD encode/decode type situations)
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=287

 

[mfenn]

- CPU: i5 2500K, the extra threads and 100MHz of the 2600K are not worth it
- GPU: That video card is a colossal waste of money. You can get similar performance (within 10-15&#37 for literally 1/2 the cost with a 6970. Hell, you could get 6970 CFX for the same money, which would of course completely dominate a GTX 580.
- Mobo: PCIe 3.0 is a useless feature, it shouldn't be part of your decision making process at all. The GA-Z68XP-UD3 is a solid board with USB 3.0 front panel header support
- PSU: 650W is plenty for a 6970 or GTX 580, and 750W is plenty for 6970 CFX.
- SSD : Somehow I doubt you care whether or not the NAND is toggle or ONFI. At any rate, the Corsair M4 128GB is a solid choice.
- HDD : Depends on what you want to use it for. For general purpose storage that is somewhat performance intensive, I'd recommend the 7K1000.D 1TB
- Case: Why get a HAF knockoff when you can get the real thing for less? Check out the 932.
- RAM: DDR3 1333 vs. DDR3 1600 doesn't really matter, so only get 1600 if the prices are equivalent. This. G.skill DDR3 1333 8GB kit is good.

 

[lehtv]

PCI-E 3.0 isn't found on the current Socket 1155 boards. Its a chipset feature that's not present on the Cougar Point chipsets.

Plenty of LGA1155 motherboards are PCIe 3.0 compatible (= Gen3). Just need an Ivy Bridge CPU.

Strongly recommend against a GTX 580 at this point. If you want the best single-GPU performance, grab a 7970 3GB (msrp $550 IIRC), it will be out Jan 9th. Outperforms GTX 580 pretty easily, and once overclocked it'll compete with 6990.

Should stick with 2500K, you're unlikely to benefit a lot from hyperthreading.

A 550-650W power supply is big enough.

The GA-Z68XP-UD3 is a solid board with USB 3.0 front panel header support

But since he doesn't care about SLI/crossfire, he could get P8Z68-V LE instead

 

[pitz]

I stand corrected then...

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/z68-PCI-Express-3.0-mobo-pcie,13569.html

Asus P8Z68-V supports PCI-E 3.0 with a supported CPU (ie: Ivy Bridge).

 

[lehtv]

So do Asrock Z68 Pro3 Gen3, Extreme3 Gen3, Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3, Z86X-UD3H among others