Need some help on choosing parts for an all new computer

[Ulven]

I’ve been reading a lot of reviews on the Anandtech site. Through the whole thing, a lot of them.. But I’m still confused on some points which might come from me being a Semi-noob (Or a total noob. For you to decide I guess ).

Ok, so to the point. I want to build a desktop computer, and I’ve trying to see what parts would best suite my needs. I want it to be powerful and stay powerful relative to new game titles for at least a year or two, but ofc preferably more. So it’s mainly for gaming, but also for Photoshop (though not so much that I would need triple channel memory) and various student work that my 3 year old laptop can’t handle. I want to overclock my system by a fair bit as well, but I’ve never done it before. I’ve seen it been done and read a bit about it, mainly through the tests AT has done. So I thought the OC Genie on the MSI Big Bang Trinergy would come in handy, skipping the hard part and minimizing the chance of me breaking my processor or something else My budget is about $3000 or about €2000, but I might be able to stretch it a bit. European prices on the parts though.

It is not decided yet, but these are the parts I’ve been thinking of putting together so far:

• MSI Big Bang Trinergy Motherboard
• Intel Core i7 870 OC
• AMD Radeon HD 5970
• Memory: not sure, thinking about getting something like 4x2GB DDR3 1600MHz
• Silverstone Raven Fulltower

I’m open for other suggestions though and recommendation for the other parts I haven’t thought that much about yet (Got a monitor so won’t need to buy that though and I won’t have to buy an operating system since MSDN provides one for me).

My questions are these:

• Will the 5970 cause any problems on the Trinergy, or have drastically lowered performance?
• Would the 5970 perform better on a X58 motherboard at the same price of that of the Trinergy coupled with a Core i7 950 (which is the other alternative I’m considering, though I’m leaning towards this setup) overclocked by a noob?
• How big a PSU would I need for this, and can you recommend one for this setup?
• If I wanted to install a bad-ass sound card as well, would the built-in thingy on the Trinergy get in my way, so to speak?
• ·Overclocking in mind, would the Silverstone Raven provide enough cooling (I will also install a dedicated CPU fan)? And will the Graphics card AMD recommend having 13.3 inches of space to fit the case? Anyone with a little experience with this tower? (And in the Raven review, what did they mean by pointing the CPU cooler upwards? In the system installation photos they didn’t point it upwards? Did they mean outwards from the CPU?)

Thank you for reading this long post! Let me know if I forgot to mention anything. I plan on buying the parts as soon as I can decide on which and any input you have would be greatly appreciated

 

[Syran]

Let me answer your questions, then get on to recommendations.

My questions are these:

• Will the 5970 cause any problems on the Trinergy, or have drastically lowered performance?

• 
  
  It should not. It's a multi-GPU single slot card; so no need to worry about cross-fire or the NF-200 for SLI.
  
  
  

  My questions are these:
  
  

  • Would the 5970 perform better on a X58 motherboard at the same price of that of the Trinergy coupled with a Core i7 950 (which is the other alternative I’m considering, though I’m leaning towards this setup) overclocked by a noob?

  • 
    Honestly, if you want to overclock, you either want a i7 860 or a i7 920. To me, at least, OCing is getting the best bang for your buck. You go with the slower processor, (neither the 860 or 920 could be really considered slow), and ramp it up to outperform its much more expensive brothers. Based on US prices, it's about a 65-100% cost increase for nothing close to that in performance. You can save here to boost up other things to much better heights.
    
    
    

    My questions are these:
    
    

    • How big a PSU would I need for this, and can you recommend one for this setup?

    • 
      The 5970 is the most power hungry part of your build, it requires a 600W PSU by recommendation. I'd look at anything in the 700+ range honestly. Check out the Corsair HX series in the 750 or 850 Watt area.
      
      
      

      My questions are these:
      
      

      • If I wanted to install a bad-ass sound card as well, would the built-in thingy on the Trinergy get in my way, so to speak?

      • 
        
        Never had any issues disabling on-board sound. Check out the Asus Xonar series for great sounding sound.
        
        
        

        My questions are these:
        
        

        • ·Overclocking in mind, would the Silverstone Raven provide enough cooling (I will also install a dedicated CPU fan)? And will the Graphics card AMD recommend having 13.3 inches of space to fit the case? Anyone with a little experience with this tower? (And in the Raven review, what did they mean by pointing the CPU cooler upwards? In the system installation photos they didn’t point it upwards? Did they mean outwards from the CPU?)

        [/FONT]

        
        This one is hard for me to answer, not really knowledgeable about this particular case. I can tell you some nice ones are the Coolermaster HAF, Thermaltake Armor+, and the Corsair 800D. You might want to jump over and read cases & cooling more on that. Cases can be things people are very personal about, since it's the part that you see day in and day out.
        
        About mounting the CPU cooler... Only time I have ever mounted a CPU cooler upwards was when it would not fit on the motherboard in an exhaust configuration. (OCZ Vendetta's on an Gigabyte AM2+ motherboard in a Coolermaster 690 case.)
        
        On to other things.
        I don't know how much space you need, but with this budget, you should look at a boot/os drive on a SSD platform, and then Maybe some WD 640 Blues or Blacks. (yeah, I know not the biggest, but a lot of experience with that line of hard drives, and very happy with their performance, cost, and reliability.)
        
        I would go with an i7 920 & X58 board, esp as the new ones hitting the market soon have the new USB and SATA specs. Those can eat up PCIe lanes that the P55 doesn't have much of (the 1156 CPU has 16 built in lanes, so faster access, but much less bandwidth to run things on, and has to steal them from the Video card to activate them). Also, I've had no compatibility issues or build problems with them, whereas for some reason the P55 just doesn't quite seem ripe enough yet. Triple channel memory doesn't seem to cost a premium over dual channel, so it's not an issue IMHO.

 

[Ulven]

Thank you very much for such a detailed answer!

About using something other than the Tringergy, I'm a bit worried about the OC process since I don't know much about it. Are there any good guides on how to overclock these things?

Honestly, if you want to overclock, you either want a i7 860 or a i7 920. To me, at least, OCing is getting the best bang for your buck. You go with the slower processor, (neither the 860 or 920 could be really considered slow), and ramp it up to outperform its much more expensive brothers. Based on US prices, it's about a 65-100% cost increase for nothing close to that in performance. You can save here to boost up other things to much better heights.

So you are saying that I can get a more powerful system by going down to 920 and spending the extra money on something else? Hmm, any suggestions?

In the reviews I read that the Core i7's take up to almost 300W when overclocked, and if the 5970 also take up 300W, wouldn't I need at least 850W+ PSU?

As for the case, I was reading this article:

http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3511&p=1

But I'm not really sure what to make of it. For example how does the system they used for testing compare to an i7 setup temperaturewise? I really like the looks of it and the easy access to all the ports on the top (No more crawling under a table to see what's wrong with the connections), but a little bit worried about the intake fans being restricted by their height over the floor and only three fans all together, is that enough?

I was thinking about having my OS on a 120 GB SSD or something like it. I've experienced it eating space after time, it's taken up 50 GB now on this computer, so thought I'd need a big one. The SSD's seem a bit too new to me though, hear about a lot of bugs and varied stability, so not sure I dare having my OS on one yet.

Also thank you for your recommendation. I like the thought of having triple channel memory and USB 3.0

 

[Ulven]

Anyone have any experience with the Silverstone Raven, maybe even with an overclocked system?