New PC Guidance

[Fastin]

Hello Anandtech long time reader first time poster. Hoping to get some advice for this new PC build that I'm looking at constructing in the next week. First some background on the idea. I will be giving my current E6600/8800 GTX to my better half. This "gift" allows me to build a new PC for around $1200-1400(max). The catch this PC must include a monitor and OS, be as "futureproof" as possible (Sata 6.0, USB 3.0, Crossfire/SLI mobo, etc). The GPU isn't in the calculations due to a spare GTS 250 laying around and the fact I will be buying a new GPU around Christmas.

Monitor-ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM
Case-Antec P183 Black Aluminum / Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
HD-Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"
Optical-ASUS VH242H Black 23.6" 5ms HDMI Full 1080P Widescreen LCD Monitor
PSU-CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-650HX 650W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI
Ram-CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) MB-GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD4P LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX
CPU-Intel i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
OS-Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM

How does this look? Any critiques? Should I be going i7 or perhaps AMD?

Thanks a ton.

 

[darkewaffle]

What are you using it for? Gaming? Encoding? Editing? I'm going to assume gaming since you're picking up a new GPU soon.

Aside from you probably having no need for 8GB of RAM and the Caviar Black being about equal to a Samsung Spinpoint F3, which is normally cheaper, it looks pretty solid.

If you have serious plans for SLi in the future, you might consider going with a more powerful PSU now also. But that Corsair is plenty of juice for any single GPU system.

i5 and i7 really aren't that far apart as far as games are concerned, so i5 is definitely the better value. If you are doing a lot of more cpu intensive work though, an i7 may be worth considering, but you probably won't really benefit from it.

AMD is more of a value option. With your budget, Intel is a good choice. It's got a bit of a premium, but the performance is also superior generally.

Also your optical drive and monitor are backwards

 

[mfenn]

Dark pretty much hit the nail on the head.

That being said, the MSI P55A-G55 is much cheaper than the UD4P and has x8/x8 Crossfire support (no SLI). I would add that I don't think that "upgrading to SLI/Crossfire" is really ever a good proposition. I would definitely opt for a cheaper motherboard than the UD4P and put the money towards a better GPU.

I also think that the XMS3 is very expensive when you consider that it is 1.65V RAM. 1.5V (or lower) RAM is much easier on the Nehalem's memory controller and is thus recommended. Since you didn't mention overclocking, I don't think you need the flexibility that DDR3 1600 provides. You can get two of these 4GB DDR3 1333 1.5V for cheaper than the XMS3 and have the opportunity to go to 16GB later (crazy talk, I know).