Description

Hello all! :) As an upcoming IT student I decided that I should probably build a computer! ;)
Originally I had a $550 rig that was "meh" at best. It wasn't bad but I eventually sold it and months later this is my build. I've put hours of research into this so I do hope that it will live up to my expectations! I realize that there are no already built photos, but I plan to add those very soon as I am waiting on the SSD and GPU still. Btw, yes that ocz box did come with that dent in it :/ no damage to the psu though! But it was still a little disappointing, oh well. If you have any questions or critiques please let me know! In my mind I felt that this is exactly what I needed and the best I was going to get for $1000. By the way, I ended up spending roughly $1050 after promotions and rebates so it did take a while to get all of the parts rounded up due to waiting for sales and such. As far as overclocking goes, I don't plan to overclock as of now, but I went with the 3570K because I may change my mind in the future. Now I'll add a reason to why I picked each part :)

Case: I picked this case because it had every feature I was looking for. I didn't really want to get too much into liquid cooling, so I wanted something that was spacey and had some great airflow options. Which I just remembered, I'll have to upload my "airflow diagram" for this build. Mind you, it's not the best but I made it pretty quick! I picked this case up for $80 on Newegg (on sale).

Motherboard: I decided to go with the ASrock Extreme4 mainly because of the amount of positive reviews and for the great upgrade options it has. I may want to add another 7950 in the future or perhaps some more RAM. I felt that this was definitely a worthy Motherboard. I got this for $95 at Microcenter (this was with a cpu bundle)

CPU: I went with the i5-3570K for many reasons. Many of you know of its performance capabilities already, so I'll stick to the other reasons. I saw this on a bundle with some Motherboards and ended up saving a lot of money through that. I bundled it with the ASRock Extreme4 and was able to pick this up for $200 at Microcenter.

CPU Cooler: I picked this cooler because of the popularity/positive reviews as a very effective budget cpu cooler. It does block the first DIMM slot on my ASRock Extreme4, I was planning on grinding down the fan on the cooler once I decide to add some more RAM. Especially with vengeance being so tall. I got this for $27 on newegg.

Memory (RAM): I picked this RAM because my motherboard and cpu are compatible with up to 1600mhz ram without OC'ing and because it is CAS 7. Also, it was surprisingly only 1.50v, fully compatible with my cpu and mobo without OC'ing. Yes, I paid the extra for the 7-8-8-24 timings, but this was just a little fun thing for me to do, finding this and then ordering it :) I picked this ram up for $80

Power Suppy: I was initially going to get an Antec HCG-750W non-modular psu, seeing the great reviews, but then I saw that the OCZ ZT750W (fully modular) was on sale for $55 so I checked the reviews out and it turned out to be tier 2 on the newegg psu hierarchy and got great reviews. I does not have an MOV for the filtering stage, but despite this, it got some pretty nice reviews. I got this for $55 from Newegg.

Storage: The reason I chose a 256gb SSD was because in my last PC, I used about this much storage after almost 2 years. If need be, I can always upgrade for more room, but it'd be another 840 Pro. This is the best SSD in the price range for me, the random speeds are nice, and the sequential read/write is 540/520mbs respectively. I got this for $220 on Newegg.

Video Card: I picked the MSI Twin Frozr 3 OC HD 7950 as my gpu mainly because of the cooling and future capacity of it via overclocking and such

OS: I chose Windows 7 as my OS and I got it for free because I had ordered this a long time ago but never used it due to Ubuntu catching my eye.

Optical Drive: Not too much to say about this. I needed something cheap to use two or three times and that's about it :)

That's my build guys I hope you were interested in it as much as I am and I will be providing some built photos as soon as my last few parts come in. PLEASE critique this build because I tried to get the best I could for the money but perhaps there may have been a better option somewhere. Thanks for your time guys I hope this helps you in some way or that you help me in some way by providing some tips :)

Thanks!

Comments

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

There really isn't anything to critique about this build, except maybe the SSD. If you're using it as a boot drive, I would've personally recommended a regular 840 series. The chips are rated for a lower number of reformats than the 840 pro and the write speed is only around 180MBs, but with a boot drive, things will only be written as fast as they can be downloaded (nowhere near 180MBs), and I doubt you will be rewriting it more than 1,500 times in a 2 year period.

  • 79 months ago
  • 4 points

Hm, so do you think say a 120gb 840 for bootup(plus some applications since I'm sure there would be plenty of room left) and then use the 840 Pro as a separate storage? That would be more effective possibly?

  • 79 months ago
  • 5 points

I would use the 840 pro as your boot+apps drive because you already own one. I was not saying the 840 pro should be replaced (it is by no means a bad choice), I was just suggesting a way you could have saved some money with a very minute loss of performance. Generally, storage drives are low-rpm, high capacity drives. I would recommend WD caviar green drives as storage. They are low-power consuming (if you care about that), quiet, do not vibrate or squeal, and are very reliable.

  • 79 months ago
  • 4 points

Okay thanks, I'll definitely keep that in mind :)

  • 79 months ago
  • 4 points

If you don't think that you will go over the 256gb there is no reason to change anything. You shouldn't be losing any boot performance with either of the two. I think what he was getting at was that either SSD is performing the same, atleast what you will notice, so it would essentially have the same effect if you had gone with the regular 840.

  • 79 months ago
  • 4 points

Ahh okay. Seems reasonable. I should be alright then

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

I LOVE that you have done a fan airflow diagram. I would suggest that the number of fans (8 case fans) is massive overkill. Once you factor in CPU cooler, GPU 2x fans, and the PSU that is a scary amount of fan spin!

Of course to some extent there is the idea that the more fans you have the slower you can afford to run them, when you're comparing 1/2 fans to 3/4 fans this way you do essentially reach a conclusion of "more fans, less noise".

After this if you keep adding fans you'll find diminishing returns and the process swings back to a more simple "more fans, more noise".

This is a really interesting article that I think you would do well to read before you purchase all your fans! Plus if you knew how long it just took me to re-find this in my history you'd definitely read it! ;-) Bookmarked now... http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/02/10/the-big-cooling-investigation/

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

Alright cool ill definitely check the article out and reply with my thoughts on it. Also, I did factor in the cpu cooler, gpu and psu fans in the diagram. I'll have to patch it up a little to make it a bit nicer looking haha. Thanks, I'll read the article and let ya know :)

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

My only critique is with the PSU, OCZ is not the best of power supply manufacturers. Apart from that, this looks sweet

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

I love this build! I myself am about to assemble my first build and seeing that you are having success with the same psu cpu and optical drive (and also an hd 7950) give me more confidence that I made the right decisions!

  • 79 months ago
  • 1 point

Good job!

  • 79 months ago
  • -1 points

256GB SSD can be pricey. Instead, how about a 128GB 840 Pro ($130) + 1TB HDD WD Black ($88). This storage system will be fast as hell and plenty of room for files.

A 128GB SSD is best for OS, all programs, and a couple low GB games. (BF3 w/ all maps is 35GB) everything else can go on the fast HDD.

  • 79 months ago
  • -1 points

Why did you go with that SSD there isn't any reason to have it for programs only OS you could've went with a 128gb SSD for much less money and instead put that extra 100$ in a 1tb drive and better GPU, probably a 7970

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

I went with strictly an SSD because I wanted this build to focus on the concept of "future ready". Also, the programs that I'll be using are going to mainly be games and editing programs. (I do have an external HDD for all those photos and videos btw!)

  • 79 months ago
  • -1 points

The only way an SSD will help you with programs is make them launch faster. Nothing else :3

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

And loading times in games/rendering and writing edited videos or photos :)

  • 79 months ago
  • -1 points

Yes but you aren't gaining that much if your game loads faster and for rendering you can use SSD and then throw it over to hdd :3

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

Yep, that's what the external hdd is for :)

  • 79 months ago
  • 3 points

I'm not sure where you get that information. SSD compared to HDD for playing games is many many many times faster loading in-game resources and the net result is the most massive increase to actual, real-world speed that you could imagine from a minor hardware change. If you're making a modern gaming rig I would never advice to install your games on an HDD.

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