new rampage 4 build

[sweeko]

Hi. I asked for advise in my introduction the ROG, my bad!
I am building a kick butt work/play station and asking for advise. starting with the Rampage 4 extreme MB, i7 3930K CPU, Coolermaster HAF X ped, coolermaster gold 1200W PSU, WD Caviar green HD, MS W7 prof, and here is where I need some advise.
The GPU (maybe 2), HD7970 or the new ASUS GTX 680 direct CU II, or maybe another of your choice?
SSD (2) in a raid mode?
32G RAM? Will 16G be sufficient for today's X11 games? 64G?
CD/DVD or blu ray? Need both?
Card reader?
Cooling. Looking at the Corsiar H100 for the CPU. Any other cooling needed?
Sound card?
Quiet fans? I will add as many as possible.
Any accessories needed in the build?
Want to start ordering this week.
Thank you for any help you may provide.

[Xtreme-Performance]

I've read if your gonna play skyrim on other forums they currently only support 16GB lol but why not keep some incase they do upgrade the support from 16gb to 32 lol... And if your gonna tweak it... for me I purchased 2400mhz 8GB RAM tho.. because later on I'd would tweak it to 2400mhz once I have the right cooling for it like liquid cooling. So far I did not purchase liquid cooling so I barely tweaked it from 1300mhz to 1600mhz because I know the fan cooling won't keep it cool even though I'm 3-5 feet in front of a/c w/ a vornado fan to push all that cold from a/c although I'm not so confident about my a/c cos it's very old... So yeah fan would work but I'd want liquid cooling if I do want extra precaution...

From previous forum I've read they said you'd want too cool down gpu not only cpu and if tweaking ram to o.c. them then ya... don't think hdd needs cooling but I would think if you'd use psu... lol maybe... since it has a fan in the psu to want to cool it down too... (but I don't know myself if that makes sense...) I'm sure psu heats up too if used at a high wattage for many hours of gameplay...

I also purchased Rampage IV Extreme for gameplay and work also bro... lol (although I'd want to only tweak the PC with CPU level up only if I'd require more speed and power... like using some graphic applications like autocad2004 or adobe graphics suite but if it's for MS office I'd lower the speed down to default because my i7-3820 should be officient at default normal speed settings...

If you want to make your PC componants last longer for many years then I'd want to do that for myself... Like the Video from ASUS showing two gamers in competition... I'd only want to use tweaking for increase performance if applications needs it.

Also I saw a COSMOS II has like up to 13 hdd's 3.5 hard drive and 11 fans to cool it down... It's a huge Full Tower ATX that it'll fit almost anything... I'd purchase it but it's quite expensive...

http://www.coolermaster.com/product.php?product_id=6792
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Nvtw_Hzl6HA

[HiVizMan]

If you are going top end and want to kick butt and take no prisoners.

You are certainly going the right way about it.

The ram question first. Their is a trade off between capacity and speed. The good news is the loss of speed in the form of raw megahertz is not that crucial as your bandwidth even at the Intel default specs is going to be so much more than you will max out in 99% of the time.

The good thing about having 64GB of ram is that you can have a ram drive. Oh boy do those little babies make encoding a pleasure and speed like you can not believe. However 32GB is huge, and for most things 16GB is plenty.

RAID 0 or more correctly striped hard drives are by far the quickest but you want to know something it is not worth it. Rather get two SSD's of at least 120GB in size and RAID 1 array. That way your data is safe and the difference in speed is so small in the real world you will not notice. Oh and make sure you do regular back ups in any case. I should know I lost my RAID the other day and that cost me big time.

Graphics - hmm here it is a little more difficult mainly because of the fanboi element. I have pretty much all the graphic cards and I am currently more than happy with the 7970 offerings. I own two 680's and took them out of my rig and went back to the AMD cards. But that is a personal choice and each must make their own call. Prior to the 7970's I was running Matrix 580 cards, I am not a AMD fanboi. But this card is a pleasure to use.

Cooling - like wine and women. You get what you pay for and again each person has their own preferences. The H100 is a solid performer but not much better than some of the top end air coolers. The water cooling guys can offer more constructive input here.

Just enjoy the whole process and remember that the journey is often more important than the outcome.

[sweeko]

Hey guys,
Thanks for the quick response. just returned from dinner at Chili's and a few (burp) beers. The RAM I am going to play it safe and use what I see my fellow online ROG's are using. I will have to do more research as to the RAM drive thingy, IE 64G RAM. Sounds like an interesting and fun idea. Just might do it knowing I have your help here if I screw up.
SSD? I do not understand the RAID 0//1 and how it works. My idea is to be protected if one drive fails, and be cool because an exact copy is running on the good drive. Isn't this the premise of the whole thing?
I will go with the HD7970's. Seems like a can't miss thing.
OC'ing I'll learn and use it only to kick butt (or try to) with the on line gaming. :-) Otherwise doing business with the top down cruising along nicely enjoying whatever.
I like the HAF X because of the front ergonomics, IE, usb locations, fan positions, storage compartments, popularity, and massive room inside for my sloppy hands.
Again thanks. More later zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz







If you are going top end and want to kick butt and take no prisoners.

You are certainly going the right way about it.

The ram question first. Their is a trade off between capacity and speed. The good news is the loss of speed in the form of raw megahertz is not that crucial as your bandwidth even at the Intel default specs is going to be so much more than you will max out in 99% of the time.

The good thing about having 64GB of ram is that you can have a ram drive. Oh boy do those little babies make encoding a pleasure and speed like you can not believe. However 32GB is huge, and for most things 16GB is plenty.

RAID 0 or more correctly striped hard drives are by far the quickest but you want to know something it is not worth it. Rather get two SSD's of at least 120GB in size and RAID 1 array. That way your data is safe and the difference in speed is so small in the real world you will not notice. Oh and make sure you do regular back ups in any case. I should know I lost my RAID the other day and that cost me big time.

Graphics - hmm here it is a little more difficult mainly because of the fanboi element. I have pretty much all the graphic cards and I am currently more than happy with the 7970 offerings. I own two 680's and took them out of my rig and went back to the AMD cards. But that is a personal choice and each must make their own call. Prior to the 7970's I was running Matrix 580 cards, I am not a AMD fanboi. But this card is a pleasure to use.

Cooling - like wine and women. You get what you pay for and again each person has their own preferences. The H100 is a solid performer but not much better than some of the top end air coolers. The water cooling guys can offer more constructive input here.

Just enjoy the whole process and remember that the journey is often more important than the outcome.

[Xtreme-Performance]

Just enjoy the whole process and remember that the journey is often more important than the outcome.

Hey I'm having a blast even with errors ROFL... I'm certainly having fun putting my first custom self-built PC and I'm having fun taking out pieces and putting it back together to make it work...

It's certainly is a nice hobby to get into but a rather expensive hobby to get into... Certainly makes you feel good of yourself once you've built one because you've certainly feel accomplished because I've talk with people in my community and there's a lot of people who don't know about PCs and especially custom builds like ASUS

If people would be more aware of this... I would think they'd enjoy their lives instead of creating problems in our community lmfao... And in the state were I live in they legalize marijuana... which is a sad world... there other ways to get high... and my high is enjoying ASUS products and learning more about PCs lol

[Xtreme-Performance]

I like the HAF X because of the front ergonomics, IE, usb locations, fan positions, storage compartments, popularity, and massive room inside for my sloppy hands.


Yeah I wanted a HAF X HAF 912 or HAF Advanced... which ever is the one with the Full Tower ATX But I chose Antec DarkFleet there new one appearantly from a customer service representative saying it's an immitation from another PC case tower... Could be the Corsair 800d Obsidian but this is how Antec DarkFleet 85 looks like... It's quite bigger than a Full Tower NZXT Paladin I recall or was it another model..


8345

[HiVizMan]

Go have a read in the guides section on the front page there is a article about setting up RAID arrays. And in the article is a explanation of the different kinds of RAID.

You want to go for RAID 1 in my view. ;)

As that offers protection.

[sweeko]

Sweet! I'll take a look at it. Thanks.


Yeah I wanted a HAF X HAF 912 or HAF Advanced... which ever is the one with the Full Tower ATX But I chose Antec DarkFleet there new one appearantly from a customer service representative saying it's an immitation from another PC case tower... Could be the Corsair 800d Obsidian but this is how Antec DarkFleet 85 looks like... It's quite bigger than a Full Tower NZXT Paladin I recall or was it another model..


8345