Building My First High End PC

[Mondrayish]

Ah yes.. Now I remember. I was upset with ATI cause of its driver support, stability and compatibility. Though that probably isn't the case with ATI anymore.

Okay, so I know what my choices are with graphics cards. Thanks everyone for helping me understand the video card market a little better.

Now that's out of the way, let's talk hard disks and chassis. Came across quite a few articles on these two subject with varying opinions.

SSD
1. Too expensive right now, better off getting 7200 rpm HD or 10800 rpm HD
2. Get a 60GB SSD to boot Windows 7
3. Get 240GB SSD for all your games, HDD for all your other miscellaneous stuff
4. Performance difference between a Kingston 60GB SSDNow and Samsung 830 256MB is marginal

For purely gaming, just having 1 SSD is okay, right? Pros and cons for this?

I'm thinking to drop down to OCZ Agility 3 120GB or OCZ Vertex 3 120GB. Anyone can explain to me in layman terms what the difference between the Agility and the Vertex series are? It's like a difference of $20. Why?

Chassis
1. Lian LiPC-P80NB Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower
2. CM HAF-X RC-942
3. CM Storm Trooper
4. CM Cosmos II
5. Thermaltake lvl10 GT
6. Nzxt Switch 810
7. Corsair 800D

I was originally just going to go with the CM HAF-X RC-942. Then all these people starting telling me this and that, so I checked out reviews for each of them. Then I just got lost. Seems like every review article gives a thumbs up for all these cases.

[Chris Manico]

I was seeing that in some benches the 7970 was only beating the 580 by like 10-15 % not saying much for a new line of cards... Haven't seen alot on Keplar yet, but nvidia hasnt let me down yet.

[UltraNEO*]

I think you might find most reviews will give thumbs up for just about everything... provided someone's making money, that is

Whichever case you end up going with, don't forget to make sure the airflow of your GPU's are compatible. You don't want your GPU exhausting hot air outta both ends and your case blowing cool air against it, it'll make the GPU's cooling less effective.

[Area 66]

I'm thinking to drop down to OCZ Agility 3 120GB or OCZ Vertex 3 120GB. Anyone can explain to me in layman terms what the difference between the Agility and the Vertex series are? It's like a difference of $20. Why?

You better stay away from OCZ.... get an Intel 520 instead, at least you have a 5 years warantty and you sure the company will still in business in 5 years.

[UltraNEO*]

SSD
1. Too expensive right now, better off getting 7200 rpm HD or 10800 rpm HD
2. Get a 60GB SSD to boot Windows 7
3. Get 240GB SSD for all your games, HDD for all your other miscellaneous stuff
4. Performance difference between a Kingston 60GB SSDNow and Samsung 830 256MB is marginal

I would honestly recommend you buy a 120Gb SSD for Windows purely because once you start updating, patching the OS, you'll need space for it's temp files; don't forget your anti-malware, anti-virus and the optional security also lives on the boot drive.

I'm thinking to drop down to OCZ Agility 3 120GB or OCZ Vertex 3 120GB. Anyone can explain to me in layman terms what the difference between the Agility and the Vertex series are? It's like a difference of $20. Why?

OK.. Basically the Vertex series is meant to be their high-performance, all singing and all dancing drives; it's the one with all the latest technologies OCZ has to offfer... While their Agility series is the cut-price version with fewer bells and whists - it's controller chip is ever so slightly slower.

[ugapug]

I went with a Corsair Force GT 120gb for the OS - Windows 7 really gets starved with a 60gb over time. The Crucial M4 is really nice, as is the latest Intel 520 series, but they're more expensive. Apparently the Intel SSDs have a lot more write cycle durability than other brands, so that may be of interest to you.

[Area 66]

Crutial are very popular, we usually ear Crutial and Intel as recommendations

[UltraNEO*]

Crutial are very popular, we usually ear Crutial and Intel as recommendations

I'm gonna forgive you cause I know you meant "crucial" and yeah, they do have a few great models.

[InnervateD]

I think I may have strayed from my intended goal lol. I was going around looking at 3-way, 4-way setups. Then I remembered I just want today's top of the line system; A PC that can run all of today's most demanding games at around 60-90 FPS at the highest setting on 1920x1080.

I think both the EVGA 580 Classified or the Asus 580 Matrix are both fully capable of doing this. I will probably end up with the Matrix though just because that card, according to the reviews I've read, can be pushed further than the EVGA 580 classified despite being 1.5GB vram. To me, that translates to "you can squeeze the most performance out of this card thereby prolonging its life". And in the future, after I've saved enough, probably just slot in another Asus 580 Matrix.

My only doubt left concerning this build is that the thickness of these Matrix cards are no joke... I'm not sure whether I'll be able to slot 2 Matrix on the RIVE and still squeeze a Creative Titanium Fatal1ty sound card without it being a detriment to the rest of the components. Hoping an owner of the RIVE can help me out on this one.

I'll tell you this much. You're not likely going to find some ASUS ROG MATRIX GTX580s unless you are very lucky with a local computer store or score them off ebay or some online retailer. I think when I got my pair (back in November) it was just about the last time you get get them. I had to wait about 3 weeks for my local computer store to get stock of them and I dropped quite a bit of cash on the pair.

As for the sound card fitting in between the two ROG MATRIX GTX580s, it'll fit. I plan on waiting for the ASUS ROG Phoebus Soundcard and I plan on putting that in between my Matrixes. I"m using a Coolermaster HAF-X case.

Here's a few pics of my setup on the R4E with a pair of ROG MATRIX GTX580s:

[Mondrayish]

That looks like a very powerful machine.. kinda like what I had in mind.

Fortunately or (unfortunately depending how you look at it) for me, I'm residing in Asia and they still have stocks of the 580 Matrix. Over here, with regards to the high end category, it's a choice between the 580 Matrix, 580 Classified, 7970, or wait indefinitely for Kepler.

I was actually drawn to the whole EVGA ftw hydro copper 2 but it's not available on this side of the world. So I'm just going to work with whatever they have here.

As for the chassis, looks like Cosmos II will be the weapon of choice. The more space, the better. The only bad side I've heard so far about the Cosmos II is its weight. But that won't be an issue because I don't plan on hauling around town with the case on my back. Again also because of the limited choices they have over here. It was a choice between, CM StormTrooper, CM HAF-X, CM CosmosII, Corsair 800D, and Thermaltake lvl10 GT in the high end category for chassis

So much for not breaking US$2800... lol

Thanks a lot for the advice and tips everyone. I learned quite a fair bit lol. I will be trying to scrounge around for the lowest prices around. Probably won't be so soon for my system to be ready. But will be sure to post some pics when it's up