I own the Cooler Master HAF ATX and it's amazing. A lot of room to put assemble everything, great air flow, and I love the HDD shelves. The way you snap in graphics cards, etc is also really simple and easy to undo/redo.

Highly recommended

yeah i live 10 minutes from the only one in the state

they've got a really good deal on the 2500k and i'm going tomorrow to buy that and whatever else i can find in the store from my list

Prob the wrong place to ask this but i didn't see a LC thread. Whats the best/cheapest place to buy an xbox360 online? I can obv use google but was wondering if theres any $ecret $ites I should know about.

Just built my beast yeaterday

i7 3930k. OC @ 4.7ghz
Asus Rampage extreme. overclocking that tonight.
16gb quad ch 2133mhz
6970 crossfired
Hydro h100 cpu cooler
Atx 1200 corsair psu
ssd 120gb
obsidian 800d case
27" led..dual screening.with my42"

beastly indeed sir

It's been over a year since I posted my last build and now I'm at it again. I haven't been keeping up with the new hardware so I had to do a bit of research to come up with this rig. Any opinions would be great.

I want to build an all-around multimedia PC for a reasonable price. Machine would be used for gaming, running apps like Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop, and regular day to day functions like email, browsing, file storage, etc...

Before shipping and taxes I'm looking at around $1150 CDN for the following:

CPU - Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K

MOBO - ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

RAM - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL

GPU - Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC 1100MHZ 2GB 4.8GHZ GDDR5 DVI HDMI 2XMINIDP PCI-E Video Card

HDD - 1TB CAVIAR BLUE SATA 7200RPM 3.5IN 6GB/S

SSD - Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal

PSU - OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w ATX 20/24PIN SLI Ready Modular Cables 135mm Fan 80PLUS Power Supply

CASE - Corsair Carbide Series 500R Mid-Tower Gaming Case ATX 4X5.25 6X3.5INT USB 1394 No PS White

DVD - ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM

The PSU might be a little on the large side but with the rebate it's only going to cost $35.

I'm open to suggestions on anything keeping in mind what I've posted nearly maxes out my budget.

8 GB of RAM would be enough but with RAM so cheap now it doesn't make much difference.

That was exactly my thought process. It cost very little to upgrade from 8 to 16. If RAM was more expensive I wouldn't have bothered.

Researching mobos was a little overwhelming so I'm very open to recommendations.

If you want to save some cash, you can get a smaller SDD. I've got a 64GB and it is enough for a few games (Even large ones) and plenty of work programs as long as you store other media on HDDs. I've got 3 HDDs with 500GB-2TB installed that I can store stuff on to keep the SDD clean and it isn't too bad. I unfortunately can't figure out how to set up RAID, so HDD failure is F'n annoying as hell though. Going with a large SSD could be useful in that sense if you don't have a lot of TV Shows, games, etc floating around your computer.

I game at Ultra settings in 2560x1600 settings and my I5-2500k has been more than enough for everything - so I like that you are sticking to the i5 instead of going with i7. The price difference just isn't necessary for 99.99% of people.

I have the Ripjaws RAM myself and it has been good to me for the last 15ish months so I would stick with that. Maybe just buy what you need for now and then wait for a nice sale price like I did to add an extra 12GB for like $40.

I went with 2x GTX 570s for my GPUs though and my mobo is different; so I can't comment on those. Your MOBO seems compatible with everything though, so you should be fine.

Overall it seems like a good machine that will future proof you for at least 2-3 years with maybe a small upgrade at some point. You are spending about what I did (I paid ~$1000 USD) and I haven't regretted it one bit. I will never go back to consoles or pre-built computers again!

how did you build a PC with 2x GTX 570s and a $200+ processor for $1k?

Because I'm a dirty liar. I just went back and found a thread I made before I built the computer and I was spending $1400-1500. I must of just told my GF I only spent $1k

That did include Windows 7 for $100 and everything but a monitor though.

Also, @Wires, you requested some MOBO input. I went with the ASUS P8P67 PRO LGA 1155. It had solid reviews before I got it and I've had good experiences so far. At one point in time it actually had the 2nd GFX slot go bad (this might have been my fault) and they sent me a new one in like 2 days and let me swap it before sending the broken one back, which was AWESOME. So while I can't give much more advice, that type of customer service is highly valued by me. I refuse to ever buy a Gateway product again from bad service, but I love almost anything Dell. So if you value that service, I would see if you can find a sale on the ASUS P8P67.

Trikkur,

I'm good with the 128GB SSD. I'd like to keep all my applications on the SSD and data on the HDD.

What monitor are you using that's capable of handling ultra settings. I haven't looked extensively but the 2560x monitors I've looked at are in the 1K range. I'd rather not spend that much.

I guess I'm open to suggestions on monitors now as well. I've looked at a few 27" models but haven't jumped in with both feet yet.

I purchased a Dell 3007 30 in. monitor about 4 years ago when I was playing poker full time. My old computer couldn't game very well on it, but my goal for building my computer was to let me play ultra settings on the 2560 resolution. You probably are not going to find a good one for less than 1k, unless you go used. Maybe look for a nice 1920x1080 montior. That should save you a ton and a lot of games can't go up to 2560 anyway.

Let's resurrect this thread and use it imo.

I'd like to talk about cases. Looking to get a couple new ones. I prefer full size tower machines. Anyone have one they like or would like to get?

My last build I used the Corsair Carbide 400R which I'm very happy with, it's $99 atm. It's a mid-tower while my last few cases have been full tower (HAF 932 and Antec 900), but it feels just as roomy with a much smaller footprint. You have any specific requirements or price in mind?

I like the Phantom series cases by NZXT. Awesome to build in plus they look sexy.

http://www.nzxt.com/category/product...m-series-cases

Not really. Just thought about getting new cases today for wife and I. I've been using the same one for over 5 years and the inputs on the front have gone dead. I'm willing to put out some money for something that catches my eye. Just wanted to get some opinions on what people here like to get my brain moving on it.

Those phantom cases do look smexy. Like something out of Portal.

Currently using a Silverstone Raven RV-02E. The newest in the Raven line appears to be the RV04. I like my RV-02E a lot. Easy to work with, enormous, and uses an innovative design. 3 x 180 mm intake fans at the bottom of the case, and 1 120 mm exhaust fan on the top. Also the motherboard mount is rotated from the standard design so the entire I/O panel is located on the top of the case (and covered by a snap on shroud). I could do without the window though.

Well the three that caught my eye tonight were the NZXT Phantom, a Rosewill Thor V2, and Thermaltake Chaser MK-1.

But it looks to me like there's a new Phantom case called the Phantom 530 coming out in September that looks like just the thing I want. Probably going to wait for that.

rv-04 looks pretty sick:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7084/s...04-case-review

FT-02 is a really nice looking case too, especially in silver.

So, when I built my rig back in 2009, ATI Radeon 5850 video cards were kind of the rage. My recollection was that it was around $300 per card; I got two.

Even though my rig is holding up really well, I'm getting the itch to build a new one soon. Any recommendations for best bang-for-the-buck video cards? I'd be in the $150-350 range.

You're probably looking at a GTX 660TI or 760 from Nvidia and from AMD (EDIT: still used to writing ATI) a Radeon HD 7870 or bottom end 7950 at that price. I got a MSI 670 GTX in December for $340ish on a good deal which I would recommend if you want to go a little higher. Great card for overlocking, out of the box already performs nearly as well in benchmarks as the reference 680 and has decent overlocking headroom, and I *LOVE* MSI's Twin Frozr II cooler. My quiet case fans are louder, and I went from a Radeon 4850 that idled at about 45c with an aftermarket heat spreader and fan to this thing which idles at 25c and barely ever tops 50c, and the only game I've found yet that it can't handle at 1920x1200 max settings was for some odd reason the Company of Heroes 2 beta.

In the end I went with the Phantom 630 instead since it's out now and a step up from the 530. $135 on newegg after promo code and rebate. I consider that a pretty good deal.

The one thing to remember when building a computer is you want all the parts to be fairly close in "quality". Depending on what your price range is, you want the parts you use to all be "middle of the line", "top of the line", etc. It makes no sense to get a really cheap/crappy hd for a high end system.

Little bit of an over-generalization. Not many games would be bottleknecked due to some cheap DDR3 sticks for example, most of the gaming benchmarks I've seen only show differences of less than a frame per second between low end DDR3 1033 and high end like DDR3 2800 - really only an issue with things like video encoding and 3D modelling. And cases are only an issue performance-wise in terms of their airflow design, and I've found the price of the case usually has little bearing on this. And not many games are bottlenecked from any dual-core+ desktop CPU made in the last generation or written to really take serious advantage of multi-threading. So I think your argument only applies to storage and video cards, and you can get away with a cheap 64 gig SSD for your OS and a few games and keep the rest on separate HDDs. After that, your most price efficient upgrade is easily the video card.

The mobo and PSU are bit of a special case, you're not really going to find any performance differences between different models, it's a case of feature sets and reliability, and with both of these you tend to get what you pay for. Anything under $100 for a PSU is asking for trouble in my experience, and mobo reliability is so random between models even from the same manufacturer that price isn't always a good guide.