Planned build

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suntzuEDITED

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Well thoughts... any reccomendations to switch anything?


Planned Build:

NZXT Phantom Full Tower Case
ASUS M4A88T-V EVO/USB3 ATX MoBo
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition @ 3.2GHz
XFX HD Radeon HD 6950 2GB
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W
Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 8GB DDR3
Western Digital 640GB Internal Hard Drive @ 7200 RPM
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack
 
1. Why a full tower case? Go with one of the mid-sized towers that were recommended in your other thread. Even if you need room for expansion, with what you have now, a full tower case is a waste of money. You could easily save yourself $100 or more on the case alone if you pay attention to your earlier posts.

2. Why do you need a 750W PSU for that rig? I think you've overshooting by 100-200 watts. At the most I'd have grabbed the 650W -- specifically, for a little more buck, you get a LOT more bang with the SeaSonic X650. It is modular and gold-certified, which will save you a lot of grief.

3. You have quite a bit of RAM for that rig. Unless you intend to do more than game, you could probably do with 4-6GB rather than a whole 8GB. But that's personal opinion.

4. That 640GB is pitiful compared to a 7200RPM 1TB (or more) equivalent you could get if you shaved some watts of your power supply and got a less redonkulous case. Also, you mentioned Western Digital but the model series. Caviar Black? Blue? Green? I'm assuming it's a Black. Whereas the 640GB WD Caviar Black is about $70, the 1TB drive is nearly twice the space for only
Interestingly enough; you could get a 1TB drive for $100, or two Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GBs for $100 shipped for the handiness of two drives in one (or RAID-0, if that's your schtick).

5. Why did you get a motherboard specifically designed for core tinkering (i.e. unlocking and multiplying) and then pick up a quad core? It's not a bad CPU -- I'm a huge fan of that specific chipset, in fact -- but I am just not seeing the correlation here. The motherboard you chose is nice - but again, by optimizing your build and saving cash off shaving down the GPU, tower, PSU and RAM, you could get the Asus AMD 890FX for $50 more and STILL have enough left over to get a far superior power supply, higher-quality RAM, and a less overkill video card.

6. 2GB on the 6950 is way too much, I'd think, but if you are ordering NOW it's only a $20 difference. Still I probably would get the XFX 6950 1GB and spend that $20 towards a HDD that has a better capacity. You would save even more if you got the Sapphire 6950 1GB
 
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runo said:
5. Why did you get a motherboard specifically designed for core tinkering (i.e. unlocking and multiplying) and then pick up a quad core? It's not a bad CPU -- I'm a huge fan of that specific chipset, in fact -- but I am just not seeing the correlation here.
Click to expand...


Its a hexa core not a quad
 
Here is a list of similar components I would look into, assuming you have everything else you need:

COOLER MASTER Storm Scout Computer Case
ASUS 890FX Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition @ 3.2GHz
Sapphire HD Radeon HD 6950 1GB GPU
SeaSonic X650 Gold 650W PSU
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB OR (TWO) Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB(s)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM

TOTAL: $1117.36

Other folks will probably help you save a lot more money, but this is something to go off of.
 
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You don't need 8gb of ram.

I like that case, the nzxt phantom is sexy. But full towers are big...i have one now and kinda would like a mid-tower now but they do cool well and are roomy.

I personally wouldn't get a 6950, unless i got two of em but yea 2GB of vram is too much unless your running eyefinity and super high resolutions. Anything 1920x1080 i would get GTX 460 SLI and overclock them. My two 460's at the overclocked speeds are equal to GTX 470's in SLI if not better sometimes since their scaling is amazing. I also picked them up for only $300.
Idk if the 6950's 2GB can still be unlocked to 6970's but if it can, it's a good buy.

750w PSU is fine, if anything you could go more. The PSU is something that will last especially if its a decent one. It's better for future proofing also.

Edit: scratch the nvidia cards, your on an AMD build and SLI isn't really much of an option compared to crossfire. Try to get crossfire 6950's
 
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I would not call the phantom a full tower. (i own one)

It is more like a large mid-tower, it really isn't much bigger than something like the Antec300.

that board is fine, it is actually pretty nice for the price.

you would be fine with 650w, is honestly think that you will get a second 6950 (you wont with that board), then get 750

8GB of ram, while useless right now, might prove usefull in the future. Just 2 years ago, 2GB was fine, now it is really weak
 
2500(k) would be my main recommendation. That and this cheap ass ram with great timings

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...n_ddr3_1333_hyperx_4gb-_-20-104-140-_-Product

Upgrading to 8gb down the road would save a little atm.

PSU, futureproofing is a wise suggestion as pewpew said and an 850w would be the lowest I would go:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...re=80_plus_silver_850w-_-17-151-100-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...re=80_plus_silver_850w-_-17-256-058-_-Product

Two solid choices that are both 80 plus silver.

But yeah, any reason you don't want to go sandy bridge route?
 
Nothing against AMD, but I see no reason to get that hex-core. For the same money, you can get an i5-2500k that will perform better despite being a quad-core. To put it bluntly, the extra two cores only benefit on very very specific functions like benchmarking. Even then, the i5-2500k can outperform the 1090t on benches.

Buying 8GB RAM now isn't a terrible idea. It may not net you any difference right now, but it's not too big of a difference in price. And like reflex, I'd expect that threshold of acceptable RAM to go up quickly.

Saying an 850W PSU is a bare minimum for a non-SLI/xfire build is just silly and I'll leave it at that.

If you plan on sticking with one GPU, strongly consider the Seasonic X650W. Modular and Gold Certified = teh winz0rz.
 
a pet rock said:
Nothing against AMD, but I see no reason to get that hex-core. For the same money, you can get an i5-2500k that will perform better despite being a quad-core. To put it bluntly, the extra two cores only benefit on very very specific functions like benchmarking. Even then, the i5-2500k can outperform the 1090t on benches.

Buying 8GB RAM now isn't a terrible idea. It may not net you any difference right now, but it's not too big of a difference in price. And like reflex, I'd expect that threshold of acceptable RAM to go up quickly.

Saying an 850W PSU is a bare minimum for a non-SLI/xfire build is just silly and I'll leave it at that.

If you plan on sticking with one GPU, strongly consider the Seasonic X650W. Modular and Gold Certified = teh winz0rz.
Click to expand...

Single GPU set ups needing 650W? That's a stretch. The X-560 is cheaper.

I agree with every other point.
 
Everything looks good. I prefer Gigabyte but sometimes Newegg bundles deals with certain boards. 880G is fine, but Gigabyte has a 890X board for ~30 more and it's a higher end board. Nice OC board

- You can NEVER go wrong with more power besides burning more money...but wait are you burning more money? Companies like Corsair, PC Power and Cooling underrate their power supplies. On top of that they are top notch, high quality power supply brands (Corsair uses Seasonic stuff so it is good). If you plan on CF that 6950 I would actually go higher in wattage. You see idiots running tri SLI with a 1000 watt PSU and their PSU dies in 1 year. You don't want your PSU to run anywhere near full load so all my builds have way overkill PSUs.

Phantom is a good tower, it's like a super mid just like my 922M.

Spend at least 20 bucks on a Hyper212+ and you are good to go!
 
There's a few things you want name brand- the PSU is one of them. Don't skimp out on it (Oh look, its seasonic guts!)- just spend the extra cash for a good one.
 
Yes, lets buy the bare minimum PSU so that when you want to upgrade your computer, you have to buy a new PSU as well. That is just silly and I'll leave it at that.
 
Tsunade said:
You don't want your PSU to run anywhere near full load so all my builds have way overkill PSUs.
Click to expand...

So, what you're saying is, you're not supposed to use the PSU like it's supposed to? Good units can provide their full load, but you don't want to be pushing that 24/7
Unlike any propaganda that you may have heard (most likely from PCP&C), a PSU is most efficient when loaded to 50-80%, and closer to 80%, usually.
 
Tsunade said:
Everything looks good. I prefer Gigabyte but sometimes Newegg bundles deals with certain boards. 880G is fine, but Gigabyte has a 890X board for ~30 more and it's a higher end board. Nice OC board

- You can NEVER go wrong with more power besides burning more money...but wait are you burning more money? Companies like Corsair, PC Power and Cooling underrate their power supplies. On top of that they are top notch, high quality power supply brands (Corsair uses Seasonic stuff so it is good). If you plan on CF that 6950 I would actually go higher in wattage. You see idiots running tri SLI with a 1000 watt PSU and their PSU dies in 1 year. You don't want your PSU to run anywhere near full load so all my builds have way overkill PSUs.

Phantom is a good tower, it's like a super mid just like my 922M.

Spend at least 20 bucks on a Hyper212+ and you are good to go!
Click to expand...

1.890X is not a chipset, it is a 790x chipset, with a SB850 southbridge, that gigabyte misleadingly branded as "890X". It will oc no better than 790x boards.

2.you still don't get it do you?

You do not need 750w to run a single GPU........

3.Corsair has stopped using Seasonic in most of their units (HX650, 620, 520 are the only that remain), they are now all CWT.

4.None of the compaines you listed "overrate" their PSUs.

5. depending on the card, tri-sli will run perfectly fine on a quality 1000w for way more than a year. I would not do 3 480/580s on 1000w, but something like 470s or 285s would be perfectly fine


6. 80%= about peak effiecency, that is why we are recommending a 650w unit
 
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