Hey all, needing some advice.

The parents have confirmed they will look into buying me a new desktop PC in a combined Birthday, xmas, good marks and schoolwork PC + to take advantage of the Education Tax Rebate. Anyway, Dad wants me to send a list of parts and he'll have a look and decided. Budget is about $1600 MAX INC Win7 and postage!

 

Anyway, gonna buy it all from PCCG and hopefully assemble it myself, with the help of a few Youtube videos and w/e.

 

Recycling Mouse, Keyboard, Speakers, Headphones & Mic.

 

Case - Coolermaster HAF932 $159 - I've had my eye on this case, and indeed I've designed my computer desk in Tech to the correct size with anticipation for this case (so I should have some breathing room for others if needed).

 

CPU - Intel Core i5 2500K $225 - Bang for your buck gaming performance and decent with other applications. K version because I will probably overclock a long way down the track.

 

Mobo - ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Motherboard B3 $205 - Recommended from the Whirlpool wiki for being quite cheap with a lot of features.

 

ODD - Lite-On IHAS124 24X DVDRW OEM $29 - Pretty cheap and recommended by Whirlpool again.

 

HDD - Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB $59 - Cheap, fast, reliable and I've heard it being used for ages.

 

RAM - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-8GBNT (2x4GB) DDR3 $59 - Cheap and decent. 8GB should be good enough for my needs and 1333 is alright I think.

 

PSU - Silverstone Strider Plus 750W ST75F-P $149 - Pretty decent PSU which should power my rig nicely with a bit of headroom.

 

GPU - Sapphire Radeon HD6970 2GB $379 - This is where I'm not too sure. I want a card that will give me enough grunt to handle BF3 and various flight sims and arma2 etc without the hassle of crossfire (which I can do down the track anyway). 6970 seems to fit the bill here.

 

OS - Win7 Home Premium OEM 64Bit $105 - Pretty self explanatory.

 

Shipping is about $123 which brings the total to - $1681 which is a bit over budget, but I'm hoping I can get away with it because I can't seem to get it any lower without sacrificing too much. Any more recommendations for the GPU and other parts would be good considering I would like to keep at a single card solution at the moment.

 

Anything I've missed?

Mobo - ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Motherboard B3 $205 - Recommended from the Whirlpool wiki for being quite cheap with a lot of features.

 

ASRock motherboards are worse than Gags mother with multiple STDs according to Stardream. Get a Gigabyte or ASUS one instead. Its worth the extra money.

 

If you are getting the 2500K, you will want an aftermarket CPU cooler. The Prolimatech Megahalems are good bang for buck.

 

Reguarding everything else, its looking quite good.

To keep within budget you should stick with standard cpu cooling, for now.

 

What you have put up looks good. 6970 is a good choice, 2gb of video ram will allow you to run games like arma2 with lots of AA, to make it look pretty.

 

If you needed to lower the price, you could drop the psu down to 650w or the video card to a 6950, or possibly use a hard drive from your existing computer?

 

You could try emailing the supplier and asking if they will do you a "combo price" seeing as you are buying a whole box.

Would you use all the 'features' of the ASRock? If you cant picture a use for them or even dont know what most are then look at something a bit cheaper maybe. Recommend Gigabyte myself. Like StarDream said, stick with the stock cooler for now, they normally build a bit of oc headroom into them these days (I know the AMD ones do) so it should be okay, maybe warmer than a Noctura etc at the same clock but if you're not going to aggressive you'll be fine.

Looks pretty decent, But IMO grab a HD 6950, they're simple to unlock to a 6970.

You pretty much nailed it :fans:

 

I agree with Shady, (now theres a curious thing to say) maybe a 6950 instead.

Stay with a stock cooler for now and maybe look at an .edu version of Windows 7.

Mate tell your old man to look into the finer details of the rebate because I think you may have to buy a pre built PC for the rebate. Not sure about this but it pays to check these things out.

Looks pretty decent, But IMO grab a HD 6950, they're simple to unlock to a 6970.

 

no longer any reference 6950's available.. so the unlock option isnt available..

 

and as for the ASRock MOBO, they are fine.. if they are on whirlpool, theres a good reason why

You could try emailing the supplier and asking if they will do you a "combo price" seeing as you are buying a whole box.

 

This ^

 

If it does indeed turn out that it needs to be a fully assembled PC for the rebate, most suppliers I have had to deal with are generally more than happy to assist the customer in obtaining tax right-offs in whatever fashion is required.

 

Can't hurt to ask

Cheers Nufty and Stardream, will give that a look.

@ Boost - Lots of people on WP have had success with buying parts and claiming IIRC... however I guess if I could get them to assemble or w/e that would be the best bet for me.

 

With the GPU, a guy on WP suggested two GTX 560Ti's which brings the parts down to about $1400. I still reckon the 5970 for future crossfire-ability although the 5950 looks interesting at this point.

 

Just emailed PCCG about building and I'll see what they reply with.

2x GTX 560Ti's would give you incredible performance. Those cards are epic. My old man has a single 560Ti in his 2600K rig.

 

I can play Crysis warhead fully cranked at 1680x1050 (he only has a 22" LCD) 4xAA at 40-60fps. Smooth as silk. They are excellent cards and SLI'd would be freaking awesome. Give the 2500K some extra volts and clock it up to 4.5Ghz and you would have an excellent rig. Up to you, but I would go with the 560Ti's.

 

The case you chose is awesome, same as my old mans.

 

I would recommend an MSI or Gigabyte mobo, but that ASRock looks fairly decent. The ASUS Sabertooth, while at $249, is an extremely awesome mobo.

 

CPU cooler... the only one to get is the Noctua NH-D14. They will take the 2500K up to 5Ghz if you really wanted to push it. It won't be stable for long, but you'll still hit 5Ghz.

With the GPU, a guy on WP suggested two GTX 560Ti's which brings the parts down to about $1400. I still reckon the 6970 for future crossfire-ability although the 6950 looks interesting at this point.

 

well when you get down to it, a 6950 is a 6970 with some shaders (~130 or so) disabled and slower clock speeds. Overclock to the same speeds as a 6970 and your sweet..

 

as for performance on a 6950, i have my eyefinity setup running off a 6950 unlocked to a 6970 (when you could do it), and i could get my FPS to sit nicely at 45-50 at max settings on BC2.. unlocking to a 6970 allowed me to keep my FPS at 60 (except in those huge battle scenes.

 

and it all depends what your mobo will support (xfire or SLI).. and also depends if you have the desire to xfire or SLI in the future. Also depends how many monitors you want to run..

Hahah or u could get 2 of these for 60$!

 

http://203.185.232.2/dbs/images/products/14300.jpg

 

http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=82&bid=4&sid=56275

Ok, so if I get two Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Golden Sample's which are factory overclocked to 900mhz for $259 each, do you think this would be better than a single 6970, or 6950?

 

Also, what other gear do you need to run SLI?

Ok, so if I get two Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Golden Sample's which are factory overclocked to 900mhz for $259 each, do you think this would be better than a single 6970, or 6950?

 

Also, what other gear do you need to run SLI?

 

In most cases and most benchmarks I've looked at, SLI 560Ti's will smash a single 6970 or 6950. They will beat a single GTX580 aswell.

 

Only thing you need is a mobo that supports SLI, a PSU that will handle the increased load and an SLI bridge. You will have all that.

 

Up to you man. You could also look at it from this perspective. You could get a single 6970 now for $379 (PCCG) and down the track when you have some extra cash, pick up another. The performance increase will easily outperform SLI 560Ti's and close to matching GTX580 SLI performance for over $200 cheaper (looking at the cheapest of each card).

 

SLI/XFire is as they say, the ducks nuts, but you do pay for it.

Another thing to check is if the mobo supports dual x16 PCIx slots. was looking at a number of boards the other night and those using the Z68 seemed to only have 1 x16 and 1x8. Fitting 2 cards dropped the 16 down to an 8 as well so instead of x16x16 you ended up with x8x8 . . . strange imo. they say you wont notice the difference between the two but i'd prefer to know that it was a dual x16 setup myself.

The difference between x16/x16, x16/x8 and x8/x8 is really small. On average it equals about 2 - 3fps. Some people will swear by x16/x16, but the reality is, do you want to pay an extra $100+ for a mere 2 - 3fps?

@ Boost - Lots of people on WP have had success with buying parts and claiming IIRC... however I guess if I could get them to assemble or w/e that would be the best bet for me.

 

yeah just dont want you to miss out on the rebate mate as this is part of the reason why your old man is forking out the cash for this.

Haha yeah you're right there.

 

Got a reply from PCCG at 12am last night??? It basically says they no longer offer building services as they would rather focus on the shipping of individual parts - fair enough I guess. (Just checked and it was sent at 5pm and I received at 12am..)

 

I think I'm gonna go for the single 6970. Just less hassle and seems to be pretty powerful. Further down the track, I'll probably buy a CPU cooler, SSD and another 6970 all in the one hit - which should give a bit of a boost to keep it going for another year or so.

 

I'll also email PCCG again and see if they can do some kind of deal for ordering the whole box and see what they say.

 

Still open to advice tho!

The wiki was updated and I made some changes. The two 6950's again seemed to be too expensive, so again I went with the single 6970.

 

Can I get some opinions on this build? I still have to email PCCG about seeing if they'll do a deal, but I might wait until Dad's ready to spend.

 

CoolerMaster HAF 912 Advanced $115.00

 

Intel Core i5 2500K $215.00

 

Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 Motherboard $179.00

 

G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-8GBNT (2x4GB) DDR3 $59.00

 

Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB HD502HJ $39.00

 

Silverstone Strider Plus 750W ST75F-P $149.00

 

Lite-On IHAS324 24x DVDRW $29.00

 

CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ CPU Cooler $33.00

 

BenQ GL2440HM 24in Widescreen LED Monitor with Speakers $189.00

 

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit with SP1 OEM $105.00

 

HIS Radeon HD6970 2GB $379.00

 

Total: $1,491.00 + $113 Shipping = $1604

This is a fair bit cheaper I think, for a system that is basically the same which has a fair bit of headroom for expansion later on (when I buy an SSD, 2nd GPU and CF bridge).

 

Thoughts?

 

EDIT - Changed the monitor from an LCD to a LED due to longer lifetime and sale price.

Edited July 24, 201115 yr by BaseJump

Looks good to me.

Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 Motherboard $179.00

 

You dont need a motherboard with an onboard graphics card if you are getting a PCI-E one.

 

I'd reccomend this one http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=138_711_1183&products_id=17327

Otherwise, thats almost exactly what I'm getting in my new computer

I guess, but a motherboard with onboard is handy if your GPU broke and you need to troubleshoot or w/e + the price is exactly the same lol.

Looks good. Probably the only thing I'd change would be to knock that HDD to 1TB if you can stretch the budget slightly.

$26 difference and I'm trying to keep it under $1600 total. I haven't run out of space on my 250gb laptop drive in the 2.5 yrs I've owned it and I also have a 1TB external that I use to put my media on.

 

Also, I'm planning on an SSD later on so will have more storage in future if need be.

Just an update, I'm still getting this rig - it's just been knocked back a while as I have to pay for some other more pressing issues (such as schoolies accommodation).

 

It'll probably end up being an xmas present now...