Yet Another First Build

[wiimonkey9]

I have a nice budget of around $1300 and find myself wanting to build a desktop. I'd prefer to spend around $1200 since I need to purchase a new mouse and keyboard as well. I will be using it for college work, video editing, gaming, and recording gameplay. I will soon be using a 1920x1080 monitor with it. I don't really have any brand loyalties, but would prefer nvidia over amd atm. I live in the US and plan to build it ASAP. Since this is my first build, I am not sure if I will be overclocking it away, atleast until I read up more guides on how to do it.

Case: Rosewill BLACKHAWK Gaming ATX Mid Tower

PSU: Rosewill HIVE Series 750W

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V PRO

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K

Ram: CORSAIR Vengeance DDR3 1600mhz 8gb(4gb x 2)

Storage: Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"

Optical Drive: ASUS 24X DVD Burner

GPU: Nvidia GTX 660 Ti

Cooling: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus

Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound

Thanks =)

 

[azeem40]

The Pro is not worth the premium. Get the ASRock Z77 Extreme4. Everything else is fine.

 

[wiimonkey9]

The Pro is not worth the premium. Get the ASRock Z77 Extreme4. Everything else is fine.

Thanks for a confirm. I've been doing a ton of research on everything since it is my first one, and even made this https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmhG766IzjkudGNuZmQ3Z0pDMVI0RzdzTW11M2pRNHc#gid=0 to help figure out pricing. It really helps to know that their won't be any compatibility issues because I was a noob.

 

[krnmastersgt]

The Barracuda 1TB isn't as cost efficient as a higher capacity like the 2TB would be just pointing out.

The RAM you chose has heatspreaders that will interfere with the fan mounting for the 212+, that and I think they're ugly. Just grab whichever is the cheapest 8 GB set and you're solid, for gaming systems there won't be a discernible performance difference between 1333 and 1600.

Agreed on the motherboard being overpriced, however I don't see much reason for the Extreme4 either over the Pro3 unless you intend to SLI relatively soon.

I personally don't like Rosewill PSUs but that aside a 750W unit is really pushing it. For a single 660 Ti you won't need more than a decent 500W unit which will cost you considerably less and be a bit more power efficient.

 

[DSF]

krnmastersgt's points are all good. Personally, I know I'll never use 2TB, so it doesn't matter much to me that the price/GB is slightly better, I'd just as soon put the extra dough towards other stuff that I'll be using.

I think you could get a much more effective build for the money. The PSU is overspecced and therefore overpriced for what you want to do. For example, the PCP&C Silencer Mk III line are good PSUs and they all have pretty good pricing right now on Newegg. (At least if you're willing to use rebates.)

The motherboard is overpriced. The idea with motherboards is to get the least expensive motherboard from a reputable manufacturer that has all the features you need. For 90% of gaming builds, that means a $80-110 motherboard.

You don't need to buy thermal compound unless you just want to have extra on hand in case you anticipate doing a lot of work with heatsinks. The Hyper 212 will come with some. If you really want to buy thermal paste to get the best of the best, Arctic Silver isn't what you're looking for anyway. It's kind of going on name recognition at this point.
(But again, I wouldn't worry about the thermal paste anyway.)

Lastly, a $1200 budget should make room for an SSD, assuming that $1200 doesn't have to also include the OS and monitor. There's no good reason not to get one, especially with prices having come way down.

 

[mfenn]

Agree with the posters above.

You can basically take my standard $1000 midrange build, which already has an SSD and a GPU equivalent to the GTX 660 Ti (7950 will probably have some more longevity due to having 3GB of VRAM, but they are really very similar) and call it a day for $300 less than your budget. If you want to spend a little more, grab a GTX 670.