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First Rig in Quite Some Time

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Evelgest

New Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Hey all, I've decided it's time to upgrade my Pentium D desktop (I know), though this is clearly more like an overhaul. I'm sure most of you are more knowledgeable than I, so.. do your worst. I'd like to keep this around the $800 range. I'll be stripping the CD/DVD drives from my current desktop, so it's unnecessary at this time. This rig will be used for gaming, videos, photo/video editing, and tasks such as word processing and web browsing. Currently not looking to OC.

My current concern is the PSU. Is 500W or 600W sufficient for this build?

Also, if you can help me save a couple bucks, that'd be great.

Here's what I have so far:

MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD3 LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor

GPU: GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

PSU: Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V version 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified

OS: Windows 7 Home 64 bit

UPDATED: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=15546352

I added a EVGA instead of the Gigabyte GPU after reading some reviews about the card locking up their system. I'm also considering a different motherboard since the one I was looking at has a terrible Vdroop. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Any input would be appreciated. Much thanks.
 
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Antec PSUs are about the same price as Corsair now and not as good $ for $.

Everything looks good. I don't help people save $ unless I have to because that usually means crappier components and that's just not good for anybody.

One thing I'd do is go to 2000Mhz RAM and try to find cas 7 or cas 8 as opposed to cas 9 sticks.

DO overclock that CPU. You can get away with a cheapo hyper 212+ cooler. Even if you just overclock it to 4Ghz, which you can probably get away with on the stock cooler, that'll put you 2:1 with the RAM, which is good.

Not sure if you've read up on Sandybridge overclocking, but it is very easy. You can just do it with the multi like a black edition AMD chip. Also with good cooling 5Ghz is not difficult.
 
Thanks for the comments. I'll definitely look into Sandy Bridge overclocking. I've updated the original post with a wishlist with my concerns below. Thanks.
 
+1 on that motherboard. I bought the same thing a week ago and it's been pretty good. Has a good feature set for the $.
 
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