My second build - please critique and give me suggestions!

[Ahimoth]

I think for what I'm gaming on at the moment the 7950 will be more than enough. When the next gen series of GPU's come out I'll upgrade to another 7950 or even to a standard new one. At little under $350 and the highest clock speed of the 7950 I can't go wrong with MSI. They're from what I've read very OC friendly but then again all performance GPU's are.

https://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=wish_lists&wlcId=108873&action=wish_lists

The only thing I have issues with at the moment is the case, the Corsair Obsidian 800D Case is a large clean cut, well designed case. At $325 it does everything I need however the NZXT Phantom 820 Case Gun Metal at $60 less ($265) does everything the Corsair does for cheaper.

While it comes with blue LED lights which would need to be converted to red, or I may even have to buy new fans all together I can get the exactly same performance out of the NZXT Phantom 820 Case Gun Metal as the Corsair Obsidian 800D and on top of that get the more aesthetic case of the two.

 

[givmedew]

Hi, I don't thing that case is in stock and it has no ETA. If you look at the picture of my case you will see that there is a divider between where the PSU goes and the upper area of the case. When the side panel is on you can not see that area. What this means is that you can hide a decent amount of stuff down there and not have it affect the aesthetics of the case. The case is quite a bit larger as well. The bigger the case the easier it is to make everything look clean. Also there is a huge amount of space on the back side to fit all your cables. The other thing is that 5 hard drives are on a sata back plane which means no mess and you pull the drives right out hot swappable. Then 2 drivers are on the bottom no back plane but they are completely hidden and are tooless.

I'm not trying to push this case on you just pointing out the differences. If you don't want to spend this amount on a case I don't blame you. But be aware you only have to buy a case once.

The 810 gun metal and the 820 white are in stock. Both support a 360 rad. The 810 is a lot less money. Also I think you will need a total of 6 of those red LEDs because I think it is 2 for the GPU 2 for the CPU and 2 for the res. I may be wrong it might just be one for the CPU and maybe none for the res you need to double check but make sure you get enough.

 

[Ahimoth]

Just a quick reply the one for the res is a 5mm led, which I'll buy separately. I've finalized my build, not much has changed apart from settling on the case I'm going to go with the black matte 820 (2 weeks until it's in stock).

Apart from that nothing much, I'll have progress pictures up when I'm ready to build it in a few weeks.