Newbie's first rig

[Fr05tByt3]

Hello helpful people at overclockers.com!
I'm wondering if you all could give me a little help with building my first rig. I'm an avid PC gamer who's currently running an nVidia 285 with a core 2 duo & it's starting to show some age. The monitor I have is relatively low res (1440x900) so I can still crank most games up to the max with decent performance, but I'm coming in to some money in a few weeks and I think I might wanna build a PC.
I was perusing these forums a bit and saw the guide to building - that makes me feel 1,000,000 times better about building... having it all in one place like that with pictures and everything is fantastic. I also saw some other threads with newbies like myself who are building and I grabbed some preliminary questions from Mr. Knufire (I hope he doesn't mind too much!)


"When trying to recommend a build to you, there's some information that's extremely helpful for us to know. If you could answer these few short questions, we'd be happy to help!"

*What are you planning to do with this compuer? Please be as specfic as possible. - Game. I game for about 25 hours per week during the school year (I'm ashamed to admit my gametime per week during the summer xD) and every game I play ATM is on the PC. Lately I've been playing BF3, Diablo 3, StarCraft2, Sniper Elite v2, Prototype 2, ARMA 2 and Farming Simulator 2011 (go ahead and make fun, but it's quite relaxing) just to name a few. I also surf the web and use FL Studio (music software) on occasion but I'm not super devoted to the music software

What is your budget? I'm willing to go up to $1,200 but, as always, the cheaper the better.
Does this include a copy of Windows? Yes

Does this include peripheals (a keyboard, monitor, mouse, speakers, etc.)? Just a monitor. I've got a Naga and a Carcharias already

Are you from the United States or a different country? Are you ordering from your own country or from across borders? US, probably Newegg unless you have some other suggestions

If you are from the United States, do you live nearby a Microcenter? Yes

Do you have any specific requests with the build? I'm looking for something relatively future proofed. Obviously with my budget I won't be looking at anything extravagant, but to answer the question I'm more familiar with Intel chips and nVidia cards. I could be persuaded to the dark side though, I imagine

Do you plan on overclocking? In the future, probably.

If yes, do you have a specific goal in mind? Nope

Would you prefer the build to be particularly small? Nope

Would you prefer the build to be particularly quiet? Nope

In general, do you prefer this to be a computer that you can spend money on now and let it rest, or a box built for continuous upgrading? I'd like to spend money on it and let it rest for about 6 months or so, maybe more, and upgrade in the future.

Do you ever plan on utilizing NVIDIA's SLI or AMD's CrossfireX technologies? MAYBE. This is up for debate, I suppose, but I'd like to have the option to go dual SLI/CrossfireX for a quick upgrade to performance (maybe once ARMA 3 drops) Triple SLI could end up being a nightmare I imagine due to heat so I think that's out of the question.
________________

Having said all that, I've been looking at some hardware on Newegg already.
As far as the GFX card, what benefit would I get from going with, say, a GTX 660 ti when compared to a GTX 480? From what I'm seeing the 480 still puts out a ton of bang for the buck. This is what I'm looking at:
EVGA 015-P3-1480-KR GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Intel Core i5-3450 Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.5GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
And as per suggestion in a different thread, I've been looking at the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

That's a good idea of what I'm looking at right now. The questions I have right now are: Will these parts work in tandem well?
What type of case/power supply would you all recommend?
Which monitor should I get for gaming?
Should I go with a sound card?
What RAM would you all recommend?


Thank you all for all the work you do to help newbies like me! You all seem like great people!

 

[Fr05tByt3]

I was just browsing newegg and found a nice combo deal I may be interested in:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1018081

I would have to add another HD and a GPU to it but that looks to be pretty nice. Opinions?

 

[Knufire]

That's actually a pretty good first build.

On the topic of the GTX480, you're right. Being the best card from two generations ago, it's still quite powerful. However, the GTX480 (as far as I know) is the single highest power consumption, highest heat producing single GPU card ever made. It's terribly inefficient.

You'd want a 3570K si you can explore into overclocking. . only Intel CPUs that end in a K can be overclocked.

I'm going to try to squeeze a build into $900 and recommend a Q270 from Ebay. These are 27" 2560x1440 IPS displays, the same LCD panel as the 27" Apple Cinema Display or the Dell U2711. However, while the latter two retail for $700-800, these retail for $300-400.

 

[Fr05tByt3]

That's actually a pretty good first build.

On the topic of the GTX480, you're right. Being the best card from two generations ago, it's still quite powerful. However, the GTX480 (as far as I know) is the single highest power consumption, highest heat producing single GPU card ever made. It's terribly inefficient.

You'd want a 3570K si you can explore into overclocking. . only Intel CPUs that end in a K can be overclocked.

I'm going to try to squeeze a build into $900 and recommend a Q270 from Ebay. These are 27" 2560x1440 IPS displays, the same LCD panel as the 27" Apple Cinema Display or the Dell U2711. However, while the latter two retail for $700-800, these retail for $300-400.

I would hate to have to worry about temperature and power all the time with the 480, so yeah you're probably right. I think a 660 ti looks to be about perfect for me with having a nice amount of power without costing a ton or frying itself by giving off so much heat.

YES. I would love to, at some point, poke around with overclocking my CPU. I watched my dad mess about with that for years and TBH it looks like it'd be fun to see how far I could push it.

@ that monitor WOW. A quality 27' monitor for $300? Great find!

Thanks a ton for the response, too! I would be lost without you, lol.

 

[Knufire]

Whoops, you need Windows too. Not sure if I can get a Q270 to fit in there.

Probably go with this. Maybe if you drop the SSD and add it later, you could fit a Catleap.

 

[Fr05tByt3]

Whoops, you need Windows too. Not sure if I can get a quality build in $900 there...

Well, if need be I can skimp on the monitor until I can afford a better one.

 

[Fr05tByt3]

What made you decide to recommend the 7870 rather than a 660 ti?
As far as I can see, the 660 is about 10 bucks more expensive & HWCompare gives it a 28% better texture filtering rate than the 7870.

Otherwise, I really like this build. Thanks again for taking time to recommend stuff for me!

 

[Knufire]

HWCompare isn't that great of a site, lol. The 660Ti and 7870 are pretty much identical in every way at 1080P. However, since the 7870 has a 256bit memory bus vs the 192bit on the 660Ti, it starts to pull away at higher resolutions.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-ti-benchmark-review,3279.html

 

[Ivy]

In reality the difference is very low. A 7870 clocked at 1150 got 92 GTEX, a 660ti is just slightly above with 102 GTEX. But thats just raw maths because a 660ti got slower interface and a cut in ROPs . It wil take away many mucles and it would be hard for the 660ti to beat a 7870 at such clocks.

 

[Fr05tByt3]

HWCompare isn't that great of a site, lol. The 660Ti and 7870 are pretty much identical in every way at 1080P. However, since the 7870 has a 256bit memory bus vs the 192bit on the 660Ti, it starts to pull away at higher resolutions.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-ti-benchmark-review,3279.html

So you're saying the 7870 is the way to go if I plan on getting that 27' monitor. Makes sense. Now, having used nothing but nVidia since I've started using computers, is there anything I should know about switching to ATI? I mean, I'll look up the warranty information and stuff like that, but is the software/drivers anything spectacularly different?
Also, being that the 7870 performs better at higher resolutions, would that mean more performance when compared to the 660 ti if I decided at some point to drop another card in and run it on 2 monitors?

Also I've been looking at a different case - Newegg claims that the one I'm looking at got an award from Tom's Hardware for best cooling for value. I figure the extra 20 bucks is worth it in the long run, seeing as you can gut a case and put a completely new computer inside of it in the long run.
Rosewill BLACKHAWK Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, come with Five Fans, window side panel, top HDD dock
Plus I like everything being on the top. I have a fairly small desk and I'd like to not have to worry about having both my box and the monitor up on it.
I've also been looking at this: COOLER MASTER HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN3-GP Black Steel + Plastic and Mesh Bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 and Black Interior. Every one of the reviews says that it's remarkably spacious and the airflow is top notch.


I know I've said it in like every post I've made so far but I just wanna thank you again. I just really appreciate having someone as knowledgeable as you help me just because I need it.

 

[Knufire]

You wouldn't play games across two monitors, so it would be the same. Multimonitor gaming is usually done on three screens, or multiples of three.

If you want a quality case that will last through multiple builds, I'd recommend a Lian Li without a doubt.