[New Build] Need Advice Building Gaming/Editing PC

[S1L3NoZ]

Hi guys! I'm building my first PC and I need your help to finalize it. I'll start buying parts next week when I finish working (June 6 or 7). I was supposed to start ordering June 1st but I'm doing overtime at work that day. I'll start with 1 monitor but in the future I will be using 3. Here's the general informations about my future build.

System Usage: 1-Gaming 2-Photo Editing (Photoshop & Lightroom) 3-Listening/Editing Music

Budget: $3500-$4500

OS Included: Yes

Parts Not Included: Mouse, Keyboard, Speakers, Case

Country: Canada

Website: Newegg, CanadaComputers, Amazon, TigerDirect, etc.

Specific Request: Soundcard would be great if I got room for it.

Overclocking: Yes (4.0 GHz or 4.5GHz)

Small PC: No since I already got the CoolerMaster COSMOS 2 case (HUGE ).

Quiet PC: If possible with my other requirements yes, but not necessary.

Rest or Upgrading: Don't know. What's your thought?

SLI or Crossfire: SLI


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Here's a list of what I was planning to buy.

Case: CoolerMaster COSMOS 2 (Already Have)

PSU: Seasonic X-1250 80PLUS Gold -or- Seasonic X-1050 80PLUS Gold -or- Seasonic 1000 80PLUS Platinum
Don't know which one if I want to futureproof my rig.

CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K
Maybe Intel Core i7-3770K would be a good option too but I don't know. What you think?

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR3 1866MHZ

Mobo: ASUS Rampage IV Extreme

SSD: Samsung 830 Series 256GB

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX690
I'll eventually buy a second one.

CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H100
The reason why I choose this one over the Noctua NH-D14 or any other air coolers, is because it doesn't block any RAM slots and performances are similar. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Optical Drive: LITE-ON Blu-Ray Burner with 3D Playback

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

Total= $3549,88


That's it! If I forgot to mention something let me know. Looking forward to hear your suggestions/advices! Thanks

 

[Knufire]

Are you ever actually going to burn Blu-rays? Blu-ray combo drives (play Blu-ray, burn CD/DVDs) come in a good bit cheaper.

As long as you can store all your programs and games on the SSD, you're fine. Anything that isn't music/pictures/documents that's on that HDD is going to be extremely slow.

The RIVE is a benching board, period. Massive overkill and a waste of money for a gamer, IMO.

32GB of RAM? The max reasonable amount IMO is 16GB, only if you're doing huge Photoshop/Lightroom projects.

LGA1155 is generally better for gaming than LGA2011, especially if you're going with the GTX690 and don't need the extra PCIe 3.0 capacity.

General thought: This is easily the top performance for what you can buy today. However, since technology is a fast moving market, the best today is outdated six months from now. It's much more economical to buy a more conservative build and always be continuously upgrading.

How many monitors are you gaming across?

 

[S1L3NoZ]

@Knufire: Burning on Blu-Ray could be a good thing for me since when I want to back-up my pictures, they're in RAW format and take minimum 22MB each. But I guess it's not necessary you're right. I could just burn on more DVDs and probably would cost less than a single Blu-Ray.

What would be the best alternative for RIVE then? Quality over price.

I'll start with 1 monitor.

Don't forget that I'm not only gaming, I do a lot of photo editing as well so HT might be useful in that case no?

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Knufire]

If you're editing pictures that big in RAW, maybe the 3930K/32GB of RAM isn't as overkill as I previously thought, lol. I'll put together a full build right now.

Also, any reason for W7 Ultimate?

 

[S1L3NoZ]

If you're editing pictures that big in RAW, maybe the 3930K/32GB of RAM isn't as overkill as I previously thought, lol. I'll put together a full build right now.

Also, any reason for W7 Ultimate?

To be honest no I could just go with Pro and it would be just fine and save money

 

[Knufire]

So Newegg.ca is being annoying with half of the things I want to recommend being out of stock..

Either way, things I'd change from that.

GTX690, if you're going with the 2011 platform, no need to get the 690. 680 SLI will beat it, and you have enough PCIe slots to not have to worry about bandwidth. 670 SLI is probably the better price/performance option.

Motherboard, I've been liking what ASRock's been putting out lately. Their X79 Extreme6 board packs a ton of features for the price.

PSU wise, I'd stick to tri-SLI 680 in the future and pickup the 1KW Seasonic Plat.

 

[S1L3NoZ]

Alright mate! Thanks for your suggestions I'll take that into serious consideration.

 

[manu2b]

Yes, Knufire is THE configuration expert on the forum: he has some Augmented Reality built-in that links him straight to NewEgg website and hardware DB

 

[jazon1]

yea you'll defiantly have to go with win7 pro minimum or wont be able to use over 16 gigs=(

 

[HARAMOSH]

Looks good, I like that seasonic 1000W PSU, I might swap out my thermaltake 850W for that one when I go with a new CPU/MOBO set up.