First gaming rig, need a few advices!

V

vitorjapa94

New member
I've been saving some money for a new gaming rig but I can't decide what to get for the system. I'll be using it just for gaming and I have around US$1400 to spend so I thought about most of the components but I still have others to decide.

I was thinking about a 3570K, a Definre R4, HD7970, a couple of samsung 840 120gb ssd's in RAID 0 and a WD Green just for storage. About the SSD's I wanted to know if the RAID 0 is going to make a lot of difference in loading times and booting my system and if it's worth 100 bucks for the second one.

I don't know which PSU to buy, the old AX750, the new AX760 or even the AX760i but I wanted something with room for a future CrossFire setup.

My main doubt in this build is the Motherboard. I wanted a decent motherboard that is capable of overclocking my i5 to something around 4.5Ghz. I'm just not sure if I can get this with like a ASRock z77 extreme 4 or I should go with a higher end one, like an MSI MPower or something in between them. I'll also get a Corsair h100 or h100i.

I'm not very worried about memory so I'll probably go with some relugar 1600Hz that maches the colors of the build, but I notived that the Corsair Platinum Dominator are much more expansive than others, is it just about the aesthetics or is there something special about them?

I'm new to the forum and I'm sorry for the extense post but I've seen other topics and saw that you guys really seem to like helping new people. Hope you can help me too and sorry for my english mistakes. ^_^
 
Most Z77 boards are good for overclocking, I like the ASUS boards better, but that is just me. As far as RAID goes, I hear that people get really good speeds out of it, but I haven't done any RAID arrays myself. On the PSU's, I would go for the AX760i, just beacuse it is the newest, and supports CorsairLink. The H100i will integrate with it too, so thats a cool feature. I use 8GB Corsair Venegance 1866MHz, and I've only used up to 75% of it at a time.

Thanks, TheCMStormStryker
 
Go 3570k for sure, as far as graphics go I would grab a gtx 680... nvidia rules...
Power supply wise I wouldn't pay the extra money for the i series power supplies. I would just get the new ax760 without the i.
I'd go with any asus mobo, some of the gigabyte boards are good too.

As far as memory goes, I'd try and get the lowest cas latency you can find.
 
Go with the Asrock mobo, the msi mpower is great but it's not really the same price category as the extreme 4. And don't go with a 680, either 7970 or 670 for 1080p. Btw the new 8000-series from amd launches around january 2013 so maybe wait and see if it's any good?
 
welcome to the OC3D forums,

i didn't really find that a RAID0 SSD really improved the boot times from a cold start
or warm boot over just a single SSD. ive got the OS trimmed without a lot of
loadup crap and phoo-phoo. cold boot 8sec, warm boot 5sec on single drive.
when using a RAMDRIVE my times are longer from caching the RAM.

hope this helps and again, welcome.

airdeano
 
Nvidia GPUs nuff said. If you are looking for RAID improvements RAIDing a couple or more of HDD would give a better bang for buck ratio than RAIDing SSD's unless you were only using SSD then why not ;) The other thing is why the WD green the black is a better drive I think mainly as its is faster and after that there is not much else when it comes to gaming rig's
 
Rain 0 on SSD's shows next to no performance gains as the drives are already superfast anyway. Raid 0 helps more with mechanical drives which by comparison are notoriously slow.

Raid 0 on 2x128 SSDs may not even be as fast as a non-raid 240GB SSD. as the bigger the SSD the better they perform.

760i will be sufficient even with SLI/XFire.

Ivy Bridge loves raw Mhz and hates having the ram mulitplier messed with so dont bother with overclocking your ram, per say, just get faster ram. The 3570k is a sweet chip and I'm sure youll be quite happy with it (I know I am.)

The MSI Z77A-GD65 got great reviews and after purchasing one I can see why: It's awesome. You can easily overclock with the touch of a button but I think youll want to get a Corsair H100(i) before you get into some heavy OC's. The GD65 is also a bit more affordable than the MPower which is also a great board from everything I've read.
 
Thanks for the advices... I think I'm going to get a the simple AX760 and just one ssd... Just going to search a little bit more about the AsRock extreme 4 and how it compares to the MSI motherboads.
Also I think I'm going for the 670, it's cheaper than the 680 so it's easier to gat another one in the future and I won't have to wait for so long!
 
vitorjapa94 said:
Thanks for the advices... I think I'm going to get a the simple AX760 and just one ssd... Just going to search a little bit more about the AsRock extreme 4 and how it compares to the MSI motherboads.
Also I think I'm going for the 670, it's cheaper than the 680 so it's easier to gat another one in the future and I won't have to wait for so long!
Click to expand...
Just saying, but it's not absolutely necessary to drop $180 on a power supply, though there's nothing wrong with it. If you want the extra reliability then by all means go for it, but you may want to consider alternatives like the Rosewill Capstone-M 650w or the XFX XXX Edition 650w, which would also be excellent units for the price. If you do plan on adding a second card however, I would recommend an 850w+ unit.

I would recommend sticking with the original choice of the HD7970 though, it's actually faster than the GTX680 with most games, using the newer drivers.


Also, it is worth noting that spending on a decent aftermarket cooler isn't really necessary for a gaming rig, given most games GPU-bottlenecked anyways you may not see much of a performance difference from overclocking. You choice, but you may also be fine with a cheaper unit like the CM 212 evo. Regardless however, the Extreme4 should have no problems pushing a 3570k to 4.5ghz with a H100i, with it's 8+4 phase design.

Lastly, I've seen little performance differences with memory speeds, especially in the context of gaming. I'd would recommend going either for what's cheaper, or what looks best. Just make sure it's got some heat spreaders and that it's 1.5v or lower.
 
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According to a couple of benchtests I found, the performance gain for ram faster than 2133Mhz ram is negligable. If you plan on running a ram drive, faster is better. With no ram drive though, I cant recommend any ram faster than 2133 and only if its close to the same price as 1866. And yes, theres a marked improvement of 1866 over 1600.
 
Hey Vitor, I'm planning on building gaming rig also in the new year. Looks like I'm gonna have a similar spec to you.

I'll keep an eye on this thread :)
 
If I were in your shoes, I would get the 7970. From what I have seen it's quite a good overclocker and it's faster that the 680.
 
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