New build for a friend

[Brooksie]

Got an email from a mate earlier which listed the PC specs he wants for his new build:

1. Obsidian Series® 800D Full-Tower Case

2. PSU: Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 — 80 PLUS® Gold Certified Fully-Modular Power Supply

3. Dominator® GT with DHX Pro Connector and Airflow II Fan — 12GB Triple Channel DDR3 Memory Kit (CMT12GX3M3A2000C9)

4. Intel Core i7 (want something that supports triplet channel memory m8)

5. Motherboard (want something that supports triplet channel memory m8) + USB 3

6. AMD Radeon™ HD 6950 x1

7. Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache x2

8. I want 1 SSD (around 40GB)

What else can you recommend m8

plz?

Told him to get the 800D because he wants the removable caddies for the HDD's. Also recommended to him the Noctua NH-D14 but since he wants the Dominator GT the D14 won't fit so any other suggestions there?

He's a bit of a AMD nerd and won't go nVidia even though I told him the 5 series are better than the AMD 6 series (Think he wants to crossfire the 6950 in the future). Managed to convince him to go Intel instead of AMD as he wants the best future proof rig - Around 5-7 years.

So, maybe some posts will convince him to go for some certain parts (He thinks Samsung SSD's are the best on the market

). No idea what the budget is, actually don't think there is one! He won't be buying it all in one chunk either so that should help.

Cheers guys.

 

[adamjamesroe]

I have a corsair F40 SSD and it's great.

I would reccomed not to go with the 800D if they ate not water-cooling. It's a hot box of a case. The asus p6x58d-e supports all those features, I have one. It's brilliant. I have also heard that the msi bog bang xpower is a good mobo.

Double post.

The i7 970 has just had a big drop on price, so this would be a good option. I strongly do not reccomed the 800D for RAM anything Corsair or mushkin and your sorted.

HD 6950 is a good bet because you can flash them to 6970's

If there's mo budget, tell him to get a pair of gtx 580's.

 

[Stryker64]

800D has no existent airflow, so I wouldn't recommend it. Also hot-swap isn't all that great of a picture tbh. It's blocks airflow, and I personally I see why you would need them. Better off getting something from Lian-Li.

RAM: Try to convince him to get Mushkin, but if he won't budge, Thermalright Archon or Venomous X are probably your best options for CPU heatsink.

CPU: i7 970, high performance, overclocks like a beast and won't cost you your liver.

Motherboard: MSI Big Bang or ASUS Rampage III Formula or ASUS Sabretooth.

GPU: MSI 6950 with Twin Frozer Cooler.

SSD: One of the new SATA III SSDs maybe?

Also when is he planning to buy the rig, because if he's going to buy it in like April/May it might be worth waiting for Bulldozer?

 

[Rastalovich]

Flashing the 6950 and lasting 5-7 years makes me nervous tbh. I'd push the 6970. Heck get 2 if there's a possibility of bags of cash.

If he's not standing on the professional footing, I'd talk him right out of the i7 - or atleast the 12g option. Nothing, and hardly anything I can think of working from home is going to use the 12g. 6g is overkill, but if you can't talk out of the i7 and triple channel goodness, push the best 6g sets of sticks on the planet.

The psu is way out of order, unless there's a further reasoning behind the HDD caddies.

SATAIII harddrives all round, that is if the mobo has enough ports.