Gaming PC Build!!!

That's the plan! Especially since the case has a side window. The only thing is I have heard this case isn't all that great when it comes to cable routing. There isn't a ton of room behind the MOBO tray, but I will make it work! I will have enough problems trying to figure out where all the cables go to begin with.

 

I haven't read through all 3 pages; so, sorry if this has been brought up...

I've built a few computers and the absolute biggest bottleneck to them all is the hard drive; don't care who fast your processor is, how much RAM you have, etc... programs and such will only load as fast as your 7,200rpm hard drive will spit out the info

I finally went with an SSD, and it's been hands-down my single greatest performance upgrade
Spring a little extra and put, at least, your OS and main programs on an SSD and use the hard drive for all other storage

 

I think I spent around $60 on my Mushkin SSD; it's a 60gb: plenty enough for my OS and main programs
Best $60 I've spent on the computer

 

Zip ties are super helpful - bundle the excess PSU cables up and zip 'em up. Your airflow will be better through your case if your cables are nice & tidy.

I always find the connections from the case (power & reset buttons, hdd light, etc.) are the biggest PITA. I actually test fired the last system I built (mobo, ram, cpu, vid card, and PSU) before screwing it into my case to be sure everything was working. Sucks to get it all put together and find that you got a bad mobo or card or something.

 

All my parts arrived today!! I will post some pics in awhile!

Just waiting on a copy of windows 7 from someone on here!

 

I just saw this thread and couldn't agree more with this post. SSD is the single biggest performance boost you can add to a computer these days. Even the fastest Raptor drives (10k and 15k) don't come close.

Put another way, all the biggest baddest toys in the rig won't matter if you run a regular hard drive. Spend the money on SSD first, not last.

 

I would be with the group of people telling you that your power supply is too weak. If your system checks out at ~360 watts. You're asking that PS to run at a constant 84% of it's Maximum power output. That's a very high number.

More important than the total watts is the amps on the 12v rails. Most gaming graphics cards tell you what the card requires for power. Overall watts may check out but the graphics card will require it's own hookup straight to the power supply. So, the better power supplies have dedicated rails to power the cards.

Here's a good read about power supplies, it's very basic in its approach but it's a good start. http://www.newegg.com/product/CategoryIntelligenceArticle.aspx?articleId=199

Your PS may check out for amps on the 12v, I'll take a closer look at the two when I get home.

Have fun and I second what others have said, go slow and exercise good cable management. I've built several gaming machines for myself and a few for others. Always fun and exciting.

 

I think the hardest part will be finding where everything plugs in and not forgetting anything haha. Yeah if you would look into it more really quick that would be great, I have no idea what I would be looking for..

 

Great discussion about your power supply on Tom's hardware, this guy nails it. The video card he is referencing is an older version of yours. It uses less power than yours, he recommends a 500W minimum:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/364150-28-safe-corsair-cx430-430w-power-system

"For a system using a single Radeon HD 5850 graphics card AMD specifies a minimum of a 500 Watt or greater system power supply. The power supply should also have a maximum combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 28 Amps or greater and have at least two 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors.

Total Power Supply Wattage is NOT the crucial factor in power supply selection!!! Sufficient Total Combined Continuous Power/Current Available on the +12V Rail(s) rated at 45°C - 50°C ambient temperature, is the most critical factor.

Overclocking of the CPU and/or GPU(s) will require an additional increase to the maximum combined +12 Volt continuous current ratings, recommended above, to meet the increase in power required for the overclock. The additional amount required will depend on the magnitude of the overclock being attempted.

You may find power supplies on the market that supply more than enough Wattage to run the system. However, some of them lack Sufficient Amperage capacity on the critical +12 Volt rail, which is necessary to properly power the critical components in the system (i.e. CPU and GPUs). This is the reason why graphics card manufacturers may overstate the power supply wattage, usually by at least 50 Watts, in an attempt to take into account some of those power supplies that have the weaker +12 Volt rail(s).

The Corsair Builder Series CX430 (SKU# 75-001666 / CP-9020046), with its maximum combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 32 Amps and with one (6+2)-pin PCI Express supplementary power connector, is electrically sufficient to power your system configuration with a single Radeon HD 5850 graphics card but is deficient by one PCI Express supplementary power connector so you will have to resort to using a dual 4-pin Molex peripheral to 6-pin PCI Express adapter cable.

The Corsair Builder Series CX500 (SKU# 5-001667 / CP-9020047) has two (6+2)-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors. This one would be more suitable for your use.

The Thermaltake TR2 600W (W0388RU), with its maximum combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 48 Amps and with one 6-pin and one (6+2)-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors, is more than sufficient to power your system configuration with a single Radeon HD 5850 graphics card. This particular model was made by HEC/COMPUCASE had horrible reliability problems so it was discontinued and was replaced with the TR2 TR-600P model with 80 PLUS Bronze certification made by FSP".

Here's a power review of your graphics card, not exact as this is a tweaked version of yours, same architecture however. This card, at full stress, uses 300+ watts alone. 150+ at idle. Gaming should come in somewhere in the middle They recommend a 550w power supply.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_hd_7870_twinfrozr_iii_oc_review,7.html

Now, with all this said. It might work fine. For me when I'm building, I want a strong power supply as I don't want any issues with power. Lack of power shows up when you least want it.

 

I have a 6 core AMD setup on my desktop with a corsair liquid cooler, and I think my old i7 ran way better. I use my ASUS G75 now like 90% of the time heh, specs look good though.

 

As Forster46 said before, maybe we shouldn't lean on him too hard about the things he mucked up Unless something plain won't work I say it's simply worth educating while trying to avoid telling someone they done mucked up.

I'm sure your rig will run fine with the power supply you've bought. In the future, power supplies are something most guys like to recycle from rig to rig. If you purchase a good high output, high efficiency supply for your first rig, it may last you for years. You might run into issues if you're trying to OC hard, or if you start stacking expansion cards or running lots of peripherals.

On the SSD issue, they do make your machine faster for day to day tasks, that's for sure. And booting games is an unbelievable difference, but once you're in game you should be fine solving the issue with loads of RAM. You've got 8gb's as it stands, which is fine for most things, but i'd personally go for 16gb's of ram before I spent more money on an SSD. The cheap 60$ SSD's really aren't an incredible improvement over a quick HDD and decent RAM, and the reliability issues the low-end SSD's are still facing doesn't make me want to buy another. I'd stick with mid-line SSD's, which you're looking at >1$/gb, and with the size of most games today, you'll want a 120gb SSD to keep your OS and a few good games on.

 

Good stuff, my first modular PSU I bought (still own it) was 800 watts and runs like a champ, that was 3 or 4 years ago. Also I would wait until black friday for an SSD, they will be around $0.75 per gig. Alsoooooo 8 gigs of ram is plenty, I really don't see the necessity to get more unless you are running simulators.

 

I am currently building one to, although I am not able to put the parts together just yet, I have them all ordered waiting for me, I kinda wanted to future proof it, and since I have never had anything this powerful or nice I kinda splurged

Here's the what I'm putting in there:
CPU- ASUS Z87 Pro
GPU- ASUS Direct CU II GTX 780
Power supply- Seasonic Platiunum 860
processor- i7-4770K
CPU cooler- Noctua NH-U12 S
RAM- Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2X4)
HDD- 1TB western digital Black
SSD- Samsung 160GB
Case- NZXT Switch 810
Random- 6 120mm noctua fans, Dell 27" monitor, Corsair Vengeance K70 keyboard, and a Razor Abyssus mouse

 

I like RAM
Ever since its been reasonable to have lots, every desktop i've ran has been 16gb or more. Being able to mount entire .iso's in your RAM is very useful. When Skyrim first came out my rig had 32 gigs of RAM and we mounted the whole game install and ran it from there. Never saw a loading screen until I played on a friends desktop.

 

Shipping out tomorrow!!

 

This was my plan all along... wait until black friday

 

Question for anyone who would know. When I bought the DVD Drive, I thought it would be coming with cables to hook up to the motherboard and whatnot. It didn't even come in a box. It came in a fedex bag with absolutely nothing. So what cables do I need to go buy? And can I just buy them somewhere local?

 

Question for anyone who would know. When I bought the DVD Drive, I thought it would be coming with cables to hook up to the motherboard and whatnot. It didn't even come in a box. It came in a fedex bag with absolutely nothing. So what cables do I need to go buy? And can I just buy them somewhere local?

 

sata connector on the DVD, no?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10226&cs_id=1022601&p_id=8775&seq=1&format=2

 

And the power for this should be coming from the PSU already correct?