I have a question, building a new gaming computer

[raizer357]

Hey all, I have a couple questions. If anyone experienced in building gaming computers and hardware could help, I'd GREATLY appreciate it! :)

 

I am about to build my first gaming PC. I hears building them was not too difficult, and you would end up spending less money than if you bought a built one. This computer will take me many months to save up for, but my goal is to build one that will be able to run any PC game on max graphics with no lag or frame rate issues Being able to game in HD is also my goal. I have never built a computer before, but did a LOT of research online into how to do it.

 

That being said, I'd like any advice or tips into building computers, and I'd also like to know if all the parts I selected are compatible with each other and if the build will work. I plan on getting all this from www.newegg.com. I also plan to run two of that same video via SLI, but not first. That will come later down the road. Don't know how to go about doing that, but when the time comes I will research into how to do it more. Any advice on that will be gladly accepted as well.

 

Here is the hardware:

 

Case: COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Compucase Case with USB 3.0, Black Interior and Four Fans-1x 230mm front RED LED fan, 1x 140mm rear fan, 1x 230mm top fan, and 1x 230mm side fan

 

Motherboard: MSI P67A-GD65 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

 

Video Card: EVGA 015-P3-1580-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card (Goal is to SLI 2 of these)

 

Power Supply: CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX1200 (CMPSU-1200AX) 1200W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K

 

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL (4x4GB (Total of 16GB) Dual Channel

 

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (Goal is to RAID two of these)

 

CD/DVD ROM: LITE-ON Black 18X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model iHDS118-04 - OEM

 

Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional 70SB088600002 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Express x1 Interface Sound Card

 

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM

 

Once again, I just want to make sure all that is compatible together. that its a good build in which I can run any game max graphics with, and any advice on how to build a computer and how to SLI. Also any improvements on this build that I could make would also be great! I am a huge PC gamer and I have a passion for gaming, I am even taking classes in game design, so I want a machine that is top of the line for gaming at the moment. And hoping this will be able to pull it off. Still deciding on a monitor, but HD is a must.

 

Also, computer over heating is an obvious concern, and any advice on how to keep ti cool will rock too as I usually game all day, every day when I am not working.

 

Thanks!

Edited August 29, 2011 by raizer357

[Spaceritual]

Does look like you have taken good care of you sound/music output with the soundcard , only thing worth suggesting here is to peer at the Asus Xonar range as well for comparison to the creative ones . Anyway looks a good system and best of luck with it :)

[MarkInMKUK]

RAM - use the largest single DIMM modules the motherboard will take - it it'll handle 8GB ones, use those. Then if you ever want more, you don't have to throw away old RAM to fit more in.

 

Hard drive - RAID is good for speed of access and reliability. I have a system drive I boot off - because a reinstall of the OS is pretty easy, and bootable RAID is harder to get working), and my data drive is RAIDed.

 

Check the power supply has the correct connectors - we recently built a dual processor unit at work and had to find a splitter cable to power both CPUs.

 

LED fans and the like are very pretty, but use unnecessary power and hence add to the heat load - swap them for plain boring black o0nes for marginally less power use.

 

Sound - I think Creative is the right choice - everything else basically copies their stuff so it's as compatible as you can get. There are specific EAX enabled drivers for some sound cards so if you play any EAX games, try and find one for yours.

 

Airflow - replace any wide ribbon cables with the ones with the wires in a thin tube (Akasa do them for instance). Helps airflow. Be neat with wiring, and route as many cables as you can away from the main airflow path - Coolermaster cases usually help that a lot.

 

Have fun!

Edited August 29, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[hoofhearted4]

the build is solid. it will handle any game max graphics no problem, and witht he i7 CPU with hyperthreading, it leaves you with other options like video editing and stuff if you ever venture into that.

 

as for a monitor its all a matter of opinion. look for a god 24"-27" monitor, however big you want it, good refresh rate. 5ms is the average, but you can find one with 2ms as well. LCD HDMI of course. just find on you like. for expensive ones you can get ones that look the same from any angle and dont discolor from your viewing angle and whatnot, bunch of little things like that you might consider, but will raise the price obviously.

 

as for cooling, your case is designed for god air flow. think about getting a 3rd party heatsink. as far as fan heatsinks go, the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ is pretty much top of the line and is very cheap. look up different comparisions and tests to see what performs better. you might also want to consider a closed water cooling system for your CPU instead of a fan heatsink, like the Corsair H60, or H70 for example. also keep your wireing inside the case nice and neat and as minimal as possible. if your PSU is modular, take out excess wires. better wire management helps air flow. other simple things like keeping it off the rug, allow airflow to get underneath. i have my tower in this metal frame thing i had fom way back in middle school lol. it was a rack for inside your locker aha. but its sturdy and keeps it a foot off the ground and allows for air to flow from underneath. keeping the room itself cool also helps, and even keeping a fan in the room. i have a fan on oscilate that blows over the PC as it passes....some ppl take off their side panels to their case for cooling, but then more dust becomes an issue.

 

and yes everything wil be compatable. as long as all your pieces are recent youll have no problem. issues with compatability usualy only occur when you use say an old mobo with new cards or any other old/new situatiion.

 

as for SLI. you need to have the EXACT same card. not jus the same maker, or same series, SAME CARD PERIOD. there will be a little thing that you hook the two cards together with and its as simple as that. plenty of videos on it to show you :)