Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[=sw=warlord]

You can sometimes get motherboard makers to update the bios for you though it will cost a pretty penny.
Note:

This is not a pretty penny.

[JackalStomper]

short 670, because who needs footlong cards.



Makes me wonder how the heatsink would work

[Limited]

My PSU is starting to cut out, 2 power cuts in a week (wasnt a real power cut as my monitors were still powered). I think I might RMA it when I go on holiday as its within 3 year warrenty.

Starting to think I may make a new rig, hopefully won't have same issues as last time (faulty mobo, hdd, gfx card from all brand new items).

Thinking I might get 680GTX, 128GB SSD for default hard drive.

[Amit]

short 670, because who needs footlong cards.



Makes me wonder how the heatsink would work

How did they manage that?

[JackalStomper]

How did they manage that?

Guess the advances made in gk104 allowed them to cut down on the VRM required to run the card, and therefore the length. Meaning if you want to overclock you're going to have to go with the good old giant version.

Rumors abound that AMD is gearing up to release a 7970 'ghz edition' to compete with the 680/670. (recent benchmarks have the 670 putting up competition against 7970's)
Not sure if there would be any actual changes in the design or if its just a factory overclock with marketing hype.

I really hope AMD's next card series are better than this, because they totally shafted early adapters with this one.

[Amit]

But damn. That new GTX 670 is even shorter than my old Radeon X1600 PRO. Ghz Editions are just marketing hype mostly. OC yourself and save the money. Btw all HD 7770's are Ghz editions really, so they are just a bunch of bullshit.

[JackalStomper]

More on that short 670, this time with the heatsink on



the blue pcb is an 'overclocked edition' 670, which is really just a 680 pcb with a 670 chip.

I don't understand why they would go through all the trouble with designing that short PCB, and then ruin it by using a blower added to the end of the card :/

[Limited]

So I have a rough set of parts that I am thinking of getting and I was wondering if you helpful chaps can like fill in the gaps and make sure the ram is the right type and all that jazz.

Heres what I'm currently thinking.

EVGA 680GTX
Intel i7 3.4ghz
120GB SSD (Probably OCZ as they are on sale, or a Crucial)
Coolermaster HAF X Case
Corsair 16GB RAM
BR/DVD Burner
Wireless PCI Card

Okay so PSU and Mobo, I have no idea. Corsair are good ones but I have no idea what wattage I'd need, and I'd want the possibility of SLI'ing later down the road, maybe a 850W or 1000W?

Mobo I have absolutely no idea, obviously it would need to be the same socket as the i7. Manufacturer? I have no idea, ASUS perhaps?

Any help is appreciated

[JackalStomper]

...what model of i7? Guess it doesn't matter i7's all cost an arm and a leg anyway.
I would suggest getting an ivy bridge board for the PCI 3.0 ability (which a 680 will take advantage of) and other doodads like native USB 3.0 and such.
I've been going with ASUS for years and they haven't let me down. Gigabyte would be a secondary choice and MSI after that.
AsRock also seems to be pretty popular but I haven't used a single product of theirs.

Corsair PSU's are horrible on the low level and all their models only have one 12 volt rail, that dies and poof psu evolved into paperweight.
Not that this is common but I'm paranoid
Prefer Antec myself.

For SLI, you shouldn't need anymore than a 850watt these days. This is especially true with the crazy power consumption numbers that the HD7000's and g600's are getting.

[king_nothing_]

Here's what I just built (didn't get everything from Newegg):

Intel Core i7-3770K
ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 LGA 1155
SAMSUNG 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 x4
SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128D/AM 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive
Phanteks PH-TC14PE 140mm UFB (Updraft Floating Balance) CPU Cooler
CORSAIR Professional Series HX650 (CMPSU-650HX) 650W, Modular
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced
Ordered: ASUS ENGTX570 DCII/2DIS/1280MD5 GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5
Sent: ASUS HD7950-DC2T-3GD5 Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384-bit GDDR5

I'm pretty satisfied with everything so far.

When I was researching SSDs, it seemed the most recommended ones were the Intel 520 and the Samsung 830. I don't remember if it was the OCZ or Crucial drives, but I think I remember hearing about reliability issues with one of them. The Samsung drives are apparently incredibly reliable.

Also, before you laugh at my ugly, heat spreader-less RAM, you should know that that RAM is recommended like CRAZY. It overclocks very well. I know shit about RAM overclocking, and I have mine at 1866MHz. Once I figure out what the hell I'm doing I should be able to get it to 2133MHz. Some people are getting it to 2400MHz. It's also very low profile, which I needed for that Phanteks monstrosity.

That gigantic CPU cooler is working well for me as well. I'm at 4.7GHz completely stable (24/7) right now, with hyper-threading on.