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

[ThePlague]

I had that case too, terrible cable management whenever I owned it, but there was nothing I could do. Now I have a coolermaster HAF 912. Some may think it's ugly, but this thing is fucking amazing at management.

[Patrickssj6]

Yes the old one (Antec 300 I think?) was terrible at cable management. The new case is a Fractal Design R4. I thought I ordered the window version but I received the closed side panel with the ugly side fan intake which I wasn't going to use in the first place. So what I did I exchanged both side panels and they do fit. The other side panel was slick and white, now full of pictures and stuff. Now it looks like a fridge xD

I also tried to OC but after realizing that my Phenom is a C2 stepper, the max I could get out was 3.6GHz at 1,425V. Which sucks a tad because 1,5V was idling at around 46°C.

[ThePlague]

Well i'm using a 925 at stock clocks, but my moderate clock I used to use was 3.5GHz which ran extremely cool (21C gaming) on my hyper 212+ cooling.

You got a great case though, if I had the money it would've been that or the other one everyone is getting.

[Bodzilla]

That cpu fan in your old case is enormous.

i havn't seen a cpu fan like that in 10 years. literally.

[Cortexian]

OK so here's my plan for the next few months, I'll be documenting it in a build on overclock.net or elsewhere but I'll make sure to post links to updates here.

• Corsair Obsidian Series 900D Full Tower
• Intel Core™ i7-3930K Processor, 3.20GHz w/ 12MB Cache
• Corsair Hydro Series H100i Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
• Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 w/ Dual DDR3 2133, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, USB 3.0, 4 Way CrossFireX / SLI
• Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB DDR3 1866MHz CL9 Quad Channel Kit (4 x 4GB)
• Crucial M4 2.5in SATA III Solid State Drive, 512GB
• 2x WD 4TB RE Enterprise Hard Drive, SATA III w/ 64MB Cache
• LG 14x Internal Blu-Ray Writer
• 2x EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB PCI-E w/ Dual DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort
• Corsair AXi Series AX1200i Digital Modular Power Supply

I'll be getting the parts in increments, holding off on the motherboard, processor, and RAM until Haswell comes out. However I think all the other stuff is fairly set in stone at this point, though not all coming in the initial build. For example, I'm only getting the SSD to start and the hard drives will come later. Additionally, I'm only going to get one Titan initially and get the second one after living with one for awhile.

After the base build I'll get my own HP ZR30w or Dell U3014 monitor, then the second Titan, then two more of the monitor I chose. Then the hard drives go in and other optional stuff. After that, watercooling (hence the 900D).

[Zeph]

:\

I'd hold off on buying hardware till after Haswell gets benched.
Well, getting the 3014s wouldn't be a bad idea.
I'd say go for a single Titan, but I'm curious as to how nVidia is wanting to refresh them. If there's going to be a 700 series Titan it seems a bit silly. 800 series wouldn't be too bad considering how long it will be till that happens.
But a new CPU and such is a meh idea.
DDR4 is hitting servers with Haswell and that'll be a fucking huge leap when it's pushed to mainstream. Unless you can't play your current games at 1920x1200, hold off on serious hardware investment. This is especially true if all you are planning is to use it for general gaming. It's really painful to see a GTX680/690 roll out "so soon" after dumping so much into a 590 and have it do a considerable percentage better (30-60% higher in some cases). That gap is just going to get bigger when DDR4 rolls in just as DDR2 got raped when DDR3 started getting cheap.

[Cortexian]

I said that I'd be waiting for Haswell to come out and get tested before buying the CPU/mobo/memory.

Getting a Titan for the VRAM obviously, since it's the only Nvidia card with that much so far. I doubt there will be a 6GB VRAM 700 series right off the bat. The higher VRAM is great for the large resolution displays I'm planning on running, that's why I went with the Titan instead of 690's or triple 680's.

Additionally, I've been telling myself that I'll upgrade for almost two years now without ever doing it because I'm always waiting for the next best thing. At some point you need to bite the bullet and just buy your new system. I'm holding off for Haswell but as soon as we see some benches there I'm making a decision.

[InnerGoat]

get 3 titans an 64GB of ram or you're not hardcore

[ThePlague]

and a 1tb SSD, and two CPU's

[DarkHalo003]

I know this is a thread about building computers, but I'm a big laptop person versus a desktop person. I'm not thinking about buying anything new soon, but I would like to know what would be an example of a great gaming laptop? Please, don't be sarcastic with your response because I know it's absolutely tempting.