I have recently decided to complete my first ground up build for gaming and general home use, thanks to Logan's videos. Please let me know what you think. I would appreciate all the input I could get before I start placing orders. Thank you in advance.
P.S. I don't do any editing so I was leaning towards the 7970. The only reason I went with the 680 was because I may want to add a 2nd at some point and wasn't sure of the PSU as I have heard the 7970s are not very efficient under load.
This is my take on your build. XFire and power issues are not a problem with two 7970s. Moved the psu down to 750W for a bit of money savings (also fully modular will do XFire fine, silverstone is a good brand used them for years), slightly cheaper SSD (faster too), cheaper more featured filled mobo, Case is good, and cheap right now.
Thanks for the input. I was thinking of going for a kit of Mushkin Blackline or Corsair Vengeance. I just have the G. SKILL in there because Newegg is giving it away with the motherboard.
Thank you for your build. I liked the look of the Extreme4, and I know Logan used it in his 1300 build. I went with the Asus because I am new to overclocking and I read they have an auto tuning feature in the AI suite, I also liked the built in wifi (but not a deal breaker). Is the ASRock a good board to learn how to overclock on? I just went with Seasonic PSU because they always talk about it on the show. I also noticed you went with Windows 7. I plan on running Windows 8 Pro, but I'm not sure that matters. Thank you again.
So now I am looking at http://pcpartpicker.com/p/uXRT. I would start with a single 7970 and pick up the 2nd in a few weeks. I stuck with the larger PSU because I read their output drops over time and this would give me 145 watts of head room. Is that true? I have a single 7970m in my laptop and I have not had any AMD driver issues on any of the games I like to play. Is crossfire as much problem as I have read? I was also wondering if it was worth it to move up to 2033 memory? I have read conflicting information on its value. Thank you again.
Both are good psu's, just thought I'd try and save a few dollars on that front. Only badly rated PSU's have bad drop out, most good companies PSU's are pretty trust worthy.
XFire is supposedly fine for most people. In my experience, I have never had a problem with SLI, and I had a problem here and there with xfire. But for the price to performance, if you need to shut off Xfire for a certain game here and there (like 1 every 6 months) its worth it.
2133mhz memory will give you zero benifit unless you render and do heavy ram and cpu orientated tasks. 1600mhz in terms of gaming, is just as fast with intel processors.
Lastly, get this deal:
http://www.windowsupgradeoffer.com/en-US
You can get it for 40 dollars or 15 (if you dont mind lying a little bit, I took the servey and it gave me the deal for 15 bucks I did not buy a new computer)
If you have a usb you can mount windows 7 using a legal iso from:
Thank you both for the input. I will go with the 7970 and drop the ram to 8. Anyone have any tips overclocking the ASRock Extreme4? Will it work just as well as the Asus for someone new to it? If it is a good starting board for a first time builder then it looks like my final build is going to be: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/v1Tt. I guess it is about time to start placing orders on Newegg & NCIX. I left the os off as I have an extra license and I will pick up the 2nd video card in a few weeks. I was fine with the price of the first build but everyone in the thread has seemed to save me a few hundred dollars without touching preformance. Thank you all for that.
Thank you all for the help. Final Build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/vuFg I ordered the case, PSU, CPU cooler, HDD/SSD and the optical drive. I'll drop the orders for the mobo, CPU, GPU and Ram next week. I had the monitor, OS, keyboard and mouse on hand. Here is hoping I watched enough youtube videos to put it all together.... :)