[ShAd0wS]

Hi, I'm putting together what will be my next pc, and wanted to get some second opinions on it / any suggestions for it. Its been about 4 years since I built my last system, so I'm not compeltely up to date on whats out there in the market today. My budget is roughly $1000 for the actual parts of the system (already have monitor, windows, mouse, etc). So anyways, heres what I was able to come up with.

CPU: Intel i5-2500k Link $219.00
MoBo: BIOSTAR TP67B+ LGA 1155 Intel P67 Link $129.99
GFX: XFX HD-685X-ZNFC Radeon HD 6850 Link $159.00
RAM: 16GB G.SKILL Ripjaws Series DDR3 1600 Link $150.00
PSU: Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Link $70.00
HD: 1 TB SAMSUNG HD103SJ Link $65.00
Case: Antec Three Hundred Link $45.00
Total: $879.00, Shipped

From what I've seen by looking around, the cpu and gfx card i picked out were pretty much the best value anywhere near their price point. The Mobo was one of the only P67 chipset boards available that I can find, and while it apparently has some overclocking issues currently, there should be new BIOS released that should fix it. I would like to OC this cpu to about 4.0 GHZ probably, as there are reports of people getting it up in the high 4GHZ range off of air cooling. The ram is on sale currently, which makes it a pretty great deal for 16 GB. Speed it only 1600 MHZ but I'd still rather have 16 GB @ 1600 then 6 GB at 2000 for the same price. Case and PSU are both just great products.

So, does anyone have any suggestion/ideas how I could improve this? Thanks.

Edited by ShAd0wS, 17 March 2011 - 06:01 PM.

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Hi ShAdOwS,

The P67 boards are rapidly coming back on sale, so I would do a little more research before you finalise your choice as I think you can do much better than the Biostar.

> http://www.tomshardw...ridge,2837.html

> http://www.anandtech...gabyte-at-190/1 Look for the bit about Asrock.

Some info about your video card,

> http://www.itp.net/5...fc/?tab=article
> http://www.hardwares...ard-Review/1127 *


psu. If you later decide on 2 video cards, this will not do.,

Why do feel you need 16MB of RAM?

Edited by iammykyl, 19 March 2011 - 02:10 AM.

[iammykyl]

Hi ShAdOwS,

The P67 boards are rapidly coming back on sale, so I would do a little more research before you finalise your choice as I think you can do much better than the Biostar.

> http://www.tomshardw...ridge,2837.html

> http://www.anandtech...gabyte-at-190/1 Look for the bit about Asrock.

Some info about your video card,

> http://www.itp.net/5...fc/?tab=article
> http://www.hardwares...ard-Review/1127 *


psu. If you later decide on 2 video cards, this will not do.,

Why do feel you need 16MB of RAM?

Edited by iammykyl, 19 March 2011 - 02:10 AM.

[ShAd0wS]

I don't plan on Crossifiring / SLI ing this computer, but I suppose I should leave that option open: I found a thermaltake 850W for the same price as the antec after a rebate, so I might as well pick that up instead. I wasn't able to track down a place to actually buy the ASRock Extreme 4, but I'm not buying the parts today so I'm gonna keep my eye out for it... might go with a gigabyte board too as I've had good luck with them in the past. As far as the GFX card goes, I think I might upgrade to an Sapphire 100314-2SR.

I really don't need 16gb of RAM I suppose, it would be nice for photoshop but I don't use it enough to let that have that much of an impact on having more than 8GB.

[iammykyl]

Looking good.

What Windows OS do you have? Retail or OEM?

Have you enough in the budget to get a smaller second hard drive to use for the OS and keep the 1TB for storage?

[iammykyl]

If you are going to buy from Newegg, register, create a wish list. This way you can track a running total even if you change things.

You may also have to place an order for the Mobo you want so it can go on back order.