Advice on a new PC

[SharpeXB]

I would like some advice on putting together a new PC, my own skill and experience level at this is just above zero. That's why my first impulse is to order this retail rather than build it myself, I would have to pay CompUSA or someone to do that, haven't looked at what that would cost yet for comparison.

The goal is to be able to run games like DCS A-10 on full max settings at 60fps on a single 1920x1080 monitor

I would like to have a bit of future expansion capability in RAM and the ability to add another graphics card.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Maingear Vybe Super Stock

(what leads me to the Vybe is it's size and weight. I am amazed looking at some other PCs like the Velocity Micro Z90 or the Maingear F131 that weigh 60-75 lbs! What on earth in a PC could weigh that much?!)

Motherboard: Asus® P8Z77-V LK Featuring Lucid Virtu MVP, CrossFire and SLI

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770 3.4GHz/3.8GHz Turbo 8MB L3 Cache HD 4000

Processor Cooling: MAINGEAR EPIC 120 Supercooler

Memory: 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 (2x4GB)

(has the potential for 16GB but I hear 8 is enough for now)

Graphics: AMD® Radeon™ HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 w/Eyefinity

Power Supply: 660 Watt Seasonic® X-660 80+ Gold Certified Modular Power Supply

(would like the ability to handle two of the above cards for expansion in the future)

SSD Caching: 45GB Corsair® Accelerator™ SSD Caching Drive

Hard Drive: 1TB Western Digital 7200rpm 32GB SATA 6G

Audio: 7.1 Channel High Definition Surround Sound Supporting S/DIF Optical Out

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

System is overclocked

[Kuky]

Some cases are very heavy (if made from steel) and the PSU is very heavy also (then you have many fans, HDD and rest of hardware, add some water cooling and it'll get quite heavy)

 

From that list I would change the PSU to 850w if you plan to do CF or SLI in future as you say you do

[MeerCaT]

The difficult part of building a computer is the research stage.

 

Researching all the different products available on the market for each and every component of the system, to understand what options you have.

 

Researching how each product for each component ranks against each other so you know which ones are 'good' and which ones are 'bad'.

 

Once you know what is available, and have an idea of how 'good' each one is your next battle is limiting yourself with the budget so you don't end up with a 1200 <insert_currency_here> machine from starting budget of 500.

 

THOSE are the hard parts!

 

Plugging it all together is little more difficult than lego. :)

(Famous last words)

 

 

Just a thought, if you have or can get hold of a REALLY old computer destined for silicon heaven, then use it to practice on. Strip out every single component. Put it back together and see if it still works.

If it doesn't, then you know to pay someone to build your new one :)

[Hamblue]

Looks like a good set-up. I agree with boosting the power supply.

That motherboard will support up to 32 gig of ram.

I would start-off with 16 gig. 8 will do fine for now but if you go to 16 gig you can turn off the swap drive and get some more speed out of it.

For Video I'd get the GTX 670. It's a better card and uses less power.

 

Whatever you get for a case make sure it has at least a 120mm fan on the side to help with GPU cooling.

 

Also consider going with self contained water cooling for the CPU since you will probably do a moderate overclock to at least 4 ghz.

I use the corsair H80 and am happy with it.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181016

[emenance]

pcper.com is a good place with mature people to learn how to build your own