New to building PC's

[Greg99456]

Hey there.
I'm new to building PC's. The last time I put one together (and by "put one together" I mean merely adding a GPU) was before the PCIe days when AGP was cutting edge tech. So obviously I'm a little out of date with what's good and what's great in the PC hardware world. I've done a lot of research in the last week and put together 2 builds. My goal is to spend no more than $1500 including peripherals and a decent monitor. I'd really prefer to keep it under $1200 and upgrade come the new year if necessary.
My PC usage is fairly simple. I recently began working at home and my laptop does everything I need. However there's a lot of down time and I've found myself playing a lot of PC games - but I average 30 FPS on medium settings in BF3. Not so fun! I also dabble in video editing for another part-time gig but nothing serious at all. The idea is to have a really strong gaming PC with good upgrade capabilities after the new consoles release so I can at least play at high/ultra high settings for a few years to come.
Any and all input is greatly appreciated!
Here's what I had originally put together.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1f33u
After doing a few more days of research I tweaked the build to the following.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1fq3M
After reading through the forums here - I'm definitely keeping the NZXT Phantom 410 case in the build.

 

[Jad Chaar]

Great build. It will be hard to play at high/ultra settings for the next few years since games are constantly improving/getting more detailed. Things I would change in the build:
1) Get a Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler instead.
2) Get a ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 motherboard instead since it is cheaper.
3) I would upgrade the Samsung SSD to a Pro version instead since it is much faster (but this is unnecessary if the budget doesnt allow for it).
4) Remove the sound card because these are not needed unless you have a very high end sound system.
5) I would upgrade the 660Ti to a newer GTX 760.
6) I would change the PSU to something like a Corsair TX650 V2.
6) Finally, I would downgrade the monitor to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254092.

Optional:
Upgrade the case to a Corsair 200R and get rid of that extra fan you are going to purchase. Or you can keep the Phantom 410.

If you are not going to burn discs, then you can downgrade the BD drive to a DVD drive.

Overall, a very good build that needed minor tweaks.

 

[captaincranky]

If I had an extra 20 bucks or so lying around, I'd go for the same capacity HDD, but in a WD "Caviar Black" model.

I have a couple of Caviar Blues, and they don't test as well as a standard duty Seagate on the WEI 7.

250GB Caviar Blue pulls a 5.4. (Win 7 Home Premium 32 bit).

Seagate 320GB pulls a 5.9. (Win 7 Pro 64 bit).

Don't know if the different OS is a factor. I can't speak tp the higher capacity drives such as the one you're looking to buy.

To be fair they're in different machines

But to its credit, the WD Caviar Blue SATA 1, (160GB), that came with my eMachines, is still going strong in its ninth year!

 

[hood6558]

Great build, I love the performance of my 3570k/Z77/660 Ti system. In one week of research, you found the sweet spot called "bang for buck". All the suggestions made by JC713 were exactly the same thoughts I had, and all will add value to the system while possibly saving you some $. Good luck, and enjoy building it.

 

[GhostRyder]

1500 hmm, lets see what I can do for you there while looking at what you already have selected and see if we cant break the mold. So I looked at your budget, price on current items, the listed parts just to see if I could change some things up based on prices on newegg/combinations that could help save you some money.

With the same budget and processor, heres the build recommended based on the parts you have listed and some changes that at least in my opinion are better bang to buck and will add to your overall build.

i5 3570k $220
MSI Gaming Z77 $119 (10 Dollar rebate and a free 8gb Crucial Ballistics 1600 Ram with purchase)
Crucial Ballistics Sport 1600 8gb 1x8gb (2 of them, you buy one and one comes free with the board) $73
Cooler Master 212 Evo $33
LG Blu-Ray Combo Drive $50
Rosewill Xtreme Series 850Watt $100
NZXT Phantom 410 $89 (20 Dollar rebate also)
Seagate Barracuda 1tb $70
Windows 7 $99
5.1 Creative Speaker System for Gaming $68
Azio Gaming Keyboard $30
Azio Gaming Mouse $24
Hanns-G 23, 3ms 120hz Refresh, 3D 150 (I swapped in this monitor because personally hanns g makes great monitors especially considering the price plus this saves money and adds some very nice features.

Now here comes the fun part, the GPU, now I noticed in one build you had an SSD, now if we do something like this
Samsung 840 120gb $110
You can get this
Nvidia GTX 760 MSI gaming 260 (10 dollar rebate)

Now without rebates that build is at 1500 on the dot Shipped from newegg.

Or swap out to no SSD, and upgrade your gpu, you can go to something like this
HD 7970 by Powercolor 359 (339 with 20 dollar rebate)

That totals the same thing at 1500, I hope this help as its just my suggestions based off what you were picking and the sales I saw/bundle deals. Just some food for thought!

Hope it helps!

 

[Greg99456]

I appreciate all the insight guys! Very helpful.

So I've tweaked my build again and the biggest change would be the processor and GPU. I'm not entirely sure if it's worth while but someone else recommended it so I thought I would ask around again. I'm thinking with the monitor I might just use my TV as I've got a reasonable setup with my desk/tv as is and ... well it's 47 inches lol.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1fLuh

Two things I'm really curious about. First, what would be more beneficial in terms of gaming and longevity (specifically to upgrades)? A better MoBo/Processor (I7) or lower end Processor (I5) with the money saved spent on a higher end GPU?

And secondly considering what I want to do with this PC, is an SSD really worth the money?

Thanks again everyone!

 

[GhostRyder]

Umm, if I were you, I would skip on the lga 2011 socket if your not going for at least a 3930k, the 3820 you have selected is locked so there almost no overclocking on those from what I've seen. Plus it's a much better deal to just go ahead and grab an ivy-bridge or haswell for the same or 20 bucks more (plus the mobos are much cheaper).

If you really wanna go high end, grab a haswell 4770k and an lga 1150 mother board that contains at least 2pcie 3.0 16 lanes that will work in sync at 16 times.

 

[Greg99456]

This is going to take longer than the actual build...

Here's what I've come up with. I'm pretty happy with it since it's kind of the latest. Still wondering if SSD is worthwhile for me.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1g3G2