pharaun159 wrote:
> So I have been out of the pc building wo.rld for while now. (cough...
> since the 90's)
> And I have been wanting to get back into it. The world of gameing
> consoles was fun for awhile,
> but it has been marketed to rediculous levels. I am interested in
> building a gameing pc with max
> graphics to run solely on my samsung 65in plasme. Blue ray a must.
> I7 most likely. But
> essentiolly I would like to hear youralls build ideas. Where to
> start. Cooling reccomendations ect
I built a low power/noise machine a couple months ago:
MSI Z77-GD65 motherboard
Intel i7-3770S CPU
Noctua NH-D14 cooler with Ultra-Low Noise adapter
HIS 7750 iSilence GPU
Kingwin Stryker 500 PSU
Noctua case fans in a Lian Li aluminum case
I'm in the process of putting together a higher-performance machine
now, with the Z87 version MoBo, i7-4770K, and SE2011 (PWM) version of
the Noctua cooler.
What is your primary goal -- minimum noise, maximum performance, or
something else? Will your games be capable of using more than 2 or 4
CPU cores? Intel has significant advantages over AMD for pure
performance. You might go with an AMD CPU if price is the primary
concern.
Since you're starting from scratch (not an upgrade), your main choices
will start with the CPU series and its motherboard/chipset/socket
requirements. The Ivy Bridge (last of the legacy Socket 1155) and new
Haswell (Socket 1150) i7 CPUs should be the leaders, since they have
significant power use reductions from previous CPUs. Haswell has
little inherent performance benefit over Ivy Bridge, so price vs future
upgrades is the decision.
The i7-3770S and i7-4770S, respectively, are clocked slightly slower
than their K counterparts, but with a significant reduction in power
use and thermal output, so one of the S versions should be your choice
if low power/noise is your goal. The K versions will allow significant
overclocking if performance is primary.
For RAM, DDR3-2133 seems to be the fastest available without paying
through the nose, though DDR3-1600 should be fine in a non-overclocked
rig. G-Skill Ripjaws X looks to have a good combination of price &
performance.
nVidia and AMD are pretty much even in the high-end GPU war, but be
aware that the high-end gaming GPUs can pull more than 6 times the
power the CPU uses (with the attendant heat and fan noise issues).