mirza001

Hi forum i am building a new gaming rig soon, and wanted to hear what your thoughts are on this. any good.( it's what i can afford)

(update)
Noctua NH-D14
Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced Black
Corsair TX 650W PSU, ATX 12V V2.2
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Quad Core 3,2Ghz
ASRock 870 extreme3 AM3
Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600MHz 4GB CL9
Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5
Western Digital caviar black 500GB


PS. will i have enough power to crossfirex with one more 6870.

iPlayer

If you need to do the build right now, at least get a 1055t instead of the 4 core. I think the 6 core is a better choice.

And, yeah, you would have enough to crossfire 5770, but you should probably also consider the new 6000 series cards.

OldBuzzard

Given the rest of your build, the RAM choice makes me go
I'd opt for some Corsair XMS series RAM instead.

I'm running 2x 4870s in Xfire, and a lot of other stuff, with a Corsair HX620 with no problems. The TX 650 will be more than adaquate.
<====== See System Specs

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synthesis204

I would ditch the 5770. HIS isn't well known for having high quality products/good customer support (miserable on the latter, in fact). If you were set on the 5770, I would go with Sapphire or PowerColor, personally.

Another similarly priced alternative would be the 768MB GTX 460 (which performs better and is cheaper) and the 6850, which runs about $30-$40 more but offers a lot more performance. The ASUS GTX 460 768MB is currently $120 on NewEgg, which is an amazing deal. I bought mine for about $100 more.

I would also vote for the 1055T over the four core black edition.

Kingston ram isn't bad, but that particular line doesn't seem to scream quality. I would recommend getting some Patriot Viper II or some Corsair XMS.

Tipstaff

Although, synthesis204, he's looking to do Crossfire later on, and SLI is out of the question on that board. If it were just a matter of the 1 card only then I would agree with your choice. That, or the HD6850.

My breakdown:

Video:
Since we are talking Crossfire, I mentioned this in another thread, but for myself, the HD6850 is about, on average, $30-50 more, and is faster than an HD5770 (not huge, but noticeable), so I'd go with it instead. Current tech (so getting an identical card later should be easier), faster card, and plenty of headroom for overclocking.

RAM:
As for the RAM, I agree with OldB, more because as a builder I've seen my share of crap RAM, and Kingston Value RAM is just that. Going with OldB again on this I would pick Corsair as my top choice, specifically the XMS3 CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 (1600mhz, CL9) Dual Channel kit. You could buy the faster CL8 or CL7 RAM, but you're talking $30 and $50 extra respectfully.

Hard drive:
Being a system builder affords me a unique perspective here, so take heed: forget Seagate. Ever since the 7200.11 drives Seagate drives have had a high failure rate (a least in regards to errors forming in the partition), plus over time (and maybe right off the bat) you will hear an odd clicking noise from them as they idle. Point is, they are loud unreliable drives, and I get complaints about them all the time. I don't even sell them anymore unless I'm really really desperate.

I would instead look to the WD Black series like the WD1001FALS, a 1TB, 32mb cache, SATAII drive. As another users pointed out you can still find even smaller sizes of these drives on Newegg to save yourself a little cash (like the 500, 640, or 750GB sizes), or buy 2 of them, and set them up in RAID 0 to give you that little extra performance. Or, since the board you've chosen supports SATA III natively, grab yourself a WD1002FAEX, a 1TB, 64mb cache, SATAIII drive. While the speed difference is marginal between SATAII and III it's the extra cache that makes the difference here. I've had mine for a little while now, and it's been well worth it.

Edit: BTW, even though I could have gone with the WD1002FAEX regardless since SATAIII drives are backwards compatible, I have to say that of the 3 times I've sold these twice I've had odd data errors/corruption while using them on Intel SATAII controllers (not on the AMD for the 1 drive though), which is why I recommended the FALS drive first. I've been running mine just fine on my boards Marvell controller, but when I first got it I had it on the Intel controller, and when installing applications off of it I kept getting install errors, or finding I was unable to uninstall programs that I had installed off of that drive. This could have just been an isolated incident though, but all I know is that since running it on a actual SATAIII controller I haven't had an issue yet.

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mirza001

http://translate.google.com/translat...491282&act=url

Not sure if this will work with my cpu since it say "for core i5 and i7 1.65v, intel xmp"

And what do you think of this mobo

http://translate.google.com/translat...596850&act=url

I have also looked at the ASRock 880G estreme3 and ASRock 870 extreme3

Tipstaff

I wouldn't worry about the listing. A lot of memory manufacturers put that on due to the confusion and problems that arose from people using much higher voltage DDR3 RAM (2.1v) on i3-i7 based boards. 1.65v is the limit you should be using on those processors, preferred 1.5v. Most DDR3 you buy these days will be 1.5v or 1.65v specific, or support a range such as 1.5-1.65v, and there's even lower voltages of RAM out there too (like the ones I use at 1.35v).

If you're really worried about it though, take a look at the OCZ Gold OCZ3G1600LV4GK kit. This is the dual channel kit version of the same RAM on their list (V4GK instead of V6GK which is the triple channel kit designation) that runs at the same speed and voltage as the XMS3 I mentioned, but has a Cas 8 (CL8 rating). Should work just as well.

Edit: just noticed the 2 boards you've mentioned. I haven't seen or tried the MSI, so I can't comment on it, but the AsRock boards are pretty solid. They're pretty much the same, just one having extra graphics slots, bt I'm inclined to go with the ASRock 870 extreme3 though as it has a Realtek HD audio chip vs the ASRock 880 extreme3's crappy VIA audio. Although, if you intend to put in a separate sound card then either one is a good choice.

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mirza001

Thanks allot for all the good feedback guys.

OldBuzzard

I don't know how good their Intel boards are, but for AMD boards, ASRock are pretty hard to beat when it comes to Price/Features/Quality/Performance.

I'm going to be retiring the one on my specs that I got back in 2007 when it was first released. It's been running flawlessly pretty much 24/7 since then and has seen at least 3 different processors in it.

I'm not so sure that this is true. I think that for GAMING, which is what the OP said he is building the system for, that the faster 4 core may be a bit better than the slower 6 core. Now, I'm not stating that as a fact. It's just the 'feeling' that I get.

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synthesis204

Assuming he wants to be using this rig for future years, the six-core is much more future proof -- likewise, most AMD chips are able to OC well, and with that cpu cooler, he should be able to crank the 1055T to the black edition levels fine.

Tyrsonswood

I'm running 4 sticks of that Corsair XMS RAM (4X2gig for 8 gig) in my AMD system on an ASRock board.... no problems. Get it!

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