New build - first time in a decade

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moorcat

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Hello everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster here. It's been since 1997 since I've built my own computer. I used to do it in high school as a hobby, and I would like to get back into it. I have a few questions if you guys don't mind.

a) If I buy a SSD boot drive and a 1 TB HDD storage HD, do I have to link them with a RAID set up? Or can they be seperate? I am not sure how to link hard drives.

b) What is crossfire or dual video cards? Do you simply buy 2 of the video cards you want and the computer links them automatically?

This is the build I am looking at so far. The goal is to build a good gaming rig for myself that can double as a picture/video editor for my wife. Price is not a huge concern for us, performance is more important, though of course, if there are some parts I can get cheaper or more efficiently, please recommend them!

Case: Newegg.com - Antec Nine Hundred Two Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case -- $120

or

Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Blue RC-932-KKN3-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - $160

PSU: Newegg.com - CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-850HX 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply -- $170

MoBo: Newegg.com - ASUS P6X58D Premium LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard -- $299

RAM: Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9S-4GBRL -- $107 x 3

CPU: Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601920 - $294

Video Card: Newegg.com - HIS H587FN1GD Radeon HD 5870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card -- $389

DVD Drive: Newegg.com - ASUS Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - CD / DVD Burners -- $23

Hard Drives:
Boot Drive: Newegg.com - Intel X25-E Extreme SSDSA2SH032G1 2.5" 32GB SATA II SLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - SSD - $377

Storage: Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - $95

Total: $2,088 ($2,128 depending on case)


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Some points:

*The price overall doesn't scare me, though if I have wasted money in there, I'd like to get rid of it.

* I am not terribly confident about my choice of RAM. I wouldn't go as high as 12 GB for my gaming, but I would for my wife's programs. Is the quality of RAM I chose okay?

*The Intel SSD drive from what I can gather is the best SSD on the market, but are the other options comparable in that I won't notice an actual difference between them?

*Opinions between the Radeon 5870 and 5970? Is it worth the upgrade? Also, does it matter which Radeon 5870 I pick? Which manufacturers are good?

*I am pretty sure I want an i7; I am not a big overclocker, though I won't say I'd never do it either.

*The only complete guess I made was in the PSU. Any suggestions would be welcome.

*If you see anything I am missing, please let me know!
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Thank you all for your help, and sorry for a very long first post!
 
Ok, first off, you don't have to link the 2 drives in raid, iam currently running an Intel x25m 80gb SSD (boot drive) and a Samsung spinpoint f3 1tb (storage) and they are not in raid at all. secondly, there is a bridge connector that comes with all crossfire compatible Radeon cards. it links the 2 cards together.Also,it does not mattter to much which brand of HD5870 you get, they are all pretty safe though try to stick to the more common brands such as XFX or ASUS just to be sure. Thirdly, your PSU is good for that rig, even if you do go crossfire with the HD5870's. and the ram, well, if you don't care to much about money, than go with 6gb instead of 4. it will then be in par with the rest of your system. Overall, very good system in my opinion :)
 
12 gigs of DDR3 ram is unnesacary

if you dont like spending a lot of money on SSD, and wanna put that money saved twards processing power, go with the seagate momentus hybrid drive, its almost as fast an SSD, there is a 500gig version, and its 1/5 the cost. and it is significantly faster than a 10k drive.

if you ahve the money go with a 5970, no doubt, that is the fastest graphics card on the planet and will last you a long time with out having to worry about anything giving it a hard time.

as far as a PSU, just go with a name brand and you will be fine

are you going to be overclocking, if you are you need a CPU cooler

and i would go with the Coolermaster 932 case
 
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