Wanting a beast, need help.

[gordonie]

I want the beastest desktop ever for around 1700$.(core components only) please I am new so add any comments as to recommendations and such.

Tower: cooler master HAF X (like it alot)
CPU: going to wait for AMD's new 8core bulldozer, pretty sold on that.
Heat sink: zalman 110m fan and artic thermal paste
GPU: can't decide, I like the 6970 but is the 5970 better? I will probably go crossfire in he future when I need an upgrade. or is nvidia better for the price? Should not amd based gpu work better with amd's processor?

Motherboard : Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard (could definately use some suggestions here)
Memory: 4x4g sticks of the ripjaw. is there better? the 8gb sticks are stupid expensive so thats a no
SSD: 120g of idk because I have no clue which ones the bestest, any suggestions? could be 128 but just around that area
HD: 1tb best western 7200rpm.
PSU: cooler master silent pro 1000w
wireless cards: some rosswell 300mb/s thingy. now will this give me wifi, receive and broadcast, blutooth?


I got a computer science major friend who is going to help me build it.
any suggestions? am I ready to game it out?

 

[Roark]

am I ready to game it out?

If this is a build primarily for gaming there are a few things I would suggest:
1) If you are set on waiting for Bulldozer wait for the 4-core, 6 and 8 core has no benefit for gamers.
1a) Don't wait for Bulldozer, from the leaks I've read I'm quite underwhelmed, plus there is still no launch date. Intel i5 2500k is a beast.
2) 16GB of RAM is overkill, thats 4x more than even BF3 recommends. Like a 6/8-core CPU a lot of it will just be sitting around doing nothing, essentially wasted money. 8GB is more than enough for gaming, and even basic multi-tasking.

For the rest of the components:
Case: I love the HAF X, that being said I don't think I could justify spending almost $200 on a case when other components can be upgraded.
Heatsink: Haven't researched the Zalman, not sure specifically which one you're looking at. Thermal grease get Tuniq TX-2.
GPU: If you're dropping $1,700 there is no reason you shouldn't be able to get a GTX 580. GPUs don't care what brand CPU you have.
MB: Nice choice if you do decide to wait around for Bulldozer, though choices may change by the time it finally launches.
SSD: OCZ is currently king of the castle for SSDs, Agility 3 or Vertex 3 is a great choice.
HD: ...I laughed, sorry. Best Western is a motel, know what you're saying though. Overpriced, grab a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB.
PSU: Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, Silverstone, OCZ. Only brands I suggest, cooler master may be legit, but they don't have the history the others do.
Wireless: Need to know which card specifically.

 

[Dr DMoney]

I agree. When it comes to gaming throughing cores at it won't help it much if at all. You best bet is to go intel because per core it has the best performance which in turn better gaming performance. I would have recommended amd if you planned to use applications that use multiple cores, but most if not all of those applications now use the graphics cards because of the high parallel processing it can do. Its your choice, but now to me and in it current state is mainly for budget builds, and you said you wanted a beast... hmmm...