Final Build!

[PP Mguire]

Don't do side panel fans as they are pretty much useless unless used in my situation to force air between cards.

Do front, top and rear. 2 in the front, 2 on the top 1 in the rear. Your PSU sucks air in from the bottom as it is and there is a dust filter. Having a fan there wont help it at all in the case of dust and typically not much flow can come from the bottom due to limited clearance.

 

[Suomalainen]

If I use the 140mm, I can only fit one in the front. Should I totally drop the 140 and only use the four 120s?

 

[Bregadon]

All *77 boards support IB as the 77/75 chipset was created for that specific CPU.

Had a problem with a buddy who bought a H77 board that must have been re labeled after they added bios support for ivy bridge, the stock bios on it didn't though was a pain.

And like I said and PP said, side fans bad bottom near useless just force that air through and out the case front to back, maybe even come up with your own mod to cover the side vents as it will (if done right) drastically reduce noise and create more of a vacuum effect.

 

[Bregadon]

If I use the 140mm, I can only fit one in the front. Should I totally drop the 140 and only use the four 120s?

That's up to you would be an benefit to sound and since it's a better quality fan it might push around the same amount of air. Would save you 20 bucks to just get the 120's though. I'd probably do that and then get a 660ti instead of 660. Granted you'd probably have to get a 2 gb 660ti it would still be better unless your planning on using triple monitors.

Something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127696
or keep ur 3gb and get this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150590

 

[Suomalainen]

That 660 TI is going to be pretty big for a Micro ATX. The 660 is something like $50 cheaper, smaller, and 3g memory. It does ofc have less cuba cores though.

I wonder how much perfomance difference I'd actually notice between the 2 of those cards..

 

[Bregadon]

That 660 TI is going to be pretty big for a Micro ATX. The 660 is something like $50 cheaper, smaller, and 3g memory. It does ofc have less cuba cores though.

I wonder how much perfomance difference I'd actually notice between the 2 of those cards..

From benchmarks I'd say 10-15% overall. A lot of the benchmarks are outdated though, so you can't really compare the 7950 to the 660. Between driver updates etc, a lot of the newer cards have gained substantial performance gains.

But all in all if you stay nvdia or amd the next card generally puts out 10-15% each step some cases more or less.

Keep in mind you won't need that 3GB unless your displaying some wicked resolutions.

The 660 is a great card, just trying to find a place to put that extra 20 bucks perhaps save it for shipping

I'd just overclock the video card, watch and read some tutorials ask for help, but with the software out today, it's easier then baking a cake.

 

[Suomalainen]

Interesting, definetly something to consider. You think it would make much of a difference to the naked eye outside of graphs etc?
I was kinda thinking the 3gb might somewhat ''future proof'' my build a little better than the extra cuba cores.

Another option would be getting better timed RAM. Corsair LAT 7
Newegg.com - CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2X1600C7R

 

[PP Mguire]

That's up to you would be an benefit to sound and since it's a better quality fan it might push around the same amount of air. Would save you 20 bucks to just get the 120's though. I'd probably do that and then get a 660ti instead of 660. Granted you'd probably have to get a 2 gb 660ti it would still be better unless your planning on using triple monitors.

Something like this Newegg.com - MSI N660 Ti PE 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
or keep ur 3gb and get this
Newegg.com - XFX FX-795A-TNFC Radeon HD 7950 Core Edition 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Then his board was defective and I would have simply RMAd it. Like I said, the 77 chipset was released with IB and created for it for a complete platform. Z68, P67, and H61 chipsets were all bios updated later on. If he is currently using that board I would CPU-Z to see if it is infact the proper chipset and look physically on the chip what it says.

That 660 TI is going to be pretty big for a Micro ATX. The 660 is something like $50 cheaper, smaller, and 3g memory. It does ofc have less cuba cores though.

I wonder how much perfomance difference I'd actually notice between the 2 of those cards..

The 660ti and 660 are the exact same size. You can put any size card on an mATX motherboard long as the case fits the length of the card in question. I have seen 690s be put on mITX boards in those tiny cases and it worked quite well. As for the performance, there is a big jump in performance going from 650ti, to 660, to 660ti. Basically, that 660ti has comparable performance to my 580 with more VRAM. As was suggested, 3GB of VRAM wont help for lower powered cards because if the VRAM is being capped that means you have higher resolution textures that the GPU itself has to be able to handle. That is why I suggest only the 1GB version of the 650ti as opposed to the 2GB.

 

[Suomalainen]

Alrighty then..

Well, how about better RAM timings vs getting 660TI over the 660?

Would the better card make a more signifigant performance increase than the better memory?

 

[PP Mguire]

Um, duh.