First time building a gaming rig- Criticism welcome

Thurgoz

Solid State Member
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Hi guys. Never built a computer before, but I've taken them apart multiple times and put them back together, just to get the feel of them. Anyways, the parts:

CPU- Intel i7 3770k Ivy Bridge 3.5Ghz
GPU- Radeon HD 7970 3GB DDR5
Motherboard- Asus Sabertooth Z77
Case- Cooler Master HAF 932
Power- Coolmax 1000w 80 Plus Bronze PSU
Cooling- Corsair Hydro Series H100 Liquid Cooling
RAM- Corsair Vengeance 16GB
SSD- x1 OCZ Vertex 3 max 240 GB
Sound card and OS I'm not sure about yet. OS is definitely going to be Windows, just not sure if windows 7/8.

Criticism will be appreciated, just tell me if I am uneducated bout this or that. Thanks :D
 
If this is a gaming rig you could save a ton of money on a few things.
For instance, you could get the 3570k instead, a much cheaper motherboard, ditch the 1000w PSU as it's way overkill and get a quality brand at that, ditch the H100 if you aren't overclocking, drop the RAM to 8GB as a gaming rig needs no more, and I would get a different brand SSD at that too. Samsung 830/840pro, Intel 520, or Corsair Force GT.

Can't stress enough on some threads that a 3570k is a 3770k without HT. HT makes no difference in games.

The board is vastly overpriced in my opinion, and if you aren't going for high end OCs on phase or LN2 then getting a regular Z77 Pro or ASRock Extreme 3 or 4 would be perfectly fine without the price tag.

It is my personal opinion/preference, but I would get a GTX680 instead. Way better drivers. No exaggeration, the drivers are seriously that much better.

A single card overclocked system can be run on a 650w PSU like the Corsair TX650 easily. An average consumer will not need anymore than this. Quality over wattage, #1 importance in PSU.
 
Okay, thanks Mguire. I'll research on the parts. The more I like into your suggestions, the more I realize I was kind of getting carried away. $400 more is not worth an extra 2 frames per second in games.

However, I do plan of OCing. Not sure if the liquid cooling I suggested was alright, or if there are better ones for around the same price. (You know your stuff, so I might as well ask)
 
IF you do actually OC, the H100i is excellent. I bolded if because a lot of people say they will and never do. It's really up to you if you want to spend over 100 on a cooler. If you actually do, it's a great contender. Depending on when you actually build this you might be able to get something slightly better like the NZXT 240.

For OCing you can simply use a lower end board still and be perfectly fine. The only thing expensive boards offer is multi-GPU support 3 or 4. Almost all Z77 boards support SLI/Crossfire. They also offer retarded things like dual LAN, and a bunch of other retarded things 90% of people wont use. Like, who actually needs 10 SATA ports on a gaming rig? If I had the money for that many drives to RAID or whatever I would get an OCZ Revodrive, not have extra cables/clutter in my system, and still be as fast if not faster lol.

Also, the 3770k wont grant any extra FPS in games. Going to a 680 will give relatively the same performance depending on the game but will save you a ton of headaches later.
 
Okay, after a bit of research, I've decided upon a different setup. (Sorry about making you continually critique my stuff, lol)

SSD- Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB
RAM- G.Skill Sniper series 8GB
Power supply- Corsair GS700 700W (I boosted it up to 700w just in case I want some pretty LED's)
GPU- EVGA GTX 680
Cooling- Corsair H100
Case- Cooler master HAF
Mobo- ASRock Extreme4 Z77
CPU- Intel i5 3570k

It lowered the price by a few hundred, which I'm very thankful for.

Oh, and one last thing, do you think this will have any difficulties with crysis 3?
 
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Lighting, HDDs, and fans are pretty irrelevant to power usage. Your big hitters are the GPU and CPU. If you absolutely must have more than get a TX750 at least.
The rest is fine to me.
You dead set on the HAF? They are pretty big cases.
 
I would love to have a big case. SInce this is my first one, I just figured it would give me more room to work with. Anyways, thanks a ton for helpin me out!
 
More room is pretty pointless unless you have a ton of drive, plan on large water loops, or want to go for triple cards. I'm only using a HAF because I have 5 HDDs in it.
 
Not necessarily. A cases CM ability comes from the user and how well laid out the case is. For instance, the 922 is big, but kinda sucks because you can't really hide cables. Airflow is dependent on how cluttered your case is and more importantly on fans. If you have a huge case with low CFM fans you aren't going to push any air. The 230s on the HAF cases kinda suck so I would instantly replace them.
 
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