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Within the next month or so I plan to start to seriously build a new gaming desktop and while I'd like to buy top of the line across the board, I'll take a notch slightly below that.

So what is new in the world of desktops since 2007? I plan to use Win 7 (finally) and don't need a monitor. I really want something I can sink my teeth into.

You really should have just put Pat's name in the title -laugh-

I'm currently using a i940 (OCed), 8gb RAM (don't remember the hz), 850psu, Radeon 5870 XXX (OCed) and I'm not sure on the MB. It's played everything I want like a beast.

Seriously, Tech Talk should be renamed Ask PatrThom

-edit-

Ooh, make that Ask PatrThom or Matt2 (sorry Matt, seems like you haven't been around lately!)

Get a good PSU.

What's the price range?

1500

I would rate importance "Processor > Graphics > PSU > Motherboard > RAM" in terms of where you should put the heft of your funds. Balanced around that.

Jiarn said:

I would rate importance "Processor > Graphics > PSU > Motherboard > RAM" in terms of where you should put the heft of your funds. Balanced around that.

Click to expand...

I'd put graphics ahead of processor, but otherwise I agree.

Also, a $1,500 budget is not going to get top of the line across the board, or even one step down from that. A six-core i7 alone would eat up half that budget, and a single high-end graphics card could take up the rest and more. The good news is that you don't need top of the line to get great performance, and you'll get a lot more bang-for-your-buck by going high-mid-range.

Graphics can be easily replaced, processor needs to last longer.

so this Intel i7-975 is probably out.

Jiarn said:

Graphics can be easily replaced, processor needs to last longer.

Click to expand...

True, but graphics are more of a bottleneck, in general.

I guess it depends on how much you plan to upgrade this specific machine. For me, when I made my last build, my graphics and processor were fairly evenly matched, so upgrading one without the other wouldn't have seen a large improvement (and they cost about the same as well). I did this knowing I wouldn't have a lot of money to spend on hardware upgrades, and that I'd likely be looking at a new system a few years down the road, rather than incremental updates along the way.

I'd spend more on the processor, It's been my experience that the really good cpu upgrades use some new slot, requiring a new mobo and possibly new ram. Video cards are easier to upgrade and more flexible even, what with SLI and CrossFire.

That's pretty much exactly how I see it. Not only that, but instead of shelling out for a completely new card, sometimes for a low price you can just add a second card and boost your power up to that of a brand new card, while not ditching the one you had previously.

Drop a solid state disk in there for the main drive and you'll see a noticeable performance increase. A lot of people skip the hard drive, but it is currently the worst bottleneck in most systems, and the processor and graphics card often idle waiting for stuff to load from the drive. Modern games and the OS perform a good job pre-caching stuff to RAM, but they still aren't perfect, and a fast SSD is not terribly expensive anymore.

My current PC has a Raptor Drive as the local C drive and I use another drive for storage.

I do agree with some of the point brought up thus far and I feel pretty confident that 1500 or so can provide me extremely potent, heck 3 years ago I bought this PC for barely 1100 using parts from TigerDirect/DirectCanada.
Added at: 17:13
I'd definitely would go with Processor before all else then Graphics.

What's the primary focus? Gaming? Versatility? Or longevity? For an even greater challenge, pick two (in order of importance, of course).

--Patrick

High quality gaming rig that can last me for some time (3 years would be swell)

Gaming then Longevity

PatrThom said:

What's the primary focus? Gaming? Versatility? Or longevity? For an even greater challenge, pick two (in order of importance, of course).

--Patrick

Click to expand...

^^^^ This man's advice never fails, Jay. My computer still rocks.

Honestly, I'm flattered. It also makes me happy that the people who take the advice end up happy with it. I listen to the requirements, pick solid parts from reviews and build the sorts of systems that I'd like to have (going by the stated requirements), but it's all vicarious, so it's good to know that practice matches the theory. And yes, you two*, if my batting average stays this high I'll seriously start thinking about doing this as a sideline, if not a full career.

Right, then. 2hrs of research later, we have the following:

First, the bad news. You simply must wait another week or two before you start buying stuff. Sandy Bridge is about to be officially released for sale on January 9th, and it is a big step up from the older Nehalems. Also, it is a new socket (LGA 1155), which should help you stay more modern than the 'older' (by all of about a year) LGA 1156 and LGA 1366 Nehalem/Westmere sockets. Building a brand new 1156/1366 system right now would make about as much sense as buying a brand new VCR. It is a new architecture, so nobody knows if there will be any late-breaking revelations, but for now the test results are clear: If you are building a new system right now, you should choose either AMD AM3 or Intel Sandy Bridge. For gaming, Intel still holds the lead, so Sandy Bridge it is. There isn't enough data yet on AMD's next chips for me to make any kind of guess how well their Fusion line will perform, except to say that I think getting good performance out of it is going to mean rewriting software to take full advantage. We'll see.

After making that decision, and taking your budget into account, the rest pretty much falls into place.
(Prices are as accurate as I could get seeing as how some of these things aren't actually released yet)


270.00 MLB - P67-based such as Gigabyte's GA-P67A-UD5
225.00 CPU - Core I5-2500K
40.00 HSF - Zalman CNPS8000A
100.00 RAM - 2x4GB high-quality (CAS 7) DDR3-1333 (PC3 1066x)
150.00 OS - Win7 Pro 64-bit OEM
220.00 PSU - Seasonic X850
400.00 GPU - ATI 6970 or NVIDIA GTX 570, your choice
------- ---
1405.00 SUB - System price
95.00 XTR - Budget surplus

Reuse your old ATX case, DVD, HDDs, etc. and replace them later (if you want). If your current PSU is beefy enough, you can put off the Seasonic purchase until later and free up an additional 200 or so.

A year from now (when prices come down!), either replace your system drive with a pair of good, enterprise-level SSDs in RAID0 to eliminate the HDD bottleneck OR add a second graphics card for SLI/XFire. Then do the other one the year after. Assuming none of your parts have failed by then, you should have 3 years of awesome followed by 2 years of pretty good.

Make sure you let us all know how it turns out. Yes, it's going to be faster than your current rig (no matter what you currently have, I'm sure), that's a given. The questions is, how much faster.

--Patrick
*You know who y'all are. And thanks for the nudge.

Going to read this more carefully when I'm not this plastered but... cann you also cover what is new and awesome with HDDS? To be honest, I'\m looking to replace everything except the monitor... and these rpices... damn Pat... they are sexy! I appreeciate all of this.

Right now you'll be hearing a lot about 'advanced format' Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). These are drives that internally work in chunk sizes of 4k instead of the old 512 bytes (0.5k). This means they can pack more data into smaller spaces, but it also means they don't work so well with any version of Windows before Vista SP1.

Also, SSDs are on everyone's mind, but most of them really, really suck at small random writes. The newest ones (Sandforce 1200-based, for instance) are starting to be built to compensate. Do your homework. Avoid disappointment.

Go ahead and replace everything but the monitor. But reuse the non-critical parts (such as the drives, kbd, etc) to save money you can spend on critical parts (CPU, GPU). To save time and trouble, you might want to spring for a new case during the new build (so you don't have to disassemble/reassemble later), but that might put you over your budget, so I left that option up to you.

For what it's worth, I appreciate that you're willing to take a risk on the recommendations of a stranger over the Internet.

--Patrick

Personally, I truly appreciate it... the initial researrch is a good thing. In a week or two I'll probably have the near final listing of waht I want to do and once that is done... I'll order, and start building and show you guys some pictures as the progresss goes.

As far as HDDs go, if you had to buy one todya for a main drive, what would you go with? (I'll probably spring some extra cash and gett another terabye backup)

The Raptor you already have is probably better as a boot drive than any non-SSD you can get today. If it's still working for you, I'd stick with it. The newer VelociRaptor is faster (when hooked with SATA300 or better), but you already have the Raptor, which means more money to spend on other components. The rest of your new computer will be so much faster than the old that you won't care that the HDD speed hasn't increased. Then, in a year or so when SSD prices fall, do the RAID0 thing I mention above to remove that bottleneck and reignite your computer's speed (which you will see in boot times, defragment, etc). Get the base built properly. There will be time to save up for the multi-stage turbocharger later.

--Patrick

Sandy Bridge reviews are trickling out. SB performance is about 5-15% faster (on average) than the current 3-digit i3/i5/i7 CPUs at the same clock speed. Not a huge deal...until you realize that the 3-digit chips max out around 3.8GHz, but people are pushing the new Sandy Bridge chips as high as 4.4GHz with just the stock heatsink. These new chips have some sweet headroom. Prices look to be right about where they were estimated, too.

--Patrick

Nice man. I'll be progressing on this sometime next week. I hope to have my new rig by month's end.

Oh and anything new on the front for a new computer case? I have a black Antek P182 it's pretty solid and will go out with my current rig (I found a friend who'll buy it for $300 and that's good enough for me). I'm looking for great performance but I'd like a system that runs REAL QUIET since my rig is in my study room and to be honest, I can read a book in the same room and barely hear the fan go.

Haven't really been keeping up on ATX cases, my latest builds have been more towards Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX in size, so I will just run right to the editors' choice list of one of my frequently visted websites, and they point me towards the Silverstone Fortress FT02. It's an interesting case design, and it earns high marks from a website devoted to making as quiet of a PC as possible, so I would think they would know what they are talking about.

--Patrick

drifter said:

Seriously, Tech Talk should be renamed Ask PatrThom

-edit-

Ooh, make that Ask PatrThom or Matt2 (sorry Matt, seems like you haven't been around lately!)

Click to expand...

I haven't, and that's been by design, business and the lure of Fable 2.

I'd recommend my current case (Thermaltake Armor+MX), it was a breeze to install parts to, but it's loud as hell

PatrThom and I share the "I'm old enough to want a computer that looks like an adult owns it" mentallity.

One other vendor (always have to plug them) is Lian-Li. Very expensive cases, but they are exceptional.

Oh yeah and for the heatsink, you only have to pay an extra 10-20$ for the cooler master H60 or whatever it is, and that thing is effectively silent (as well as being very low profile)

And wtf on Nehalem already being obsolete? Intel isn't doing themselves any favors in changing the socket type that fast.

Yeah. I don't care about LEDs, rave wire, or any of that. I want a computer that goes fast, does a lot, and won't choke 2yrs down the road. There are components I'd love to own, but nobody is ever going to see the LEDs buried inside my case, so why have 'em? At least let me turn 'em off and save the power.

Yes, Lian-Li makes good cases. My main PC is currently built in a PC-7.

Intel shoots themselves in the foot (socket-wise) about every 2 years. They've been doing it since slot-1. It's like they don't want anyone else to copy their sockets or something.

--Patrick

I tend to be in that crowd too, all my friends have bright flashy boxes that do crazy things. mine is just a dull matte black box filled to the gills with gear. it also kicks everyone elses ass...

I like a flashy case if it doesn't cost me more than $50 over an economical case. Also, Red LEDs ftw!

I like a case that has good airflow and is easy to build in. The fact that my case has a window and LED is irrelevant to me. I'm more annoyed by the painfully bright blue LED on my right speaker. dear speaker manufacturers, I know your speakers are on because I can here things coming out of them, I don't need a distracting light to tell me what I already know.

All the LEDs do is keep me up at night* when I'm trying to sleep during a backup or something.

--Patrick
*by which I mean "...the early, early morning after I finally go to bed I need every last stinkin' minute of sleep by then don't you seeeeeeee???"

Just because it isn't flashy doesn't mean its cheap. Usually you are paying a premium for the manufacturing quality and noise isolation.

the point is all that flashy stuff is superfluous, its not required for anything. in my example my friends kept adding flashy shit to theirs while i built a quiet black sleeper that ate their computers for lunch without even straining itself. this is because we were all on budgets and they allocated more money for looking cool than performance.

So here's the revised version of my previous recommendations.
(reviews are out now, we have data!)
(All prices in $CAN, shipping included where required)

225.00 MLB - ASRock P67 Extreme6
230.00 CPU - Intel Core i5 2500K
0.00 HSF - Included with CPU
120.00 RAM - G.SKILL DDR3-1333 CAS 7 2x4GB (8GB total) kit
165.00 OS - Windows 7 Professional 64bit OEM
240.00 PSU - Seasonic X850 PSU
510.00 GPU - EVGA GeForce GTX 580 (non-factory overclocked)
---------------
1490.00 - Total cost, shipping included. Juuuuust under the 1500 limit. If you shop around, you might find better deals.

You will still need to supply your own case, HDD, DVD drive, etc. I assume you have some of those left over from other builds OR you will be able to find them for relatively good prices no matter where you go. I would still recommend the case I mentioned earlier, but that's about another $250 or so.

Let us know how it turns out!

--Patrick

Fantastic update, and thanks again for the research.

One thing is lacking though, what do you recommend for HDD? Couple options would be nice to have.

I was thinking one for fast gaming, one for storage.

175.00 HDD1 - RunCore Pro V 60GB SSD
110.00 HDD2 - HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 2TB

--Patrick

60GP, well fuck, I do plan to have at least 200G used in my games. I'm kinda a gaming whore.

They make less than 100 Gig still? what the hell?

SSD has a high price per GB cost still. If you want speed suck it up, if you want space stick with the disk drives.

Great games tend to take a lot of HD space. For example, an amazing game like Mass Effect 2 currently takes 17G, Dragon Age 2 takes 19G. These 2 games alone take 36G and well over half the hard drive. I'm sure Win 7 takes X Gigs as well. 60 Gig is a paltry limit, even for SSD standards.... they might as well throw me a bunch of floppy disks and go ask me to wing it.

SSD would be nice but isn't mandatory not when it's cost is that high for a space limit that would have looked sweet in 2002.

Any other HDD recommendations Pat?

Also on the note of cases, I tried to contact a few places for some sweet cases and it seems that they really don't carry them though they do carry the Antec performance line. I currently have an Antec P180 (full) and it runs rather quiet though not very quiet. This rig is going to a friend and thus I'll be buying a new case, so I can't keep it. Do you suggest perhaps I get another? Or another model that is slightly higher? Obviously, I need to carry it and the stores carry the line. I unfortunately won't order a case and pay over 100$ for shipping, they are pretty heavy.

I was maybe thinking of the Antec P183 - http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=314&Itemid=61

But it's not overly quiet... so I'm unsure.

I already made my case recommendation previously in post #26 (and then referenced it again in post #37 )

If you absolutely must have speed/speed/speed, you might try 2 x 500GB WD RE4 in RAID0 (at $95CAN ea), but remember to back up your important data to the 2TB in case the RAID fails.

EDIT: Uh-oh, might want to put off the build for a few weeks.
Intel reports new chipset has problems, issues recall

--Patrick

Intel Recalls Eight Million Faulty Chipsets for Latest Microprocessors

goddamn

Think of it as a test of your commitment.

--Patrick

UPDATE: Looks like it may not be as big of an issue as you might think.

-The new chipset has 6 built-in SATA ports, 2 of which are SATA-3/600 and 4 of which are SATA-2/300.
-Only the 4 SATA-2/300 ports are afflicted.
-The Extreme6 MLB I mention above adds 4 more SATA-3/600 ports by using add-on Marvell chip(s).

Therefore, if you restrict yourself to only using the 6 SATA-3/600 connectors (instead of all 10), you'll never even be affected (this makes the ASRock board looks like an even better choice to me than I first thought).

--Patrick

Som what should I do? *bites fingernails*

Are you going to have more than six drives?

ONLY 6? AHHHH

So all these CPUs are being recalled because of?

The CPUs aren't being recalled, it's the motherboard chipset. The CPUs are fine.

The above motherboard comes with 10 (yes, ten) SATA ports. The chipset defect means that, at some time in the future, 4 of them are probably going to go bad (all at once or really close together). Fortunately, this will be the four slowest ports. Unfortunately, it will be four out of the six which support RAID. You have four choices at this point:

-Go ahead with your build right now and only use the 4 affected ports just for DVD/CD drives (where you won't lose data if the connection fails). They're the slow ones anyway, so probably not a big deal. If/when the ports do fail, just reconnect them to the extra 4 Marvell ports instead. You will likely be able to exchange your board later under an Intel-sponsored recall (Intel is putting aside 700 million dollars to deal with this), but it is still going to be a bit of a hassle. However, if you already have a buyer lined up for your old system, you may be forced to move out earlier than you really wanted.
OR
-Wait until Intel finishes with the recall, buy the rev2 board OR one of the upcoming Z68-based boards instead (Z68 boards aren't coming out until the Spring and will NOT be affected by this recall). Build as usual.
OR
-Scrap this entire build and start over either with last-generation Intel technology (Nehalem/Lynnfield, P55/X58 chipset) or with AMD Phenom II.
OR
-Go without (continue using your current system until you can't stand it any longer).

I've put them into what I believe will be your order of preference. Keep us posted!

--Patrick

It begins.

--Patrick

Any idea how long it's going to take for proper motherboards to start filtering their way into distributors stock?

PatrThom, what brand do you recommend for hard drives? I know a lot of people feel very strongly on the subject and I was curious as to your take on it.

Also, what would be your recommendation for dual video card setups?

a) The linked article gives other links talking about what each mfr is doing, and when they're doing it.
b) I try not to recommend brands. I try to recommend models (based on requirements). For instance. Seagate is pretty well known, has a good guarantee and pretty good performance, but they've also had some colossal duds. Same thing with WD and everybody else.
c) Why do you need dual cards?

--Patrick

A) Thanks for the heads up... looks like April for the gigabyte board I'm looking at... just gives me more time to save.
B) Fair enough, I was just curious if there was one brand that you felt was more reliable than others (I've yet to have a catastrophic hard drive failure and I've had all kinds of different brands).
C) With the right SLI setup you should be able to get more performance out of two lesser cards than one monster card... and it costs less. I'm thinking Geforce GTX 460's. Two of them are $360 and theoretically should outperform a GTX 580 (need to do more research though).

Delays.... goddamn delays! Jay needs rig... arrgh

Azurephoenix said:

C) With the right SLI setup you should be able to get more performance out of two lesser cards than one monster card... and it costs less. I'm thinking Geforce GTX 460's. Two of them are $360 and theoretically should outperform a GTX 580 (need to do more research though).

Click to expand...

More performance doing what, exactly?

EDIT: It's a legitimate question. I mean, I assume you just want MOAR FPS in your games, but you haven't said which games, or if that's even really what you're after.

--Patrick

Patrick,

MOAR FRAMEZ PLS KTHNXBAI!!!

. As for which games... all sorts... but sometimes I play games that are really hard on both the CPU and graphics card (Playing supreme commander with 7 opponents with 1000 units each and using two monitors can really strain things lol).

Games I normally play: Mass effect 1&2, Supreme Commander forged Alliance, Dragon Age, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War 2, Sins of a Solar Empire (with Huge maps), Fallout 3 and New Vegas. They are all games that can be really demanding on both the graphic card and CPU.

I wouldn't go lower than a pair of GTX 470's in SLI (about US$500) due to the much better minimum framerate increase over a pair of 460's (or even a pair of 560 Ti's!). Minimum framerate means less stuttering/slowdown. If I thought I could swing it, I'd recommend instead a pair of Radeon 6950's in XFire (about US$600) since they have more on-board memory (2GB) and a pair of 6950's will give you almost double the fps of a single GTX 580 ($US500).

...this is in games which play nice with SLI/XFire, of course. Or you could just get a single GTX 580.

If you absolutely can't hit the $500 mark, let me know and I'll see what's best at $400.

--Patrick

a) Could get one 6950/2GB right now, get another one later.

b) 850 should be enough, 1000 and up would be extra insurance if you want to add water pumps, extra drives, maybe some other expansion cards/lights/cigarette lighter at a later date.
175W - 2500k OC
25W - MLB
20W - HDD x 2
10W - RAM (est)
400W - 6950 x 2 (thermal limited to 200W max ea)
100W - Fans n DVD n crap
-------
750W or so total

--Patrick

Discovered something after doing new research today which causes me to alter my recommendations a bit.

GTX 580 cards are thermal limited to only draw a max of 200W per card. This is the info I was using to build my previous recommendations. I have since learned that tweakers have discovered how to remove these thermal safeguards in order to get more performance from the GTX 5xx series of cards. A side effect of this is that the cards can draw up to 350W of power per card, which is way more than I budgeted for in my previous research. To keep from overloading the system, this means that I no longer endorse anything bigger than the GTX 560 Ti for use in SLI unless you are using at least a 1200W PSU (previous budget was for 850W max + 300W new discovery = 1150W needed).

So for the above build, I'm changing my recommendation to either getting a single GTX 580 and sticking with it until the next generation, or getting either one 6950/2GB or one GTX 560 Ti for now and adding another one later (assuming you stick with the 850W PSU and its lower noise/heat, that is).

--Patrick

The order has been submitted and is now being processed in 3 different orders. This is my new rig that is coming in a few business days. I hope to have everything by next weekend.

- EVGA SuperClocked 015-P3-1582-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI

- G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL7D-8GBRH

- Western Digital VelociRaptor WD4500HLHX 450GB 10000 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

- HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

- SeaSonic X Series X-850 (SS-850KM Active PFC F3) 850W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS 12V v2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD

- Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52500K

- ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM

- Silverstone Fortress FT02 Case

- I got a Win 7 free licence from a friend who works for Microsoft.


I'm excited.

Man, I love that case. I love it so much.

Case is on it's way from Calgary, should have it Wed/Thu.

Concord, ON, Canada 03/21/2011 12:26 A.M. Arrival Scan
Calgary, AB, Canada 03/18/2011 1:27 A.M. Departure Scan
Calgary, AB, Canada 03/17/2011 7:21 P.M. Origin Scan
Canada 03/17/2011 5:56 P.M. Order Processed: Ready for UPS

Free shipping for a case? Yes plz.

Newegg however, have been terribly slow. Called them this morning. Apparently, I missed a confirmation call for my cell number, yet my cell never got called. Nonetheless, it got cleared up and I see the process of them shipping it to me.

I'm pretty excited to get this rig up.

Received some of the parts ordered. Noticed during shipment that the motherboard was removed from the puchase due to "stock issue". Place an order for it right now.

Either way, wouldn't have had time this weekend to set it up anyways.

I know exactly what you're going through, Jay. One of my "fastest computer yet" builds came with faulty RAM. No problem, I had other RAM I could use...but it had to run at half speed. So for a week, I ran that system at half speed, knowing that everything could be going twice as fast.

--Patrick

Still waiting on the video card, should be here Monday. Should get the motherboard early next week but sadly next week is end of quarter. Work is going to be busy busy busy and when I get home I'll prolly be too tired to try to get it together.

When I'll do though, I'll take some pictures.

Posting from my new rig. It's been a fun experience setting it up. I should be done transfering all my files and configuring Windows 7 to my leisure. Pictures will be incoming, feedback as well.

Yes, I'm terribly slow but it is also work's busy season. When I get home I barely am inclined to cook dinner, much less setup my PC with enthusiasm. Did it tonight though.

I'm going to get a better heat sink for my CPU sometime soon, looking forward now that Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit is installed. Going to first transfer my data and then play with benchmarks. Then once I get the fan, gonna overclock a bit.

Gigabyte boards are so sweet.

Looks very...capable. Don't let the cat sit on it!

--Patrick

This rig is beast. Can't wait for the weekend to get some quality DX11 gaming. What I've seen so far has been bonerific.

What MLB did you go with? I just now realized it's a Gigabyte instead of the ASRock. Call me slow.

--Patrick

Nice rig Jay! Keep us up to date as you get used to it. I just built something around the i5 2500k last week:

CPU: i5 2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz
MB: Biostar TP67B+
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer II 650W
RAM: PNY Optima 8GB DDR3-1333
GPU: EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 1024MB

I was going for cheap and effective. I skimped on the video card because I don't plan on running much more than large photoshop files. I was all ready to keep it under $700 and then I let a few people talk me into an SSD for the boot drive. I love it, but I'm really not familiar with SSD yet, and while researching I made the switch from ide to ahci after windows 7 install and now it just seems...off. I'm hesitant to do a reinstall so I'm still playing with settings but I'm guessing I'll end up caving and redoing it all.

But if anyone is considering a new build and was debating SSD, I definitely recommend it for the boot drive if you can afford it.

SSD will be something I'll consider next rig, right now, it's too limiting in capacity for the price.

I agree. I maybe should have added that I only got 64GB for an extra $100, but as I said I don't plan on running much on it. Windows 7 64bit, Office 2010, and CS5 is really all that is going on that drive, so I felt it was worth the extra expense. If you're going to run games or programs with a high install then it makes more sense to wait.

Hey, @Jay. Did I miss something?

--Patrick

Nah, I was checking this thread since I've been getting little pang of WANT for a new PC next year and I recalled this thread. Saw that I wasn't giving the appropriate amount of positive feedback back in the day, tried to make up for it.

You're a good bro.

That will be all.