Building a PC soon, advice?

Ok so this will be the first time ive actually bought and put all of the pieces of a pc together, Here are the specs i planned..


GIGABYTE GA-Z77-D3H
Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz
Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB)
MSI N570GTX Twin Frozr III PE/OC

Acer S211HLbd 21.5'' 5ms LED-Backlight LCD
Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200 RPM
COOLER MASTER HAF 912
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W ATX12V

comes to just under 1400 with 6G keyboard and windows OS and all that junk.

Anyone have any past problems with the products ive posted or have some better suggestions?

Gigabyte really makes a killer motherboard for the money. 3rd gen Intel Core with z77 express chipset is a worthy foundation. Seagate Barra is a classic and well worth money.

I think your on your way to building a great machine. Post up some pics when you get her done. Be Safe instead of sorry, wear a Anti-Static wrist strap!

All the best~

Not sure if i should buy a GTX 570 or look around for a Radeon 7870 or something.

theres too many models of GFX cards recreated by like 15 different companies each with all sorts of very slight differences lol, i have no idea which ones are best

I like the look of 570 you picked best. Twin Frozr is really nice looking.

Sick fucking build man, should be a hell of a machine once its done. Make sure you stay grounded too, idk if you got a carpet or what but constantly touch your heater or something metal, the case metal is good, and use a static wristband if you got one. (only 5 bucks...)

Also if you are going to college, check out your schools site see if you can get windows for free, i got mine for free from my college's site. Saved me 200$ lol.

Intel is the way to go for CPU, and i am a fan of Asus Motherboards, but Gigabtye isn't bad....

CPU Cooler??

CM Haf series = Dank shit man

What's your budget man? I have almost an identicle build except I went all out at the time and put a 3 gb radeon 7970 in it. Works wonders at 1080p.

If you can't afford to go all out get a nvidia 570 or a 580 if you can.

I like the look of 570 you picked best. Twin Frozr is really nice looking.

Sick fucking build man, should be a hell of a machine once its done. Make sure you stay grounded too, idk if you got a carpet or what but constantly touch your heater or something metal, the case metal is good, and use a static wristband if you got one. (only 5 bucks...)

Also if you are going to college, check out your schools site see if you can get windows for free, i got mine for free from my college's site. Saved me 200$ lol.

Intel is the way to go for CPU, and i am a fan of Asus Motherboards, but Gigabtye isn't bad....

CPU Cooler??

CM Haf series = Dank shit man

Well i was planning on just using the stock fan that comes with the CPU, i am not sure how to hook up liquid cooling or things like that and wasnt sure if an aftermarket fan was necessary, And yea, my current college only offers upgrades to windows 7 for ~70 dollars and no copies of the full thing, ill have to check with the school im transferring to though.

Also yes, i chose this case because it looks good for cable management and it has some nice big fans on it,

What's your budget man? I have almost an identicle build except I went all out at the time and put a 3 gb radeon 7970 in it. Works wonders at 1080p.

If you can't afford to go all out get a nvidia 570 or a 580 if you can.

Well the $1,500 price range feels good to me and i'm not sure i feel like going much over that, im at about ~$1,390 atm on newegg.


Should i be looking for a gfx card with more VRAM? I am looking to play bf3 on near all ultra settings,

i was on some part of the nvidia site before and i was able to select GeForce Cards and see their benchmarks on a large list of games, cant seem to find that same page today tho... lol

Edited by NowIsB, 09 July 2012 - 03:09 AM.

I would say getting an aftermarket CPU cooler is a pretty important thing to do if you plan to overclock.

The one that Intel includes is usually pretty wimpy.... 50$ can get you a pretty nice cooler

also PS, they have prefilled watercoolers that pretty much just bolt on these days which are really simple. I am not into the idea of liquids in my system though so i pass on that. But they are pretty nice.


also is this what you where looking at:

http://www.geforce.c...570/performance

just click any GPU and it will give you benchmarks.

Edited by Jumbo, 09 July 2012 - 04:51 AM.

You could do either one of these builds and I would think your benchamarks would by higher than your current build. I like to use toms for all my builds because they always update all their charts monthly and they put way more time and energy than i ever could to test out every little part.

Use this build IMO with just an I5-2400k & the card you like already. That would put you back down in your range.
System Builder Marathon, June 2012: $2000 Performance PC : Ivy Bridge And Kepler Come Together

Use this if you need to buy extra accessories like mouse, keyboard, monitor. Maybe even upgrade to a 600 series Nvidia.
System Builder Marathon, June 2012: $1000 Enthusiast PC : A $1000 PC With Radeon HD 7970 Graphics?

Well i was planning on just using the stock fan that comes with the CPU, i am not sure how to hook up liquid cooling or things like that and wasnt sure if an aftermarket fan was necessary, And yea, my current college only offers upgrades to windows 7 for ~70 dollars and no copies of the full thing, ill have to check with the school im transferring to though.

Also yes, i chose this case because it looks good for cable management and it has some nice big fans on it,




Well the $1,500 price range feels good to me and i'm not sure i feel like going much over that, im at about ~$1,390 atm on newegg.


Should i be looking for a gfx card with more VRAM? I am looking to play bf3 on near all ultra settings,

i was on some part of the nvidia site before and i was able to select GeForce Cards and see their benchmarks on a large list of games, cant seem to find that same page today tho... lol

You can check out tomshardware.com for benchmarks for cpus and video cards. Id say anything with more than about 2 GB vram and you will be fine.

I would say getting an aftermarket CPU cooler is a pretty important thing to do if you plan to overclock.

The one that Intel includes is usually pretty wimpy.... 50$ can get you a pretty nice cooler

also PS, they have prefilled watercoolers that pretty much just bolt on these days which are really simple. I am not into the idea of liquids in my system though so i pass on that. But they are pretty nice.


also is this what you where looking at:

GeForce GTX 570 | Performance | GeForce

just click any GPU and it will give you benchmarks.

I myself have an H100 for my CPU. I usually average at 25 C on idle and 50 C on full load. I'm pretty happy with it.

Well due to newegg running out of stock of 570's and me changing my mind im gonna go with an MSI Radeon 7950, changed the mobo to an Asus and also picked out an 120g kingston SSD coupled with a 320g standard HDD. SHould be a good build, probably going to throw a liquid cooler in there too

I have an uncle that knows how to build computers and I was thinking about asking him to build me one. About how much would a good build cost me?

I have an uncle that knows how to build computers and I was thinking about asking him to build me one. About how much would a good build cost me?

For comparison, the pc i am planning is *supposed* to run all the games i have atm on max/ultra (sc2, bf3, games like that). With the edited additions i put into my last post in this thread, the running total , monitor, ssd, hdd, GPU, CPU, CPU liquid cooler, Mechanical Keyboard, 8gb Memory, Case, and mobo and static wristband totals to just around $1,414.

Keep in mind tho i am kind of anal and didnt want to pick a GPU that would not allow me very high performance in games, so i picked a $350 gfx card, more than likely overkill if you dont highly desire top quality graphics for next year or so. A ~$250 gfx card with a ~$200 cpu would more than likely run bf3 on high-ultra and bf3 is to my knowledge the most demanding game out atm.


also i only own a macbook atm so i had no parts like a case or HDD so i had to buy pretty much every piece needed for a pc.

Alrite so I don't know shit about computers, so you guys can help. My computer just shitted and won't start up. Can I still retrieve my files.

If I were you I'd go AMD for some of those parts to save money. I'd also switch to SSD if you don't already plan on that. Get 16gb of ram, again you can buy cheaper stuff.Grab a 2gb vid card.Things like water cooling really aren't needed. You can build a much better system with that money.

Alrite so I don't know shit about computers, so you guys can help. My computer just shitted and won't start up. Can I still retrieve my files.

You gotta be more specific. Unless it's a hard drive problem your files are most likely fine.


Edit: It's a fine build anyways.

Edited by KiefCoveredLips, 15 July 2012 - 10:53 PM.

For comparison, the pc i am planning is *supposed* to run all the games i have atm on max/ultra (sc2, bf3, games like that). With the edited additions i put into my last post in this thread, the running total , monitor, ssd, hdd, GPU, CPU, CPU liquid cooler, Mechanical Keyboard, 8gb Memory, Case, and mobo and static wristband totals to just around $1,414.

Keep in mind tho i am kind of anal and didnt want to pick a GPU that would not allow me very high performance in games, so i picked a $350 gfx card, more than likely overkill if you dont highly desire top quality graphics for next year or so. A ~$250 gfx card with a ~$200 cpu would more than likely run bf3 on high-ultra and bf3 is to my knowledge the most demanding game out atm.


also i only own a macbook atm so i had no parts like a case or HDD so i had to buy pretty much every piece needed for a pc.

Quite correct good sir. I too went all out and bought the radeon 7970 a few months after it came out. 450 dollars. It was so hard to rationalize.

Im usually a nvidia fan. My last 2 rigs had nvidia. 8800 gt in my first. And dual gtx 470's in my last. I do have to say. Im imprssed with this beast. My one radeon 7970 beats my Sli 470's any day of the week.

Quite correct good sir. I too went all out and bought the radeon 7970 a few months after it came out. 450 dollars. It was so hard to rationalize.

Im usually a nvidia fan. My last 2 rigs had nvidia. 8800 gt in my first. And dual gtx 470's in my last. I do have to say. Im imprssed with this beast. My one radeon 7970 beats my Sli 470's any day of the week.

hahha yea isaw the 7970, it is probably something i would look into getting if i already had a system, ya know, but i cant justify that extra 100-120 atm. but yea i am gonna gowith the 7950 because it is pretty much second best in the 7000 series and not too far behind the 7970 specs wise.

Yea I got hard drive failure, so I lost all my shit. Thanks for your help tho blades. Keep burning herbs my friends. Peace

hahha yea isaw the 7970, it is probably something i would look into getting if i already had a system, ya know, but i cant justify that extra 100-120 atm. but yea i am gonna gowith the 7950 because it is pretty much second best in the 7000 series and not too far behind the 7970 specs wise.

Honestly you could probably overclock yours to out perform mine, so id say your going with a hell of a rig man, even with a 7950 or even a 7850.

be careful it might eat you.