Final Build Critiques. Then I am placing the order. :D

[Vociferate]

Looking at a complete upgrade to get back into boxing. As I have sold everything I had for it when I moved across the country. I am living in the tropics of Australia, an awesome place for stuff in the sun, not so much for a computer that will be sitting in idle temperatures of at least 20C/70F on average. Air conditioning can be used, but not all the time.

Electricty can be quite large up here. (Roughly $.38 per unit, so for example a dryer being used for an hour costs about $3.00) Aside from pricey electricty, I will be using a few extra fans in a push/pull configuration along with the liquid cooler. I will have external fans (ceiling and wall fans being used to circulate the air in the room) so the temperature will never go passed 25C/80F.

Now this isn't the final systemn, but I am certain that it is overkill for 5 boxing WoW, but I am looking for something that I can use for the next 2 years, as I dont have the income to get the bleeding edge every year.


CPU: Intel Core i5 3570 - Ivy Bridge
Mobo: Asus P8Z77-M PRO P8Z77-M PRO.Z77
RAM: G.Skill 16GB [SNIPER] DDR3-1866 F3-1866C10D-16GS
Case: CoolerMaster HAF912
Cooling: Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H100 Liquid Cooler
HD: Western Digital WD5003AZEX 500G SATA3 HDD Caviar Black
SSD: Intel SSD 120GB 330 Series
GPU: Gigabyte ATI HD7870 OC ED
Burner: LiteON SATA DVD-RW 24X Black
PSU: CoolerMaster 850W Silent Pro MII Modular
Monitor: Samsung S24B300H 24inch LED

[Multibocks]

Is there a reason you're not going with a faster SSD?

[JohnGabriel]

Seems getting two SSD drives would be much better. [..oops..]

[Vociferate]

At the moment I am going for a cheaper SSD to just get me by for a few weeks. Waiting on my tax return so I can upgrade the SSD and get a second 24" monitor along with another GPU for XFire.

[MiRai]

At the moment I am going for a cheaper SSD to just get me by for a few weeks. Waiting on my tax return so I can upgrade the SSD and get a second 24" monitor along with another GPU for XFire.

If you're looking to utilize Crossfire for multiboxing, I would say that you'll be disappointed with the increase of (or lack there of) performance. In fact, I don't even think Crossfire works in Windowed Mode.

Buy one single awesome card that has a single GPU for multiboxing.

[Khatovar]

If you're looking to utilize Crossfire for multiboxing, I would say that you'll be disappointed with the increase of (or lack there of) performance. In fact, I don't even think Crossfire works in Windowed Mode.

Buy one single awesome card that has a single GPU for multiboxing.

I have to chime in to agree. Even if you don't use crossfire and opt to go with 1 monitor per card, you're still going to be a sad panda. I use 1 card per monitor and you can't run the slaves in DX11 on a secondary card. You will also take a major performance hit if you try to swap a slave from a secondary monitor to the primary - which means all that awesome instant swapping in ISBoxer is wasted. Not to say the swapping won't work, the game itself has a total hissy fit about it.

[Bollwerk]

That proc doesn't have hyperthreading.
I highly recommend getting one with hyperthreading.
When I moved from the i5-2500k (4 cores, no hyperthreading) to the i7-2600k (4 cores, WITH hyperthreading), it made a BIG difference (stock speeds) and I only 5-box.
Hyperthreading now seems to help alot with boxing. In the old days, it didn't.

[Vociferate]

Wow I had no idea that Crossfire was redundant with boxing. Cheers for the heads up. So then my best bet would be to invest in a better single GPU then, obviously.

As far as a hyperthreading CPU, better look into that too then. Can anyone recommend a case that has decent air ventilation? Or is the HAF 912 sufficient enough?

[Vociferate]

Here is a new build, similar pricing but with CPU/GPU/SSD Changes.

Looking more like a final build.


build.jpg

Thumbnail is tiny, but the image is big enough to read whilst opening. Cheers.

[MiRai]

Assuming you don't want to overclock then that build will work as is, but I don't see a reason to buy a 2011 chipset if you're not going to use a 6-core processor (or unless you really want 64GB of RAM). Especially since you should be able to pick up a 3770K for the same price and then overclock it to be much faster than the 3820. In fact, benches show that the 3770K is just a touch better than the 3820 right out of the box - Source.

The TDP of the 3820 is also twice as high, so it's bound to run hotter than the 3770K (at stock), and it only comes with an extra 2MB of cache (not really a big deal). However, I will say that an overclocked 3770K is still bound to run a little warm (depending on the overclock), but since you're using an H100 you should have no issues.