Hello everyone,I've been compiling a parts list for a new PC for quite some time, and now that I have the expendable cash coming available, its time to get serious about the build. If anyone has any suggestions to increase cost to performance ratio, change vendors, etc, it is welcome.

As of right now the only things that are set in stone and cannot change are the storage devices and the case.

I do have a couple concerns about the motherboard. Firstly, for the GPU it states that if one is installed it will run at 16x, but if two are installed it will only run at 8x. Should i be concerned about this? Also, for the memory clock rates that the board accepts, I noticed that it will take higher clocked memory such as 2800 O.C. . I assumed this would be 1600 speed memory OC'ed to 2800 but i don't know if that is correct.

CPU: X1 Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core/ *fixed link
CPU Cooler: X1 Arctic Cooling UCACO-P0900-CSB01 Fluid Dynamic Bearing
Motherboard X1 Asus Maximus V Formula EATX LGA1155
Memory X2 G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600

Storage X4 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM
X1 Samsung 830 Series 128GB 2.5" SSD
X2 Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200 RPM

Video Card X2 Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB
Case Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced ATX Full Tower
Power Supply Corsair 750W ATX12V / EPS12V
Optical Drive Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer

Thanks in advance.

@ddp

Originally posted by ddp:

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why the 2x500gig & 4x1TB drives?

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the 4 1TB drives are going to be placed into a RAID 5 and the 2 500gig drives are planned to be set up in a RAID 1 config for extra redundancy for critical data.

@Ripper

Originally posted by Ripper:

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So you're planning on running 32GB of RAM? The only question is why, and if you don't have an answer then you really don't need it.

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The build i've listed is what my machine will eventually look like, for the initial purchase i was only planning on purchasing 16GB to start and expanding later. The justification for 32GB is because i do a lot of work in VM's.

Originally posted by Ripper:

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Running a quad-core CPU, SLI GPUs and 7 HDDs is going to need more than a 750W PSU.

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i was thinking more about that today and was thinking that i should upgrade to the corsair 850W PSU It is a little pricy and maybe another vendor has a better deal. I am concerned whether this is enough power for this machine.

Originally posted by Ripper:

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You're also going to want to make sure that this case is properly cooled too as there will be a relatively high amount of heat.

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That case i went with has 3 240mm fans and one 140mm so i think cooling is not going to be much of an issue especially with that heat-sink i coupled with the processor.

Originally posted by Ripper:

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However, you may want to choose a mobo from the NVIDIA list of SLI certified boards to be on the safe side.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/sli/motherboards

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Looks like i have some more research to do :)

alright, I did some research on SLI certified boards, but none of them have enough 6 gig sata ports so i think i'm going to have to stick with the same one.

i originally selected 2x GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB but they are $320 each. I was looking on newegg and found GeForce GTX 660 2GB for $220. Is it worth the extra 100 bones for the 3GB Ti?

for the power supply, i now selected OCZ ZX Series 850W. According to pcpartpicker, my current build is at 648W, so if this is correct, this 850W has a 92% efficiency which leaves a nice 130W cushion. This PSU states its Sandybridge ready, the fact that i'm going to use an Ivybridge processor shouldn't matter, correct?

CPU: X1 Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core
CPU Cooler: X1 Arctic Cooling UCACO-P0900-CSB01 Fluid Dynamic Bearing
Motherboard X1 Asus Maximus V Formula EATX LGA1155
Memory X2 G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600

Storage X4 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM
X1 Samsung 830 Series 128GB 2.5" SSD
X2 Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200 RPM

Video Card X2 Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB
Case Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced ATX Full Tower
Power Supply OCZ ZX Series 850W
Optical Drive Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer

Thank You

Originally posted by Ripper:

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Quote:

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i originally selected 2x GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB but they are $320 each. I was looking on newegg and found GeForce GTX 660 2GB for $220. Is it worth the extra 100 bones for the 3GB Ti?

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I don't know - compare benchmarks with a pinch of salt, here.

PSU is a good choice, "sandybridge ready" means nothing.

Have fun.

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* thanks for your help, it is much appreciated.