Okay, so, down to business, if you will. I'm about ready to purchase the parts to a new build, and I was wondering if people might comment on said build. It's been six and a half years since my last, so I figured it was time for a machine that could actually play something made in the last three... Downloaded Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and my laptop (I will never buy another laptop again, especially not a "gaming" laptop) couldn't really handle it. Upgrade time!
I'd like to keep this build between $1500 and $2000 at the highest, and hope that I can make it last for at least three years of playing games on high settings. Ultra settings would be even nicer, but ultimately, that's a luxury and not necessary. My current monitor is 1920 x 1200, and it's what I'd prefer my game to be played at. As an aside, I already have speakers, a headset, keyboard / mouse, Windows 7, etc. This is basically the machine itself I'm asking about.
If there is anything wrong with the build or comments you have on parts, etc etc, please feel free to post them. My biggest questions about the build are the following:
1. ASRock: I'm a little removed from the custom PC scene. I had never heard of them until I started looking into building a new machine recently. I haven't come across any terribly negative things about them other than people who give one egg because boo hoo, they got a DOA board and forgot to tell us about the replacement they received. So, are they worthwhile?
2. A lot of what I've read on SSD's is a 50 / 50 split. Some are saying it's all kinds of wonderful because HDD's are the real bottleneck in systems today. The other half are saying that even now, they're so unstable and don't last nearly long enough for the price. I'm not against taking that out of the build, or even keeping it. I would just like to get some more opinions.
3. 2600K or keep the Sandy Bridge 3820? Both perform almost identically, with the 3820 pulling ahead in a few places. I've read that it's a good choice because it is -slightly- better, and it's good for future proofing when newer cards come out. I'm not an expert, so I can't claim to understand everything I was reading. Something about having multiple cards and all the channels open or some such. I'd like a bit of future proofing, but I was wondering what people thought of the 3820 in general.
4. Quad-channel memory support. Should I keep the 3820, I'm assuming this means it would be preferable to get 4 sticks of RAM and fill four DIMM slots? Or am I just too out of it?
5. The 850W PSU. I might get a second card in the future, so I figured having a little headroom would be nice for that. I'm still not sure, however, if that's too much and should drop to a 750. I'm debating between the GTX 670 and 680 at the moment, as there's no way in hell I'm paying the price for a 690.
Here's a list of the parts I've selected from Newegg:
Case: COOLERMASTER HAF 932
Motherboard: ASRock X79 Extreme4 LGA 2011
Vidya Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW or a GTX 680
PSU: Corsair HX Series 850W
CPU: Intel i7-3820 Sandy Bridge-E
Heatsink: Thermaltake Frio OC-Ready
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series (2 x 4GB)
HDD: WD Caviar Black 2TB
DVD: ASUS 24x DVD Burner
I apologize for not having any direct links... Apparently I can't make a post with any in them til I've fulfilled the requirement of "a few" posts here on the forums. *sighs* No idea how many that is, so I just posted what I have. Every item listed here is on Newegg.