Building my first gaming desktop. Need advice on hardware selection.

bazkook said:

BTW,I play on running mostly first-person shooters. I have Far Cry 2,Steam with several Half-Life games,and Elder Scrolls Oblivion Anniversary Edition. The Half-Life games run fine with maxed out settings on my PC now but I have to dial down settings a fairly good bit for Far Cry 2 and Oblivion. I hope to be able to run Crysis 1 and 2 and Battlefield 3 though.

with a gtx 560 even at stock settings you should be able to max those games at decent high resloutions. Though if you can offored the store clocked one then i say go for that one because you be able to squeeze more AA on high resolutions.

M1GU31 said:

bazkook said:

BTW,I play on running mostly first-person shooters. I have Far Cry 2,Steam with several Half-Life games,and Elder Scrolls Oblivion Anniversary Edition. The Half-Life games run fine with maxed out settings on my PC now but I have to dial down settings a fairly good bit for Far Cry 2 and Oblivion. I hope to be able to run Crysis 1 and 2 and Battlefield 3 though.

with a gtx 560 even at stock settings you should be able to max those games at decent high resloutions. Though if you can offored the store clocked one then i say go for that one because you be able to squeeze more AA on high resolutions.

I figured those games would perform great with the 560 Ti and if there is a game that comes out that is simply too much for the 560 Ti (which is highly unlikely),then I could always upgrade.

That card should be fine

I agree about the PSU. Think Id go for something like this:
Seasonic-X650
Or
Corsair-HX650

Either are certainly worth the bit extra they cost.

But even a TX series would be a good choice, and cheaper.
Corsair-TX650


Sure, they are only 650W but they are far more power than you'll need. Plus, just better PSUs all around.
Wattage alone doesnt tell the whole story.

Wishmaster said:

I agree about the PSU. Think Id go for something like this:
Seasonic-X650
Or
Corsair-HX650

Either are certainly worth the bit extra they cost.

But even a TX series would be a good choice, and cheaper.
Corsair-TX650


Sure, they are only 650W but they are far more power than you'll need. Plus, just better PSUs all around.
Wattage alone doesnt tell the whole story.

Thank you for the suggestions. I think I will go with the Corsair-TX650 you mentioned.

bazkook said:

Should the Crucial M4 64GB SSD I already purchased be large enough to store the OS,system files,and a few games? I was also recommended by man who works at the shop to purchase another Crucial 64GB SSD and run the two in RAID 0 and connect an external hard drive,instead of an internal one,so that the normal HD isn't being accessed all the time.

No one has answered my question here yet.

bazkook said:

bazkook said:

Should the Crucial M4 64GB SSD I already purchased be large enough to store the OS,system files,and a few games? I was also recommended by man who works at the shop to purchase another Crucial 64GB SSD and run the two in RAID 0 and connect an external hard drive,instead of an internal one,so that the normal HD isn't being accessed all the time.

No one has answered my question here yet.

OS & System Files: Sure, not a problem.

A few games: How many? How big would each game be? One or two games max. , on that drive.

A raid array is going to be a more complex setup thats far more prone to issues/failure.
With the SSDs, you really do not need it anyway unless of course your after benchmark records. But in real world use, it wont make much difference.


It should be perfectly fine for the OS and all your programs. And thats all I would use it for.

If you have alot of games, I would just make a Games folder on a secondary HD and install them there.
Aside from a level loading slightly faster, most games will not show a huge improvement from the SSD once its loaded. (You wont get better FPS for example)

A few however, do show some improvement if they are constantly accessing the HD, such as open world games.

In the future, if you want to add a second SSD for your most played games, by all means go ahead if budget allows.
But, I would advise you just run them independently, not in a RAID.
Keep the main SSD as it is for the OS and Apps, and the second to install some games on. far simpler setup, plus the OS SSd will be clean and much easier to image and restore should you need to.

ReviverSoft said:

bazkook said:

bazkook said:

Should the Crucial M4 64GB SSD I already purchased be large enough to store the OS,system files,and a few games? I was also recommended by man who works at the shop to purchase another Crucial 64GB SSD and run the two in RAID 0 and connect an external hard drive,instead of an internal one,so that the normal HD isn't being accessed all the time.

No one has answered my question here yet.

OS & System Files: Sure, not a problem.

A few games: How many? How big would each game be? One or two games max. , on that drive.

The size of Windows 7 64-bit Pro is estimated around 20GB.
Currently the games I have are:
Far Cry 2 - 12GB
Elder Scrolls Oblivion - 4.6GB
Call of Duty 2 - 4GB
Half-Life - 0.71GB
Half-Life 2 - 4.76GB
Half-Life 2 Episode 1 - 5.94GB
Half-Life 2 Lost Coast - 2.96GB
Half-Life Blue Shift - 0.71GB
Half-Life Opposing Force - 0.63GB

Of those you listed...

Oblivion will have some benefit. The SSD will help some hitching as you move around the world.

Far Cry 2 .. maybe.
I have it installed on just a regular HD, with the OS on a SSD and have no issues with it here.

HL .. not really worth the space. It runs/loads just as good on a regular HD. Little faster loads on the SSD, but not enough to warrant the SSD space IMO.