Going to be making my first computer, and need some advice

So I'm going to be making a custom built rig soon, and need some advice to make sure everything works and is compatible. I've done some research and it seems like they would all work, but some advice on building my first computer would be useful as well. Here are the parts I've been looking at:

Case - Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

**PSU - CORSAIR 750W ATX12V 80 PLUS Certified

CPU - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core (Going to OC at least to 4.0GHz)

OS HDD - ADATA 2.5" 40GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (I've been wondering if I should use this as the main C: drive or put it as the secondary drive? I'm assuming it would be C

Data HDD - RAID0 2x Western Digital Caviar Black WD6402AAEX 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

GPU - SAPPHIRE FleX Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 (Going to flash to a 6970)

Motherboard - ASUS P8P67 PRO (REV 3.0) LGA 1155

RAM - CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600

CD/DVD - ASUS SATA 24X DVD Burner

Media Reader - Nippon Labs Delux 3.5" Internal All In One Card Reader/Writer

Thermal Paste - Arctic Silver 5

CPU Cooler - Thermalright U120eXtreme 120mm Fluid Dynamic CPU Cooler

** I'm having some doubts about whether or not this is a sufficient power supply. Should I up it to 850w or is 750w enough for this?

Thanks.

Well what are you going to be using that computer for?

You should use the SSD as the C drive, but 40 gigs is quite small. You could get away with it, but you'd have to be careful about what you install.

Most people get beyond 30 gigs pretty easily.

Power supply is more than enough.

A few changes I would suggest.

1. Change the 6950 Sapphire card to Dual GTX 460 (768 MB Version) in SLi configuration. Naturally means you need to make sure your motherboard can accomodate this. Plus you get PhysX (Dirt 3 will be using it).

2. Why do Raid0 for your data? You need reliability there not speed (especially since you will have SSD). I would suggest a single Western Digital RE 4 500 GB for your data OR if your budget allows, four Western Digital Caviar in Raid0+1 configuration.

The rest looks ok.

My understanding raid 0 with ssd and hhd will slow the ssd down to the speed of the hhd.

ignatzatsonic said:

You should use the SSD as the C drive, but 40 gigs is quite small. You could get away with it, but you'd have to be careful about what you install.

Most people get beyond 30 gigs pretty easily.

Click to expand...

One option I know is possible but not sure exactly how to do this intensionally is to put the OS on drive D:

I have this setup, but by accident and I love it- I created folders for program files on C: drive and everything defaults to there upon install-

(I did this by accident- first I had vista- then w7 rc on different partition- then w7 upgrade version overwriting vista which was drive D:- when I removed w7 RC I had a blank c: ?---yay


I would not raid 0 two different HDD's but that is me- Raid 0 also can make for 'less effective' system image backups- you can use macrium reflect for this but not the freeware version (see sticky in backup and restore section).


Your power supply is just fine unless you are using three GPU's for only one then a 550W would be fine-

Looks like a great build-

I think that 40GB for an OS drive may be a little small. It might be workable if you don't install too many large applications on it. 64 or 80GB or larger would be better.

I'd skip the RAID on the data drives, and go with a larger single Caviar Black. I haven't experimented with RAID for a few years, but I found it more annoying than useful. (Too easy to trigger verification on a RAID 10 array.)

The 750W Corsair should be more than enough. People have had trouble with Corsair PSUs and Asus motherboards in the past, though. (I believe that it was due to Asus violating some part of an ATX standard.) That's probably in the past. You may wish to check whether there have been any problems with your exact model of PSU and the P8P67 Pro.

@beecher Pretty hardcore gaming.
@ignatzacsonic I'm only using it for the OS, not games and program, so I don't think it needs to be bigger
@gpost3 Because those 2 500GB HDDs are going to be my main store.. the SSD is only for the OS.
@Layback Bear, I'll have to look in to that. EDIT: Oh, I see, you thought I was RAID 0'ing the SDD + HDD, I'm not, I put a 'x2' beside the 640GB HDD to note that it's going to be in RAID 0
@bill1821 They are the exact same HDD's, and I don't do backups.
@bobkn But it's only for the OS, and I don't think the OS takes up even 30GB?

I'm still sticking with the RAID 0 though, and I'll stay with the 750W,

Thanks guys.