I feel a little bit dirty but need your help !

Do you want the i7? Because most people find the 3570K to be a much better value, though it does lack HT. If you need the HT, then go for it. The 3770K will outpace the Sandy Bridge 2600/2700K clock for clock. You can hit higher numbers, easier with SB, but an IB will physically perform better with a slightly lower clock rate. The Ivy Bridge platform also utilizes RAM a little more efficiently than SB, so that is a bonus. Right now, I am running Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz(specs below) and just using the OC Tuner built into my Sabertooth board am OC'd to 1923MHz. Enough for a 7.9 WEI. According to Anandtech and plenty of other hardware reviewers, when it comes to Ivy Bridge, 1600-1866MHz RAM is the sweet spot as they saw no real advantage with faster RAM for the price difference.

As far as choosing RAM, I really wanted to go with a Dominator set, but couldn't justify the extra cost with ABSOLUTELY no bump up in performance. I tried and tried to tell myself that it was worth it for the looks, but honestly, with 4 DIMMS populated with the black Vengeance, it looks rockin as-is. It's your dime though, if you want the Dominator, I know very well where you are coming from!

I have the 3570K, OC'd to 4223MHz(stock OC using OC Tuner) which is a 20% OC, and I actually UNDERvolted it and running 12+ hours of AIDA64 I stay between 50-53*C. I am sure with some tinkering, I could keep it below 50*C at full load, but I'm not fooling with it for a couple degrees. There is about a $100 difference in price between the 3570K and 3770K. Both are excellent overclockers, both can be overclocked AND undervolted at the same time, and both are 10-15% faster clock-for-clock than Sandy Bridge. If you do any kind of video encoding/decoding etc, I would recommend IB for the Intel HD4000 graphics with Quicksync 2. It will encode/decode faster than any video card out there by a significant margin. You can also use the HD4000 with a discrete video card with the 2nd generation Lucid Virtu MVP.......all things to consider.

Edit: This is the RAM I went with, and it is solid, especially at less than $100! ................Newegg.com - CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 Desktop Memory Model CMZ16GX3M4X1866C9

linnemeyerhere said:

Thanks for all the great info Kelly ! Much appreciated.

Anything else you wanna know about it, just ask.......I'll give you as much info as I can.

That being said, Haswell will use a totally new socket......socket 1150. Ivy Bridge-E has still yet to emerge, but will use Socket 2011. If you are ready to build a system now, don't think 1155 and Ivy Bridge will be "outdated" anytime soon. It is still a hell of a platform and a solid performer. Also, I don't feel like you need to go the Sandy/Ive Bridge-E route, or you wouldn't be considering 1155.

A good IB cpu/mobo will be a great backbone for a system that will last most people for quite awhile. They just run so good and have so much power...I've yet to perform any task that I've noticed using more than 15-20% of my total CPU power!

There hasn't been a good reason to go AMD (other than a low end budget build) for what seems like a decade now. There's nothing to feel dirty about....not at all. Intel hasn't been called the "Evil Empire" in at least that long, and they have actually became VERY enthusiast friendly.

The main reason I have always built Intel systems is the chipsets. Intel builds chipsets that AMD never can compete with in terms of performance and stability.