Final few decisions for the build

IamSatai

Hey everyone,

Finally, after about two weeks of intensive research, I almost feel confident enough in my choice of parts too buy them for my first build. HWVS is the forum favourite for components, but instead I have decided to go with mindfactory.de as the price of the components come out about €40 cheaper. Have a quick look at my thread to see what I found out about them if you're interested:
Has anyone purchased from mindfactory.de?
As you can see, I started asking questions about my build there, so I though I would make a different thread as it was losing relevance to the title, I hope that's ok.

I have one of these, 1000GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12, at home so I'm leaving out a hdd from the purchase.

Here is what I have come up with:
Item|Price
Intel Core i5-3570K Box|€209.65
ASRock Z77 Pro3|€82.85
Sapphire HD 7870 2GB|€214.81
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile PC3-12800U CL9|€39.44
BitFenix Shinobi Black Mid Tower USB 3.0|€50.18
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO|€27.02
Super Flower 550W Golden Green |€72.52
Shipping|€29.99
Total|€726.46

I previously had a Super Flower 400W Golden Green (€56.85) and a ASRock Z77 Extreme4 (€122.86) on the list.

I am concerned that with overclocking the cpu and gpu, 400W may not be enough power (396W from the 12V rail). This is what has me concerned:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/26/sapphire_hd_7870_oc_edition_video_card_review/9
It shows with the 7870 overclocked, it was drawing as much as 397W. That's rather close to 400W for my liking. However, in the test they are using an oc'ed i7 920, so a 400W may be fine for me as a oc'ed 3570K would not draw as much power.

I decided to dig a little deeper, so tell me if I have this right. I am basing this off the TDP rating of each of these components, please inform me if I have missunderstood what TDP is. It seems is only posible for the sapphire HD 7870 to draw a maximum of 190W, and the 3570K a maximum of 77W. That only comes to a maximum possible power consumption of 267W. I cannot imagine the other components requiring more than 133W. This leads me to believe I am missunderstanding something, that or the 400W psu would be more than enough. If this is not the case, I would appreciate if you could tell me what the maximum power consumption of both of these components are, assuming there is a maximum. I prefer to have my choice based upon solid numbers, rather than vague "that should do"'s. If I am wrong about this I'll go for the 550W, but if I'm right I'm happy with the 400W.

My other concern is that the BitFenix Shinobi only has one case fan. I will admit that fans are one component that I have overlooked, so I feel sort of thrown in the deep end with regards to what I should be going for. It seems that three fans is really the minimum you would want to have in your case, but I am happy to hear any advice you have on the topic. If you could help me pick out some cheapish decent quality fans from mindfactory.de (site is in german, google chromes auto translate comes in handy here), with an explanation of where to situate them in the case, I would really appreciate it. I am nearing my budget of €750, so I can't really go overboard on the fans. If I should sacrifice the quality of something else for the sake of the fans please let me know. This was the main reason I wanted to make this thread, I just hope this paragraph doesn't get drowned out in the vast expanse of the entire post. This is really the part I'm looking for help with most.

Because of these concerns, I have downgraded the motherboard from the extreme4 to the pro3 to free up some funds. The extreme4 seems to be a popular board, with the consensus that it has the best price to cost ratio. I will lose some overclocking potential, but I'll still get decent speed out of the pro3, right?
What could I safely leave my 3570K overclocked at with the pro3 vs the extreme4?
What else would I be loosing out on by going with the pro3?
Is it really worth the €40, or is my budget too low to be considering this?
I could also look at the asrock z77 pro4, which is €14 then the pro3. It would be a bit better for overclocking, or is it not worth the extra €14.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, it turned out a bit longer than I expected. I suppose long and informative is better than short and vague. I finally have the money ready to go. By just knowing I could pull the trigger on the purchase any time I want really makes a difference to how sure I want to be about every little component. If you have any other suggestions I would love to hear them.

Procrastastudy

I'd say you'll reach the thermal limit of that cooler way before you get issues with the motherboard. At 4.6Ghz I struggle to keep my 3570K out of the 80s on a H100 during stress tests.

IamSatai

Thanks Procrastastudy.

I won't be overclocking too high, so I figure the pro3 should be fine for me. Could you get a higher safe 24/7 overclock out of the extreme4 then the pro3, or would the extreme4 only help with with extreme overclocking? I have done a bit of reserch on overclocking, but not enough yet.

Ok, I may as well find out about case fans. I have a fairly good understanding of the other components, I better just round off my knowledge.

It has been pointed out that mindfactory.de charges €30 per package. If the case is considered a separate package, I will either get the case off amazon or go back to using HWVS if there is no longer a substantial saving. A bit dissapointing, but better to know now then when I am trying to make the purchase only to have a surprise shipping charge.

Procrastastudy

IamSatai wrote: »

Thanks Procrastastudy.

I won't be overclocking too high, so I figure the pro3 should be fine for me. Could you get a higher safe 24/7 overclock out of the extreme4 then the pro3, or would the extreme4 only help with with extreme overclocking? I have done a bit of reserch on overclocking, but not enough yet.

Ok, I may as well find out about case fans. I have a fairly good understanding of the other components, I better just round off my knowledge.

It has been pointed out that mindfactory.de charges €30 per package. If the case is considered a separate package, I will either get the case off amazon or go back to using HWVS if there is no longer a substantial saving. A bit dissapointing, but better to know now then when I am trying to make the purchase only to have a surprise shipping charge.

I dont know what the story is with the Pro3 and extreme4 the majority of the cost difference is made up of the extra features such as SLI and extra SATA ports. Have a look and see what's been written about all the voltage and capacitor stuff on the mobo (Technical terms )

IamSatai

So, I am just about feeling ready to buy the parts. This is what I will be going with:

Item|Price
Sapphire HD 7870 2GB GDDR5 PCI-Express|€232.00
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL9|€42.64
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - Intel/AMD|€27.99
Intel Core i5-3570K Tray, LGA1155|€214.59
Super-Flower SF450P14XE Golden Green Pro 80plus gold|€64.86
ASRock Z77 Pro3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€90.29
Corsair Carbide Series 300R, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€68.63
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€759.99

I'm going for the carbide 300r over the bitfenix shinobi as it has better airflow and comes with two fans, which I figure should be all right. I also quite like the look of it.

I will be going with HWVS, as mindfactory would charge an extra €30 for shipping the case which negates the savings I would have made. I am €9.99 over budget (funny how that price worked out), but I can live with that.

I will probably make the buy tomorrow morning, so if there are any last minute objections, now is your opportunity to make them.

Thanks for all the help, couldn't have done this without the help of you guys. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions once the parts arrive .

IamSatai

An interesting turn of events has unfolded resulting in this:

Item|Price
Sapphire HD 7870 2GB GDDR5 PCI-Express|€222.00
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL9|€41.96
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - Intel/AMD|€27.81
Intel Core i5-3570K Tray, LGA1155|€214.00
ASRock Z77 Pro3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€89.24
Corsair Carbide Series 300R, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€70.17
Super-Flower SF450P14XE Golden Green Pro 80plus gold|€65.99
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€750.16

From a reshuffling of prices, I am now no longer over budget . So of course I thought, great! I decided to set up an account to find out exactly how much it was going to cost. Just as I had feared, they threw in an extra fee. Its 3% paypal charge, which is €21.94 for my order. I wasn't too happy about this as I had just gone from €10 over budget to on budget , only to go €20 over again :mad: .

I just happened to check out the Bargain Alerts thread as I felt a bit hard done by and wanted to see some nice offers, only to find that cherryghost has supplied us with voucher-codes for HWVS that are actually in date! So I tried the VME87RV166 code for €10 off orders over €500. Great, so I was back down to €10 over budget, right where I had started. I decided to try the other two codes;
"Also, new customers can use VHRUH92NV3 to get €5 off €100 euro or more purchases. Or AXF98H4XV8, for €5 off €50 euro or more. Again, new customers only."
They didn't clash which I was expecting, so I am now on budget once again . Thank you cherryghost, you have cheered me right up. It would have been nice to have that €20 to spend on parts, but this sense of achievement for getting around the system is nice too.

If anyone else has any more voucher-codes they would like to add to the list, I would love to hear them.