Hardware Advice

[3qX21hU5]

So at the moment I'm building my dream computer that I have been wanting (and saving for ;p) for a lifetime. I've got most of my components and just need some RAM and a better SSD. So was wondering if anyone wanted to debate a little about the best RAM (Overclocking in mind) and SDD's on the market.

Personally I would like to get the best even if its quite spendy. First here is my current build.


Case - Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133188

Mobo - GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128545

CPU - Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo)
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501&Tpk=3770K

RAM - Currently need some only got some x2 4gb stock RAM More Info below

Harddrive - Looking for new one See below

Solid State - OCZ Agility 3 240gb
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227727

GPU - EVGA GeForce GTX 680 2GB
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130768

PSU - CORSAIR Professional Series Gold 1200W
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139014

OS - Windows 7 Ultimate.

Cooling

CPU Cooling - CORSAIR Hydro Series H60. Might upgrade but right now not needed since its running cool with minor overclocking.
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181015

GPU Cooling - Now I'm not completely new to liquid cooling but I have never even heard about liquid GPU coolers till recently. My girlfriend got me the ARCTIC Accelero Hybrid VGA Cooler and I've yet to install it.
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186067

Other Cooling - Other then that I'm running the stock fans from my case which seem to be doing quite well.


I'm not new to building rigs but I also got a lot to learn still so could use some help on it. So was wondering what is the best RAM for overclocking? So far I have narrowed it down to two reliable brands (I think) GSkills and Corsair. Here is the one I have been thinking about getting.

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133
Link - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231572

I've overclocked GPU's and CPU's but never RAM. From the limited research I have done so far It seems pretty much the same.

The questions I have are is DDR3 2133 the best way to go or should I look for another speed? Cooling wise do I need to get anything to cool these when overclocking? And lastly is there a better choice out there?


My Other Questions is about SDD's and HDD's. I've had plenty of people tell me that OCZ is not a good way to do for SSD's and they tell me I should get a different brand. The problem is that I have no knowledge of SSD's and what ones are the best and the worst so could use some help choosing one. And could use help choosing a good hard drive for storage to.

Any advice on how to improve this build would be welcome also. And I know its a bit overkill for what I do (Amateur 3D modeling, Gaming, Programming) but I consider building a rig a hobby and damn do I enjoy it lol.

[Thumper]

Sweet, i love rig building. I rarely get to exercise my skills (i work at a computer shop) and nobody wants my advice when building a custom computer. Typically I find that everyone I talk to in person wants to do it themselves if they're going to do it. But i love brainstorming about rig building.

Okay, so i'll start with the motherboard. GIGABYTE isn't bad. I haven't had gigabyte boards die on my like MSI or ASRock boards. However, since you're socket 1155, consider getting the ASUS Sabertooth. It's built with military grade components (which, while it may not be entirely necessary, is awesome as hell), and has the longest warranty ever offered on a motherboard (5 years.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131821

Moving on to the solid state. All the articles I've read as of late lead towards the conclusion that the Samsung 8xx series solid states take the game in terms of reliability. There are a few ones that claim higher peak read/write speeds than, like the OCZ vertex 4, but you never actually reach the peak read/write on any SSD. In terms of longevity, i would stick with a Samsung 8xx. Even so, solid states are still new technology, and are prone to error. Make sure you have a backup, or store only your OS on the SSD and data on a hard drive. The SSD i linked has a 3 year warranty, so for 3 years regardless of how many times it dies (if any), you can harass Samsung into replacing it at no cost.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147189

As for RAM, there's such a small difference in higher speed memory that it's negligible, and 99.9% of the performance boost you notice will be placebo. The only place where higher memory speeds are useful are in memory intensive applications. Things like gaming and programming won't benefit at all from buying memory with increased speed. So to me, it doesn't make sense to buy memory that's rated at a really high speed because it's so much more expensive. Instead, buy a 16GB (4x4GB) kit of DDR3-1600, which will only cost $80-90, sometimes less if you catch a sale.
As for brand, my personal favorite is Corsair, but kingston, gskill, and pny are equally cool.
Consider this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233143

Next is the graphics card. GTX 680 is an absolutely baller card. I would consider switching to the ATI equivalent: Radeon HD 7970. Not because i'm an ATI fanboy, but because the brand XFX manufacturers ATI cards. XFX offers lifetime warranties on all of its graphics cards. I haven't seen that anywhere else.
The EVGA GTX 680 has very very similar benchmarks to an XFX Radeon HD 7970, but EVGA only warrants the card for 3 years. So when that card dies (and it will), you're dead in the water. (Every EVGA card i've ever owned has shit out.)
Consider this: $50 cheaper, 3GB GDDR5 instead, lifetime warranty.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150586

As for an HDD, you can pretty much grab any HDD you want. I would stick to either Western Digital or Seagate as a brand, though. They're the most highly regarded in the HDD industry atm. Hitachi drives suck the D.
Don't buy a refurbished or recertified drive. They will die on you soon.
WD offers a 5 year warranty on their caviar black series drives. They're worth it.
Another worthy note, be cautious of buying anything over 2TB drives. There is (or was) a problem with controllers not being able to address the entire drive, and larger drives have a considerably higher fail rate. It seems to me that everyone is trying to shove more sectors in a drive when we simply don't have the technology to address sectors that tiny (safely) quite yet.

On other cooling, you won't have to liquid cool to get the performance you want. Running stock, that computer is going to be like lightning man. The only reason I'm currently liquid cooling my build is that i got the liquid cooler from Thermaltake for free, which was awesome.
Also, liquid cooling your video card will cost you another $150-200 to buy the copper cooling block for your specific card. It's a lot of effort for little outcome.
If you do decide to liquid cool i would probably cool only your CPU, and leave your graphics card out of the equation. The Thermaltake Bigwater series liquid cooling units are really good in my opinion. There are also some closed system Corsair ones (Corsair H60) that have the pump on top of the CPU block, and you don't have to use a resevoir or worry about refilling it with coolant because it doesn't evaporate. I've personally never used one of those, but on paper they don't look too bad.

Hope my input helped!

EDIT: (fixed some spelling too)
Also, a note on your power supply. You can have as little as a 600W power supply to run said computer (500W if you go for Radeon HD 7970). Actually, the only reason you should need more than a 600W PSU is if you're running two (or more) video cards at the same time, you're running a really really high end card computing card (like nvidia tesla), or if you're running dozens of HDDs. Save yourself a buck and step down on your PSU power rating. You'll never use 1.2 megawatts, even though "megawatts" sounds so incredibly badass.
I wouldn't consider getting anything above 600W in this scenario, unless you plan to do something crazy in the future.
And contrary to what I've found to be popular belief, a higher rated power supply doesn't make your system any more powerful. The 1200W rating means it can supply a maximum of 1200W of power. The computer will only consume what it needs.

EDIT 2:
A note on multiple video cards.
You rarely see the performance boosts you want to see when using multiple video cards. With both nvidia's SLI, and it's ATI counterpart's CrossFire, given that you have two identical cards linked together, the max performance change you'll see is roughly +20%, which, to me, is like 1/5th of a card for 100% of the price.
These technologies are prone to bugs too. There was/is a problem called microstutter, where there is an inconsistency in the delay between frames rendered by the different GPUs, resulting in video movement to appear to stutter. Neither GPU can know for certain when the other is done rendering. Loads are split as proportionately as possible, but it's impossible to perfect.
That's not to say everyone has the same issue with SLI/CrossFire.
Just throwing out some observations I've made on the subject.

[chrisname]

Intel SSDs are said to be the best. AFAIK the Samsung SpinPoint F3 is still considered the best hard drive, although the VelociRaptor is faster (10,000 RPM vs. 7,200 RPM).

[slumpers]

An issue people tend to have when piecing together custom pcs is that they go for the absolute top of the line stuff. You end up paying vastly greater sums of money for what ends up being a ~15% increase in performance over middle-high grade stuff (a performance increase that usually is not a big deal). I just got a 240 dollar video card that plays every single game I own (except the horribly optimized Planetside 2, it keeps skipping the GPU and rendering on CPU) at max settings at 1980-1020 resolution. You can't future-proof your computer. Some of the GPUs on newegg retail for almost a thousand dollars and its a sure deal they will get out-preformed by a 200 dollar card in 3 or so years.

Multiple GPUs only come in handy if you're gaming at super high resolutions or with multiple monitors. And please dont buy an EVGA card. My EVGA GTX 560ti from 2011 crapped out on me unexpectedly while browsing the web, the EVGA card I bought to replace it was DOA.

32 gigs of RAM seems like a lot, but you said you're also doing 3-D modelling so go for it.

[3qX21hU5]

First I would like to say I understand where you are are coming from about it being not necessarily worth the money to get a 15% performance increase that you almost never will use. But I'm going to have to disagree with that to a extent. Yes most likely I don't need the top of the line stuff but if I'm totally honest with myself I want it just to say I have it if you know what I mean (I don't mean rub it in peoples faces). Some people might call that shallow or whatever but I don't really care, I spend very little on myself and about the only thing I do buy for myself is Computer Hardware and Software. Its my hobby, I don't think of it as well I might never use this piece so I wont get it. I think of it as well now I got this upgrade for my computer now I need to start saving for the next top of the line upgrade for my CPU ect. Its all about fun for me not being practical ;p. Also I would love to go for some Overclocking records (I will never break any but I would like to try).


Anyways some points I want to point out. I think I worded my first post wrongly. I'm not planning on buying all the hardware I posted I actually own all of them I posted other then the RAM.

Thanks for the suggestions on the SSD's and RAM i'm currently looking at some new choices after reading the advice here. As for graphics cards I absolutly hate XFX and I will not buy their products ever again. Lets just say I had a bad experience with their graphics cards. I still think they are a good brand but just wont buy from them personally.

On the multiple GPU topic, I think I actually might get another card just because I will be running three 27 inch monitors with 3D vision setup and for reasons I posted above. One question I have though is would two 680's be the same performance as one 690? I heard that only difference between the two is that the 690 would consume less power. Other then that 2 680's out preform.


That again for the advice and any more is welcome. And i hope I don't come off as some rich jerk. I actually not even close to rich, I just put money away from each paycheck after I pay bills and use that for computer parts.

[3hM2Nwbp]

I'll vouch for the ASUS Sabretooth series. I used the Z77 model in last year's build and it's been running almost 24/7 ever since with no hicups. I can't recall the exact build parts, but I used an Ivybridge line processor along with a meager 80gb SSD. The new build cut compilation times from 5 minutes to 25 seconds which impressed me greatly.

_{My build was the vision of Albatross the Legendary, who inexplicably vanished a while ago...}