Looking to build a system

As Deadend said, AMD's new generation comes out a little bit later this year. Rumors are it is supposed to be pretty fast. The architecture looks really promising on it. Additionally, Intel's new stuff also comes out at the end of this year too. But as for parts that are here right now:




Alright so I picked out a bunch of parts that I think will work much better. The i7-990x is nice and all, but it is an old generation processor that is not as good as the new gen. It may have additional clock speed and triple channel RAM compared to the new gen, but the triple channel is actually just as fast and the newer generations dual channel, and the 2nd generation runs much cooler, can overclock a lot farther, and runs faster per clock cycle. Meaning if you took a 1st gen at 3.45GHz and compared it to a 2nd gen at 3.46GHz, the 2nd gen would score higher even though technically both would be running at the same GHz speed.

The one thing I dont like about the 2nd gen stuff is that the graphics slots run at dual 8x lanes, compared to the first generations dual 16x lanes. But this isnt a real limitation right now as the performance difference between 8x and 16x on a dual card setup is only an average of 2 frames per second in games.


If you are set on that case then go with it, but otherwise this one is still really nice and much cheaper:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021
or:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129085

You need a quality power supply to get a reliable computer. And if you plan on running an overclocked processor and dual graphics cards then you also need a higher wattage power supply. This PSU is rated quite highly, is energy efficient, and has lots of power:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341045

DVD burners dont really matter. Just get any DVD burner rated at 24x or 22x speeds and is cheap:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136236

For the motherboard, I picked out the P67 Sabertooth as it has quality components on it and has a 5 year warranty:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131702

And the top end 2nd generation i7:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070

You are going to want a heatsink that can both cool the processor very well, and not block RAM slots. For this I have chosen the Prolimatech Megahalems Rev B and two high CFM fans. You will need to have the fan closest to the RAM slots up higher than it is intended to be in order to fit all your RAM, but this wont really hurt your performance. This is the heatsink I use and I am able to have dual fans and all my RAM slots filled up:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835242001

two of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185060

Now for RAM, the 2nd generation of processors really doesnt care about timings hardly at all. In the past there have been certain rules about RAM and timings and how it all works, and with this new generation those rules dont really apply anymore. All the processor cares about is the MHz. If you benchmark the RAM running with 1600 @ 9 timings it will only perform 2-3% better than RAM running with 1600@ 11 timings. So since the timings dont matter at all, I picked out the fastest RAM this processor can run. You will want two sets of these, for a total of 16GB of RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231468

As for the graphics, I have weighed the pros and cons of the 570 vs the 6970 and cant really make up my mind. On the one hand, the 6970 is faster, has more video memory and cooler running. But on the other, SLI with the 570 is a bit easier to deal with, the 570 is slightly cheaper, the 570 looks cooler. So you can choose whichever you want here. Im kinda leaning towards the 6970's since it has more video RAM, but there is not guarantee that games in the future will start using tons more video memory so the extra that these cards have may not even be needed.
two of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814261096
or two of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127581


And now about the SSD, you picked out a really nice one and I have been recommending that to lots of people. But now the newer 320 series has been put through all kinds of tests and really proven itself. So Id recommend the newer 320 series instead. Testing has shown that the 320 series is capable of more than 50GB of writes to the drive every day for 5 years before it would wear out:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167050

And you can use that same 1TB mechanical hard drive you picked, its a pretty nice one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185



So the price for all that should be around $2,231.84 or less. Saves about $600 fro the stuff you had picked out.
If you want to save more money, you can always run with a single graphics card and then you will also be able to get a cheaper power supply too. Doing that would save another $400.
The performance on this computer would be complete overkill for anything out today and would be usable for many years to come for gaming.

 

don't get a mid tower. get a full tower. mid towers will be tight and won't give you good airflow. Also, Palit and MSI are terrible IMO. Go EVGA for graphics cards.

 

Palit is terrible? I love Palit :/ Of course, I have only owned one card from them so I dont have a huge base to go off of, I was just going off my experience I have had with them in the past with one of my cards. Most of Palit's cards have custom made PCB's that are better designed and have better components than the reference design EVGA uses. The Golden cards from Gainward/Palit are really amazing too, those are the highest binned graphics cards you can buy and overclock really well.

From your reply, I went looking for reasons why people don't like Palit and have found that some cards in the past using some of their non-reference designs have had much higher death rates. But from what I have been reading, there are lots of good reviews from users about the 5## GTX cards and that they work really well.

Also, Guru3D tested this card and found its actual temperature is 11 degrees celcius cooler than a stock 570. It is one of the coolest running graphics cards of this generation actually. Noise level was one of the lowest of the cards tested as well.
Review:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/palit-geforce-gtx-570-sonic-platinum-review/1



AMD's new processor is supposed to launch late August or early September. So 2-3 months away. New chipset and CPU socket are already launched.
Intel's new motherboards, chipsets, socket, and processors are supposed to launch in November I think it was.
AMD's new product will hopefully bring Intel's 2nd gen stuff down in price a little bit.