I almot choked when i saw a 400$mobo on your list =] You don't really need that kind iof mobo, you won't use even half of it's features. http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157295 - one you should be looking at. and you linked your cpu instead of SSDs. Other then that, it looks great.
On fans: More out than in unless you've got a decent bit of open mesh. Positive pressure is only anti-dust as much as your inlets prevent dust from getting in. That's as easily done with negative pressure. I'll have to check reviews again but I don't think people really like that CPU cooler. I'd go for a case like the Fractal Design R4 or NZXT something something that have a dual-fan radiator thing on top and get something like the Corsair H100 or the new Swiftech H220, which isn't quite out yet (All of these things are re-branded units from Asetek or COOLit anyway. except the swiftech). Your SSD link is an intel CPU. The WD red is a NAS drive - go Black or RE4 for the long warranty or Seagate Barracuda for performance. On the other stuff: If you're going to drop nearly 4x as much as you need to on a mobo go Sandy Bridge-e and get something to show for it. What features are you chasing that get you to that point? Take the money you'll still save from a modest SB-e mobo and go to dual 680s or a 690. I dono, to me it's just silly and money better spent on future upgrades. I'd save another $100 yet and get something like this http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131837&Tpk=Asus p8z77-v lk remember Sata6 is wasted on regular harddisks. Do you have an insane number of USB3.0 devices?
Wow that is one insane computer. I bet with that you will have the most powerful gaming computer out of everyone in XoO. I have always done negative pressure as well because the the idea behind it seemed like a better choice to me. And ya, although that MB is really nice I dont see you actually needing it. You will do just as well with an Extreme6, Sabertooth, or UD5. The Extreme 9 would be if you really needed the extra USB3.0 ports or need the extra SATA ports (like is the case with me) If you are wanting 3 monitors, you should probably get 3 of the same ones so that you dont see any difference in colors, contrast, and brightness between each monitor. That sort of thing drives me nuts. For a gaming monitor on the "cheap" you might want to consider this one: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236313 The extra smoothness from the higher Hz refresh really helps, and the other specs are really good too. If you do get this monitor, be sure to check out this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1730425 The SB-E actually has less performance than the Ivy Bridge processors, because they are still the older architecture. The Corsair units are a bit better, I was just hesitent to recommend one of them as I have an H100 and dont like it very much. But if people dont like the Water 2.0 Pro either then I dont really know what to recommend other than something that isnt out yet.
As i mentioned earlier, im somewhat outdated in what i know, last time i really looked hard at hardware, liquid cooling was something for utterly ludicrous bleeding edge overclockers who hacked this stuff together in their basements with a heatsink, some small pipes and a torch, and not in any way a viable option for your average (or even moderately advanced) PC builder. Units like the cooler i have linked did not really exist then in this form. So I was simply going based on a recommendation earlier in the thread, which suggested that particular one as a high end option (and im of the mind that cooler is better, universally). As for the motherboard... well, im really attracted to getting as many usb slots as possible.... i currently have 7 devices and 6 slots, which is immensely irritating. so getting something with a a total of like 10 slots will be quite nice. All of my current devices are 2.0, obviously, but i see no reason not to pitch for as many usb 3.0 slots as possible, since they work with 2.0 as well, and i wont have to worry about running out of 3.0 slots at some point in the not so distant future. I am also a rather fluid guy... i will evenly fill any container . i may not have a use for some of this stuff currently, but once i have it, i will be plenty motivated to learn about it, and most certainly will put it to use. Such as these extra fancy mobo options. And people think im a crazy multitasker now... wait untill i have 32gb of ram! *insane laugh* And i concurr about the matching monitors, that would drive me nuts as well, i have two at the moment and eventually got fed up and took a level to them to make it perfectly aligned XD
Depending on your location, it might be worthwhile to try and find a way to buy these in the US either at Microcenter or online and have them shipped to the US somewhere and then pick them up yourself. The markup on some of those items from the US site to the Canada site is pretty bad. Like that motherboard, over a $100 price increase just to buy on the Canada site
will give that a thought when i actually order the stuff, newegg USA is somewhat finnicky in what it will, and wont, ship to canada, so ill compare the prices and shipping costs to see where im getting the better deal
Don't think you'll find that mobo anywhere in Canada cheaper then on newegg. Its Canada we're talking about here =] a country where we use dog sleds to transfer files.
back in college, we used to joke that out on the prairies , they probably transferred files via smoke signal
Okay, as a final question... can i get some clarification about the HDD? Really, what i want there is reliability, i have two SSDs for all the speed i could want. Whats the difference between black and red?
Red is more geared for network attached storage drives and the black is designed as Western Digital's top performing drive. The warranty on the black is longer if you actually use the warranty. Hard drives these days are not reliable at all no matter what brand you go with, so dont be looking for that here. Those are what the solid state drives are for as your OS drive and gaming drive, in addition to the much faster speed. Personally I see no problem using a drive designed for mass network storage on a desktop computer, but some people dont like it. The main issue is it has some sort of timeout thing set for writes to deal better with a network storage OS to prevent the drive from dropping out of the array. If you really care about this setting being set lower than standard desktop drives then WD provides a tool to change the set point. I picked that drive because I dont really care about such things and it was much cheaper than the black or raid edition 4 drives. And since the whole point of this one big drive is for storage of all the random data, and that is what the red series is designed for, it seemed a good choice. We have been over hard drive reliability once or twice before here, but Ill recap my experience as short as possible: In the past some years I have used (in both personal computer and computers I have built for friends or work) somewhere between 9-15 hard drives. I dont remember the exact number off the top of my head. I have used Seagate, Western Digital, and Samsung. All have had failures, some much more than other brands. But in these years I have had something like 6 or 7 (or 8?) drives fail on me. 2 or 3 Seagate, 3 or 4 Western Digital, and 3 or 4 Samsung drives. And thats just talking about hard drives I have used, not including the 15 or so SSD drives I have had experience with. My current personal computer has 17 terrabytes of storage space, spread across 11 different drives. Of that space, 11.5 terrabytes are full and growing at an average rate of 20GB per day. I moved to an external DVD drive a while back because I couldnt waste a SATA port on such a rarely used device. Sicne I currently have 11 drives, I suppose that 9-15 drive estimate may have been a little low, its probably closer to 20 drives in the past 6 or 7 years.