I think that my motherboard might be going bad because my computer keeps on rebooting randomly and when I use headphones (3.5mm headphones and USB Headphones) I can only hear sound out of the left headphone piece. I took out the power supply and used a power supply tester on it and the power supply tested green (pass), I'm still not too sure about the power supply though because while it does start up fine it just restarts randomly so since it starts up fine it might be passing the power supply voltage test. I tried clearing out the CMOS but it didnt help to resolve the reboot issues. Anyways, I requested an RMA for the power supply so ill try out the new one when I get it to see if the problem still persist once I switch out the power supply, if it does it looks like ill have to upgrade this year by force because im still using an i7 920 LGA 1366 CPU but the 1366 motherboards are discontinued now. I wanted to wait until next year when Haswell-E CPU's are released because they will come in 6-8 cores and have big upgrades to ram on the new motherboards (DDR4 RAM vs current DDR3, 4 channel ram vs current 2 channel) but that probably wont happen until mid or late 2014 and my system seems to be on its last legs. Since I might have to upgrade soon, can anyone recommend a good Haswell setup for CPU Cooler, Motherboard, and RAM ? I was thinking of getting the i7 4770K Haswell CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116901 for motherboard I was looking at a couple of them but I cant decide between these models: GIGABYTE GA-Z87-D3HP (benchmarks well, lots of USB 3.0 ports, lowest price, only has the essentials) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128590 ASUS SABERTOOTH Z87 (has one of the best benchmark scores of all the Z87 boards, Asus quality, good amount of PCIx1 slots, gamer quality board) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131976 ASUS Z87-DELUXE (benchmarks as well or better than the Sabertooth, has 2 more USB 3.0 slots than the Sabertooth, 1 more PCIx1 slots than Sabertooth but cost $30 more) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131978 I dont really plan to run a SLI setup so I wont need more than one PCI-E 3.0 slot, im also open to other suggestions if there is a better Z87 motherboard out there. What do you guys recommend for motherboard/ram/CPU cooler for a Haswell build? thanks - Reinier
Current boards from the platform you mention (Haswell-E/Ivy-E/Sandy-E) have always have quad channel RAM, it is the mainstream platform that still runs dual channel. Not that it matters, you dont need the bandwidth on anything except when using the integrated graphics on a high end AMD APU. For anything else single channel DDR-1866 is even enough speed and bandwidth. What we really need are latency improvements. Nothing has changed much since the very first DDR1 days in terms of latency, and in some cases we have even taken steps backwards. The introduction of DDR4 is both good and bad, good in that we need it in some situations. But those situations are very few and far between in the desktop, and non-existent for gaming. Bad because for the first year or so, we will actually have LESS performance when using DDR4 than current DDR3. This is because as always, the frequency/timings/controller speed ratio takes a big hit until technology matures. The best thing to do would be to stay with a DDR3 platform till 2015. Hyper-threading only helps in certain situations where you need a lot of threads, which is not many. Some games even run worse on processors that use hyper-threading. I would just stick to the 4670K. Games will start to use more threads soon, but Intel's implementation sucks ass for threading so you wont get very much benefit from a HT processor, because the extra threads only do something when the main thread is stalled. Stalls dont happen nearly as much as we dont want some portion of a game being stuck in limbo every so often from hyper-threading, which is why some games take a performance hit from this feature. You really want to go with real cores only for gaming performance. On the motherboards, the Sabertooth looks to have beefier VRM's even if it is less phases than the Deluxe. They will both be adequate though since you will get to a voltage and heat limit on the CPU before you get to a power delivery and stability limit on the motherboard. I would NOT do the Gigabyte D3HP though, it has sucky VRM. The regular D3H is a far better board for only $5 more, or even better the UD4H. A midrange Gigabyte is probably a lot better deal than an ASUS board. The same features can be had for $50-75 less. ASUS does have the best power delivery, but unless you are going into extreme tweaking you wont care about that. RAM can be pretty much anything from Mushkin or GSkill. I am preferential to Mushkin, and a lot of people here have tried out Mushkin and really liked the sticks too. GSkill is plenty great too and usually a few Dollars cheaper. Mushkin support is far superior though, and it is an American company. Both company's use the same IC's in the sticks though, and all are produced in Asia. It really comes down to if you want expert level support in stability tweaking for your RAM if you have issues, and if you plan to overclock the RAM or not. Generally Mushkin has higher grade chips in their RAM sticks than GSkill. All will run at rated speeds, but higher grade chips allow for better OC headroom. Mushkin Redline would be comparable to high end GSkill Trident series RAM. If all you want is stock speeds then save the few bucks and buy the GSkill. EDIT: Even though I dont like Corsair RAM anymore, if you go with the Gigabyte UD4H you can get a great deal on 8GB of Corsair RAM. It saves $40 from the combo, and then a $25 MIR on top brings the cost of the 8GB of RAM down to $10. Cant really beat that. Cooling is kinda up to you on budget. You can go with a high end solution like the Swiftech H320, or Corsair H100. Or something much cheaper like the Enermax ETS-T40 TB or Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. Both are excellent coolers for the money and will get you into the low to mid 4GHz ranges. Spending more on say the Swiftech would get you probably closer to 4.6-4.8GHz in speed depending on what you are willing to do to the CPU. Only you can determine if the extra 300-400MHz are worth the extra $60-80 additional cost. Hard to find a Switech in the US though, due to legal reasons.
Enigma said every single technical thing I could think of saying and a few I couldn't think of. With the above said I had a similar problem once and found my wall outlet to have a flaky ground that the PS didn't care for. I grounded the outlet properly (don't ask) and I didn't have a problem after that.
Yeah, stick with the top end i5 for the sweetspot in performance. Going higher up brings you very little. I like Crucial RAM, because they're fab, not just a memory packager. I've got a 16gb DDR1600 low-voltage kit that can reach some screaming speeds. Newegg had a free 8gb stick deal that was decent (maybe doing it again?) might as well just stick with that.
You make great points and I do realize now that your right, when DDR4 first hits the market it probably wont be as stable or reliable as the current DDR3 ram sticks that have been out for years and are in their golden age if you will (height of maturity) Awesome, so only stick with real cores not HT cores, I still think that its better to go with Haswell instead of Ivy Bridge-E though because there are games coming out now that use some of the tech only available in Haswell (like Total War: Rome II) and in the benchmark test Haswell performed about the same as the Ivy Bridge-E, the 6 core Ivy Bridge only performed better when performing advanced calculations (video editing) or multi tasking. I was reading the reviews on some of the Z87 Intel boards and I narrowed it down to two boards, which of these two boards do you think is a better buy? GIGABYTE GA-G1.Sniper M5 (6 USB 3.0 ports, 6 SATA 6gb/s, E2201 LAN chipset, Creative onboard sound) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-128-604 ASUS SABERTOOTH Z87 (4 USB 3.0 ports, 8 SATA 6gb/s http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131976 The thing that is a bit sketchy about the Gigabyte board is that they dont really list what the supported memory standard is like the Asus board, I looked on their website for the memory compatibility PDF and found this file: http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_g1.sniper-m5.pdf The Mushkin sticks it supports are only 2GB it seems but the Gigabyte board seems to have alot more bells and whistles than the Asus Sabertooth. Mushkin sticks usually have some of the best benchmark scores in test, I have tried G.Skill, Corsair, and OCZ but havent tried Mushkin yet. What im really curious about though is which of those two boards supports better ram and which overclocks better. I definetely want to do water cooling on this build but this will be my first time building a PC using water cooling so I want somthing that isnt too complex, I had previously built around 6 computers but all had been air cooled, never experimented with water cooling yet. I'm also going to need to upgrade my computer case, my Stacker 830 EVO is all beat up already, do you have any suggestions for a case for water cooling? I was thinking maybe one of these two cases: COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160 or COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Black Steel/ Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119225 I was also considering the Corsair Obsidian but I think it might be overpriced because its not full Steel/Aluminum, some reviewers were saying that its mostly plastic and it doesnt have USB 3.0 in the front. It could be the power outlet as well, I have the PC hooked up to a surge protector power strip but im running two power strips from that wall outlet so it might be a little bit overloaded. I purchased a UPS though which I am receiving tomorrow that I will use on my new build though, that should help protect my new investment. The faulty ground though still doesnt explain the headset audio problem, it could be that the audio on the motherboard is going bad as well but that motherboard has lasted me for 4-5 years so I think its about time to retire it.
Motherboard makers dont test every kit of RAM on the market, just a few. If something isnt listed that doesnt mean it isnt compatible at all, just that it wasnt tested. There are very few cases where a kit of RAM will actually be incompatible, unless you are talking about server hardware. Pretty much all RAM sticks use chips from either: Samsung, Micron (Crucial), Elpida, Hynix, or PowerChips. You generally dont see PowerChips anymore, not since early DDR3 days. Same with Hynix actually. Hynix BFR's (the chips of these batches started with BFRxxx, the most famous of which is the BFRH9C) were some very good high density chips when the first kits of the high density stuff was coming out. This was back in 2011 when good overclocking 4GB sticks were just hitting the market. Now days it is mostly Elpida, Samsung, and a bit of Micron. You can take educated guesses at what chips a RAM kit uses by its timings/speed/voltage. Samsung chips have "flatter" timings, something like 9-9-9 or 9-10-9 for example. Elpida will have timings much more like 9-11-9 or 9-12-10 type stuff. New Samsung chips are also low voltage, 1.35 and some higher speed sticks using 1.5v. Crucial chips are often sold as 1.35v sticks now too since both Micron and Samsung are producing newer 30nm node memory chips. All this to say, if there are a good number of RAM kits tested as compatible on a motherboard that are all using the same kind of chip, then other companies who sell RAM that also use those chips will be perfectly compatible as well. Most companies I have found do not usually test Mushkin sticks since it is a smaller less known brand. The average person usually looks at GSkill, Kingston, and Corsair. The Sabertooth may have more kits tested because it is a board designed for maximum stability and reliability. Sabertooth boards come with a 5 years warranty and are designed to last at least 5 years according to ASUS. They do not receive the latest and greatest bios like the ROG series boards because additional testing goes into the bios and compatibility. You usually see a bios release a month or two later than whatever new bios the ROG series just got, and a few less options in the bios for tweaking compared to some other ASUS boards. It still has plenty of options though for the average user. But this would be why you may see many more kits listed for the Sabertooth over another motherboard. The supported memory speed is partly about the motherboard, but also what speeds the memory controller (which is inside the CPU) supports. I believe Haswell still is only official designed for DDR-1600... Someone correct me if that is wrong though. Still, the Haswell memory controller is really nice and even though it may be spec'ed for lower speed, is fully capable or running DDR-2400+ fairly easily. Haswell will actually have an easier time running really high RAM speed than Ivy Bridge will because of enhancements the new core has received in its design. As for which motherboard, I have actually liked the G1 Sniper's a lot more lately, since they got rid of the crappy lookinig plastic heatsinks and moved in to real features. It has a very nice LAN chip and a really good audio section. It is a solid board as long as you dont need a lot of expansion slots and SATA ports. It could just be me, since a lot of people love overclocking on Gigabyte, but I have never once had good luck overclocking memory on a Gigabyte board. I dont know why. CPU overclocking will be fine though, and probably top out the same on either board since you will be limited by heat and voltage before anything else. Both boards have sufficiently adequate power delivery systems and VRM cooling. If you go with that Gigabyte board you might want to look at this thread: http://www.overclock.net/t/1401976/the-gigabyte-z87-haswell-overclocking-oc-guide I haven't read it myself, but it looks pretty relevant to you from skimming over it. As a side note, the Intel core i# processors run fairly well with just about any chips, but I see people pushing the new Samsung and Micron 30nm chips VERY far. AMD FX series seems to work well with Elpida, and cant push Samsung chips nearly as far as Intel processors can. AMD Trinity and Richland processors are similar to the FX series. And AMD Llano processors work best with Samsung chips, to the point where Hynix and Elpida can actually be unstable on a Llano CPU. If you really want to do some memory overclocking you may want to try and find Samsung "Wonder RAM", hard to find now days though since all the enthusiasts bought out the stock. The Wonder RAM is 4GB sticks of DDR-1600, using 11-11-11 timings (official JEDEC speed) and 1.35 volts. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147096. These kits usually overclock to anywhere between 2200-2600MHz on an Intel Ivy Bridge or Haswell processor. I even saw one or two people running past DDR-2700 speeds with them. Do you want to do a full water cooling loop, or a simple all-in-one water cooling system sold as a complete unit? The two I listed, the Switech H320 and Corsair H100 are AIO units, and while they are technically water cooling they would not be considered to be true water cooling by most people. Everyone calls the AIO's because that is what they are. A full custom loop will give you much better cooling performance, but also costs significantly more and takes more time to design and build. If you just got with an AIO then you dont need a special water cooling optimized tower. You just need a tower with the fan mounting that will fit whatever cooler you go with. If you go with something like the H80, it will mount to the standard 120mm fan exhaust on the back of the tower above the motherboard. A bigger kit like the H100 that uses a 240mm radiator will require a tower with dual 120mm fan mounts, usually at the very top of the tower but some people mount them on the case door too. Are the look of both those towers the style you are going for? Have you seen them in person? Just wondering because they are quite a bit different look from the Corsair Obsidian series. Myself, I go for more of the Obisian and Lian-Li styling with the flatter more elegant looking sides and front. Those CM HAF's look way too ugly for my taste, but I know a lot of people like them. If you havent seen any of these towers in person I suggest you go find a Microcenter or Fry's and take a look at them before deciding.
I'm leaning more towards the Asus Sabertooth board because of the extra SATA ports, thermal armor (I really like the way it protects vs dust and the back plate to protect the back of the motherboard from damage/warping), 5 year warranty, and because it seems more built to hold out on upgrades for a long time (I usually rebuild my system every 4-6 years, only upgrade video card every once in a while). I already have a new Creative Labs Z series sound card that I can use on it to get creative sound. I do wish that the Asus board had more USB 3.0 instead of so many USB 2.0 but I guess its a sacrifice in order to get more SATA ports (which I think are more important than extra USB 3.0 ports) The reviews on the Gigabyte board seem to be mixed too, half of the people say its awesome and love the features while others complain that it wont boot up or has driver issues. Here are some of the sites where I read reviews for it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-128-604 http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-BigFoot-Motherboard-GA-G1-SNIPER-M5/dp/B00CU4L6LQ/ Unless you know any ROG board for the Z87 chipset that might be better for me? I might pull the trigger on the Sabertooth soon (today/tomorrow) because Newegg has a special right now where if you buy $250+ and one of the items is an Intel or AMD motherboard you get $25 off your purchase for 24 hours only. For the case and water cooling, I only plan on water cooling the CPU, since it is my first attempt at water cooling an AIO kit would probably be best until I get more experience in building my own kits and more comfortable with water cooling. For the case I wanted something in Aluminum/Steel with minimal amounts of plastic and a good amount of USB 3.0 ports & audio connections in the front to plug in headphones, mic, etc. I was thinking of Cooler Master because the case that I currently have is a Cooler Master Stacker 830 and it held out pretty well, its a solid case but its starting to feel its age. Since I liked my stacker so much I figured that Cooler Master's newer cases must be pretty good too, and they seem to be pretty popular. I havent seen the Obsidian in person yet, I like the elegant and simplistic look of it but some reviewers were complaining that is has too much plastic on it for the price and no front USB 3.0 without a special add on adapter that is sold separately. I am open to suggestions though, I want to hear alot of feedback before buying the parts.
I have a very hard time justifying spending so much on a motherboard. If you need the ports, sure, if you plan on doing some crazy overclocking, maybe (we're talking much more than the "standard" 4.5ghz on an i5 sort of stuff). If you're going to do some crazy SLu right now. I can get the warranty argument to some extent...but a year's extra warranty, that'll replace something several gens out of date at that point, isn't worth $100+ dollars it takes to go to a Sabertooth over one of the standard Asus boards. Dust control just shouldn't be a worry if you get a decent case and put dust filters on the intakes. My personal favorite case(and the one I have) right now is the Fractal Design Define R4. Minimalist look. Super quiet. 2x120mm radiator port on top. Built like a tank. If you want a soundcard I'd suggest the mid-range Asus Xonar card. Sound cards are basically for caring about music quality these days and pretty much only if you've got stuff that's better than "typical" mp3 bit rate, IMO.
The reason im spending a little bit more on the motherboard for now is because since I want it to lasts me for several years I will probably have to do overclocking at some point so id rather get some of the best stuff available now instead of having to upgrade parts later on and take everything apart agian I'm one of those people that doesnt mind spending a little bit more initially as long as it will lasts me for a long time and has some future proof in it so I dont have to change parts too often to squeeze performance out of my hardware.
If you like the look of the Corsair Obsidian line you may want to check out Lian-Li and Fractal Design. Both have a similar style and the Lian-Li's are some of the most well built and solid feeling towers you can get. Most of their towers are a combination of steel and aluminum only, no plastic. Lots of metal = lots of $$ though. The cases can get expensive quick. Right now newegg has a deal on the Lian_li mid size towers though. Just make sure whatever you get is capable of mounting dual 120mm fans (read, 240mm water cooling radiator) somewhere on it to have compatibility with big AIO kits and custom loops if you go that way in the future. Usually if you want full water cooling you want to go with full sized towers though, which Newegg doesn't have on sale for Lian-li at this time :/ Rbstr's suggestion for a tower is a really good one too. If you want the extra SATA ports, the Gigabyte UD4H I mentioned before has 8 ports: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128617 ASRock can also be a good choice. They are a lower end board compared to Gigabyte and ASUS, but if you dont have problems in the first couple months then you probably will have a board that lasts a good few years: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157371
I'm not sure what your budget is for a case but I would suggest Caselabs for watercooling and ultra quality if you want ALL aluminium.
Right now Newegg has a bunch of SuperCombo deals for Haswell in this section of their website: http://www.newegg.com/Store/PromotionStore/ID-2200383 Here is a combo that caught my attention: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1326992 <---- 256gb Samsung Pro SSD, Asus Sabertooth, i7 4770k Haswell, G.Skill Trident X 16gb (2x8gb) DDR3 2400 RAM, $20 Newegg Gift card. Total Price = $932.99 shipped (has a $52.97 discount and a $20 gift card for a total discount of $72.97) It has alot of the parts that I need in that combo, comes with a gift card, good parts, and a discount for buying everything together. Edit: I ended up pulling the trigger on the above combo deal, I wanted to get it before the $20 gift card offer expires and in case Newegg decides to get rid of that combo deal. Here is what my system will have so far: - Intel i7-4770K Haswell CPU - Asus Sabertooth Z87 LGA 1150 Motherboard - G.Skill Trident X Series 16gb (2x8gb) DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) - 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD (Boot Drive) - 128GB Crucial M4 SSD (Gaming Drive, re-used from my old computer) - 2x Western Digital Caviar Black SATA III 7200 RPM 64MB Cache (re-used from my old computer) - Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z PCI-E x1 Sound Card - Cyberpower CP1500PFCLCD Sinewave 900 Watt UPS (to protect my new investment) Here is what I still need to buy/decide on: - Power Supply - Computer Chasis - Water Cooling - Video Card My old power supply was one of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003PJ6QVU/ which was a Corsair Professional Series AX1200 1200 Watt Modular Power Supply (Gold Rating) .... im not sure if I can re-use the same power supply since power supplies are starting to say "Haswell certified" now. For the drives im thinking of just picking up some blu-ray readers or burners so I can watch blu-ray movies on the computer but I have some unused gift cards for Wal-Mart I got from my job that ill probably use to buy those from their website to save some money (I have about $150 in Wal-Mart gift cards from my job).
I imagine the powersupply will work fine....Here's a list I found which includes the AX1200 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6953/sea-sonic-and-corsair-power-supplies-certified-for-haswell But you only need like half of that wattage if you're going single video card, if you're thinking of upgrading anyway. What's the budget for a videocard? Personally, for a sound card I'd go with the Xonar DX.
Haswell requires a certain quality of power supply if you use the C7 sleep state. Cheap power supplies do not have the regulation and capability to accommodate the C7 state because of very low 12v load with high 3.3v and 5v loads will cause the 12v rail to go way out of spec. When the processor comes out of C7 sleep the change in load with the too high 12v rail voltage can cause an over-voltage trip inside the PSU to protect your components. In your case, COrsair says these PSU's from their AX line are fully Haswell compatible: "AX (Gold and Platinum): AX650, AX750, AX760, AX850, AX860, AX1200". For anyone else who is concerned about their PSU when moving to Haswell and beyond, if you end up getting an OV trip and the computer shuts off when trying to leave sleep state, simply go into your motherboard bios and disable C7 state and you will be fine from then on. The difference of C7 and not C7 is a C6 state power draw of about 5-6 watts, and C7 which lowers power draw down to under 1 watt. Not a ton of savings, but every little bit helps. However I dont think the savings would ever outweigh the cost of a whole new PSU. If you can keep your old video card for a while longer that would be best. The next gen AMD cards will be out in another month or two and are looking really powerful. Nvidia will have their next gen out in the first few months of 2014. If you really want an Nvidia card but dont want to wait that long then the GTX 760 is a great value right now. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130933 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125470 I think the extra $45 is worth doubling the vram to 4GB on those cards. Next gen consoles are moving to 8GB of ram, split between CPU and GPU though, but that still means 4-5GB of vram usage on new consoles. Current consoles have 512mb of vram and to get the same quality on PC you need 2-3x that amount, with high quality settings using about 2GB these days. If you plan to keep all this hardware the same timeframe as your current computer then 2GB will be quite small in 2-3 years from now and not adequate for PC gaming. In 5 years time it would not surprise me in the least if PC games used up 8GB of vram. BTW, you have a pretty nice component list going now. Pretty much the highest of the high end.
I know its a little bit of overkill but its always good to have a little extra instead of being short on supply. Thanks for the link, if I dont need to buy another power supply that means ill save like $200-$300 on a power supply. I'd be willing to spend as much as $800 on a video card, I was actually thinking of getting a GTX 780 but im not sure if its better to SLI or get a single card. The Sabertooth motherboard supports 2 cards in PCI-E 3.0 mode so either one would be a good option. I have heard of issues with screen tearing though when running SLI but the benchmark scores are sometimes better than running a single card. I tried an Asus Xonar sound card before but it didnt have an optical out port built on to the card, it had an adapter that you plug into the card to get optical out. The adapter didnt seem to want to work with my Denon AVR-1912 so I had to return the Asus Xonar to Amazon.com and I just stuck with onboard sound after that but recently there was a special on Newegg.com where you purchase $250 or more and get $25 off your purchase and I needed to buy a UPS so I purchased the UPS which was like $195 and had to buy something else to reach the $250 so I just got that Sound Blaster Z card which was $98 so I can have creative audio in my games. It has pretty good reviews and Optical in & out ports. Hopefully the card works well on the new build.
I've got an old X-fi still kicking in my computer. Most of the time with sound cards if the card works properly and has the right ports it's "good enough". You'll be fine with that then. I think single-card is way better just because it's way less hassle. I've got a GTX780 and the thing is a monster. 1440p no problem. It's also pretty quiet, which is nice. But if you're just at 1080p it's overkill. A 760 is a great deal. Or, if you have it in you, wait on next month's AMD cards, like he's saying. Even if they aren't for you it'll probably drop nVidia prices. PCIE 3.0 doesn't matter, from a practical standpoint.
Thanks for the info, I do actually use the "hybernate" feature on my computer alot because I can leave programs open and just continue where I left off when I come back from work or from going out somewhere. Sounds good if the prices on video cards are going to drop in a few months then it might be worth it to keep using my 470 GTX for a few more months, it will give me time to recover some $$ too It might help the prices of the GTX 780's to drop or maybe there will be a GTX 790/880 for the same price as the current GTX 780. Thank you I cant wait until I can start to use everything hehe.. I still have to decide on what water cooling and case to get though, ill most likely head to Tiger Direct (since I live in South Florida) on Saturday so that I can look at the cases in person. I also want to watch some of the videos of the different water cooling kits tonight when I get home from work to help pick out which one would be the best to use.
Most AIO water cooling from the various company's all use the same Asetek (sp?) design and are just rebranded or have very minor modifications. The best thing to do is of course look at benchmark reviews to see how well each kit cools, but dont compare one benchmark from one site to another since each site probably has different ambient temperatures and may be using a different software to read the CPU temp as well. Just compare between kits within each review itself. One of the most important things though is to see user reviews on how reliable a kit is, as some have had some bad batches of Corsair units with a good number getting leaks or the pump going out, which is also why you should check on customer service ratings for whichever company you are thinking of. One this site there are people with both Antec Kuhler and Corsair Hydro series coolers. Pretty much everyone has been happy with whatever they picked, but I think one person had an issue with their H100. Was it you Ryld who had that happen?
Check out this Water Cooling case review by Toms Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/switch-810-cosmos-ii-strike-x-hurrican-2000,3151.html
Yeah, my h100 was noisier than it should have been. I never bothered rattling their chain about it since I upgraded to the H320 anyway, I just stuck it out. The new h100i should be fixed though and not have that problem. A lot of h100s had a problem and corsair denied it ever existing for quite a while. Just search for the thread on OCN to find out about it. The cosmos will not fit the h320 or h220 if you want to mount it with the fill port up (recommended). Looks like the azza will give some trouble too. You can also order the swiftech h220/h320 from NCIX.ca and get it shipped to the US afaik.