Help with building a new PC.

[Deadgye]

Well, my old desktop is going to hit 6 years old this christmas so I've decided it's time to build something new so I can join my friends on TF2 and D4D1/2 and get ready for ffxvi. I'm trying to go for something under 1,300 and I'm open for advice. This will be my first time putting a computer together for myself so I'm not planning to attempt water cooling, but I do plan to overclock. (Although I don't plan to overclock everything to it's max.)

Case: I'm planning to get myself an Antec Twelve Hundred case, with 5 120mm fans(3 front, 2 back) and 1 200mm fan(top) I'm hoping that the stock cooling will be enough for me. There's also room for 2 optional side 120mm fans that wouldn't really cost much extra to add on. I've been able to find this by itself for ~125 dollars, but I'm attempting to hold out for a combo deal. (I previously missed an antec 1200 + 750W antec PSU + 1TB Seagate HDD for 250.)

CPU: I've already bought myself an Intel Core i7 920. Its batch number is 3937A806. It's what I'm basing my computer around so I figured I might as well get it since it was available for 217.25 after tax. It should be possible to overclock this 2.66Ghz all the way to 4Ghz, but I don't think I'll go higher than 3.6Ghz or 3.8Ghz.

PSU: I've manged to spot an Antec EarthWatts 650W PSU for 90 dollars and I'm fairly sure that should be enough power, but I'm not entirely sure so I'd appreciate any advice in this area. I'm holding off on this as well, hoping that I may find a deal similar to the one I mentioned I missed before.

GPU: I actually have no clue what to get here. I want to go the ATI route over Nvidia because they're more familiar to me. I don't want to spend over 300 dollars on a gpu, but I would prefer it if I didn't have to go too much over 200. I was thinking about trying to go for the Radeon HD 5850? I don't plan to CrossFire/SLI at all.

MoBo: The motherboard I've been looking at is the Asus P6T Deluxe V2, but I'm been wondering if it's overkill lately. For instance would the P6T work just as well? I haven't had much luck with finding the deluxe for a good price, everywhere seems to be around 290 dollars. I'd greatly appreciate some criticism and advice in this area.

Ram: I don't really know anything about ram brands, but I was able to find an OCZ Gold 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3 12800 for 115 dollars and was wondering if this was a decent deal or if the ram was just crap. I've also found Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3-1600 (PC-12800) CL8 for ~150. I want to end up with either 6GB or 8GB of ram. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

HDD: I found myself a Seagate 1TB drive for ~80 dollars. Probably going to go for this unless I can find myself a combo deal.

Sound Card: I'm not planning on getting a sound card, is this a good choice? I don't have a real sound system, just some 6 year old speakers so I didn't think it would make much of a difference. If there's a huge difference after getting a surround sound system, then I could always just buy a sound card then and add it in the same time I get around to buying the system right?

DVD Drive: No clue, although I don't really think this part is going to be hard to find when I decide to start looking for one.
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I don't intend to have this computer put together until around christmas or maybe a little after, so I've been debating between jumping on some deals and waiting for some things. For example, my dad says ram should be going down after christmas, but I don't want to just blindly follow what he says and would like multiple opinions.

[fishstix]

The PSU has enough power and is of a good brand too. For the video card, the 5850's a good choice, if you want to go cheaper, the older 4890 goes for around $180 and should be enough to run most games at max these days. My nvidia gtx260 ($135) can run Aion, L4D, COD4/5/6 at max, for reference, the 4890 is similar to the gtx275 ($230). For the motherboard, imo if you're not doing serious recordbreaking OCing, any board should work fine.

For the harddrive, I'd stick with Western Digital for performance/reliability. It'll be a little more expensive, but 2 500gb drives with 32mb cache running in a Raid 0 setup would outperform the 1tb and stay cooler (I think). DVD drives/burners are really cheap these days, maybe look into blu-ray. There are some cheap ram going on sale from newegg, but with a $1k+ budget, you should be able to get everything you need.

[Deadgye]

Cutting back on the motherboard will help me a lot cash-wise, as I don't plan on doing serious hardcore overclocking, so that's good to know. I don't plan on buying a blu-ray drive, since I own a PS3 and will be playing any blu-ray media through that. I hadn't considered RAID0ing hard drives before.. but I might actually look into that now.

[fishstix]

Newegg is selling the 640gb, 32mb cache WD caviar black for $50 for a BF special. Pretty good price considering I spent $65 on a 500gb version just 3 weeks ago D: Grab 2 of these and you'll be good to go!

[Deadgye]

Hmmm, I was going to buy those drives after you suggested until I saw that they were Bare Drives and not retail, and now they're sold out anyway. If I was to buy a bare drive I would need to also buy the correct cables and everything as well too, unless I'm mistaken. Not something I really want to do as it will increase the price.

I ended up buying the case for 140 dollars after tax, and got an Antec EA 750W for 90 dollars minus a 15 MIR.

Since the P6T Deluxe V2 seems to be a bit overkill, I was looking at the P6T, which I can get for 192+tax. It seems to be a good deal, but I'm not sure if I should wait for a while to see if the prices on motherboards will go down. Same deal for ram, I think those 3 sticks of 2g corsair ram might be worth it at 150 dollars.. but my dad says ram usually goes down a lot at/after christmas. Back to the GPU.. I've been looking at the 5770 as an cheaper alternative to the 5850.. but it only has a 128bit bus, so I think I'm going to try and wait for the 5850s to go down in price. For reference, what resolution were you playing those games at max settings in?

[aGhast]

Regarding bare hard drives: If you're planning to purchase a retail motherboard, a bare hard drive won't be an issue. The only cable you'll need is a SATA cable and most retail motherboards come with at least two if not four.

As far as GPUs go, you might wait. I have a 5770 myself and am very pleased, but I also don't have a i7 920. I think when the 5850 drops a bit it'll be the real sweet spot. Depends on how long you want to wait though. At the same time, a 5770 will have no trouble with TF2 or L4D.

Lastly, if your monitor supports HDMI, you can put the sound through either the 5770 or the 5850. Otherwise onboard will probably be fine for gaming and mulimedia purposes.

EDIT: I misread the Crossfire portion

[geno]

If you aren't pushing to go hardcore overclock then you don't need to buy a hugely expensive mobo. It could help, but I think it is a fine place to save a little bit. I'm not well versed on current mobos so I can't really give you a good suggestion or recommendation, but I can tell you from my experience on my slightly older rig that I was able to get a hell of a lot out of my C2D e8400 on a fairly cheap gigabyte board. One thing to watch out for though with some cheaper overclocking boards is how it handles cooling, particularly for the northbridge. You may end up wanting to get a cheap 40mm fan and/or replacement heatsink to really be safe for a lot of boards, and in most cases this will still add up to be significantly cheaper than more expensive boards.

If you can find room in your budget for it, a nice fast RPM or even Solid state disk can be pretty awesome as an OS partition and can help tremendously with startup and load times if thats important to you. Might not be, or might push other parts out of your budget though so its not an easy thing to fit in but its something to consider.

As far as graphics go, with the possible exception of FFXIV (which we can't really know yet), like fish said, you are going to be able to get a lot out of a cheaper card. That said, you have a damn i7 920, lol. People often push for the cheap cards because they aren't getting as much out of the more expensive ones anyways with cheaper CPUs. If I was buying right now, I'd really like the 5850, but I'll admit its not the sweet spot solution for your setup given its current price imo.

Still, its probably the card I'd go with in your situation. It'll give you the best future proofing with DX11 and whatever other crap they throw on those new cards that doesn't see use for awhile (though there are no guarantees with how effective/important that will be - look at DX10 lol). It's got the obvious single slot thing going for it, giving you some more leeway on the mobo if you aren't looking to pair it up at a later date (a 5770 might be better for that anyways). Volume and power consumption should also benefit from this.

It really comes down to personal preference and a gamble on what you'll be playing come next year, or the year after that, and however long after that you keep the PC up and running. Price/performance is nice, but sometimes longevity is worth it when you can't wait out a price drop.

[Deadgye]

Regarding bare hard drives: If you're planning to purchase a retail motherboard, a bare hard drive won't be an issue. The only cable you'll need is a SATA cable and most retail motherboards come with at least two if not four.

Ah, that's good to know. Really will open up the number of drives that I can look for.

If you can find room in your budget for it, a nice fast RPM or even Solid state disk can be pretty awesome as an OS partition and can help tremendously with startup and load times if thats important to you. Might not be, or might push other parts out of your budget though so its not an easy thing to fit in but its something to consider.

I'd love to get myself a ssd, but they're not yet worth the cost imo. When the prices finally fall down to acceptable levels, I will be buying one asap.

I'm starting to lean towards the 5770 now.. only because of how rare the 5850s are. I'm looking at 300-340 for a 5850, whereas it's only 175 for a 5770. In the future I could crossfire two 5770's for about the price of a 5850 and pretty much beat it on anything that scales normally. If the 5850's would go down to their msrp of 260 then I would probably buy one..