Lookin to get new desktop, need a tech pro to look over

[quackinz]

Hey broskiis

Ive been looking into getting a solid gaming desktop for awhile. I checked out the alienware/dell/hp websites and I saw some pretty sweet rigs but I thought the cost was a bit much. Soo I decided to build my own. I have pretty much no expierience with computer hardware but I like the challenge and I've heard its really not that hard.
Anyway I did a bit of research over the past couple days and came up with this build. Let me know what you think and also if there are any compatibility problems. Any suggestions would be great too.

Graphics card: EVGA GeForce GTX 460 Superclocked EE 1024 MB DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 2DVI/Mini
Power supply: Corsair CMPSU-950TX 950-Watt TX Series
Optical Drive: Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Internal 12XReadable and DVD-Writable Drive with Lightscribe SH-B123L/BSBP
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Blue 16 GB PC3-12800 1600mHz DDR3 240-Pin SDRAM
Heatsink: Corsair Hydroseries H60
CPU: i7-960 Processor 3.20 GHz 8 MB Cache Socket (I plan on figuring out how to overclock it to ~ 4.0-4.2 GHz if thats possible without anything blowing up)
Harddrive: Crucial 256GB m4 SSD 2.5" SATA III
Motherbord: ASUS LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Motherboard Rampage III Formula
Tower: Cooler Master HAF 932

I plan on using this for a bit of WoW, some heavy starcraft 2 which I'd like to run on fairly high settings and stream, and some random FPS's like BF3 and MW3

 

[amanikshot]

Okay except go for an lga1155 socket (motherboard) and a 560 instead of the 460 it's just better for new games

 

[Sneak_Safe]

Hey Man i just got a New set of ram From Aquafire Technologies it dosent have pictures but the customer service was pretty good and the price was awsome but i was speaking to them and they said they can get most other parts in if i email them with a list of what i wanted. check them out.

 

[detox1]

probably overkill on the PSU and the ram.

 

[TechieAbe]

I agree with detox, 12GB's of RAM is overkill, the most you would need is 8GB's, it will also save you some money. Also the Power Supply, unless you're going to be using two graphics cards, would be nice, but even for that, a 950Watt Power Supply is a lot for the build that you have picked out.

As for the SSD, you should go with something like a 20GB SSD for booting and a bigger traditional Hard Drive to store all of your data on, mostly because 256GB SSD's cost quite a bit of money, plus if you're going to be gaming 256GB's really isn't that much space for installing games onto.

 

[Indigo]

I agree with most of what it said, however some alternatives to the reasons.

Socket 1366 is dead. The i7 960 while a fine CPU, won't hold a candle to the i7 2600 series in most tasks. Since you'd have to drop the 1366 and go to 1155, you can also drop the RAM to 8GB because 1155 is only dual channel and not triple channel (1366 is triple channel, which is why you'd have to buy three sticks of RAM vs two for 1155)

I disagree with the SSD recommendation however. 20GB is far too small to squeeze Windows 7 onto and still expect to be able to install a couple of programs. I realize folks are into value propositions by recommending it, but the 20GB SSDs are also dog slow compared to some of the newer 120GB models. You can pick up a 128GB SandForce SSD for under $200 and still install Windows 7, StarCraft II and a few dozen other programs just fine. Buy two, put them in RAID 0 and not even worry about disk space for a bit.

The other thing worth mentioning is that you can drop the i7 to an i5, and while you lose hyperthreading, the i5's are stellar overclockers, and you get 90-95% of the performance of the higher i7's.