spider

Thanks for the big reply! Why do you recommend the MSI Z87-G45? It doesn't seem to use one of those great Intel NICs. I do appreciate your recommendations of RAM! I heard that for Haswell and overclocking, RAM timings are important, clock speed not so much. And in the past, I've always gone with Kingston and nothing has ever broken.

Thanks for the reply. I kind of want to stick with Intel and Nvidia because of bad experiences in the past, perhaps also slightly fanboy-ing. I do appreciate that article about SSDs, thank you very much! Do you have any recommendations for RAM on a Haswell system? Or would you again suggest the Patriot Viper 3 memory you recommended in the AMD build?

700€-850€ for CPU, CPU cooler, motherboard, SSD and RAM. I already have the case, PSU and GPU. The variation of 100€ is because I'm still deciding on whether I really want the 4770k or perhaps go for the 4670k. And the PSU is fairly new, I just replaced it earlier this year.

Simple editing and rendering of 1080p gameplay footage for YouTube, just cutting it together without special effects or anything, nothing fancy really. Gaming performance is the main priority. As for the budget: the SSD should be around 100€ CPU cooler shouldn't be more than 120€ RAM should cost around 120€ - 150€ I'm pretty much set on the motherboard, but if you can convince me on a "better" motherboard in the price range (+-30€), I would welcome that. I just want to get really "solid" parts, so that my system can last at least 3 years, both in terms of build quality (i.e. nothing breaks) and performance (not be considered slow). So that's why I want to invest a little bit more now, rather than go for completely budget-grade components, like I did for my previous build (I regret my choice of motherboard).

Thanks, I will check it out.

I've had another look at the Evo. Tom's Hardware says that it doesn't use cross-die redundancy, however their sizes are multiples of 120GB, not 128GB. Do you know why that is? I thought SSD manufacturers only do that because of things like SandForce's RAISE technology.

Whoops, you're right, they introduced that with the 500 series. My bad.

Damn, totally forgot to say that. A 64GB one would suffice actually, but I can't find any nowadays, so a 128 GB one is perfectly fine as well. I've played a lot of Borderlands 2 over the last year, and I actually enjoyed the fact that I could offload PhysX to another card. But perhaps I might just try and find a good price to sell it.

Hi guys, I'm looking to upgrade my current PC to Haswell.The main purpose of this PC is to be a quiet but powerful gaming PC (mostly Battlefield 4 in the long run but also just about every AAA game), as well as dabbling into video editing with Sony Vegas and recording with Dxtory. For extra information, I live in Germany, the budget you can probably gather from my current component choice, I'm currently running 2 monitors at 1920x1080@60Hz. I might in the future look for an additional 120Hz monitor (not for 3D), though since I probably will not run SLI, I will stick with single monitor gaming. My current (old) specs are currently: i5-760 @ 3.8GHz on an Asrock P55 Pro motherboard be quiet! straight power e9 700w PSU (want to keep) GTX 660Ti (want to keep) GTX 460 (want to keep) Fractal Design Define R4 (want to keep) Samsung 830 120GB and 60GB I'm looking to upgrade to an i7-4770k. So I'm looking for input and help for the questions I have with the parts: CPU cooler: After doing a huge amount of research, there are a few contenders, but also reasons why I didn't choose them, however if I'm wrong, please correct me: Noctua NH-D14. The best CPU cooler using air, imo, but I want to go with an AIO water-cooling setup Corsair H110. Personally I wanted to go with this one, however some forum posts suggest that the spacings are not compatible with the mounting option on the top of my case (Define R4) NZXT Kraken X60. Apparently it's the same OEM product as the H110. Just about fits in my case, but quite expensive. Corsair H100i. Currently the one I'm going for. It is over 40€ cheaper than the X60 with just about the same performance (though I can't mutter "release the Kraken!" to myself). One problem I heard though is that it's a bit loose on Socket 1150 for some. I'm planning on replacing the H100i fans with Noctua NF-F12 (I already have one), have them in a push configuration pointing out of the case, so that heat is pushed out at the top, and taking in from the front, bottom, side and back. Motherboard: I want to go for the Asus Maximus VI Hero (C2). This is because it uses a good Intel NIC, has good onboard audio, a great BIOS, and overall I'm impressed by the Asus quality that I heard from around the Internet. I have a question though. I currently have to graphics cards, a main one (GTX 660Ti) and a dedicated PhysX one (GTX 460Ti). The Hero has 2x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (red ones), in addition to a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (back one at bottom). Is it correct to assume that if I populate one red slot with the main gpu, and the black slot with the PhysX card, I will get the full PCIe 3.0 x16 worth of bandwidth on the main red one, and the full PCIe 2.0 x16 on the red one? And will that be the best setup to go? SSD: Currently I have 2 Samsung SSDs, 60GB for Windows and Programs Files, and 120GB for games. I want to replace the 60GB one with another ~64GB or ~128GB SSD, because it is now almost 2 years old, and I just don't trust SSDs enough yet (heard horror stories of them failing completely and instantaneously). I might use the 60GB for Intel Smart Response SSD caching. I've narrowed my options down to the Samsung 840 Evo and the Crucial M500. I'm leaning far more towards the M500 because of cross-die redundancy, as well as the 840 Evo missing power loss protection. On the other hand, the 840 Evo is a heck of a lot faster, but I think I'll stick with safety over speed. The Kingston HyperX 3k is too old now, right? Memory: Too be honest, surprisingly I have given no thought into this area because there are so many option, I wouldn't know where to start and what to look for. However I think I'm initially going to go for 16GB worth of whatever you recommend. And it should be optimized for gaming, though I don't know what that entails. Sorry for the wall of text guys, but I hope you can help me in any of these areas, or constructively criticize my choice Cheers!