Building a Gaming Rig

[Skoffer]

@Fuskox

Yeah I know someone who has put together 2 comps before so I’ll probably be fine. I’m going to get a 1 Terabyte Hard Drive, how large should the second one be that will have my OS? It’ll be Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.
Another thing. I’m trying to decide on hard drives and like I said, how large should the one with my OS be? And should my main HD be internal or external?

Your OS should be installed on an internal HDD. It would be pointless to install the OS on an external drive since it wouldn’t operate correctly, or most likely at all, on any other computer anyway. Also, if this is going to be a gaming rig, your internal HDD should also be where you plan to install your games. Otherwise, you risk losing performance due to the significant difference in BUS speeds between USB and SATA.

If you plan on Installing Windows 7 on it’s own drive, seperate from anything else, you will need at least a 20GB HDD for the 64 bit OS. You could get by with that, but I would recommend you get at least a 30 GB, to ensure that you have ample “virtual memory” available to the OS. Windows systems, regardless of the amount of RAM you have, will still hammer virtual memory.

Also, if you plan on using a brand new 1 TB drive as an external, be sure you get a quality enclosure for it. With the abuse that most external HDD take, you should avoid 3.5" drives for that purpose. 2.5" HDD are built primarily for mobile applications, and can handle more abuse. Get a 2.5" drive to stick in an external enclosure.

[JiB]

Looks like not too bad of a comp

I would have went with the blue/green team, but everyone has their preference

I would think hard about getting a new case. I used to love Antec cases, until I got a coolermaster. I got a HAF 922 and 932 and they are freaking huge fits a 480 no problem.

For the HDD, ssd’s are still way overpriced for what they are worth. I would just get 2 cheap 320’s or 500’s and put them in RAID 0 (unless youre anal about backing stuff up, then go with another type of array).

Finally the RAM, 2x4gb is prety good if you can afford it. However you may want to do some research into the problems with the board when running more than 4gb. I have a 790i and I cannot find a stable configuration to run 4X2gb.

All around a nice comp either way.

EDIT: Razer lycosa is a nice blue backlit keyboard for around 70 bucks, I have 2 of them and never had a problem with them.

[BaTz281]

Gah…I’m late to the party.

I didn’t see a second hard drive in your parts list - be sure you get at LEAST a 1TB drive as an external backup. When you load everything (OS, games, docs, music, etc) onto one HDD, and it crashes… yeah you’ll be screaming for a while. That said, you also “overpaid” on your hard drive, so to speak - you purchased the RE3, which is a RAID quality drive. Certainly, it should be a bit hardier than your average drive, but you may have been better suited to either A) get 2 of them and RAID or B ) get a 1TB Caviar Black FALS and save $50.

Regardless, definitely get yourself an external to backup to. And even then, I’d recommend only powering on the external drive when you do backups (I do this, that way the hard drive only runs for ~4 hours per week for a weekly backup, instead of 24x7).

The Antec 900 is plenty roomy, although I would almost agree with the USB header statement - it depends on how good you are at routing cables and the placement of the USB header on your motherboard.

Also, DEFINITELY get an aftermarket CPU HSF (heatsink/fan) - I have this guy and it keeps my Core i7-930 (overclocked from 2.8 to 4ghz) running at 42°C idle in a ~27°C room.

Otherwise you’ve got yourself parts for a very good system. Post pics of the build!

Picture of my current system (in-progress picture, I built it a month ago). That’s the Antec 900 and Hyper 212+ (vertical orientation really helps).