It's time for me to seek desktop advice, Mark II

[viper37]

Considering I won't do SLI/crossfire, do you think it woulkd be sensible to trim the PSU to 700 watt? Or even :gasp: 650W?

L.

Even with SLI/Crossfire, a good 700w would be sufficient.  If you plan going TRI-SLI/TRI-Crossfire at some point, you could still upgrade the power supply then.  I'm assuming you don't want to got that way in 6months-1yr time.

[Pedrito]

Ok, other questions:

what's the quality of the heat fans that come boxed with the cpu? I doubt I'll ever perform any kind of cpu overclock, but never say never; should I invest in a third-party cpu fan, and what's the correct price for a medium quality one?

L.

[Grey Fox]

I always found them to be of sufficient quality.

[viper37]

Ok, other questions:

what's the quality of the heat fans that come boxed with the cpu? I doubt I'll ever perform any kind of cpu overclock, but never say never; should I invest in a third-party cpu fan, and what's the correct price for a medium quality one?

L.

I always found them to be crappy.
(nod to GreyFox )

You need to replace them every year or so because they make noise.

Get a good Zalman fan, you'll be good for life with this.

[Pedrito]

HA! Finally did it; I was forced to use two different retailers because of short supplies.

The final lineup:
Case: CoolerMaster CM 690 II Advanced
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W 80Plus Bronze
Main Board: ASRock 1155 P67 Extreme4 B3 ATX
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3Ghz 6MB 1155 boxed (with the crappy original fan)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B 1600MHz 8GB (2x4GB
OS HDD: OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Data HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB 3.5" Intellipower 64MB SATA2
Video Card: Asus ENGTX460 DirectCU/G/2DI/1GD5 GeForce GTx 460 Core 675MHz Memory GDDR5 3600MHz
OS: Win 7 Home Premium 64bit

All of this comes at around €1100. Seems a fair price

Now I have another 200 euros to spend on a new monitor and maybe a fan for the cpu.

L.

[katmai]

let me know how you like the cpu as same one i'm gonna grab.

[Pedrito]

Goods will be delivered saturday or monday, assembling will be made during the following weekend, I think.

In case of anything malfunctioning, voodoo dolls and sharp needles for every contributor to this (and the older) thread are ready.

I'll let you know about any issues I'll stumble upon, it's several years since I assembled my last PC.

L.

[Grey Fox]

My replacement board is stock in the UPS system.

Damn it. I hate when companies use UPS. It sucks!

[katmai]

Yeah i dont' have the free time to build the pc till like easter, so content to wait to for newegg to have the mobo i want in stock.

And GF i'm having to use UPS as Fedex wants twice the money for same delivery speed.

[Grey Fox]

It's all paid by Asus but it's still annoying as hell.

[Pedrito]

Case, motherboard and CPU arrived today!

..the remaining material is yet to be sent 

L.

[Norgy]

Case, motherboard and CPU arrived today!

..the remaining material is yet to be sent 

L.

katmai probably got them.

[Pedrito]

Case, motherboard and CPU arrived today!

..the remaining material is yet to be sent 

L.

katmai probably got them.

Considering the quality of local delivery services, it's more than possible 

Nah, the pieces arrived this morning, all seems in order, tonight or maybe tomorrow I'll start assembling it.

I still need:
a crappy DVD writer (i could cannibalize my old pc);
a good monitor (didn't want to e-buy it before having seen some different models live in some hardware store);
and the 3rd-party cpu fan is still under scrutiny: first I'll try the OEM one; if it's noisy, or not efficient, I'll probably go for a Corsair A50. My main concern is the height of the thing, I suspect I'll have to precisely calculate the millimeters of case clearance 

L.

[Pedrito]

assembled everything last night, it seems I did not fry anything, it works like a charm
Although, while clamping the cpu down, it made a horrible cringing noise that made me fear I beheaded all the 1155 pins.
Installed only win7 by now, I'll keep you posted about any issues I'll get while installing BIOS updates, drivers etc.
The SSD works wonders, from bootup to ready for work it seems there are about 15-20 seconds. SuperVanilla Windows only installed, though, no other apps.

I am happy

L.

[katmai]