Fel wrote:Intel I7 3.0 or 3.2 GHZ CPU
The only available i7 with a nominal core speed of 3.0 to 3.2 GHz is the
i7-4770S for about $310. The
i7-4770 costs about the same, but has slightly different speed and turbo settings. The
i7-4771 is more expensive at $320, at least on NewEgg.
You may find many users' favorite alternative in the
Intel Xeon E3-1230V3 though. The differences in clock speeds are negligible anyway, but this Xeon lacks the integrated graphics unit. It is in turn the cheapest Intel processor with hyper-threading at only $265 on NewEgg. Compatibility isn't a concern either, since both i7 and the Xeon fit on the same socket and usually run fine on all consumer motherboards.
Fel wrote:Non-SLI Asus motherboard (I don't need 3 monitors...I don't have ROOM for 3 monitors.)
The Asus Maximus Formula Z87 and Sabertooth Z87 are both good boards. Be aware though that they're premium products with a cost of $250 to $300, so they're likely wasted on you, if you don't plan to create a high-end rig with over-clocking and/or multiple graphics cards.
If you don't plan to spend a premium for the motherboard, you won't find much of a difference in quality between the entry- and mid-level offerings. Whether you choose a Z87-K for $110, a Z87-A for $140 or a Z87-PRO for $200, they're all essentially the same board with different feature-sets. You should only spend more if you need the additional features, the additional cost is wasted otherwise.
Because I've heard some negative comments about the cheaper Asus boards (comparatively high return and defect rates), I wouldn't be averse to choosing their own budget brand ASRock. The
ASRock Z87 Pro3 is a bit cheaper than the Asus entry-level at only $95, yet it is still a good product that comes without any extra features but those included in the Z87 chipset itself.
Fel wrote:2TB 7200 RPM HD
Several people have suggested a SSD and I can generally agree with that. Provided you know how to avoid the pitfalls of some products, this 'new' kind of storage medium for your computer can certainly speed up some of the most crucial tasks. What's more, everything feels so much faster if your operating system and the most important applications are installed on an SSD. The
Toshiba Q 128GB for $95 or the
Crucial M500 240GB for $182 are good products I've worked with myself and can recommend.
Nevertheless, there is an alternative that can merge the best of both worlds: hybrid drives. Currently there's only the Seagate SSHD series to choose from, its regular hard-disk comes equipped with an 8GB MLC NAND cache. While it's not designed to be as fast as your regular SSD, this hybrid drive can get you some of those blazing fast access times and transfer rates typically known from an SSD drive without compromising on the available disk space. The
2TB model costs $140 on NewEgg. That's certainly a steep price, considering a regular 2TB HDD is available at $90, but it has the potential to really speed up your working experience. See the
HardwareCanucks review for some benchmarks of its intelligent caching mechanism.
Fel wrote:minimum 800 watt power supply
I fear the power supply madness in this thread is getting out of hand
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
Even the "minimum 800 watt" suggestion is already miles beyond what's recommended or what could ever be required for this system in the future - but to counter that with a 1,000 watt PSU is mind-boggling.
There are three big reasons why buying and using such over-sized power supply units is a bad idea:
1.) If two PSUs cost the same, always take the one with less nominal power output. Instead of buying "cheap and big", such as the CoolMax 1000 suggested earlier, I'd rather take something like the
SeaSonic S12G-450 for the same $70. While there are exceptions to every rule, this generally holds true for well known brand names with largely respectable products.
In this instance, the SeaSonic is 80 Plus Gold certified and has received several positive reviews. See a model of the Seasonic S12G series (750W) tested by
PC Perspective and
KitGuru.
Also note that smaller models of the CoolMax ZU series have
really bad user-ratings, at least on NewEgg. That I couldn't find a professional review of the product anywhere on the net isn't encouraging either, but I could have missed something in my cursory search.
2.) The efficiency rating of a PSU can be deceptive and may not apply to your own system configuration. Today's standard of testing is the already mentioned 80 Plus certification, which comes in several levels of efficiency: 80 Plus, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum. For a product to be certified at a certain level, it must meet or exceed the required efficiency ratings at fixed power levels of 20, 50 and 100 percent of the rated output. The certification doesn't care what the product does outside these three test parameters and it is not an indicator of the product's quality either.
To put a power supply unit of 1000W in your system, you should reasonably have an idle consumption of around 200 watt. Most modern systems are very much below that, which means that the PSU is required to work at a load of sometimes only 5 to 10 percent. Some PSUs are simply dreadful at that and their efficiency may slip to 70 percent or even lower.
3.) There's nothing all this power could be used for anyway. If you consider that the idle consumption of a regular computer with a modern Intel CPU (Sandy Bridge onwards) and a modern graphics card (AMD 6000/7000 series, nVidia 600/700 series) is between 55 and 70 watt, you know how over-sized a proposed PSU of 800-1000W truly is. Even under a full load you won't get an overclocked system with a single graphics card beyond 450 or 500 watt, while using components with the highest power consumption (like the AMD Radeon R9 290X for example). Using more realistic alternatives like the proposed nVidia GeForce 660 Ti or 760 GTX will reduce that to 250 or 300 watt at most.
Since you can't upgrade to a 6/8 core CPU (these are only available on the Intel socket 2011) and don't plan to use more than one graphics card in SLI/Crossfire mode, you'll never need the huge reserves of these large power supply units. Most internal devices (hard drives, PCI/PCIe cards, disc drives) are happy with about 10 watt each, while external ports like USB take from 2.5 to 10 watt (2.0 and 3.0). Those are peanuts compared to the CPU/GPU consumption.