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[asdad123]

Speaking of overclocking, what's a typical oc for a 4770k?

I'm currently at 4.5ghz at 1.236V testing it and temps are in the low 80s. I don't think I'll be going any higher because I don't want temps to be in the 90s as I'm in a very small case.

I'm still so impressed how tiny this case is.

 

[Dawg]

Do I lose anything important by going W8 Basic instead of Pro?

 

[kharma45]

Speaking of overclocking, what's a typical oc for a 4770k?

I'm currently at 4.5ghz at 1.236V testing it and temps are in the low 80s. I don't think I'll be going any higher because I don't want temps to be in the 90s as I'm in a very small case.

That's a great OC from a Haswell chip.

I would be happy to not have to spend any more money! I think the Battlefield 4 beta spooked me a bit because of the absurd CPU usage, but that could just be a result of a poorly optimized beta.

Yeah I'd wait until the full game comes out to judge it.

I currently have the 4770K with a Hyper N520 cooling fan. Mobo is a MSI Z87 - GD65.

No worries there then, just in case you're running an AMD build.

Got it, thanks a lot Kharma. What about ASUS? I really liked my P5Q pro motherboard.

ASUS do make good boards but for Z87 I don't know what is good from them, never really bothered to look in to them truth be told because those three boards were already good enough for most people.

 

[asdad123]

That's a great OC from a Haswell chip.

Okay cool. Ill probably stick with that if it passes the testing. So far 15 minutes on prime 95 and no problems.

 

[TheThunder]

Actually, they look about $10 apart (the EVO kit is $198, while the vanilla 840 runs $210). Still, according to Anandtech's comparisons, you're very, very safe going with the EVO. Which, actually, is kind of a step up from the vanilla 840, not a downgrade.

Yeah but one comes with all the screws and sata cables necessary while the other is just the SSD alone right ?

Cheers for the links, I guess I'll get one of those EVOs.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

I'm still so impressed how tiny this case is.

Shit yeah, nice case, homie.

Looks like they changed the top panel a bit.

Anyways, that's the best case I've worked with so far. If you're feeling adventurous I'd recommend installing an extra 120mm in the rear for the video card. The aluminum is really thick, so dremeling was a pain, but the extra cooling is nice. Plus there's not a whole lot of room on the inside, so the fan is best mounted on the exterior, which also gives the added bonus of LED rear lighting.

 

[TheD]

Exactly what I'm talking about when the benchmark settings are listed in this link, http://teksyndicate.com/videos/amd-fx-8350-oc-vs-i5-3570k-oc-battle-continues makes who look like a fanboy?, lol

And also that there is a bigger power comsumption myth is also mentioned in this video, http://youtu.be/4et7kDGSRfc?t=10m39s




So we gotta pay more price for the same performance?





That frame latency difference is not that much big and you can't see much difference while gaming, unless you are going to bench.

You are the one that came out of nowhere, got upset at people for daring to say that the objectively better (in most loads) CPU is objectively better (in most loads), used a site that has benchmarks that are not supported by any other site's benchmarks as proof (and claiming that people don't like Tek "becasue they can't accept the truth"!) , claimed that the power usage is a myth bar the fact it has been measured and ignored data like frame latency!

There is no two ways about what you look like.

P.S: Ending a sentence in "lol" is cringe worthy.

 

[saelz8]

Do I lose anything important by going W8 Basic instead of Pro?

Not really. You can use better 3rd Party Solutions for Pro's features, like Teamviewer. I don't think it's worth the extra $30.

 

[Ty4on]

Speaking of overclocking, what's a typical oc for a 4770k?

I'm currently at 4.5ghz at 1.236V testing it and temps are in the low 80s. I don't think I'll be going any higher because I don't want temps to be in the 90s as I'm in a very small case.

I'm still so impressed how tiny this case is.

That's a really good overclock! I have been lazy with my 3570k, but it is only resting at 4.2Ghz with temps around 70C. It was at 4.4, but Kerbal Space Program of all things got very unstable.

How are you cooling it? My H60 does a decent job, but I think the gap between the radiator and fan on the bottom is costing me some degrees.

Shit yeah, nice case, homie.

Looks like they changed the top panel a bit.

He has the much smaller FT03 mini. I understand that more fan mounts would ruin the look, but in the bigger FT03 mATX I really see it being useful, especially with two GPUs. The mini actually does ok cooling wise. The GPU is a bit starved from air, but I really wouldn't want to stare at an intake in the front

 

[DTKT]

Do I lose anything important by going W8 Basic instead of Pro?

I think you lose the ability to edit local security policies(secpol.msc) too.

 

[Dawg]

Well, I can buy W8 cheap... but it's either W8 Basic or W8 "industry pro edition"

 

[Fimbulvetr]

Didn't get any replies before, so I'm re-posting:

After about 3 and a half years, a friend of mine is looking to overhaul his PC. His current specs are these:

GPU: Radeon HD 5770
CPU: Phenom II X6 1055t
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Mobo: Asus M4A87TD Evo
RAM: 4GB
PSU: Seasonic X650

He's looking to trade up his core components to these:

GPU: Radeon HD 7970
CPU: i5 4670k
Mobo: Some decent 1150 socket
RAM: 16GB

First, do these parts look good? If so, is there likely to be a way to get that CPU and a quality mobo for a better price than the Z87-G41 bundle for $265 on this page come Black Friday? Finally, is the 7970 likely to drop below $225 this year, or does anyone know of one being sold below that? Right now, he could get all of these parts for $540, and that's satisfactory, but $500 would be ideal.

 

[SteveO409]

I realize that I should have went more wattage with my build. Would it mess up the hardware if there's not enough power? AMD 8350 and plan to OC it a bit with a 7950. I ordered the OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W

 

[Spiritreaver]

And 1000w CM is installed.

I've been doing Crossfire for a week now and I have had 0 issues whatsoever. I was expecting the worst to happen from all the bad rep CF gets, but everything works. The games I tested all run well and CF works, but I haven't tested many dated games yet.

Overall I'm pretty happy, We'll see how it goes.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

He has the much smaller FT03 mini. I understand that more fan mounts would ruin the look, but in the bigger FT03 mATX I really see it being useful, especially with two GPUs. The mini actually does ok cooling wise. The GPU is a bit starved from air, but I really wouldn't want to stare at an intake in the front

Oh yeah, that does look quite a bit smaller. There's like zero room in front of that GPU.

I'm a huge fan of these cases though - the whole vertical orientation with the fans creating a wind tunnel effect. My case is near silent and my temps frosty.

 

[Sykotik]

Hey, guys. I'm in search for a after-market air cooler for my reference 7970. I've tried to do some research, but I've not had much luck in finding good information. I was interested in a ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme 7970, but it seems to be discontinued? And from what I understand, the Xtreme III requires a shimmy, and as a result, it loses efficiency.

Apart from those, I'm having difficulty finding any other attractive options. Does anyone have any advice to offer?

 

[kennah]

Didn't get any replies before, so I'm re-posting:

All of your questions are speculation. I'm not sure what anyone is supposed to tell you.

 

[NoRéN]

Didn't get any replies before, so I'm re-posting:

I'll take a shot at this for you. As someone who did wait to see if any stuff did go on sale for black friday for their first build I can say that any discounts were minimal for the most part. Stuff does go on sale. However, any discounts I managed to score involved putting off my build for months.

The biggest discounts I can say i got involved a video card and ssd. The ssd, any ssd, has yet to reach that price again. The video card i ended up selling 2 months later for a much better card at a much better price.

So, does stuff go on sale? yes. What stuff? that's random. there is no guarantee that what you want will drop in price. Is waiting another 6 weeks worth it to you? If so, then wait. If not then pull the trigger already.

 

[Hazaro]

Yes I also don't understand whey everyone is inclined towards intel and tease/make-fun-of people who go with AMD CPU and scare the hell out of them and make them to buy intel.

I'm building a PC and I'm going with 8350 (and also support AMD to build better CPU & GPU). I did my research and I don't want to spend more on intel for the same performance.

Even the game developers prefer 8350, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-future-proofing-your-pc-for-next-gen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu8Sekdb-IE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4et7kDGSRfc

And that youtube reviewer, Tek Syndicate is also being looked down my many people becasue they can't accept the truth.

lol seriously? Do you have any proof that AMD MB's are bad quality boards?

'Game developers prefer x' - You mean some PR people and BF4 being the giant lead project for Mantle? Okay.

On TS. If anyone in the entire world can reproduce his results I'll take it seriously. Oh wait. You can't. BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WRITE DOWN WHAT THE FUCK HE TESTED AND HOW HE TESTED IT.
It was 100% link bait with his previous title "It's time to rethink everything" and after he got shit on by everyone with half a brain (Reddit got stringed along sadly and mass downvoted anything opposing it) he changed the title and ran another bench to 'prove' his results. Same problem. Can't reproduce results and contradicts every single data point on the internet? Get fucked. Also he looks and acts like a douchebag.

Missing the point, he meant in regards to SFF builds and nice ITX boards.

ps thx karma

 

[Anton668]

Didn't get any replies before, so I'm re-posting:

well, first, there are no fortune tellers in here. wont know what if anything is on sale till its on sale.

second, unless something other than gaming is involved, why the need for 16Gb ram? 8 is plenty for gaming

 

[asdad123]

That's a really good overclock! I have been lazy with my 3570k, but it is only resting at 4.2Ghz with temps around 70C. It was at 4.4, but Kerbal Space Program of all things got very unstable.

How are you cooling it? My H60 does a decent job, but I think the gap between the radiator and fan on the bottom is costing me some degrees.

He has the much smaller FT03 mini. I understand that more fan mounts would ruin the look, but in the bigger FT03 mATX I really see it being useful, especially with two GPUs. The mini actually does ok cooling wise. The GPU is a bit starved from air, but I really wouldn't want to stare at an intake in the front

Yeah it's the mini. And i spoke a little too soon. It crashed after about 30 minutes so I raised it to 1.27 and it's been going good so far. Max temps are about mid 80s but I doubt I'll see that while gaming.

I'm using a cooler master seidon 120m (on sale at newegg for $25 after rebate)

 

[Dawg]

That FT03 mini does look sexy, too bad it's twice the price of a Prodigy.

 

[kennah]

That FT03 mini does look sexy, too bad it's twice the price of a Prodigy.

Save up longer

 

[Sibylus]

So after over a year of putting up with it, I think the BIOSTAR TZ77B burned me (half of the RAM slots inoperable, won't start without pressing restart several times). What would be a good replacement (LGA 1155 Intel Z77)?

 

[Zombie James]

Intel delays Broadwell: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/15/intel-delays-broadwell-chips-to-early-2014/

The stagnation of the CPU market continues.

 

[maneil99]

Intel delays Broadwell: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/15/intel-delays-broadwell-chips-to-early-2014/

The stagnation of the CPU market continues.

I thought Broadwell was skipping desktops

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Intel delays Broadwell: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/15/intel-delays-broadwell-chips-to-early-2014/

The stagnation of the CPU market continues.

Just keep Haswell-E on the docket for late 2014/early 2015.

 

[Husker86]

Just ordered an EVGA GTX 760 4GB (it was $30 more than the 2GB--people said the 256bit bus won't be able to make use of it but I'm planning to use Nvidia surround so I thought what the hell) and 3 Asus IPS VS239H-P monitors with 3 wall mounts and a new computer desk.

I'm so damn excited. I don't play games much, but my GTX 260 has served me well and I really just wanted to overhaul my setup. i5 2500k should hold me over for a while longer. I hope this gets me into PC gaming (I've really only played MMOs on PC). Either way, the general workspace of 3 monitors alone is enough to get me excited...plus a clean desktop with no monitors taking up room. This weekend is gonna be fun.

 

[AcridMeat]

Is there likely to be a better deal on this case in the next month or so? If not I'll just go ahead and order it now.

Fractal R4 - $80

 

[Fimbulvetr]

All of your questions are speculation. I'm not sure what anyone is supposed to tell you.

I'll take a shot at this for you. As someone who did wait to see if any stuff did go on sale for black friday for their first build I can say that any discounts were minimal for the most part. Stuff does go on sale. However, any discounts I managed to score involved putting off my build for months.

The biggest discounts I can say i got involved a video card and ssd. The ssd, any ssd, has yet to reach that price again. The video card i ended up selling 2 months later for a much better card at a much better price.

So, does stuff go on sale? yes. What stuff? that's random. there is no guarantee that what you want will drop in price. Is waiting another 6 weeks worth it to you? If so, then wait. If not then pull the trigger already.

well, first, there are no fortune tellers in here. wont know what if anything is on sale till its on sale.

second, unless something other than gaming is involved, why the need for 16Gb ram? 8 is plenty for gaming

Thanks for the replies. What he's really asking is whether those parts have already dropped below those prices in the past, or come close to them in the case of the GPU. The GPU has gone for lower than that on eBay numerous times, but it would be nice to have an idea of whether retail will have similar prices in the near future so he doesn't have to watch eBay like a hawk. The RAM is in such quantity mainly because it'll be very cheap, so why not.

He's still curious if anyone's aware of a Z87 chipset mobo available anywhere for less than $90 and an i5 4670k for less than $200, tax/shipping etc. included.

 

[kennah]

Is there likely to be a better deal on this case in the next month or so? If not I'll just go ahead and order it now.

Fractal R4 - $80

Goes that low every six months or so. Buy buy buy

 

[Sectorseven]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57...adwell-pc-chip-production-to-early-next-year/

Intel on Tuesday said its upcoming PC chip, dubbed Broadwell, will be delayed by a quarter.

CEO Brian Krzanich, speaking during a call discussing the company's third-quarter earnings, said Intel will begin production on Broadwell in the first quarter of 2014 rather than later this year. The chip is the first manufactured at 14 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, which puts Intel at least a year ahead of rivals.

Not sure how relevant this is to the thread, but it looks like Haswells will be current for a little while longer.

 

[Anton668]

The RAM is in such quantity mainly because it'll be very cheap, so why not.

ram is cheap again?!?!? when did this happen?? so I can get another 8Gb(the good stuff) for $45 again?!?!?

 

[AcridMeat]

Goes that low every six months or so. Buy buy buy

Cheers, ordering.

 

[Xyber]

Installed a new motherboard and the i7 4770K today. I wan't lucky with my chip and it didn't want to run stable at 4,4GHz with 1,275V. Couldn't really bump up the voltage anymore than that because this shit runs so damn hot (85C in Prime95) even with my Noctua NH-D14 that served me very well on my i5 2500K. So I have it at 4,3GHz with 1,25V right now, and it ran stable in Prime for 2 hours. Gonna see how much lower I can go tomorrow.

If I had some more skill I would maybe do that mod that can lower the temps by ~15C, but I'm too scared to mess something up if I tried it now.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Hm, found a hd 7950 second hand for 135 euros inc shipping on a local games forum where I buy/sell some stuff now and then, kind of tempting to replace my 6870 with it.
It's only a few months old too, the owner replaced it with a gtx 690, and it's a sapphire.
Anyone know anything about this cooler? :
http://www.sapphiretech.com/present...d=1&gid=3&sgid=1157&pid=1439&psn=000101&lid=1

Even the basic 850mhz 7950s should overclock to 1000mhz reliably, right? without voltage increase? (I don't like noise so don't like upping voltage on my hardware, too much heat)

Then again I'm quite bottlenecked by my phenom II in quite a few games (then again not at all in many other games) .

Wasn't planning on getting another amd gpu but for so little money it's kind of tempting, even if just temporarily till nvidia gets their shit together on pricing.

 

[Ty4on]

Oh yeah, that does look quite a bit smaller. There's like zero room in front of that GPU.

I'm a huge fan of these cases though - the whole vertical orientation with the fans creating a wind tunnel effect. My case is near silent and my temps frosty.

Yeah, you don't need a ton of fans to cool well, just well placed fans.

I'd love to check where the GPU sucks it air from with smoke or something. I think it manages to get some from the cracks around which isn't brilliant for dust build up. I don't know how much it matters, but the exhaust also heats up the front panel to 5-10C above ambient which might heat up the air the GPU is intaking. Tried to boot up Skyrim and check the differences with temp/noise with front panel on/off. It did go from 79 and possibly increasing down to 77 while fan speed went from 54% and possibly increasing down to 51%. Nothing scientifical and I gave it way too little time, but here's the Afterburner graph. I have an old custom fan profile optimized for temps to hit 80-85 during load and stay quiet up until that point. I promised ages ago to take some pic of it which I still wanna do, but here's an old pic of what the GPU looks like.

One feature I found kind of overlooked once when I hooked up the computer at a friends house was how he had to struggle on the floor to hook up the cables while I barely had to bend down with the computer on the table
Just missing a handle to be the perfect LAN computer.

Yeah it's the mini. And i spoke a little too soon. It crashed after about 30 minutes so I raised it to 1.27 and it's been going good so far. Max temps are about mid 80s but I doubt I'll see that while gaming.

I'm using a cooler master seidon 120m (on sale at newegg for $25 after rebate)

Different OEM (square block tends to be CoolIt while round tends to be Asetek), but the temps should be pretty similar. Do you use the stock 140mm fan at the bottom? I purchased extra fan connectors and a Noctua F12 trying to go push/pull, but the HDD mount came in the way. Now I have the Noctua fan at the bottom with a slight hum as it revs up under load. At idle I can reduce the speed to sub 500RPM
(shame my PSU won't follow suit...)

Edit:

Hm, found a hd 7950 second hand for 135 euros inc shipping on a local games forum where I buy/sell some stuff now and then, kind of tempting to replace my 6870 with it.
It's only a few months old too, the owner replaced it with a gtx 690, and it's a sapphire.
Anyone know anything about this cooler? :
http://www.sapphiretech.com/present...d=1&gid=3&sgid=1157&pid=1439&psn=000101&lid=1

That sadly looks like the reference cooler under a different plastic shroud. It's not as noisy as a blower I think, but still noisy and hot.
Cooling performance is so poor because the heatsink is tiny.

I dunno about the PCB performance though for overclocking, but it should be decent so you could maybe go for it and get a third party heatsink. They have much better performance than even the dual and triple fan ones if you feel comfortable replacing a GPU heatsink and have the space for them.

 

[SneakyStephan]

That sadly looks like the reference cooler under a different plastic shroud. It's not as noisy as a blower I think, but still noisy and hot.
Cooling performance is so poor because the heatsink is tiny.

I dunno about the PCB performance though for overclocking, but it should be decent so you could maybe go for it and get a third party heatsink. They have much better performance than even the dual and triple fan ones if you feel comfortable replacing a GPU heatsink and have the space for them.

Wow, thanks, looking at that piddly heatsink I dodged a bullet here.
And looking at the videos, fuck that noise, literally.

My old 4870 was a sapphire and it had a really big heatsink (ran for the full length of the card, this one :

http://www.jayceooi.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/sapphire_hd4870_04.jpg

and was really quiet (until eventually the bearings on the fan wore out and the fan became noisy at any speed)

I was kind of dissapointed in the cooler of my 6870 (HIS iceQ X) but compared to the coolers in these videos it's not nearly as bad;...
The only two that sounded quiet and wouldn't make me want to gouge out my eardrums were the PCS and the directCU II (both still much noisier than my old sapphire)

Note taken then... avoid stock coolers like the frigging plague when I do buy a new gpu.

About replacing the cooler with an aftermarket one, I might do that if I buy a longterm card, but this would have only been as a 1 year tie me over till I find an affordable nvidia card , and only because it's cheap, so spending money on an aftermarket cooler would be counter productive.

Thanks a lot for the info You saved me from some buyer's remorse

 

[Ty4on]

Thanks a lot for the info You saved me from some buyer's remorse

No problem! Nowadays it is almost hard not to find a dual fan card, but not all are equal. The first 7970 XFX dual fan coolers managed to be noisier than reference cards

When you mentioned HIS I remember looking a lot at their coolers because they were the only ones making good blowers. It was funny though how the 7870 from HIS either came with three coolers: The big blower, a cooler similar to the one in your 6970 and this which looks like it has the reference 7770 heatsink underneath.

Single fan coolers can be decent, especially for cards with sub 200W TDP so it is a shame when crap like this hurts their rep.

 

[Sanctuary]

Uh...now you too can own your own Prodigy with another brand!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...-cool-under-pressure-outperforms-competition/

I seriously had no idea that these boutique shop builds were well over twice as much as what it would cost for you to build it yourself with identical parts. I knew they cost more, but I thought maybe 50% more. That's just fucking ridiculous.

 

[Ty4on]

I seriously had no idea that these boutique shop builds were well over twice as much as what it would cost for you to build it yourself with identical parts. I knew they cost more, but I thought maybe 50% more. That's just fucking ridiculous.

Silverstone probably makes a lot on the deal, but it still annoys me seeing Maingear talk as if they designed all their cases. Their Shift is also just a RV01 just with a shell that doesn't look like crap

I find it a bit silly calling them dream PCs when they still fall in the same old OEM pitfalls and for the extra price I could have 1TB SSD storage or a second computer for storage. Maybe that's just me though.

 

[Wolf Akela]

Are USB soundcards generally frowned upon? Can't use internal cards because I only have a cheap mobo so no spare PCI/e slots.

 

[Ty4on]

Are USB soundcards generally frowned upon? Can't use internal cards because I only have a cheap mobo so no spare PCI/e slots.

I don't think so. Soundcards for music production are usually USB because almost everyone in the market use Macbooks.

 

[Anton668]

Uh...now you too can own your own Prodigy with another brand!



http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...-cool-under-pressure-outperforms-competition/

I seriously had no idea that these boutique shop builds were well over twice as much as what it would cost for you to build it yourself with identical parts. I knew they cost more, but I thought maybe 50% more. That's just fucking ridiculous.

arent they the ones who said they were no longer going to use AMD GPU's?

Are USB soundcards generally frowned upon? Can't use internal cards because I only have a cheap mobo so no spare PCI/e slots.

any particular reason you need a sound card? only asking as onboard sound has come along way.

 

[Seanspeed]

Are USB soundcards generally frowned upon? Can't use internal cards because I only have a cheap mobo so no spare PCI/e slots.

From what I've read, external is the way to go if you're serious about your sound.

Speaking of sound cards, I'm probably gonna get a Xonar DG. Its not the greatest card and its internal, but I absolutely need more volume, which the onboard headphone amp will hopefully help with. For £25, I wont even be too upset if it doesn't turn out that good.

 

[Sanctuary]

From what I've read, external is the way to go if you're serious about your sound.

There are very few USB cards that beat an internal, let alone even match them. They start getting good when they aren't even really sound cards any longer, but a more powerful DAC and Amp box. Their price is reflective of the size too in most cases.

 

[kharma45]

Didn't get any replies before, so I'm re-posting:

Looks good to me. 16GB of RAM is a bit overkill if you're just gaming though, if that 4GB is DDR3 you could just grab 2x8GB and be well set with 12GB.

G41 won't be a great board for OCing, stuck to the Biostar Z87X, Gigabyte UD3H and the MSI G45 Gaming. ASUS probably have a good mid-range board too but I'm still yet to look into their Z87 offerings properly yet.

I realize that I should have went more wattage with my build. Would it mess up the hardware if there's not enough power? AMD 8350 and plan to OC it a bit with a 7950. I ordered the OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W

It'd be cutting it close if both are overclocked.

So after over a year of putting up with it, I think the BIOSTAR TZ77B burned me (half of the RAM slots inoperable, won't start without pressing restart several times). What would be a good replacement (LGA 1155 Intel Z77)?

Depends on your budget. For lower end go for the MSI G45 or for the middle of the road pricing go for the ASUS LK.

Intel delays Broadwell: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/15/intel-delays-broadwell-chips-to-early-2014/

The stagnation of the CPU market continues.

Just keep Haswell-E on the docket for late 2014/early 2015.

Best idea. If I was on say an i5 7xx, i7 8/9xx or any AMD Phenom I'd ignore what is around now and just put my money towards Haswell-E.

Is there likely to be a better deal on this case in the next month or so? If not I'll just go ahead and order it now.

Fractal R4 - $80

Great case, enjoy it when it arrives.

arent they the ones who said they were no longer going to use AMD GPU's?

Yeah that's them.

 

[bleachrude]

My budget was 1500 (canadian) and I was wondering if there was anything I should switch?

CPU Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core $239.99
CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing $29.99
Motherboard ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 $134.99
Memory Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 $127.99
Storage Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" SSD $99.99
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM $64.75
Video Card Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB $299.98
Sound Card Asus Xonar DGX $29.99
Wireless Network Adapter Rosewill RNX-N250PCe 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 $35.48
Case Cooler Master Storm Enforcer ATX Mid Tower $89.99
Case Fan Cooler Master Megaflow 110.0 CFM 200mm $12.37
Power Supply SeaSonic 750W ATX12V / EPS12V $149.99
Optical Drive Asus BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer $57.34
Operating System Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) $97.99

Is 1 extra fan sufficient since the case comes with a fan?

 

[Seanspeed]

There are very few USB cards that beat an internal, let alone even match them. They start getting good when they aren't even really sound cards any longer, but a more powerful DAC and Amp box. Their price is reflective of the size too in most cases.

Ah, ok. Just looked up 'USB sound card' and am seeing lots of little tiny USB stick thingies for super cheap. Not what I was thinking of, definitely! lol

 

[LordAlu]

My budget was 1500 (canadian) and I was wondering if there was anything I should switch?

CPU Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core $239.99
CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing $29.99
Motherboard ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 $134.99
Memory Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 $127.99
Storage Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" SSD $99.99
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM $64.75
Video Card Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB $299.98
Sound Card Asus Xonar DGX $29.99
Wireless Network Adapter Rosewill RNX-N250PCe 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 $35.48
Case Cooler Master Storm Enforcer ATX Mid Tower $89.99
Case Fan Cooler Master Megaflow 110.0 CFM 200mm $12.37
Power Supply SeaSonic 750W ATX12V / EPS12V $149.99
Optical Drive Asus BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer $57.34
Operating System Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) $97.99

Is 1 extra fan sufficient since the case comes with a fan?

A few questions What are your primary uses for it? Do you really need a sound card, wireless adapter or optical drive too? Do you need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or speakers/headset as well or just the tower?