First time builder

[chaoztheory1]

Hello, everyone!
I've been a gamer for a long while now, but my current desktop was top of the line 8 years ago and I inherited it about 6 years ago.
I've been looking into building a new computer, but I'm pretty uninformed.

So, I come to you all for some help.
I'm currently looking at these parts, but am open to any suggestions.

Motherboard: ASUS Socket 1366/Intel X58/Quad SLI & Quad CrossFireX/SATA3.0&USB3.0/A&GbE/ATX Motherboard s SABERTOOTH X58
Processor: Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366 Desktop Processor
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX470 1280 MB DDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card 012-P3-1470-AR
Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650-Watt TX Series 80 Plus Certified Power Supply
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333MHz DIMM PC3-10666 Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL
Hard Drive: Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS
Case: Antec Nine Hundred Steel ATX Ultimate Gamer PC Case

I need some help on choosing disk drives and fans, and would love any other suggestions!
Thank you in advance!

[GeorgeH]

Motherboard: ASUS Socket 1366/Intel X58/Quad SLI & Quad CrossFireX/SATA3.0&USB3.0/A&GbE/ATX Motherboard s SABERTOOTH X58

-No. Much as I despise Intel's PCI-E shenanigans, X58 is a dead platform. The 990X will almost certainly be the fastest CPU for the platform, and in your usage it'll be slower than a 2500K that costs ~1/5 as much. You want LGA-1155 and Sandy Bridge.

Processor: Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366 Desktop Processor

No. 2500K is the droid you're looking for.

Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX470 1280 MB DDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card 012-P3-1470-AR

No. You want an overclocked GTX 460 1GB non-SE or a GTX 560. If AMD, you want a 6950 2GB.

Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650-Watt TX Series 80 Plus Certified Power Supply

Not bad.

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333MHz DIMM PC3-10666 Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL

Not bad. If you stick with X58, though, you'll want to buy 3 sticks (X58 is a triple-channel platform.)

Hard Drive: Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS

Boot drive? Horrible, terrible, bad idea. Those drives are sloooow, but even worse they have aggressive power management; if you use them as your boot drive you'll get 5-10s complete system freezes while your drive spins back up. You want this and a SSD or a Caviar Black (if you like WD.)

Case: Antec Nine Hundred Steel ATX Ultimate Gamer PC Case

If it floats your boat.

Finally, if it were me I wouldn't build anything until AMD releases Bulldozer (~June/July.)

[EvanED]

Boot drive? Horrible, terrible, bad idea. Those drives are sloooow, but even worse they have aggressive power management; if you use them as your boot drive you'll get 5-10s complete system freezes while your drive spins back up. You want this and a SSD or a Caviar Black (if you like WD.)

I can back this up... I have perhaps that same drive (mine is at least a 2TB WD Green) and I do get several second pauses if I haven't accessed something on one of those drives for a while. That being said, if you like the tradeoffs, they can make an excellent second drive.)

(I have a 500 GB Hitachi or something for my primary drive. SSDs are still too expensive for me.)

[KingofMadCows]

Motherboard: ASUS Socket 1366/Intel X58/Quad SLI & Quad CrossFireX/SATA3.0&USB3.0/A&GbE/ATX Motherboard s SABERTOOTH X58
Processor: Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366 Desktop Processor

If you're mainly using it for gaming then it's better to go with an i5 2600k and a p67 motherboard.

Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX470 1280 MB DDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card 012-P3-1470-AR

Unless you can get the GTX 470 for really cheap, then it's better to get a GTX 460, 560, or 570. Right now there's a $30 rebate with EVGA GTX 560's, which is a really good deal.

Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650-Watt TX Series 80 Plus Certified Power Supply

It's definitely worth it to spend a bit more to get a modular power supply.

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333MHz DIMM PC3-10666 Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL

The X58 is triple channel so you'd want 3 x 2GB or 3 x 4GB.

However, there's really no reason to get too much RAM. If you go with the i5 2500k and p67 motherboard then 2 x 2GB should be enough. Although if you overclock, you'll want to get RAM that's a bit faster.

Hard Drive: Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS

No. That's great for a storage drive for videos and things like that but too slow for other uses. It's better to get a smaller Caviar Black or the Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB. Also, you might want to consider getting an SSD for your boot drive.

Case: Antec Nine Hundred Steel ATX Ultimate Gamer PC Case

That thing is a dust magnet. If there's a lot of dust where you live then you might want to consider another case.

Boot drive? Horrible, terrible, bad idea. Those drives are sloooow, but even worse they have aggressive power management; if you use them as your boot drive you'll get 5-10s complete system freezes while your drive spins back up. You want this and a SSD or a Caviar Black (if you like WD.)

I can back this up... I have perhaps that same drive (mine is at least a 2TB WD Green) and I do get several second pauses if I haven't accessed something on one of those drives for a while. That being said, if you like the tradeoffs, they can make an excellent second drive.)

(I have a 500 GB Hitachi or something for my primary drive. SSDs are still too expensive for me.)

You can change the power saving settings to get rid of that pause.

[2.71828183]

Even still, that's a slow drive for a system drive, and in my experience conventional HDDs are by far the worst bottleneck for general usage on any modern system. A fast HDD (Samsung Spinpoint F3/F4 or WD Caviar Black) will offer incremental gains, and an SSD will offer huge gains.

[GeorgeH]

You can change the power saving settings to get rid of that pause.

You can only change them by modifying the firmware, which WD doesn't officially support on consumer drives. I haven't experimented with it myself, but I believe that although WDIdle3 can lengthen the idle time, it can't actually disable it completely (even if you disable the timer, the drive will still park itself.) So you might be able to reduce those pauses, but I wouldn't bet on eliminating them without a lot of work or some pretty ugly hacks.

[KingofMadCows]

You can change the power saving settings to get rid of that pause.

You can only change them by modifying the firmware, which WD doesn't officially support on consumer drives. I haven't experimented with it myself, but I believe that although WDIdle3 can lengthen the idle time, it can't actually disable it completely (even if you disable the timer, the drive will still park itself.) So you might be able to reduce those pauses, but I wouldn't bet on eliminating them without a lot of work or some pretty ugly hacks.

Are you sure about that? Try going into "Power Options" in the Control Panel, select "Change plan settings" next to your Preferred power plan, click "Change advanced power settings," open the "Hard Disk" tab, and change "Turn off hard disk after" to a higher number. Setting it to 60 or more minutes should fix the problem. It worked on my 1.5 TB Seagate storage drive.

[GeorgeH]

WD Green drives have an automatic idle that's independent of the OS.