Specification Suggestions & Pricing

[Override2Zion]

Hi, i am intending on building a rig this week and looking at the following specifications,

Mainboard + CPU: MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming with Intel i7-3770k
Cooler: Corsair H100i Liquid Cooler
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz 2x8Gb (16Gb)
Videocard: MSI 7970 Lightning Boost Edition (Crossfire)
SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 128 Gb
Harddisk: Hitachi 3TB 7200RPM 3.5"
DVDRW: Samsung 24X DVDRW
Power supply: Corsair AX-1200 80+ Gold
Casing: Cooler Master HAF-X Full Tower

Have sent out several emails/facebook messages to shops in SLS but only one replied so far. I don't need any keyboard/mouse/monitor nor OS and will be paying in cash. Intending to do some moderate overclocking on the CPU. Gone through several pricelists and calculated to about under $3500. Any suggestions/tweaks on the specification? Any idea how much would I be expecting to pay after bundled discount? Thanks lots

 

[Override2Zion]

And btw, anyone knows which shop has stock for the MSI 7970 Lightning? Seems like stocks quite limited.

 

[nippp0n]

Are you going to do photo/video rendering with this rig or just purely for gaming?

 

[Override2Zion]

Yes, going to quite a bit of programming, high-res photo rendering and gaming on this PC.

 

[nippp0n]

Yes, going to quite a bit of programming, high-res photo rendering and gaming on this PC.

Can consider 7990. It's a dual 7970 setup. 7970 crossfire seems to be slightly faster but consumes more power. Maybe you can compare the prices and see which is more suitable for you?

And also, 7990 comes with 8 free games.

 

[Override2Zion]

Can consider 7990. It's a dual 7970 setup. 7970 crossfire seems to be slightly faster but consumes more power. Maybe you can compare the prices and see which is more suitable for you?

And also, 7990 comes with 8 free games.

Thanks much for the suggestion. But I think I'd rather have 2 x 7970 cards with the slight improvement in performance. Tried to find reviews on how the MSI 7970 Lightning BE performance stacks up to its younger sibling the MSI 7970 TwinFrozr BE OC, but information seems limited. Also the MSI 7970 TwinFrozr BE listed on most pricelist seems quite vague, not indicating if its the OC version with 1Ghz GPU clock. Any ideas on the price of the OC version? Hope someone can shed some light on this. Thanks

 

[eminus]

not the lightning but thunder only

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/p...nder-power-edition-boost-edition-4168935.html

 

[Maeda_Toshiie]

Make sure that both cards have the same amount of video ram, or else the amount of ram available to each card is the lesser of either. The data stored is mirrored between the cards.

 

[Override2Zion]

Thanks eminus for the info and Maeda_Toshiie for the heads up. Be using 2x cards of the same model, so no issues with VRAM in this case. Looks like the 7970 Lightning BE is out of stock at the moment.