What to buy with a budget of 1900$?

[Ippogrill]

Hi everybody...
I'm brand new in this forum.
I'm getting addicted to computers and my plan is to use my savings to build up my own.
I will have a budget of 1900$ and i would like suggestions about what to buy.
The only thing sure is that my case is the Chaser Mk-I from Thermaltake.

Thanks for your help

[profJim]

Re: What to buy with a budget of 1900$?

What is the nature of your computer addiction?
Gaming?
Photo editing?
Music or video encoding?
Any other demanding applications that require a high powered system?
Do you require a larger IPS monitor for superior color quality?
Dual monitors?
3D monitors?
A high quality sound system?
A 5.1 or 7.1 computer sound system?
Printer?
Do you want to print large, high quality photographs?

[Ippogrill]

Re: What to buy with a budget of 1900$?

My main purpose is editing (mainly photos) and sometimes even videos.
I even need to manage many HDs because of the terabytes of photos i will store.
I even appreciate a lot gaming (plan to use skyrim and next RPGs coming out next year).
I was even thinking about the thunderbolt option, is it worth so far?
About the monitor, i plan to buy it later, for this year i will keep the one i got and in future buy a 23" IPS monitor (but if you can suggest me one right now, i will buy it in the next months!).
I already have printer and sound system (about 3 metres away from the PC i got a 46" Samsung tv linked to my PC with a HDMI cable, and when i want to watch a video on the tv, i have a hdmi switch so i see the pc either on the monitor and on the tv). The sound system is a very good 5.1 Bose system.
Obviously i will use mainly the Adobe suite.

Thanks for your help!

[profJim]

Re: What to buy with a budget of 1900$?

A good starting point is to read the most recent buying guides at AnandTech - Guides.
Their mid-range buying guide came out several days ago.
You will get the best overall performance with an Ivy Bridge -7-3770K cpu with an upper mid-range Z77 motherboard. I would check out boards in the $200 - $250 range, looking closely at which additional features you'll want or need. I think that boards from Asus, Gigabyte or MSI would be best. Thunderbolt hardware right now is very expensive, but prices should come down as this technology becomes more popular in the future. You will probably want to go with at least 16GB of memory and 32GB is an option. SSD and memory prices are quite low right now, hard drive prices are still quite high.

The newest Haswell based boards will probably be available sometime in the early or late summer of 2013. By that time Ivy Bridge hardware will be very mature with very few problems or issues. Each new hardware generation has teething problems initially and it often takes up to six months or longer for these issues to be worked out. Haswell (microarchitecture) - Wikipedia

A single video card for $300 - $400 should do nicely and you can later add a second video card if you want better gaming performance or if you want to upgrade to a multi-monitor setup.

The power supply is the foundation of your system. Buy a high quality 80plus silver or gold rated unit. 80plus platinum power supplies offer slightly better efficiency at a premium price. Seasonic is one of the best manufacturers and they make models for some other psu vendors. You probably won't go wrong with a psu from Seasonic, Antec, Corsair, Enermax, Superflower (Kingwin), or XFX.

[Ippogrill]

Re: What to buy with a budget of 1900$?

so, following your words, i came to this list:

• case: chaser mk-I, thermaltake
• asus p8z77 v-pro
• corsair 750W enthusiast 80 plus gold
• g. skill ripjaws-x 1600 mhz
• i7-3770k (would like to oc!)
• noctua nh-d14 (what do you think about it?)
• samsung 830 128GB for storage + wd caviar green 2 TB

What would you suggest as a video card? I'm not pretty sure, but as i understood the Adobe CS6 will not use CUDA anymore but OpenGl, that means you could either buy nvidia VGAs or amd.
So what would you take, a HD 7950 or a gtx 570?

Thanks!

[profJim]

Re: What to buy with a budget of 1900$?

You're welcome, glad to help out.
GTX 570 versus HD 7950? I would go with the HD 7950, but....

The GTX 570 is approaching EOL (end of life) and probably won't be available for too much longer.
It will probably be difficult to find a second 570 in the future if you want to use an SLI setup for better performance.
The GTX 570 requires more electrical power and has higher temperatures and noise levels than newer video cards.
A GTX 660Ti video card will be better than the GTX 570 in most areas.
AMD offers similar models to the Nvidia cards.

The current (after rebate) prices from Newegg (USA) are:
GTX 560/Ti $175 - $280
GTX 570 -- $220 - $280
GTX 660/Ti $225 - $340
GTX 670 -- $360 - $500

HD 7850 -- $200 - $245
HD 7870 -- $240 - $280
HD 7950 -- $280 - $350

If you want to upgrade to an SLI or CrossfireX dual card setup in the future, you might need an 850 - 900 watt power supply.
The best power supply review sites are JonnyGuru, HardwareSecrets, HardOCP, PCPER and TechPowerUp.

High end air cooling setups offer similar cooling performance with the better (approx $100+) all in one water cooling setups.
The Noctua NH-D14 is one of several excellent top tier air cooling solutions.

You might consider going with the Samsung 830 240GB ssd if it fits in your budget.
Let us know which components you buy and how it works out.
Good luck with your new system!