Hey guys, sorry for another type of this post, my brother wants to get himself a good pc for rendering videos and music, and run games smoothly. So here is what we've come to so far:
CPU: i7-4770 (@3.2Ghz) ~314$
Motherboard: MSI B75A-G43 GAMING B75 (DDR3) (LGA1155) ====> not sure if it supports this cpu, if not I ll go for a 3770 ~113$
RAM: kingston 2 x 4GB 1600mhz (not a kit) ~2x39$
CASE & PSU: Cooler Master Elite 350 RC-350 Case RC-350-KKR500-GP w/ RS-500-PSAR-I3 500W PSU ~68$
HDD: 1TB WD1002FAEX 7200RPM SATAIII 64MB Black Edition ~91$
UPS: PCE 1200 VA UPS Max Series 660W (2x Batteries) ~79$
GPU: MSI GeForce N650Ti-2GD5/OC BE GTX 650Ti 2GB DDR5 OC Boost ~169$
Monitor: Samsung LS20B300 Wide 20" LED ~100$
And need a good/cheap wireless card thought of: Gigabyte GC-WB300D (rev. 1.1) Exclusive Bluetooth 4.0/WiFi Expansion Card PCIe ~53$
I picked that motherboard because we want to get a second GPU, and run them in SLI later on.
and I'll also get a cheap 8$ keyboard.

VAT wasn't included in the prices, so its a total of 1180$ with VAT.
Another question is should I assemble the PC or let them do it?
the board doesn't support the processor you need a socket LGA1150 motherboard, for the specs let the guys give their opinions i don't like to be part of this these topics gives me a headache :P
DNA wrotethe board doesn't support the processor you need a socket LGA1150 motherboard, for the specs let the guys give their opinions i don't like to be part of this these topics gives me a headache :P
hahaha, thanks anyways :P
guess I'll have to stick to the 3770
Get a 3570 B75 MSI board that you originally chose, get 2 x 4GB Kingston HyperX RAM. A CM Elite 350 with a 500W PSU. 1TB Blue Drive or Seagate. Some random DVDRW. LG IPS Screen. The screen you chose is 900P, and TN (which is HORRIBLE) Get any LG IPS series and make sure it's full HD. As for a graphics card, I highly suggest you wait for a 7950 restock. Or get a 670 (or get a 7950 and have a more future proof and cheaper rig) get a Microsoft Wired 400 keyboard/mouse bundle (I use it, and it's great) get a 1000VA+ UPS and you'll be done. It would be awesome if you can add a 120gig SSD for Windows. But a regular HDD would just do just as good.

Yes an i7 would be better at rendering, but considering your budget 80$ for minor speed improvements isn't worth it.
@AvoK95, thanks a lot for your reply. So I will get the 170$ IPS screen from LG (full HD) instead of the screen I first chose. But I'll stick to the 650Ti, because other cards will take us way beyond the budget, and same goes to the SSD. I want to get a keyboard alone because my brother already has a razer mouse, which imo is better than a "cheap but good" Microsoft mouse

I guess this should do, thanks a lot for all the help.
You'd rather keep the i7 or go for a better graphics card? 80 dollars more allow for a 7850 which is quite ahead especially as it has large OC headroom.

How vital are rendering times and how heavy is the workload? Would the 20% (MAX 30%, rare) additional boost from the i7 once the CPU load is 100% benefit you more than a faster GPU?

Remember that the 650Ti is not that powerful for 1080p. Especially in a 1K system, its a pity. I've built a 7950 (+blu-ray burner) rig for a friend for 1k. 7950 is...quite faster.

Where did we cut corners, you might ask? Easy. We got a cheaper board, an i5 3570, a Thermaltake V4. Heck we ordered a Corsair CX600 from amazon and ended up paying double due to a foolish shipping mistake we did. We also ended up paying $40 extra for the blu-ray burner due to that same mistake. Also paid extra for the 7950. The original plan was 900 but we ended up around 1k.

Is the dude happy with his rig? Of course.

EDIT: and TBH, I really really wouldn't blow $50 on a wireless card except if it was exceptional, aka Bigfoot Killer. I'd be passing wires on the floor and telling family to watch their step rather than blow that $50 and stay with a 650Ti ;)

About the SLI bit, just ummm...forget about SLi for midrange GPUs. Please take my advice on this one. Spend the money now and get a faster single GPU. Got more money, SLi / CF that. Bad bad idea for midrange, you'll be out of VRAM and memory bandwidth before you could use the cards' potential in many situations. Not to mention that any sketchy multi-GPU support and you're left with crippled single GPU performance in intensive cases.
riqmarmes wrote@AvoK95, thanks a lot for your reply. So I will get the 170$ IPS screen from LG (full HD) instead of the screen I first chose. But I'll stick to the 650Ti, because other cards will take us way beyond the budget, and same goes to the SSD. I want to get a keyboard alone because my brother already has a razer mouse, which imo is better than a "cheap but good" Microsoft mouse

I guess this should do, thanks a lot for all the help.
The 650Ti is not that great of a card. If you're paying for a gaming PC the GPU is the most important part of the build. The GPU should be the most expensive part od your build. Why not drop to an i5? It's not that slower than an i7.
. An i7 is just an i5 with Hyoer-Threading, which are just virtual cores. Such things aren't used by games, and sometimes even provide slower performance than its . that's 80$ saved. Skip the ridiculously expensive 50$ wifi card. Settle for a 5$ usb wifis. They do the same job and cost 10 times less. With the rest of the money get a 7950.A 7950 is 300(380 her) $ card that can be overclocked to be faster than a 7970 which is faster than a 680 and second best next to the 780.2x 7950 make 600$ graphics solution that's faster than a 1000$ titan. So even though they're out of stock, just wait for a restock or ship it.
@yasamoka, thanks for the reply. It's true that it's better to get a single faster GPU, but on this case, the 650 Ti Boost work surprisingly well in SLI (check this review. ===> keeping the i7 suddenly becomes a good idea ;) . And the problem with not having wireless, are the cables that will be all along the hallway and stuff, just like you said (it bothers my mom only, but unfortunately that's enough reasons for us to get a wireless card oO ).

And about the VRAM, we won't be running in more than 1080p, and my brother won't OC his cards (most probably), so getting 7950 or 7850 won't be much better.
And I'm happy that the dude is happy :P
Thanks again.

@AvoK95, We want to keep the i7 for rendering stuff. I would've chosen the i5 long ago if it was a gaming desktop "only"
And can you link me to one of these USB wifi, if pcandparts have some. Are you sure they do the same job ? QQ (10 times cheaper is a lot better)
Most 1080P games use up to 2GB of VRAM. 1GB is not enough anymore.


And you're getting a very minor performance improvement over the i5


The Wi-Fi card you're getting is expensive because it's a part of a series from Gigabyte's motherboards. They cost 20 ish, but is being sold for 50 ish here. It's just a Wi-Fi card. Get any old USB Thumbstick and it will do the same job. It's not about being 10 times cheaper. 10 times cheaper is the normal price. 10 times more expensive is what you need to be concerned about ;)


And go for a single faster GPU instead of 2 slower gpus. Games don't scale as well as a single GPU card. A 7950 costs $350, you can OC it to be faster than a 7970. The 7970 is the second best GPU next to the 770. And adding 2x7950 will slaughter a Titan. Furthermore, the B75 chipset doesn't natively support SLI/CFX, guys like MSI use third party chipsets to achieve that. You'll have micro-stuttering and other similar problems once you go SLI. Sometimes games don't like multiple GPUs running. It is more convenient, advisable and smart to get a single GPU card. You also need to consider that 2 GPUs will draw twice as much power and only 30% better than a single GPU. So it's just not worth the trouble.
@AvoK95
I agree with you, but the pc we're building isn't a gaming pc "only", it should be able to run games smoothly, but not max them out necessarily.
Getting 2x7950 is too expensive. Getting 2x650Ti boost ($374) performs better than a single 7970 which is much more expensive. Moreover, my brother won't OC anything, so getting some ATI cards without OC'ing them will be somehow a waste.

Thanks for letting me know that the motherboard doesn't support SLI, I'll get the G45 gaming.

500W PSU should be enough for the i7 with 650Ti boost SLI?
riqmarmes wrote@AvoK95
I agree with you, but the pc we're building isn't a gaming pc "only", it should be able to run games smoothly, but not max them out necessarily.
Getting 2x7950 is too expensive. Getting 2x650Ti boost ($374) performs better than a single 7970 which is much more expensive. Moreover, my brother won't OC anything, so getting some ATI cards without OC'ing them will be somehow a waste.

Thanks for letting me know that the motherboard doesn't support SLI, I'll get the G45 gaming.

500W PSU should be enough for the i7 with 650Ti boost SLI?
I would get a 600W or a 650W to be safe, i doubt 500W will be enough. [not sure which decent brands are available here for that wattage]
Although if you're really determined on going nvidia for the cards, I strongly suggest on buying the best single card you can currently afford. This will give more headroom for future upgrades as you only need to buy a second card instead of actually changing 2 of them. Get the 660ti instead, it will perform less but it should be more then enough for casual gaming unless you are playing some very high-end games at high settings.

PS: the price you posted on the 650ti is on the weekly, it will probably be changed back to normal in next 1-2 days.
I would wait for the new LGA 1150 motherboards to be futureproof,I emailed PCandParts and asked them about them and they said that they are expecting new motherboards tomorrow.
omar_killer wroteI would wait for the new LGA 1150 motherboards to be futureproof,I emailed PCandParts and asked them about them and they said that they are expecting new motherboards tomorrow.
Yea, thanks for letting me know. I'll check if I can get a better deal.
@InVader, wow thanks for letting me know. Wouldn't have been nice to go through these kinds of bugs.
Going 650Ti Boost now with plans to SLi in the future is, I repeat, a very bad idea.

Opening a rig-building topic, the first tip is to make sure you at least take the simplest and most crucial advice. And that advice is dealing with the idea of SLi-ing two low-midrange cards, which has been mentioned multiple times from three different people now telling you the same.

These cards are 128-bit, 2GB VRAM cards. Their GPU power is fine and dandy, but they could run out of steam faster than a single GPU would. 128-bit is tripled on the 7950/7970 and doubled on the 670/680/760/770.

The perfect scenario is that you get perfect scaling, the game does well with that 128-bit interface and doesn't bottleneck (unlikely not to), you get your GPUs' worth of raw power and you beat out a single card in FPS and smoothness. Fine and dandy.

The worst scenario, multi-GPU wise, is that you get no scaling, you fall back to a single GPU's performance and you are forced to use lower settings if you want to maintain a playable experience.

The worst scenario, GPU-wise, is that you run out of VRAM and everything slows to a crawl. With 2GB this is not so much of an issue NOW, but something to note with that much GPU power on hand.

A bad scenario, one you're most likely to run into with many games, is that you get a memory bottleneck and those 128-bit almost halve your performance compared to a 256-bit+ card. You see, this happened with the 660Ti (192-bit higher clocks) vs. 7950 (384-bit lower clocks), where even with similar GPU performance (the 660Ti is similar to a 670 GPU-wise), the 7950 had 50% more FPS in a memory-limited scenario (Metro or Crysis, don't remember). Sucks to have chosen a feeble 660Ti over a 7950 in that case. The 7950 also sweeps the 660Ti in most games and benches out there, so you could see how much memory bandwidth has an impact. Let's assume it's scalar.

So 2 cards with 128-bit busses, you get similar performance to a 256-bit card. You have spent almost the same amount of money, killed the opportunity of SLi / CF for a faster card, use up more power, make the cards heat more and make more noise, risk having SLi not scale well or not scale at all, and have the possibility of facing the most annoying phenomenon that ever existed for GPUs, microstutter. Now Nvidia, and now AMD, have got microstutter down to excellent levels (mostly Nvidia has been at this longer), but you could still get stutter.

Some FCAT knowledge to explain this issue please.

Capping FPS and doing those tweaks and tricks to eliminate microstutter won't work when you're getting varying FPS below your refresh rate (60Hz) for that matter, similar to any single GPU running modern games at suitable settings at suitable resolutions.

Of course you can dial down the settings to crank a certain amount of FPS, but then you're just wasting your cards' potential. You could have run higher settings and tolerated lower but lower variance (no microstutter) FPS with a single GPU that you have chosen to forego.

Don't believe us? Go to Guru3D Forums and ask there. I'd like you to do this. If a single user who knows what he's talking about recommends 650Ti Boost SLi over a faster single GPU, I will be your servant for a day, doing unspeakable things if you wish (including, but not limited to, murder).

If you want to save up for a second 650Ti Boost, no, save the money now, run over integrated GPU, get enough money, and get a proper single GPU instead of 650Ti Boost SLi. Yes, I'm serious.
Couldn't agree more with yasamoka.

Your confirmation is really unbalanced, you're overkilling one component over the other, instead set a balance by getting a 7950 + 3570. OC-ing doesn't change anything.

The best rendering/gaming specs to get is a 3570 8GB RAM B75 chipset and a 7950.
I will have to disagree with this one guys, dual 650ti boost SLI outperforms the 7970 sometimes, and it costs 374$ with VAT... The thing is, if I buy a 7950 and OC it, I might get the same performance as dual 650Ti boost SLI, but don't forget that I can also OC the 650Ti's, and I WON'T buy another 7950 (we don't want to put more money than this), We decided to get another 650ti because its not that expensive for the difference in performance when you get 2 of them... I have a 470gtx on my desktop and I can still max out most of the games, and a single 650Ti boost which has 2Gb compared to the 1280mb should do better when running most games.

What I'm trying to say is, either I get a single 7950 that can max out most games and stuff, or get 650Ti boost SLI which is cheaper and does better than the 7950. (In 1080p only, trust me 2GB VRAM is more than enough, and my brother doesn't mind reducing graphics settings if he has to: he's been playing on a laptop with a 9600M or the macbook pro with a 9400M, barely able to run any game...)
And for some reason my brother doesn't want to get ATI cards (lol). So getting a 670 is too expensive or getting 660Ti is extremely weak (and also has 2Gb VRAM) compared to the 650Ti boost SLI.
The PC he is trying to get has to be good at rendering and working with audio and so on, and the i7 does way better than the i5, so I wont go down to an i5.
He would have been ok with a pc that can run all games in the lowest settings.

But I'll have to make sure I get a good case, and I'll need stronger PSU for the SLI.
Thanks for the help guys.
Dude did you even read my post?

Its not only about FPS. Soon they won't be able to even surpass a 7950 and you'll be running out of VRAM.

Why don't you get it?

I haven't yet seen on the whole internet some dude who is using 650Ti Boost SLi.

You're buying a better board and case and stronger PSU for SLi! Spend that on the single GPU! Wheres the logic in that?

Audio production, do you have a soundcard? Or proper headphones?

Why do you guys not listen?

Do as you wish, this is my final say on the matter.

I will be taking a break from these forums for a while. The stubbornness is annoying.

Whoever wants my help from now on send me an email.
yasamoka wroteDude did you even read my post?

Its not only about FPS. Soon they won't be able to even surpass a 7950 and you'll be running out of VRAM.

Why don't you get it?

I haven't yet seen on the whole internet some dude who is using 650Ti Boost SLi.

You're buying a better board and case and stronger PSU for SLi! Spend that on the single GPU! Wheres the logic in that?

Audio production, do you have a soundcard? Or proper headphones?

Why do you guys not listen?

Do as you wish, this is my final say on the matter.

I will be taking a break from these forums for a while. The stubbornness is annoying.
Hahahahaha, I told you VRAM won't be a problem (2GB really is more than enough for 1080p, worst case, we'll reduce the graphics settings, I'll keep you updated with our system), we'll be checking out sound cards later, we have headphones that are good enough, he's not doing anything very professional (Still in his learning stage), but the i7 is still needed to save looots of time. I will be the first dude to run dual 650ti boost, and I will be a happy dude.
And yes I read your post several times over, and yes some people are stubborn like my brother.
Thanks :)