Never had a problem with a gel wrist rest going 'lumpy'. Obviously depends on what you've bought. Buy a high quality one (especially one that claims a 10 year gaurantee or whatever) and I'm sure you'll be fine.

I note the smiley, however drinking milk / calcium in your bones really has nothing to do with your tendons and developing RSI. Given the cost of healthcare in the USA, it certainly makes sense to pay $50 up front to prevent a $5,000 bill down the line, and potentially face loss of employment etc. It's your life of course, do what you want. Like I said, gel wrist rests might not do much for you, but they help me greatly.

Lowest price I saw the x650 was $96.

The reviews suggest that it is extremely flimsy and as a result may even be broken on arrival or at least have things break when you try to put together a computer with it. Some complain about that there is no way to delete it from the order if you order something that includes it for free and others say they wouldn't even give it away because it is so cheap/low quality/flimsy.

I guess it depends on the desk. I haven't really used mine, so I wouldn't know if a mousepad would be beneficial. I could always not use it if I decide it isn't.

Is it worth waiting for a better deal to come around before getting my PSU?

Yeah, that was probably the problem. I got it at Office Depot for like $10.

I do appreciate your concern, but I haven't noticed an impact from using a gel wrist rest versus not, other than it being slightly more comfy. Most of my computational time will be using the keyboard, I imagine.

Man, why am I wasting money on the CM 690 when I'm getting this awesome rig for free?!

Maybe I could fill it with snacks and put it on top of the computer as some sort of mini pantry.

Still looking for some feedback on overclocking.

IMO it's always worth waiting around for a good deal to come around. That's the nice thing about frankenbuilds. You can wait for something to go on sale, then buy it because you know you need an upgrade.

Is it worth buying that case for $40? That's the decision you have to make.

At high end amounts, you quickly lose out on "deals" so there's not much point in penny pinching.

I fucking love this.

Alright, so the ordering issue should be cleared up now, but prices have changed. I'm looking to order most of my parts tonight or tomorrow (probably tomorrow), but let me know if there's something I should definitely keep waiting for.

Here's what I'm looking at now (OP updated):

The Gigabyte board used to be $180, but I've been looking over the features on the ASRock board and think it will serve my purposes just fine and save me some money while it's at it. Is there a reason I should stick with the Gigabyte one?

Aristocrat mentioned something about Sandy Bridge not officially/properly handling RAM over 1333, so I didn't look at anything faster. But would an extra $15 be worth CAS 7 over CAS 9?

Not really an issue on price, but I've heard great reviews from both of these cards (the Gigabyte one is harder to find in stock). Anyone have a reason why I should go with one over the other?

The CM690 is really expensive right now. I found the Thermaltake case cut way down in price, and it has good reviews. Should I wait for the CM690 to go down, get the A60, or is there another case I should be looking at right now?

The 512GB M4 is now about the same per GB as the 256GB version. My data usage is relatively low (right now this laptop is at 90GB used), but I figure it can't hurt to have storage. Should I go with pure SSD, or opt for a hybrid solution for less money and more storage than I'll ever need?

I was looking at the Razer DeathAdder back when it was $45, but it's a costly $60 again (on Newegg, at least). I found this mouse which has great reviews for a measly $5 less. I'm thinking about just waiting for a good deal to roll around, as I already have a mouse I can use in the meantime.

Thoughts?

That option is the best one.

It's always worth waiting for a better deal. Keep in mind, however, that you gonna have to pay for shipping again, so the deal should scrap off more than $5. So when it's about a mouse that's going to be just $10 cheaper you're not actually saving much, but maybe you'll have to wait a fairly long time.

The hybrid option indeed is the best one, I'd take a 2TB though. I haven't seen many 3TB around yet, so I'd assume they're fairly new and thus not as reliable. Of course chances are that the 3TB will work fine and you're wondering about my warning. Failure rates is all about statistics.

Afaik your PSU comes with a cheap case, so you could use that for now and wait for a better deal. Again it's only worth it if you expect the deal to be significantly better.

"But would an extra $15 be worth CAS 7 over CAS 9?" <--- This is an age where RAM timings don't matter anymore.

The Gigabyte one will likely run cooler/quieter because of their 3-fan cooling, while the EVGA one is a blower design that'll be louder. It is, however, clocked higher.

For storage, opt for the hybrid solution. Not everything needs to be on an SSD (for instance, movies/pictures and whatnot do not benefit from being placed on an SSD at all). You don't use much space now, but Bill Gates also said no one would ever need more than 768KB of memory. Better to be prepared.

It was 640kB and Gates never said it. It's a hoax.

Alright, I guess I'll grab the mouse now, then.

Sorry about that; it was a typo. The link is for a 2TB drive.

I don't really plan on putting any hardware into that case, based on the reviews.

So, should I stick with the CM690 II, even though it's $30 more expensive than it was a week ago? Or should I get that Thermaltake case that's $40 cheaper than it normally is? The price difference is negligible between the two, so I suppose I should opt for the superior case, right?

Mushkin it is, then.

Honestly, I think any 670 card is going to meet my demands for a long time. I'll go with Gigabyte.

Yeah, I suppose. I already have an external drive for movies and whatnot.

I think I'm gonna go with the Extreme6 motherboard. Looks good and has everything I want on a Z77.

I'll likely be ordering tonight after work.

http://promotions.newegg.com/neemail/latest/index-landing.aspx?cm_sp=emailsub-_-homepage-_-promo
always check the promo deals

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207011
over fucking powered, not modular, but hey, it's $80 for an 850W bronze psu. You'll never need to upgrade it, but you won't be getting awesome efficiency either. If you pay for your power, get a gold/platinum. If you don't, this will do fine.
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&file=print&reid=217

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119259
EMCNDJH36
CM 692 is $70 AR.

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823201042
cherry browns for $80. Browns are slightly tactile and light to the touch.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220609
not sure of your decision making on the RAM. ddr3 1600 is pretty much the standard now, though you won't notice the difference between it and 1333 unless you have an amd apu.

So I'm out of time to review stuff, Keep on looking, or I can get you some stuff by the weekend if you like my searching ability. If you have any quick questions on how to find deals I can answer them later tonight.

Pretty much the gist of it is: don't buy anything unless it's on sale/promo code/rebate/slickdeal. Use pcpartpicker to compare prices.

I went through Newegg's promos last night. A lot of the prices haven't even changed.

I'm fairly confident I don't need more than 600W for my PSU, and I do pay for my electricity.

Already bought a Das Keyboard with cherry browns (it was the only payment to go through last time).

I've pretty much been addicted to pcpartpicker ever since you linked it to me (the listings as well as the daily/weekly price drop pages are great). I have yet to be wowed by Slickdeals, on the other hand.

Right now, the only things that aren't on sale/have a promo/have a rebate are the 2500k, the GTX 670 (unless I go with EVGA), and the RAM.

Edit: Bundled my mouse with a headset. Aww yeah.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 14 2012, 2:23 am by Roy.

I got 4 gigs of ram for $12 through slickdeals. Just saying.

So I placed my orders with Newegg and NCIX.

Newegg went through with no problems, although I got two different tracking number emails for my case/monitors.

NCIX gave me an email saying my payment failed because my billing information didn't match my bank. I called my bank and found out that whoever entered my new address a couple weeks ago made a typo on the postal code, so I had to get that straightened out. I also talked about letting the NCIX order go through, and they said they would give NCIX authorization to make the charge for 24 hours. Okay. So I call NCIX and the lady there immediately asks for my order number, and when I give it to her, she tells me that the status of my order was that it was on hold because the GPU I picked was out of stock. I tried explaining that it was in stock when I placed the order, but that didn't really persuade her of anything. After talking a bit more, she said she would inform the payment processing department to get the transaction through.

After I was done telephoning, I checked the NCIX page and the GPU still says it's in stock... Hmm...

How are you liking the CM690 II case (supposing you went with that one)? I recently bought one but haven't had a chance to hook it up yet. I'm loving all the space in it and easy holes for wire management.

Right, I suppose I should do a follow-up with everything.



The motherboard is pretty cool; it's super easy to overclock things in the BIOS. Funny enough, I have a ton of USB 3.0 ports, which sounds awesome, but I've been having some problems with non-USB3 devices in those ports. There are enough USB2 ports for those peripherals, anyway.

I overclocked my CPU to 4.0GHz as per the plan. It's idling just below 30C at the moment, and hasn't run much hotter than the low 40's from normal use thus far. So the 212+ is working pretty well. The cooler kinda loud at 100%, but it's normally running at half that speed, which is pretty quiet. It also barely fit next to my RAM (though I could have just put the fan at an offset to clear over the RAM if there wasn't enough space).

I'm using about 2GB of RAM at the moment, but I don't have SQL Server installed, nor have I run Visual Studio yet; I'm still breaking it in as far as software goes. Still, I can't really imagine myself using more than 5-6GB for a good while, unless I decide to take my work home with me one day.

The GPU is kicking ass. I've thrown a few games at it on the highest settings (Skyrim, SC2, Singularity), and it laughs at my attempts to bog it down. It also runs really cool (highest temperature on SC2 with max everything was 55C).

I'm loving the case so far. I find it awesome that the panel is on the top of the case, because my case sits low to the ground and it's more convenient to just have everything in a lazy arm's reach. Putting flash drives in the USB ports feels a little awkward, though. And yes, the free case I got is pretty cheap and has sharp edges on the inside where holes were drilled. I haven't done anything with it yet. There's also a ton of space; my cooler fit easily inside it. The cable management is pretty good (barely got the CPU cable to reach, though, but that was because I had kind of a short cable).

As for storage, I'm using about 100GB, all on my SSD. My boot times are sweet (timed it to be at 14 seconds from the point of pressing the power button to seeing the desktop loaded). Had no problems getting the M4 set up, and the HDD was good to go after a quick format.

The power supply is being all powery and supply-y. The optical drive is being all optically and drivey.

The monitors cover my entire desk (but I have a pretty small desk). I have them going through DVI to the GPU, and the quality is excellent (particularly the color quality). The dual setup was basically done for me after installing my graphics driver.

The mouse is pretty sweet, too. I had a mouse with a DPI adjuster before, but it never worked very well. With this one, I can definitely feel the change in DPI (and I can theoretically customize them if I install the software). One complaint I'd have about it, though, is that because the mouse wheel is tilted in an ergonomic fashion, I almost always tilt the wheel to the left or right when middle-clicking. I didn't install the software for the mouse, though, so it doesn't do any horizontal scrolling.

The headphones are alright for the price. The quality seems fine to me, though I'm not an audiophile by any means. I like that the cord is a detachable male-to-male, because I always wear out the cord on my headphones and have to buy new ones; with these, I can just replace the cord if I were so inclined.

The keyboard is all clacky and mechanically. Given the option again, I probably wouldn't put $135 down for it, but it is definitely the best keyboard I've ever used, and it's kind of fun to type on. The USB ports on the side are a life saver, because my case is to the left of my desk and my mouse cord wouldn't reach it, so I have it connected through the keyboard. I suppose I could have just moved my case if my keyboard didn't have ports, but I really like it where it is for multiple reasons.

The speakers work pretty well for me. They aren't very loud, but that's fine for me because I live in an apartment complex and can't really crank it anyway. Instead of a knob for volume control, there's a little spinner thing that sits on the desk (with a headphone/mic jack). It makes me feel like I'm a DJ with a tiny turntable when I'm adjusting my speaker volume. I haven't tried the speakers on my monitors, but I heard they're crap.

Not much I can comment on the wireless adapter. It didn't work at all in a couple USB3 ports, though it did for others. I just put it in USB2 because my internet speed sucks anyway, and there hasn't been any network impact in doing so. I don't know how well it transfers data, but it's fast enough for my apartment's 5Mb/s connection.

All-in-all, this is the best computer I've ever had or even used. Thanks for all your help, guys!

I recommend you not get used to a high DPI.

Stick with a low DPI as it is much easier to use at higher levels of play.

Why's that? I have a claw grip and don't move my wrist for my mouse, so I'd need to increase my sensitivity if I'm going to use a lower DPI. Are you saying a lower DPI and higher sensitivity is better than a higher DPI and lower sensitivity?

Mind that I haven't adjusted the Windows sensitivity, because it feels appropriate on my desktop. I've only had to slightly decrease some in-game sensitivities thus far.