I like it, my only advice would be that if you are going to get the processor from Microcenter, check out their bundles; you can get a Z77 motherboard for less than $100 with that processor.
Also, check deals on SSDs when you go to buy - I would just get whatever the on-sale flavor of the week is in the size you want.
The fact that I can't have that bundle shipped to me breaks my feel-organs.
I've ordered everything but the video card, CPU, normal hard drive and motherboard:
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($169.00 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Performance ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($143.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($57.96 @ Amazon)
Storage: SanDisk SDSSDP-128G-G25 128GB Solid State Drive - 2.5" Form Factor, SATA, 6Gb/s ($89.99 @ Tiger Direct)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card ($309.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 600T Mesh (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 750W 80 PLUS Gold Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($54.98 @ Outlet PC)
In single card configurations AMD cards are just fine(i think they're fine in crossfire as well but i'll admit drivers are more finicky there) but if you want to go nVidia you're looking at either a 660ti or a 670. 670s cost a bit more than 7950s, 660ti will cost a bit less. performance tends to reflect their pricing relative to the 7950.
SSDs wearing out over time is a much overhyped "issue". write endurance is theoretically a thing but you're talking six to ten years of average use depending on the nand and controller being used. It's a nonissue.
There are a couple of other Sapphires in stock, but the Gigabyte or the MSI 7950's would be nearly identical as far as performance goes. I'll 2nd Day of the Bear in the both the 660ti and 670 are great cards too.
Then the last thing is the normal hard drive. Is that Seagate okay? It has a lot of low reviews on Newegg.
Mechanical drives are all pretty much the same, only 3 companies make them these days using very similar technology and parts. And only people who get that 1 in 10,000 bad drive that dies in the first few months bother to go and leave reviews.
So just get whatever drive is cheapest for the rpm and size you want.
Is it wrong if a significant consideration of mine in choosing a PC case is what color it and the LED's will be? I can't decide if I want to do black/red or white/blue...
Is it wrong if a significant consideration of mine in choosing a PC case is what color it and the LED's will be? I can't decide if I want to do black/red or white/blue...
You know, when built my first system, in the hazy days of yore, oh, 2.5 years ago, I was mystified by the people who cared about what colors their components were because they wanted everything on the inside of their rig to match. "How often do you ever look in there? Who cares?" I asked myself.
Now I am looking at buying new RAM and wondering if getting the Crucial Tactical Tracer sticks with blue LEDs to match the rest of my components makes me a total douchenozzle.
I'm starting to wonder if my SSD has gone bad. I formatted, installed W8, updated the firmware on the SSD, started doing Windows Update, and after few minutes in the screen turned white and it locked up. I was then prompted that the update has encounter an error and got sent into a end program loop. I hit the restart button and now I can't boot into Windows.
My SSD no longer shows up as a hard drive when choosing where to install Windows. I'll try formatting it in my htpc and try again. I have the feeling this is going to be a long night.
Luckily I can swap my 7970 into my HTPC while I send the drive out for a RMA. So I'm not completely without a pc for the time being. Still this really blows and came completely without warning.
(I've picked motherboards for their color scheme before)
doubleedit do white/blue! Need more white builds
Yanno what? I think I will! Blue is one of my favorite colors and I'm quite fond of white as well. I gotta admit really looking in depth about how to tell parts apart has been an interesting learning experience too, like for example learning precisely why there's no major difference nine times out of ten between an i5 and an i7. And I've pretty much got the hang of deciding between videocards, picking RAM, so on so forth. But there's two parts of building a computer I seem to have forgotten since the last time I did this.
How do you tell if a motherboard is good or bad beyond just what processors will fit inside of it? And for that matter how does one properly weigh different power supplies against one another?
(funny how two weeks ago I was thinking I didn't want to do custom built, and then I started messing with the suggestions people gave me. And then I started toying with possible builds by myself. And now I can't stop.)
For PSUs there's really no good quick check. If i don't know already i'll either ask in here or google it and see if it's been reviewed by some decent sites. JohnnyGuru is my primary PSU review check.
Seasonic branded units are generally very solid, especially their X line. Most everything corsair puts out is at the least not bad, and their HX and AX lines are extremely solid performers. The corsair AX line is just rebranded seasonic X units. nzxt hale are pretty okay, and i wanna say the OCZ ZT's are as well but i may be misremembering there. Enermax's gold/platinum efficiency units are also very good. There are a lot more than just these, but i can never remember everything off the top of my head.
e: for PSUs make sure that whatever unit you're going with has sufficient connectors for the amount of stuff you want to hook up. THis is usually not an issue but occasionally vendors are stingy on connector counts and it's best to check first.
As for motherboards, i stick with ASUS/Gigabyte/ASrock personally, although EVGA and MSI are not bad either. For LGA1155 in a blue/white themed build your best call will be an ASUS channel board. the z77 v pro or v deluxe are fantastic choices. Blue trim with some of the best software and UEFI around.
For what constitutes a good or bad motherboard these days, there's less overall variance than in the old days since intel's been aggressive about moving more and more stuff on package for their chips. You're looking for things like how many and what kind of SATA and USB it's got, the layout of PCIE slots and lanes, if it's got PLX splitters for multicard configurations or not, onboard audio and other such things.
Also how user friendly the UEFI and integrated windows control software is. stuff like onboard fan control and auto OC features if OCing is your cup of tea.
Having some strange issues and I figure you guys might know what's what.
I have:
i5 3570K on a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3h
128GB Samsung SSD 840 Pro
2TB Seagate ST2000DM001
What's happening:
Was having problems with Steam games becoming a bit corrupted and needing to verify them and download. Steam is on my (Seagate) drive. I'm now also having some weird issue with GameSave Manager which runs a backup of my saves to my DropBox which is also on the drive and now it's failing when it verifies the file after creating it. Just now, I had steam overlay crash on me while in a game. I ran a SpinRite test on the Drive a week or so ago and it passed without any errors. Downloaded Seagate's drive thing and it's passed it's tests. My SSD is fine from what I can tell, and Samsung Magician says that it's working fine as well. I'm at a loss of what it could be. One last thing of note, that's been bugging me a bit but haven't dug into, is when I shutdown/restart the PC it takes at least 1 to 2 minutes to actually shut down. Sure it boots to windows in less than 10 seconds, but it's shutting down real slow.
This is only tangentially related to my new computer but you are all very knowledge so I've come for help.
I use a Garmin GPS watch (Forerunner 305) to help train. I've been having issues with it connecting to my computer. After 2 weeks of back and forth with Garmin support, I'm finally informed that the 305 has issues with USB 3.0 and possibly Windows 8.
I have a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H motherboard. Is there a way to force a usb port to use USB 2.0? I'm not having any luck with google.
Ideally I could leave the Intel USB controller at USB 3.0 and have the Via controller at USB 2.0.
Alternatively, I see the mobo has "up to 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports" available through internal headers. How can I make use of that?
This is only tangentially related to my new computer but you are all very knowledge so I've come for help.
I use a Garmin GPS watch (Forerunner 305) to help train. I've been having issues with it connecting to my computer. After 2 weeks of back and forth with Garmin support, I'm finally informed that the 305 has issues with USB 3.0 and possibly Windows 8.
I have a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H motherboard. Is there a way to force a usb port to use USB 2.0? I'm not having any luck with google.
Ideally I could leave the Intel USB controller at USB 3.0 and have the Via controller at USB 2.0.
Alternatively, I see the mobo has "up to 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports" available through internal headers. How can I make use of that?
Do you have any spare internal headers? You could just use one of these on those. I'm surprised your motherboard didn't come with one or two -- I seem to have collected hundreds of them over the years.
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin
Having some strange issues and I figure you guys might know what's what.
I have:
i5 3570K on a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3h
128GB Samsung SSD 840 Pro
2TB Seagate ST2000DM001
What's happening:
Was having problems with Steam games becoming a bit corrupted and needing to verify them and download. Steam is on my (Seagate) drive. I'm now also having some weird issue with GameSave Manager which runs a backup of my saves to my DropBox which is also on the drive and now it's failing when it verifies the file after creating it. Just now, I had steam overlay crash on me while in a game. I ran a SpinRite test on the Drive a week or so ago and it passed without any errors. Downloaded Seagate's drive thing and it's passed it's tests. My SSD is fine from what I can tell, and Samsung Magician says that it's working fine as well. I'm at a loss of what it could be. One last thing of note, that's been bugging me a bit but haven't dug into, is when I shutdown/restart the PC it takes at least 1 to 2 minutes to actually shut down. Sure it boots to windows in less than 10 seconds, but it's shutting down real slow.
Help?
Check the RAM?
"For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men. Not women. Not beasts...this you can trust."
How do you tell if a motherboard is good or bad beyond just what processors will fit inside of it? And for that matter how does one properly weigh different power supplies against one another?
Motherboard performance, for me, comes largely from forum chatter and reviews. Reviews can be sketchy, so I try to check reputatble sites periodically. There is usually chatter from review sites, also, if a particular generation of chip (North/South Bridge, etc) has issues.
This is only tangentially related to my new computer but you are all very knowledge so I've come for help.
I use a Garmin GPS watch (Forerunner 305) to help train. I've been having issues with it connecting to my computer. After 2 weeks of back and forth with Garmin support, I'm finally informed that the 305 has issues with USB 3.0 and possibly Windows 8.
I have a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H motherboard. Is there a way to force a usb port to use USB 2.0? I'm not having any luck with google.
Ideally I could leave the Intel USB controller at USB 3.0 and have the Via controller at USB 2.0.
Alternatively, I see the mobo has "up to 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports" available through internal headers. How can I make use of that?
Do you have any spare internal headers? You could just use one of these on those. I'm surprised your motherboard didn't come with one or two -- I seem to have collected hundreds of them over the years.
Thanks! That is exactly what I needed to know. I'm quite certain my motherboard didn't come with any of those. Now that I know they exist I can find some.
I'm considering getting a new PC for my dad for Father's Day. He's using a monster from far back. It's on Windows XP and running with only like 512 MB of DDR RAM. It was a prebuilt my mother and him bought years ago at Best Buy. He mostly only uses the system for e-mail and web-surfing. However, he does occasionally use Microsoft Office and will play his old PC games on it (things like Command and Conquer 1, Dune, Sim City 2000, etc.). So, he doesn't run high-end games on it.
The difficulty is he also has a slew of health problems that cause him to need to use a big-screen TV for his monitor and a screen magnification software called ZoomText. He has ZoomText version 9 (copies are very costly for this software so I'd like to avoid having to upgrade it if possible).
My friends all believe that for something that isn't going to be playing high-end games buying a prebuilt is the way to go anymore. My worry is that most prebuilt towers at local retail stores are now running on Windows 8. I'm not sure how compatible the ZoomText software will be with Windows 8 and I'm fairly certain my father would hate it with its current appearance.
Any suggestions on what route to take and what specifications to aim for? I'd like him to have a computer that runs very smoothly. His current set up is insanely slow. Also, he has to use a USB wireless plug-in adapter to get on his internet router; I would like to get him a setup that has a decent built-in wireless card. And I'm wondering if the newer models could even be more compact as to not take up so much desk space.
I'm considering getting a new PC for my dad for Father's Day. He's using a monster from far back. It's on Windows XP and running with only like 512 MB of DDR RAM. It was a prebuilt my mother and him bought years ago at Best Buy. He mostly only uses the system for e-mail and web-surfing. However, he does occasionally use Microsoft Office and will play his old PC games on it (things like Command and Conquer 1, Dune, Sim City 2000, etc.). So, he doesn't run high-end games on it.
The difficulty is he also has a slew of health problems that cause him to need to use a big-screen TV for his monitor and a screen magnification software called ZoomText. He has ZoomText version 9 (copies are very costly for this software so I'd like to avoid having to upgrade it if possible).
My friends all believe that for something that isn't going to be playing high-end games buying a prebuilt is the way to go anymore. My worry is that most prebuilt towers at local retail stores are now running on Windows 8. I'm not sure how compatible the ZoomText software will be with Windows 8 and I'm fairly certain my father would hate it with its current appearance.
Any suggestions on what route to take and what specifications to aim for? I'd like him to have a computer that runs very smoothly. His current set up is insanely slow. Also, he has to use a USB wireless plug-in adapter to get on his internet router; I would like to get him a setup that has a decent built-in wireless card. And I'm wondering if the newer models could even be more compact as to not take up so much desk space.
I dunno, I am open to suggestions!
Thanks so much for any advice you can give!
To check compatability I would say search around, people on disability forums or something might know more about how a specific version of software will work with newer versions of windows.
Also, given that he is using an expensive piece of software, has he tried the accessibility settings in new versions of Windows and found them inadequate? Does he also use a screen reader function of the software he has?
But yes I would go prebuilt - you can always buy a copy of an older OS if he doesn't like 8.
I will have to check with the Windows services stuff, but I know that the ZoomText made things larger than what was available in Windows XP. He has a box that he moves around the screen keeping everything extremely large (the box surrounds where his cursor is). He's able to use this to see the desktop and do what he needs; the software also has a feature to read to you what you are doing, but he tends to not use that feature.
Is it simple enough to install older OS's on a prebuilt? His old machine is some prebuilt e-machines tower and the OS was installed on an inaccessible partition of the hard drive. So, there was never a way to wipe it out without sending it to the company (I think).
I will have to check with the Windows services stuff, but I know that the ZoomText made things larger than what was available in Windows XP. He has a box that he moves around the screen keeping everything extremely large (the box surrounds where his cursor is). He's able to use this to see the desktop and do what he needs; the software also has a feature to read to you what you are doing, but he tends to not use that feature.
Is it simple enough to install older OS's on a prebuilt? His old machine is some prebuilt e-machines tower and the OS was installed on an inaccessible partition of the hard drive. So, there was never a way to wipe it out without sending it to the company (I think).
I'll take a look at Windows 8s text enlargement things, but I know you can do all of those things in Vista.
Ok that brings up a couple of questions, one related and one not. If the 780 is out, does that mean the 680 is about to come down in price?
And secondly, my bigger question, what's the major difference between the kinds of towers? In the past I never really thought about it, but is it mostly just fewer drive bays and getting the right motherboard/power supply? It's occuring to me I'm not sure if there's any real reason to go for a full tower specifically.
0
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
A decent ATX mid tower has more than enough room for pretty much anything you could want. I could triple SLI my 680 and install 6 3.5 hard drives on top of everything I already have in my 550D, and still have room to run a full custom water loop for the cards as well as the H100 I already have for my CPU without things getting too squishy.
rumors were 770 should be in a week or two, it most likely will be a higher clocked 680, for a bit less.
Unless a significant performance difference exits between the 680 and 770, I would just buy 680s when the price starts dropping. I would imagine a 770 hitting right in the $425-$450 range. In fact, this 680 is already $429 and has a $20 MIR available. Now would be the time to get a good deal on some (still) very high performance hardware.
Steam - Synthetic Violence | XBOX Live - Cannonfuse | PSN - CastleBravo | Twitch - SoggybiscuitPA
Alright then! That's handy because I found a mid-ATX tower I'm pretty fond of, appearance-wise.
Any major difference between memory speeds or should I just grab the fastest that my motherboard'll take? Or does that even really matter? (Apparently I'm looking at 2400 in that case?)
On sandy/ivybridge almost any memory is "fast enough" in that more speed isn't super noticable. Generally i recommend 1600mzh stuff unless you can get faster for not too much more
I can't tell if a hundred dollars for 8 gigabytes of RAM is overpaying or not, seems like it's about thirty extra dollars for 2400 instead of 1600?
On the other hand I realized I can fit a GTX 680 into my budget (I think) which seemed unthinkable when I was looking at pre-builts, so now I'm completely sold on doing custom built this time.
I can't tell if a hundred dollars for 8 gigabytes of RAM is overpaying or not, seems like it's about thirty extra dollars for 2400 instead of 1600?
That is $30 you won't really be getting much return for. I mean, get the 2400 stuff for e-peen's sake if you like but it's not going to make a noticeable difference over 1600.
Posts
A co worker convinced me I might as well pick up a cooler. Will this one be good?
http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Hyper-212-RR-212E-20PK-R2/dp/B005O65JXI/ref=pd_luc_bxgy_01_04_t_lh?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Also, he swears by Nvidia over Radeon, and Newegg is sold out of that Sapphire anyway, so I'm willing to take alternatives. I'm considering this one.
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Mini-Displayport-PCI-Express-Graphic-GV-R795WF3-3GD/dp/B007581QHG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369258523&sr=8-2&keywords=Sapphire++100352-2L
He also warned me that certain SSDs tend to break over time. Will mine break? What's that one "feature" that SSDs need?
In single card configurations AMD cards are just fine(i think they're fine in crossfire as well but i'll admit drivers are more finicky there) but if you want to go nVidia you're looking at either a 660ti or a 670. 670s cost a bit more than 7950s, 660ti will cost a bit less. performance tends to reflect their pricing relative to the 7950.
SSDs wearing out over time is a much overhyped "issue". write endurance is theoretically a thing but you're talking six to ten years of average use depending on the nand and controller being used. It's a nonissue.
Mechanical drives are all pretty much the same, only 3 companies make them these days using very similar technology and parts. And only people who get that 1 in 10,000 bad drive that dies in the first few months bother to go and leave reviews.
So just get whatever drive is cheapest for the rpm and size you want.
Like I said a couple weeks ago...
(I've picked motherboards for their color scheme before)
doubleedit do white/blue! Need more white builds
Time format and try again.
Luckily I can swap my 7970 into my HTPC while I send the drive out for a RMA. So I'm not completely without a pc for the time being. Still this really blows and came completely without warning.
Yanno what? I think I will! Blue is one of my favorite colors and I'm quite fond of white as well. I gotta admit really looking in depth about how to tell parts apart has been an interesting learning experience too, like for example learning precisely why there's no major difference nine times out of ten between an i5 and an i7. And I've pretty much got the hang of deciding between videocards, picking RAM, so on so forth. But there's two parts of building a computer I seem to have forgotten since the last time I did this.
How do you tell if a motherboard is good or bad beyond just what processors will fit inside of it? And for that matter how does one properly weigh different power supplies against one another?
(funny how two weeks ago I was thinking I didn't want to do custom built, and then I started messing with the suggestions people gave me. And then I started toying with possible builds by myself. And now I can't stop.)
For PSUs there's really no good quick check. If i don't know already i'll either ask in here or google it and see if it's been reviewed by some decent sites. JohnnyGuru is my primary PSU review check.
Seasonic branded units are generally very solid, especially their X line. Most everything corsair puts out is at the least not bad, and their HX and AX lines are extremely solid performers. The corsair AX line is just rebranded seasonic X units. nzxt hale are pretty okay, and i wanna say the OCZ ZT's are as well but i may be misremembering there. Enermax's gold/platinum efficiency units are also very good. There are a lot more than just these, but i can never remember everything off the top of my head.
e: for PSUs make sure that whatever unit you're going with has sufficient connectors for the amount of stuff you want to hook up. THis is usually not an issue but occasionally vendors are stingy on connector counts and it's best to check first.
As for motherboards, i stick with ASUS/Gigabyte/ASrock personally, although EVGA and MSI are not bad either. For LGA1155 in a blue/white themed build your best call will be an ASUS channel board. the z77 v pro or v deluxe are fantastic choices. Blue trim with some of the best software and UEFI around.
For what constitutes a good or bad motherboard these days, there's less overall variance than in the old days since intel's been aggressive about moving more and more stuff on package for their chips. You're looking for things like how many and what kind of SATA and USB it's got, the layout of PCIE slots and lanes, if it's got PLX splitters for multicard configurations or not, onboard audio and other such things.
Also how user friendly the UEFI and integrated windows control software is. stuff like onboard fan control and auto OC features if OCing is your cup of tea.
I have:
i5 3570K on a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3h
128GB Samsung SSD 840 Pro
2TB Seagate ST2000DM001
What's happening:
Was having problems with Steam games becoming a bit corrupted and needing to verify them and download. Steam is on my
Help?
I use a Garmin GPS watch (Forerunner 305) to help train. I've been having issues with it connecting to my computer. After 2 weeks of back and forth with Garmin support, I'm finally informed that the 305 has issues with USB 3.0 and possibly Windows 8.
I have a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H motherboard. Is there a way to force a usb port to use USB 2.0? I'm not having any luck with google.
Ideally I could leave the Intel USB controller at USB 3.0 and have the Via controller at USB 2.0.
Alternatively, I see the mobo has "up to 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports" available through internal headers. How can I make use of that?
Do you have any spare internal headers? You could just use one of these on those. I'm surprised your motherboard didn't come with one or two -- I seem to have collected hundreds of them over the years.
Check the RAM?
Motherboard performance, for me, comes largely from forum chatter and reviews. Reviews can be sketchy, so I try to check reputatble sites periodically. There is usually chatter from review sites, also, if a particular generation of chip (North/South Bridge, etc) has issues.
As for power supplies, check this article: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/410
The whole site is fantastic for detailed reviews.
Thanks! That is exactly what I needed to know. I'm quite certain my motherboard didn't come with any of those. Now that I know they exist I can find some.
I'm considering getting a new PC for my dad for Father's Day. He's using a monster from far back. It's on Windows XP and running with only like 512 MB of DDR RAM. It was a prebuilt my mother and him bought years ago at Best Buy. He mostly only uses the system for e-mail and web-surfing. However, he does occasionally use Microsoft Office and will play his old PC games on it (things like Command and Conquer 1, Dune, Sim City 2000, etc.). So, he doesn't run high-end games on it.
The difficulty is he also has a slew of health problems that cause him to need to use a big-screen TV for his monitor and a screen magnification software called ZoomText. He has ZoomText version 9 (copies are very costly for this software so I'd like to avoid having to upgrade it if possible).
My friends all believe that for something that isn't going to be playing high-end games buying a prebuilt is the way to go anymore. My worry is that most prebuilt towers at local retail stores are now running on Windows 8. I'm not sure how compatible the ZoomText software will be with Windows 8 and I'm fairly certain my father would hate it with its current appearance.
So I'm debating whether I should try to build a PC or purchase one from a retail store for him. Also, I'm wondering how beefy I need the specs to be for him to run it smoothly. Here is what ZoomText lists their specifications as:
http://www.aisquared.com/zoomtext/more/zoomtext_magnifier_system_requirements
Any suggestions on what route to take and what specifications to aim for? I'd like him to have a computer that runs very smoothly. His current set up is insanely slow. Also, he has to use a USB wireless plug-in adapter to get on his internet router; I would like to get him a setup that has a decent built-in wireless card. And I'm wondering if the newer models could even be more compact as to not take up so much desk space.
I dunno, I am open to suggestions!
Thanks so much for any advice you can give!
To check compatability I would say search around, people on disability forums or something might know more about how a specific version of software will work with newer versions of windows.
Also, given that he is using an expensive piece of software, has he tried the accessibility settings in new versions of Windows and found them inadequate? Does he also use a screen reader function of the software he has?
But yes I would go prebuilt - you can always buy a copy of an older OS if he doesn't like 8.
Is it simple enough to install older OS's on a prebuilt? His old machine is some prebuilt e-machines tower and the OS was installed on an inaccessible partition of the hard drive. So, there was never a way to wipe it out without sending it to the company (I think).
Review - anandtech
I'll take a look at Windows 8s text enlargement things, but I know you can do all of those things in Vista.
Damnit, I don't care about that one--I want info on the 770! They do this shit on purpose.
And secondly, my bigger question, what's the major difference between the kinds of towers? In the past I never really thought about it, but is it mostly just fewer drive bays and getting the right motherboard/power supply? It's occuring to me I'm not sure if there's any real reason to go for a full tower specifically.
It's big and sexy.
Unless a significant performance difference exits between the 680 and 770, I would just buy 680s when the price starts dropping. I would imagine a 770 hitting right in the $425-$450 range. In fact, this 680 is already $429 and has a $20 MIR available. Now would be the time to get a good deal on some (still) very high performance hardware.
Any major difference between memory speeds or should I just grab the fastest that my motherboard'll take? Or does that even really matter? (Apparently I'm looking at 2400 in that case?)
On the other hand I realized I can fit a GTX 680 into my budget (I think) which seemed unthinkable when I was looking at pre-builts, so now I'm completely sold on doing custom built this time.
That is $30 you won't really be getting much return for. I mean, get the 2400 stuff for e-peen's sake if you like but it's not going to make a noticeable difference over 1600.
All the RAM you need to game your face off. Good speed, voltage, latency, low profile heatsinks, reputable reliable brand.