New Gaming PC Build - Help and Advice Needed!

Hey guys. I've been into PC gaming my whole life, but I have never actually built one myself. I have been doing research lately on good setup, and I am almost ready to start ordering parts from newegg and amazon, but I need some input first. I want a powerful gaming pc, and I'm willing to spend a little over 2k. Here is what I have in mind:

Case - Corsair Obsidian 650D

PSU - Corsair Professional Series Gold 850-Watt 80 Plus Gold

Motherboard - ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME LGA 1155 Rebublic of Gamers Intel P67 DDR3 2400 ATX

CPU - Intel Core i7-2600K

RAM - G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB(4 x 4GB)240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600

GPU - SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16

Boot Drive - Corsair Force Series GT 120 GB

Data Drive - Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB SATA III 7200
RPM 64 MB

Optical Drive 1 - Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Internal 12XReadable and DVD-Writable Drive

Optical Drive 2 - Lite-On LightScribe 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive

Windows 7 Professional

I went for for that psu because I plan on doing crossfire in the future. The motherboard is what I am really not sure about, any suggestions would be great! I am also aware that the 16bg of ram may be excessive for gaming, but I will be using programs in the future that need it. Thanks!

Wow that build is nice but why go with 2 optical drives? BTW, you should get a CM Evo CPU cooler because the stock one is terrible.

That case is smexy but if you want to save a few bucks, go with the CM Storm Trooper.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811119245

The motherboard is the best you can get for 1155.

Everything else looks really good.

Just save money and just buy the Blue Ray reader/writer thing instead of 2. From now on, just use Steam to play. The read/write speeds don't matter once you're in the game.

The difference between a full tower and a mid tower is really only size. Oh wait, that mobo is E-ATX and it's P67. The 650D won't fit E-ATX mobos so you're better off with the CM Storm Trooper.

Instead of that mobo, get the Z68 version. It has SRT so you'll have increased load times because you have an SSD that you can cache.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131760
It's a bit expensive so if you can't afford it, get this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131790

If you are just gaming, go with the 2500k. also, go with a z68 mobo so in the future, you can drop an ivy bridge cpu in it without swapping mobos as well.

As far as ssd's go, i'd only buy samsung 830 or crucial m4, but lean heavily towards samsung.

and IMHO, no need to drop that much money on a mobo...

Okay good to know, thanks for your help.

@ebola28
I'm going to be using it for more things later down the road, so the ht on the i7 will help. You're probably right about the mobo, I'm probably gonna go with the cheaper one unless it doesn't have the ssd caching.

I agree. I think all you need is a 2500K, then overclock it with a good aftermarket cooler. I personally prefer some of the big air heat sink fans. I don't think liquid cooling is worth the money.

You made a good choice on the video card. I run the HD6950 when I made my build last year. One thing that is a big deal to me with computer cases is the fans. I need it to be as silent as possible because fan humming bothers me to no end. I suggest you take fan noise into consideration when building your computer. Everything else looks great. I only buy asus motherboards, and have never had an issue.

Pci-e 3.0 won't be utilized until ivy comes out. you need a processor that supports it, as well as a mobo that supports it, and a card that has it. the 7000 series works perfectly fine on 2.0, as long as its x16 slot.

And why are you getting win 7 Pro? for most people, its a waste of money.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US [...] ts/compare

OKay well apparently what I was told about the win7 ram limits was wrong, I'm just going to get Home Premium.

For SSD's

SAMSUNG 830 Series
Crucial M4
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos
Intel 320
OCZ Vertex 3 Series – MAX IOPS
OCZ Vertex 3

Read also:

Toms Best SSD for january
SSD shootout - compares intel/samsung/sandforce based (almost all others)

Samsung review