i5s are fine for gaming but if you do video/photo editing or streaming and whatnot you may want to consider an i7. for video card i have a gtx660 and it runs everything i can throw at it fine. since you have a budget of $2k here is my build- it's around the same price range as you're looking at. might give you an idea as to what you should look at.

Since he doesn't plan to OC, he should drop the H100 to a 212+ and spend the rest on a Better GPU. Also, if he doesn't need the second monitor, that money can go towards a better Card as well. And if its only going to be a gaming build, the i7 can go to an i5 and I believe that's enough money to go for a 7970.

What's the point of getting i7-3770K if he's not going to overclock?
What's the point of getting H100 if he's not going to overclock?

OP, post at what resolutions you're going to be playing at.

Ivy Bridge is basically the same as Sandy Bridge but optimized better and the internal GPU is better. (of course there are other minor changes, but those are the main ones, afaik) Consumes less electricity for the same amount of processing power.

As for the difference between i5's and i7's. The main difference is that i7's feature Hyper-Threading. Which basically duplicates some sections of the processor which results in roughly 25% more power. Windows will normally see 8 physical cores in the device manager which is wrong. (If you wanna read more about HT, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-Threading

Also in the i7-series are some CPUs that feature 6 cores 12 threads. I have one of those and it's an absolute monster.

posting my build was meant to give him an -idea- of what to buy, not "here's what you are going to buy"?

also an idea of what kind of rig you can get for $2k

haswell releases June 2nd- there might be a small price drop on Ivy bridge CPU around that time.

Overclocking isn't like it used to be by the way- It's really a sure thing to at least unlock 10-20% more performance out of the box with those K chips and most unlocked chips. I would still recommend getting a K series chip because even though you wouldn't overclock now you would always have that option in a few years if you're starting to see it limit you a bit.

I've had my e6600 for 6 years and I finally overclocked it last year to squeeze out some more life...lol.

I was bored, so I just made you a full build here. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ObxI

Since most people have hard drives laying around these days, I decided to go with a 240gb ssd. You also get 2 GTX 670s on SLI :3.

thanks for all the responses, i didn't expect that many people that wanted to help out :D

my monitors native resolution runs at 1680x1050

the last time i ran an SLI build, i had to disable it for 90% of online games because it would either crash or not do anything or actually give me worse performance (at least for tf2)

is the price actually worth the performance for running two GTX 670s in SLI

Well if you want, you can get the ASUS Direct CU II GTX 680. If you get the GTX 680, you have around $400 left. Then you can use that extra money on something else.

Can you put the specs that you have now? I think it's a little odd that you're crashing from diablo

don't go with SLI where possible. There's always a question of microstutter and other issues, not to mention it ups your power supply requirements.
If I were to splurge on a setup I'd probably get a geforce 670 and a lightboost capable 120hz monitor (benQ ++). People have found that the nvidia '3d' lightboost feature can be used to greatly improve motion clarity in regular 2d mode. http://www.blurbusters.com/

That would likely raise your gaming experience so much more than other things, especially as you play FPS games.

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/mz.haider96/saved/1qhB

100$ spare left over. 212+ because stock cooler is a sin, rapid fire tk as a keyboard option, 16 gb of ram, can go down to 8 if you aren't editing. card is just a beast. windows 8 because w8 + pokki start menu = w 7.5 and cheaper.

It comes to 1.9k w/o rebates and w/shipping, so you have 100$ to spend where you like, say on an extra monitor (list has a 144 hz from asus)

i'm crashing because my gpu is probably bad
it crashes on gw2 and a few other games too, where i see massive artifacts before crashing to desktop (nvidia drivers stopped working etc etc)

my current build is
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119213
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128425
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227541
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204 x2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100007
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
with a GTX 470

i'm still going to be using this desktop for video editing and music and stuff, but i'm going to be using the desktop i will be building purely for playing games on

sorry for all the links, that's the easiest list that i have from an old e-mail when consulting with the tech guy that helped me build it lol

i don't need any more monitors
i currently use a samsung 120hz monitor for my main rig and have a spare benq monitor for whenever i play console games, so i'd just hook the desktop up to the benq

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/oblivionage/saved/1qwP

i'm not dismantling my old computer

i read that and i realized that pardon :| but yeah the link i have shown above should give you a good idea of what you could be building.

edit: I didn't put an optical drive because i don't know much about them and i didn't know if you would be using one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178338&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Internal+Hard+Drives-_-N82E16822178338&gclid=CI-t0_GgsrYCFcyY4AodBT0A5A

what is external storage

http://www.maximumpc.com/best-of-the-best I get the magazine and its really helpful go check it out

since ur only spending 2k why dont u blow $1500 of it on a limited edition ares
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121717&Tpk=asus%207970

Discontinued

This item is currently out of stock and it may or may not be restocked.

Hey, go to tomshardware, overclock.net or some other site. Much better info. For gpu I would definitely get a HD7970, if not a crossfired 7970. For cpu, it depends. If you are streaming on twitch.tv, than a 8 core fx 8350 will be best. If its just gaming an i5 3570k would be fine, or an i7 3770k. Ram you'll want just some basic 1600 or 1866 (or higher like 2166) 8gb or 16gb ram. Case is your chose but I prefer the fractal design R4.
For budget, you realy don't need to spend $2000. For TF2 only, you only need to use like $1000. For $1000, you can easily get a fx8350 or 8320 (and overclock it), a good 990fx motherboard, 8gb ram, and a 7950 which is overclockable to 7970 speeds. But if you spend more like $1500 you can get some more hard drives and maybe crossfire video cards/sli.

Is it only for tf2?

Buy a 690/Titan and wait for Haswell c:

Also, I'd personally get two good 24 inch 120hz monitors. One for gaming and one for ther internet or something else. For $2000, I don't know how the first poster could have only gotten a gtx 660..

If you don't OC than just get a single or dual 7970s and a hyper 212.

But honestly my gtx 660 ti can max out tf2 at over 200fps. Pair that with a 3570k or something it would be great.

Don't go with nvidia. The only reason to do nvidia over AMD is because you use adobe after effects or any CS6 that needs CUDA acceleration. But other than that the amd 7970 and 7970 crossfire is much better than 680 and 690.
But those would all really be overkill for tf2...

Maybe wait for haswell, but a 3570k would be plenty for tf2. Maybe if you were doing crysis 3 or something then wait for it

actually nvm if you already have a good 120hz monitor. But yeah. DO NOT do nvidia. Amd 7970 is much better than the gtx 680 and is cheaper. Hell, a 7950 can be found as low as $260. If you overclock and crossfire a 7950, you get basically a cf 7970 which is faster than dual 680 by far and faster than a titan as well. Thats only $520 for that..

Also never go for a gtx 670. For the price you can get a 7950 which will blow it away. Nvidia sucks for gaming, unless you really need it for CUDA or something else

This is false

And comparing a multi card configuration to the nvidia titan on a price/perf. basis is silly. The Titan is a premium card for enthusiasts, everybody knows it doesn't offer anywhere near the best price/performance. The Titan is for people who want the most powerful single card solution and/or enthusiasts who are insane and want to fit as much power as they can into their computer (ie 4 Titans).

Of course ^ But a gtx 670 and 680 are not going to outpreform a 7970 or 7950, especially for the price. Same with the 660 vs 7870 and 7850.

bear ik he has a 2k budget but you don't need anything more than 1200 to play all modern games on max settings with good fps. no need for this sli and crossfire shit it only causes microstuttering and other complications. just get a fast single gpu and btw gpu doesn't really matter for tf2 i have the shittiest gpu possible and an okay cpu so i get above 100 frames normally.