Building a Gaming Computer : Input Appreciated! [PARTS UPDATED 2/23/12]

Everything looks fine there to me, really. A few things though:

I'm assuming you're overclocking, since you picked the 2500K over the 2500. You're not going to get an amazing overclock with the stock cooler so I'd recommend getting a cheap aftermarket cooler like the 212+ or 212 Evo. The Evo's slightly better but it's a really small difference so I'd just grab whichever one's cheaper.

It's probably worth springing for 8GB of RAM straight away if you can fit it in your budget. Using a single 4GB stick is going to be slower because you need 2+ sticks to run in dual channel mode. Also, depending on what other stuff you have going on, running a Minecraft server plus the client might take you over 4GB. Testing just now, I'm at 3.92GB of usage with my regular background tasks (web browser, email, etc.) plus a Bukkit server and the Minecraft client with only myself logged in. If I'm running a more intensive situation before I start playing Minecraft, and I've got a couple of people playing with me, I'm usually looking at around 5-7GB. Just something to bear in mind.

For the power supply 500W will be more than sufficient. Something like a Corsair CX500 will do well, especially as Newegg currently have a deal to get 15% off.

If you are considering running a server separately, you don't actually need a very fast computer for 1-2 people. At one point I ran an IC2 server with 2 people on my old laptop - 2.13GHz single core Pentium M, 2GB of DDR2 and a 5400rpm IDE drive. Didn't really encounter any issues with that but it was just easier to run it on my PC (similar-ish to your proposed one - 2500K @ 4.5GHz, 8GB, GTX 460)

If you're after a 320GB drive, the Samsung Spinpoint F4 is the fastest one out there right now because it uses a single platter, which is pretty awesome. Oh, don't get drawn in by drives that use SATA 6Gb/s (also incorrectly referred to as "SATA III") because no regular mechanical drive is going to come anywhere close to the maximum bandwidth of SATA 3Gb/s, so they're basically just making you pay more for something that won't make any difference.

As for the motherboard, I'd go with the Z68 chipset like you have, but you can pretty much just pick any board that you like the price and features (number of SATA ports or whatever) of. The motherboard with Sandy Bridge doesn't affect the overclocking performance nearly as much, and I'm assuming you don't want to go for a huge overclock anyway, so you don't really need to worry about that. I've got a Z68XP-UD3P which is a fairly nice board, but it's probably out of your price range.

I haven't read through all of the posts, but regarding the graphics card:

From Nvidia, the 460 and 560 are the same (with the 560 usually having faster clock speeds, something overclocking the 460 would solve) but the 560Ti is faster than both.
The 560Ti falls somewhere between the 6870 and 6950, probably closer to the 6950.

If you're considering buying an older generation card, bear in mind that the 5870 is faster than the 6870 and that the 5850 falls between the 6850 and 6870, confusingly.

Anyway, the 460/560 is a great performer and is what I'd recommend for an Nvidia card, if you want to go with AMD then a 6850 or 6870 is probably your best bet, depending on what price you can get one for.

EDIT: Wow, that ended up being a really long post xD

As for PSUs mounted in the bottom of the case, most people find them preferable, hence why almost all modern cases apart from the cheapest ones have moved them down to the bottom. You do have to ensure that the case has a decent ground clearance if you mount the PSU with the fan facing down, and obviously make sure that there's not a bunch of dust under the PC. That probably doesn't work too well on carpeted floors or rugs but it's great on my wooden floor. If you mount the PSU with the fan facing in towards the case, it won't disrupt airflow because in most PSUs it just won't run fast enough. What it will mean is that your PSU will help to exhaust some of the hot air from your case, the flipside being that the PSU itself will run slightly hotter due to the air it's taking in being warm rather than cool. So that could result in the fan speeding up and making more noise, but as long as you've got enough other airflow in your case you shouldn't find that a problem.

Talking of airflow, for a build like this all you need is to put a 120mm intake in the front or bottom and a 120mm exhaust at the back or on the top. Anything more is a bit excessive.

Quote from sirbrandino

I didn't think of that. Anyhow, it will probably be up off the floor a bit, so it wont be directly on the floor. Hopefully that will help.

shouldn't be too much of an issue then. Just be sure to pop the side of the case once a month or so and inspect/dust the thing.

Quote from sirbrandino

So I got another little question , The case comes with a fan mounted in the top rear. Should I keep it there, or would it be better suited to being mounted in the bottom front?

better to have both really, that way there's an airflow that moves over the cpu area. The one in top back points out and the one in the bottom front points in.

Quote from sirbrandino

Thanks, yeah, I plan on buying another 140mm fan for the front port, as an intake, and having the rear fan as an exhaust. Too bad my case only has 2 fan ports

eh, that's pretty standard. I've seen some with side vents but those are just evil. I've been plotting to block mine up for a while now as it's just a dust inlet. Entire front has dust filters, do a decent job but need regular cleaning.
Others may have a giant 200-something mm fan on the top but those kinds of cases are rather expensive. As it is, the aluminum case I have was expensive enough, those get worse.

Quote from sirbrandino

Alright, so I've purchased the parts, they arrived, and I successfully assembled the computer (Yay for me first time!) However, upon trying to hook the monitor up to the video card, the screen shows it briefly, then blackscreens. The only way I've gotten it to work was to remove the video card and use integrated. I was able to install linux this way. Any idea on what the problem is, as well as advice on how to update the drivers (they require windows, which I really don't want to buy)

it may be trying to do the magic z68 stuff (which may requires winblows), can you turn off the integrated in the BIOS? If you can then installing the video card should work. Then you can go about installing the nvidia binary drivers.

as to the nvidia drivers, which distro? Ubuntu and it's variants should be able to fetch and install them automatically.

edit: just confirmed it, the Virtu stuff doesn't work under Linux, you'll have to disable it and force it to only use the graphics card. Note that you will lose the quick sync video encoding support.

Quote from sirbrandino

Thanks, I'm using the radeon 6850, which freezes my computer if it is plugged in. I'm probably going to buy windows 7 (although I don't want to) so that I can get this $800 machine going. I can't update my motherboard either thru ubuntu. Do you think updating the drivers would fix my problem, or do I have a dead video card? Sending it back to the store for a refund will cost me $13 in shipping, so I'm really hoping its ok.

hmm, by "freezes my computer" you mean no hdd activity (booting an OS) and no BIOS beep? (i'll assume there's a speaker hooked up) Sounds like a DOA card if that's the case.
Only way to be sure is to try it in another machine if an appropriate one is available.

Setting up windows may be interesting with the Virtu stuff. You'll want to keep the monitor plugged into the onboard video.

Quote from sirbrandino

No actually, the computer boots, fans spin, single short beep sounds, but nothing displays on the monitor. Then, it is unresponsive to me turning it off, requiring me to remove the power source (I don't like to, but nothing I can do about it.)

hmm.. sounds like a DOA video card then. If you know what kind of BIOS you have (award, ami, whatever) you can look up the beep codes but something tells me it'll be video.

Still having problems with the build?
Which power supply are you using? The 600W listed in OP?
600W is enough to power your build, but that PSU isn't as good, it's an okay power supply. But I don't think it's the PSU's fault.

Was your computer able to work properly before installing graphics card?
What happened after installing graphics card? Any beeps after powering the computer?
Did you plug in the card properly? Power cables? Correct slot?
Does your mobo have onboard graphics? Check the bios.
Is everything plugged in properly?

Haha, saw your post above after I posted.
But good to see you got your problems fixed as well as that cpu temp.

Yeah I've overclocked, not too good at it though, so I can't really give any advice, you can search around the net which has some good guides, and if anybody on these forums are good overclockers, they can help.

Quote from sirbrandino

Same. Ever do any overclocking? I'm interested, especially considering I have the 2500k.

I'm finally proud to put my computer specs in my sig.

Overclocking can be a lengthy process if you do it by hand. However some motherboards include an automatic overclock feature. Not sure if yours does or not.
This may help though. It boils down to a little at a time doing stability tests along the way.
I forget if you picked up a heatsync or not though but note this: The stock cooler generally can't keep up with overclocking.
I'm just a bit annoyed I couldn't push the i5-760 I have more than I could. "Only" got an extra 800Mhz out of it before it started failing stability tests.