Ok so I am having a custom PC built by Maingear (the F131) as a combination Christmas/ Birthday / College Graduation gift and was was wondering if you guys could help me out with a few things I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. So first off, my processor is going to be an Intel i7 3770 @ 3.4 Ghz overclocked by Maingear to about 4 Ghz and I'm getting an nvidia GTX 690 as my GPU...yes I'm going for overkill here because...you know, I can.

That stuff is all well and good, but I'm getting stuck in regards to the RAM and PSU I should put into my system. The goal of this whole thing is to stave off the need for an upgrade for as LONG as I possibly can, thus the crazy specs, so I'm going with 16 GB of RAM, but I'm not sure which form to get. My two options are

1. 16GB Corsair® Dominator™ Platinum DDR3-2133 1.5V (4x4GB)
2. 16GB Corsair® Dominator™ Platinum DDR3-1600 Extremely Low Latency 1.5V (4x4GB)

The difference in these two formats is over $100, and I don't want to shell out another hundred for the same amount of RAM if I won't notice a difference. I've heard conflicting things about whether I would though, as some of my friends say my system is so powerful the difference between these two options is irrelevant while others say the quality of my system is irrelevant in noticing these RAM differences. So I come to you all asking what the difference is between these two choices, and how that will manifest itself in terms of noticeable performance?

Secondly, I am having trouble deciding which power source to get...for this I have 4 choices:

1. 600W Seasonic® 80+ Certified Power Supply ROHS
2. 660 Watt Seasonic® X-660 80+ Gold Certified Modular Power Supply ROHS
3. 850 Watt Corsair® AX850 80+ Gold Certified Modular Power Supply ROHS
4. 800W Corsair® Gamer Series 80 Plus Certified PSU

Now, based on my research, I'd definitely want to go with either the 800W or 850W PSU, because my GPU requires so much power, but I can't decide which to go with, and I'm confused on whether or not I could do more harm than good if I go with something too large. I would LIKE to stick with the 800W PSU because it is significantly cheaper (about 3x as cheap) as the 850 W, but if I need to go higher I obviously will. If you guys could tell me which you recommend and, more importantly, WHY you recommend it, I would be extremely grateful.

FINALLY, I was wondering about my Operating System. I've heard rumblings about a few instabilities present in Windows 8 and would like to know if I'd be better off going with Windows 7 so that I don't have to worry about little bugs making gaming/work difficult, or if I would be fine getting WIndows 8.

Thank you for your (future) assistance everyone!

@SpartyOn: Any reason why you aren't building the PC yourself? It's quite simple and would save you 1/3rd of the cost or more. You must have a tech friend or two; most are more then happy to put this kind of system together, or at least would render assistance. It's almost impossible to screw up a PC build these days, as everything is just plug in and go.

Assuming you don't want to for whatever reason, however, I'll do my best to answer your questions. For the RAM, you will see no difference. Zero. I mean, is there a difference? Sure, maybe 1-2%. You won't ever notice it. Save the money. For the PSU, go for the more expensive 850. You'll be riding that 800 hard with the components you have, and the 850 is 80 PLUS Gold certified which means it is VERY efficient and will save you money in the long run.

It's also the exact PSU I have in my system, so I can vouch for its reliability, low noise, and efficiency myself.

As for the OS, there isn't any reason to not get Windows 8. It's stable, and whatever quirks they added to it can be ignored (like that weird Metro tile thing). It functions pretty identical to 7 for the end user.

@Mirado said:

@SpartyOn: Any reason why you aren't building the PC yourself? It's quite simple and would save you 1/3rd of the cost or more. You must have a tech friend or two; most are more then happy to put this kind of system together, or at least would render assistance. It's almost impossible to screw up a PC build these days, as everything is just plug in and go.

Assuming you don't want to for whatever reason, however, I'll do my best to answer your questions. For the RAM, you will see no difference. Zero. I mean, is there a difference? Sure, maybe 1-2%. You won't ever notice it. Save the money. For the PSU, go for the more expensive 850. You'll be riding that 800 hard with the components you have, and the 850 is 80 PLUS Gold certified which means it is VERY efficient and will save you money in the long run.

It's also the exact PSU I have in my system, so I can vouch for its reliability, low noise, and efficiency myself.

As for the OS, there isn't any reason to not get Windows 8. It's stable, and whatever quirks they added to it can be ignored (like that weird Metro tile thing). It functions pretty identical to 7 for the end user.

With the rig he's making, I don't think cost is much of an issue.

@believer258: Not the point; you can take that 1/3rd you save and pack it into the system again. Grab a good IPS monitor, some speakers, whatever.

Just because you have the cash doesn't mean you need to waste it.

EDIT: And if cost is no issue, why is looking to save $100 on the RAM? That doesn't add up, then.

Whoa, that's a pretty beastly machine. Just for gaming at 1080p or less, or more intensive stuff too? 'Cause that's a lot of juice. Anyway, if you've got the cash, go for it--it'll be awesome, but I do agree with Mirado that you should consider building it yourself. Not only would it save some money, but it's quite a bit of fun, and a pretty rewarding and edifying experience too.

I wouldnt worry about the RAM and I dont think you need that much. Get 12 and spend the rest on a bigger power supply or a motherboard that allows more expansion. You are better off giving yourself the ability to upgrade rather than maxing out what you can get for the price you want at the moment.

With that being said the power supply is too often overlooked...get more than you need. RAM is easy to upgrade. If you have never built a computer before putting in a new power supply or motherboard is a lot harder than some extra RAM.

I dont know what the power needs of a 690 are but I am sure they are quite a bit.

Lastly make sure your case has good fans and excellent cooling.

Edit: forgot bout the OS. I havnt messed around with windows 8 but in terms of gaming its not like it has a new Directx just get windows 7. If you want 8 at a later date its like $30

I don't have experience with low latency RAM, but I cannot see how the difference between RAM speed is so much that it's worth the $100 increase in price. As for PSU, I'd probably stick with the 800W. It's cheaper and unless you plan adding something like custom water cooling or an additional GTX 690 for SLI (which would be WTF?! in terms of power and excess) the 800W should suffice.

Lastly, just get Windows 8. Even if you hate the metro interface, you will at least have the OS which will be supported much later. Instability/Incompatibility issues are rare from what I've seen and should be patched if the software is still supported.

[edit] Also I know your budget is in the realm of "I don't give a fuck," but it can't be unlimited. Is there anything else you need to accompany your PC. 30" IPS monitor, Razer laptop and mouse, etc.? If this is solely for games, then you can easily make huge cuts without insignificantly effecting performance. You are at the point where a large portion of your budget is earning you another 3-5 frame increase in FPS.

Memory speed and timings are over-rated and I don't advise people to overclock them (which is what you're doing if you buy and run memory at 2400mhz). People often just buy stuff and slap it together, without a full understanding of how the components fit in relation to each other. So you get guys buying 32GB of 1600mhz (or higher) low-latency rated RAM and then they're baffled when their system either won't run it or won't run stable with it (hint: the i7-3770K's memory controller is rated for 1333mhz at 9-9-9-7-2N or 1600mhz at 11-11-11-8-2N).

In your case, the 2400mhz is unnecessarily fast. In the other case, you're fine, but you will probably want to run it at 1333mhz, even though its rated at 1600mhz -- remember that these are ratings for the memory -- just because the memory can run at a certain speed and latency doesn't mean the motherboard and/or CPU you pair it with can).

The two things you want to do when buying RAM are to check the specifications for the CPU and then check the qualified vendor list for your motherboard, available at the manufacturer's website:

You can do the first (for the i7-3770K), below. You always want to know what memory density, speed, and latency it can handle and in what combinations. Anything beyond that is effectively overclocking the memory controller and I've rarely seen any performance gain worth the potential instability.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/3rd-gen-core-desktop-vol-1-datasheet.html

Your motherboard's qualified vendor list will include brand, density configuration, speed, latency, and serial numbers. You can then pick what you like best from that list and know that not only has it been tested, but that you'll be covered when you reach out to their support (for an RMA, for example).

Corsair is generally good. I've recently had fine success with G.Skill. Specifically, Ripjaws X 4x4 1600 (F3-12800CL9Q-16GBXL) in a system similar to yours (Asus P8-Z77WS with an i7-3770K and a pair of 4GB GTX 670s). As long as all the numbers match up with the CPU specifications and your board's QVL, the rest is just based on reputation, really.

PSUs are underrated and nobody ever puts enough money into them. I would avoid CoolerMaster. Corsair is good. Seasonic is fantastic. However, the PSU market can be kind of shady. What they advertise is not always what they deliver, the actual output is often very different, the degradation of power over time varies, etc. Even within brands, they can go from absolutely top of the line to complete shit -- so when I say "Seasonic is awesome" -- what I really mean is something like "I know for a fact that the Seasonic1000W Platinum is an incredible PSU, they have historically provided fantastic PSUs, but not all of their line may be of the same grade". Also . . . there's a lot of re-branding. Some of the best PSUs out there are actually re-branded from Seasonic (Corsair may do that, for example -- but I haven't gone through that research in almost a year, so don't take that as fact).

By the way, I would tend to avoid anything marketed with "GAMER". A good PSU is a good PSU and there's nothing that should be specifically "GAMER" about it, except maybe how they split up the rail and the number of lines for GPUs, which still doesn't really have any specific meaning for "GAMER".

An 800 watt PSU should be more than enough (and remember, you're only going to be hitting anything over 200 or 300 watts when you're actually playing an intense game -- you're going to use around 200 watts at the desktop). Of course, I pointed out above that not all PSUs are created equal, so a shitty 800 watt PSU *won't* be enough.

The 850 Watt Corsair AX850 (and HX850) are fine PSUs.

For additional reviews and info on PSUs, I refer people to OCP and to Johnny Guru (who is probably the most detailed and informed PSU reviewer out there):

http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/psu_power_supplies/

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Review_Cat&recatnum=13

And, no, you can't have too much power. The system will use what it uses -- unless it's a very poor quality supply, in which case it may draw more of the power limit from the wall than the computer really needs (the whole efficiency problem). The only limitation is the electrical circuit you're plugging it into at home. If you have a dedicated 20 amp for your machine -- the sky is the limit. If you have a 15 amp circuit that you're plugging it into and that circuit already has a home theater or other power-hungry stuff on it, it's not going to supply a system that needs to draw 1kw (which, admittedly, most systems shouldn't NEED unless *maybe* we're doing triple SLI)

Don't worry about the OS. If you prefer Windows 7 (like any reasonable person who isn't on a phone or tablet), then use that. Windows XP end-of-support-life isn't for another year and a half, Windows 7 end-of-support-life is seven years away. By the time Windows 7 is no longer supported, we'll have another three or four new versions of Windows that you can jump to -- any of which are sure to be far better systems and far less the frankensteinein abomination of this stitched-together mish-mash.

you wont notice a difference between the ram, get the 1600 MHz'ers. ( they were the cheap ones right? )

@kalibr said:

I wouldnt worry about the RAM and I dont think you need that much. Get 12 and spend the rest on a bigger power supply or a motherboard that allows more expansion. You are better off giving yourself the ability to upgrade rather than maxing out what you can get for the price you want at the moment.

12 is kind of odd unless you have 3 memory channels. you'd want to get 8 or 16 with a 1155 system.