Building PC: Thoughts and suggestions

So, I'm new to this place, and wondering why I didn't find it sooner. I've found a lot of useful tips here. Anyway, I'm looking into building a new comp and I'd like some opinions and pointers. I hope I put this in the right subforum, I'm sorry if I didn't. Now, I'm no rookie, but I'm hardly an expert so don't be too hard on me and my stupid self. ;D

Ok! The Important stuff. My comp is just a basic, not-good-for-much desktop.

What I have now:
HP Pavilion p6547c - Detailed Specs
Windows 7 x64
AMD Athlon II x2 220 2.8 GHz
5GB Ram
Integrated ATI Radeon 3000
600GB Hard Drive
300W PS

I'd like to see if this is a good build and double check that everything is compatible together in the setup, I'm pretty sure it all is. I'm currently estimating my total for this at $871-1044 not counting the liquid cooler (more on that below).

What I want to build:
Thermaltake Chaser MK-I Case
Windows 7 x64
GIGABYTE AMD 970A-D3 Motherboard
AMD FX-4300 3.8GHz Processor
Asus AMD Radeon HD 7850
16GB Ram
Thermaltake TR-700 700w Power Supply
Toshiba HDKPC03 1TB HD
Seagate Barracuda 500GB HD
Asus Xonar DS 7.1 PCI Audio Card
LG Blue Ray CD/DVR-RW/BD-R Combo Drive

As mentioned above, I'm looking into a liquid cooler but don't know which one's are the best to go with. I'd like to keep it around $150 or less but I'd consider higher priced ones up to $200. I was looking at the Corsair Hydro Series H60 but there's been quite a few complaints about screw stripping and the fan being a bit noisy.

Now, if anyone has suggestions on possible alternatives to anything here that might be better I'd like to hear it. Although, I don't want to raise my costs too much higher (already about a grand XD). And I still have two programs to buy at $300 each. My max budget for all of it including the programs is $2k. If I get a lot of the parts at their current sale price it's the $871 total which gives me more room for higher priced alternatives/upgrades, that's iffy though and not counting on it since I can't really get this all at the current moment.

Thanks in advance for you guy's time. :3

 

You may want to look into an SSD for your boot drive.

I personally swear by OCZ, and even though they are expensive the same company makes a PCIe card SSD (RevoDrive) which can be used as a boot drive if the motherboard is compatible. Blazing fast is an understatement...

 

your priorities are a bit wrong my friend i'd spend that bit extra on the AMD FX-8320 Vishera instead of the extra 8 gigs of ram unless you do alot of rendering or exclusively ram intensive stuff you don't need and will almost never use that much memory. however the the 8320 cpu is money you can enjoy every time you flip the pc on!

It can be clocked to 4.0 stable easily. Might i suggest the corsairs 400r for a case its amazing the cable management is soo clean tons of cooling options and a top hump with 2 120mm slots that just begs for an h100. i just finished my new build today actually and i am in love with my 400r. its less money than what your looking at to and is probably even nicer.

 

As far as the SSD goes, I'd love to get one, but they're 3-4 times the price of the HDD and I just can't justify the extra expense when the build is already so high. I mean the cheapest 500GB I found was around $370 and I need at least a 1TB drive and those cost almost as much as a whole comp. ;P With the exception of Seagate's which I'm not to sure I trust since a lot of the specs included on most SSD's aren't there on the Seagate's.

As for the AMD FX-8320, I actually didn't know it was only a little bit more. Most of the places I looked before we're $100 dollars higher or more. But for an extra $50, I can add it with out sacrificing the memory. I actually do need the high ram. I work in Maya a lot and my school comps had issues sometimes at the 8GB's they had. Especially when rendering cut-scenes. I probably don't need to go as high as 16 but for the difference of $20 bucks between them, I'd rather just get the 16. But yeah I'll upgrade to the FX-8320 for sure.

As for the case, I must admit, I'm kind of stuck on the look of it and I like the cases with color changing LED's. XD I could wire my own lighting, done it before, but I think that's kinda more trouble than it's worth and it ends up costing the about the same in the long run.

 

Sorry for the double post, but I found that I can actually get the AMD FX-8350 for $10 more than the 8320 which I think would be worth the little bit extra right? It's 4GHz instead of 3.5, otherwise everything else is the same.

 

sure if its not much more money get the 8350 on newegg the price gap is a bit bigger than 10 bucks. seems like for you getting a coolermaster evo 212 cpu cooler might be a sound investment to. being in the visual arts that chip is going to spend alot of its life under continuous load. as for the ssd i just have a 90 gig corsairs force 3 i found for 79 bucks after mail in rebate which mainly just runs my os and a few of my more resource thirsty games. intel makes some really nice ones too for cheap. it really helps alot just to run windows on it. and maybe some of your rendering software.

 

What will you mainly be doing that you need so much drive space?