First PC build, advice wanted (and definitely needed!).

[Vespre]

Hey, sorry I didn't get back to you - have been away for a few days.

I have looked at the 7950, and have decided to stick with Nvidia (as future upgrades for me will likely be SLI/Crossfire, the SLI seems to be the better of the two)

I've had to look into changing the build slightly as money wise, I now can't really afford to get the build I had listed. I only play games on one monitor, so would the 580 be more than enough for that? I was looking at the 680 with the feeling of multiple screens, but the only thing I use multiple screens for is having instant messaging/emails etc on one screen, and the game on the other. So in this case.. the 580 should be more than enough?

What do you think? Its also obviously cheaper, which is handy.

[SpicySnow]

If you want to save some money.
Here are some things to consider.

You motherboard is insanely expensive. It supports Quad-SLI, that's just mad.
I would get something like the Gigabyte Intel Z77 LGA 1155 GA-Z77X-UD3H. It's almost half the price. z77 chipset, supports dual-SLI, and has plenty of ports.

You might want to get 8Gb of RAM over 16Gb. (This really depends on what kind of prices and deals you are able to find. If 16Gb is only $10 more than 8Gb, you might as well.)
8Gb is more than enough for gaming, CAD, design, etc. Unless your doing something very specific that requires insane amounts of memory, you honestly don't need 16Gb.

580 is definitely enough. And its cheaper than the 680, if only by a little.
But, I can't recommended it to you in good consciousness. 7950 is better and cheaper. And if you want to stick to nvidia, I bet that the 670 will be a better card (in performance and price) than both the 7950 and 580.

[Vespre]

Yeah I did wonder about the motherboard, I don't really need Quad-Sli, it is a little bit much lol.

Ram wise, I am definitely now going for 8GB, I have 8GB on my laptop and it has always been more than enough. The 16 was really just because it sounds better. It isn't that much more expensive (£40), but £40 is £40 at the end of the day.

Graphics card wise, I have changed the motherboard right down now, so it is going to be hard to upgrade (but I have saved around £100 on it), so in that case I'm going for the 680, purely as it will last the longest and I will get the most out of it.

The spec I have now is as follows:

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
CPU Cooler: Xigmatek HDT-S963
Motherboard: NEW! Asus P8Z68-V LX
Memory: 8GB Corsair 1600mhz Vengeance (2x4GB)
Hard Drive: 500GB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB
Sound card: Onboard 7.1 Audio
Case: Zalman Z9 Plus
PSU: 700W Xigmatek

Sound card / optical drive are all standard stuff, nothing special. In total it comes to just under £1000. So I've knocked that down by about £500, which I am quite happy with Am going to buy an SSD from a friend as they have a spare so.. may as well save some money on that one too.

[SpicySnow]

Your list looks very good. Though its kind of weird to look at. It's completely different from what you originally wanted. :/

I didn't know xigmatek made psu.IS the Xigmatek PSU your getting a 80+?
[Edit] Hmm i look them up, and seems like xigmatek psus is more of a aus / uk thing. seems like US retailers don't carry them. I learned something new.

Be weary of your friend's SSD. SSD's have come a very long way in a very short time. The first few generations of SSDs were barely faster than HDDs but cost a lot more.
Find out what model exactly it is. If it's a drive with somewhere around 500mb/s read/write. It's probably a good drive. Also find out the company. I would stay away from ocz like wildfire. OCZ's drives are fast and cheap, but have one of the worst track records for reliability.

I'll laugh if your graphics card comes out to costing more than the rest of your system combined.

[Vespre]

Thanks Yeah it does, sadly I ended up having less money than I thought I had so had to change it quite a bit.

Yeah they do, I didn't know either until it popped up under Power Supplies. By 80 do you mean 800+? I've got a 700W one as that will be enough to run 680's at SLI in the future if I want to.

It is a brand new one, he is in the IT business (doing something or other), so he has a spare Corsair 120GB one. Can't complain

Well it makes up about %45 of the cost so, nearly

Should all be here/done by Monday, looking forward to it, thanks for all your help

[Sprint]

80+ means efficiency of the PSU. Always go for PSUs that are 80+ as it not only runs cooler and better but it is also a sign of quality since you cant get the 80+ certification on bad components.

[Vespre]

Ah ok, I had a look and it is indeed 80+ so that is all good. Thanks!