First Build, Need Advice

[iksurmunky]

Its been quite some time since I last posted anything on here as school has been too busy for me to even play games but I am planning to build my own rig as a summer project and I was hoping all you geniuses could look at what I've picked out so far and either give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

The rig i'm building is going to be built for (highest priority first): Gaming, Scientific Computations (for my research), multiboxing and streaming.

Casing:
Cooler Master HAF X RC-942

Motherboard:
MSI P67A-GD65 (B3)

Processor:
Intel Core i7-2600K -- I plan to overclock it to 3.8GHz when necessary

Processor Cooler:
Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler

Memory:
Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600 (4x4GB)

Graphics Card:
XFX HD Radeon 6970 2GB x 2 crossfire

SSD: (to install OS and games/applications)
Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) 120GB SATA SSD

HDD: (for storage and less important application files)
Western Digital Cavier Black 1TB, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache

Blu-Ray Drive: (for the rare occasions I use a disc or blu-ray)
CD-ROM SATA BD Combo Model BD240I-h01

Power Supply:
If I Crossfire: Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold Series 1000W
no Crossfire: Cooler Mastery Silent Pro Gold Series 800W

Also, two final questions: Should I use the stock thermal paste supplied with the i7 or should I buy my own from newegg? Secondly, is it even worth it to crossfire the Radeon 6970 or should I just save myself the extra $350?

And lastly, I am open to suggestions for better or worse.

[Ualaa]

From a gaming point of view, the i7-2500k is basically equal to the i7-2600k; the extra logical cores aren't beneficial to most games. If you use applications (Scientific Computations) that will take advantage of the logical cores, then go with the 2600, otherwise save a hundred or so and use the 2500k.

Not sure what game you're playing, but if it takes advantage of Crossfire/SLI then you have the option. If it is something like Warcraft, or just about any game that runs in windowed mode or windowed mode/fullscreen (when boxing), and Crossfire/SLI reduces your performance compared to the same two cards in the system but not using crossfire/sli... you can disable it fairly easily now.
If you don't specifically need the extra card, or the extra plugs for additional monitors... I'm a fan of one stronger card over multiple cards in SLI/Crossfire.

I'm unfamiliar with the SSD, but it is large enough for the OS and a lot of games.
I would probably go with more than 1TB for the storage drive; a 2TB drive isn't that much more.

If you go with stock speeds, the stock thermal paste is fine. If you are overclocking, I'd recommend getting a better paste.

[iksurmunky]

Thanks for the reply Ualaa, really appreciate the advice.

I was going to research some more if there were any big advantages to 6970's in crossfire as compared to a single card standalone before I settled on anything. I was thinking of playing a lot of fps intensive games like crysis, dead space 2, etc as well as multi boxing 5 wow clients.

I will definitely buy my own thermal solution considering I plan to overclock my CPU. And I plan to stick with the 2600k strictly for the faster computations.

Is it a decent build, however? I'm not missing anything, correct?

[Ualaa]

Looks good to me.
Maybe one of the more hardware savvy people will take a look.

I 5-box Warcraft smoothly on a system that is definitely inferior to that.
- i7 920, stock speed
- Asus P6T motherboard
- 12GB DDR3, 1600mhz
- Nvidia GTX 275, 1GB
- Patriot 64GB SSD, 180mb/sec sequential read
- Vista 64-bit, Home Premium.