[AerE]

I am an Aerospace Engineering student pretty set on going into Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for my Masters after I complete my B.S. next year. I have always wanted to build a desktop and thought it might be a good idea to have a personal computer to use in addition to the school computers for university projects and my eventual thesis. I understand that the university computers are much faster than my proposed build but if I want to build a desktop and if it has ok performance why not? Or is this a complete waste of money? I would like to build it on the cheap side (student budget) for now with the intent to upgrade in the near future. I want to run Ubuntu and Windows 7. For now I will experiment with Star-CCM, Fluent and OpenFoam in addition to using SolidWorks, Catia, MATLAB and Fortran programming. In the future (graduate school work) I will probably only use one CFD program to supplement work on university clusters.



Build 1 ~$1,100 (definitely pushing the budget but I like the idea of the quad channel processor)


CPU: Intel i7-3820 Sandy Bridge-E 3.8 Turbo Boost Quad core Quad Channel
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115229

CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series Liquid CPU Cooler
http://www.corsair.com/hydro-series-h60-cpu-cooler.html

MOBO: ASUS PX79LE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131855

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws series 4x4GB DDR3 1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231315

GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 1GB 128 bit
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102969

Hard Disk: Samsung 840 Series 120GB SATA 3 SDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147188

PSU: SeaSonic M12II 620 W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151095

Case: Zalman Z11 Plus HF1 Mid Tower
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811235035



Build 2 ~$800 (Affordable, significantly less performance? less upgradeable?)


CPU: Intel i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.8Ghz Turbo Boost Quad Core, Dual Channel
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116504

MOBO: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157293

RAM: G.SKILL Sniper Series 4x4GB DDR3 1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231480

Same PSU as above

Same Hard Disk as above

Same Case as above



Questions


This is my first build, I am going into this humbly please let me know if:
-there are better parts
-there are compatibility issues
-if the PSU is adequate
-if there is anything else I am missing
-if Build 1 is really that much better and worth it


Thank you for taking the time to read this long post.