Think I am going with this for gaming and photography any thoughts/changes

Hello

I am looking for a bit of future proofing for the next few years and have a decent budget, any thoughts on this spec is it well balanced , should I go for faster RAM.

Cheers

Noodles



Case
COOLERMASTER HAF-X FULL TOWER GAMING CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Six Core i7-3930K (3.2GHz @ max 4.6GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® P9X79 PRO: INTEL® SOCKET LG2011
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPERX GENESIS QUAD-DDR3 1600MHz X.M.P(4 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
2nd Graphics Card
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£69)
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1050W PRO SERIES™ HX1050-80 PLUS® SILVER MODULAR (£159)
Processor Cooling
INTEL CERTIFIED LIQUID CPU COOLER FOR SOCKET LG2011
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Fan Controller
NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller with upto 5 Fitted Case Fans
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
SATURDAY DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (BEFORE 12 NOON) (£19)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £2,593.00 including VAT and delivery.

No you don't need faster RAM but if you're looking to get the best performance you can then two HD7970's would be a much better choice.

I thought that 580's were the top banana at the moment,are the HD7970's better for Crysis and BF 3 ? ( am aware of 590's but a bit expenensive)

A couple of 580's will play anything you want so you shouldn't worry too much. The 7970's are the newer generation of card and are faster than the 580's so if you wanted the best you should get those over the 580's

Yes the HD7970 is currently the fastest single GPU card available.

HD7970 > GTX580

Hello

After a few more suggestions and the fact that I am mostly gaming and a bit of digital photography this set up has been suggested , I have been told to not bother with the OC on the CPU as this would make no diffrence for the purpose of gaming. Is it worth keeping the overclocked CPU in this set up for any other reason or just I just change change it for a stock 2700K ? Also could the OC'd CPU make the system unstable or damage it in the long term?

Cheers

Noodles


Case
COOLERMASTER HAF-X FULL TOWER GAMING CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™i7-2700k Quad Core(3.50GHz @ max 5.00GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3: PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX
Memory (RAM)
8GB G-SKILL RIPJAWSX DUAL-DDR3 2133MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
2nd Graphics Card
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
250GB INTEL® 510 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR | 315MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£69)
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1050W PRO SERIES™ HX1050-80 PLUS® SILVER MODULAR (£159)
Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO II C240 DUAL RADIATOR CPU COOLER (£99)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Fan Controller
NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller with upto 5 Fitted Case Fans
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Cable Tidy
3 x JML 1.5M Zip Cable Tidy - Professional Cable Management (£10)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
SATURDAY DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (BEFORE 12 NOON) (£19)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £2,698.00 including VAT and delivery.

An overclock (done by PCS) wont damage the system in the long run and should be perfectly stable. As you already said, you won't gain huge leaps in gaming performance from an overclock, really you would need to be doing some hardcore video editing or some sort of 3d work to make an overclock worth it in my opinion. If you don't bother with an overclock i would just get the standard i7 2600, as the very slight speed boost from the 2700k is really not going to give you any visable results.

I would stick with the 1600Mhz ram rather than the ripjaw stuff, as i think it can be a bit unstable and pointless upgrading from the 1333Mhz stuff if your not overclocking anyway.

You could drop the cooling righ down to the tripple copper heatpipe aswell as that about all a non overclocked CPU would need.

I wouldn't get the o/c, I don't think you will make use of it, at least not yet. I agree with mantadog, drop the RAM, your choice on the cooler. You could always get a 2700k which, in a few years time when it starts to struggle could be o/ced to keep it going.

Thanks for the advice , I am going to buy this soon but have another headache in the form of "Ivy-Bridge" , I have been told it comes out March /April. From what I have learned it seems to be about power consumption for better OC,ing in desk tops and also laptop/note book battery power and intergrated graphics, but not much more performance in a gaming rig. Is this correct or is it going to be a lot better CPU for gaming than the curent Sandy bridge CPU's and is it worth the wait?

Cheers

Noodles

Quite hard to explain as it's not really out yet and the current info out is quite vague. Depending what photography you're using it for the sandy bridge is more than enough suited along with gaming. I use mine for photography and it runs currently fine when processing unless I have a huge batch, I'd oc it to 4.2ghz which is fine. Stocks should be plenty.

It should't be a significant improvement for ivy in my view.

It's estimated to outperform Sandy Bridge by about 10% but there's always something new coming out every 6 months so if you have the money now then it would be better to just buy now. After Ivy Bridge there's Piledriver around September then Haswell sometime next year.

mantadog said:

An overclock (done by PCS) wont damage the system in the long run and should be perfectly stable.

Click to expand...

It will probably be stable but it certainly will harm the CPU. To put it in simple terms the CPU will be used for something that it was not designed for and will be subjected to higher stresses, therefore its lifespan is shorter and it will fail quicker.

AndyL said:

It will probably be stable but it certainly will harm the CPU. To put it in simple terms the CPU will be used for something that it was not designed for and will be subjected to higher stresses, therefore its lifespan is shorter and it will fail quicker.

Click to expand...

It will reduce the lifespan of the CPU, i think thats a given. However most people will move onto a different PC before the CPU dies, not many people keep the same PC for 10 years or more. From what i understand an overclock done properly should not reduce the lifespan of the CPU by more than a couple of years. How many people run their computers for more than 4 or 5 years before buying a new system? Even then i would expect a properly cooled, properly overclocked system to last much longer than 5 years with no problems at all!

So in my opinion any lifespan reduction will not be important when you look at the lifespan of the system as a whole.

Once again thanks, this is really helping.