An overclockable gaming PC

Case
COOLERMASTER CM690 MKII ADVANCED CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2500k Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, NVIDIA®SLI™, ATI®CrossFireX

Memory (RAM)
4GB KINGSTON HYPER-X SPECIAL EDITION GREY - DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 2GB KIT)

Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72)

Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)


This spec comes to exactly £900 pounds. I am planning on overclocking to some extent so the core components are chosen with that in mind (along with the cooling). I've been browsing around these forums and people speak highly of the Caviar Black HDDs which been an influence. I have toyed with the idea of a SSD + data drive but balked at the extra cost (even opting for cheaper parts elsewhere still puts it well over my £900 bugdet).

Any input welcome!
 

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
for serious overclocking you should really get the Titan as a minimum. Really you want to get some sort of watercooling. The tripple copper heatpipe will let you get some overclock out of the chip, but normaly it is recomended you get atleats the titan fenrir.

Everything else looks solid, perhaps a slightly bigger PSU to let you add in a 2nd GPU when a single card isnt quite up to it anymore?
 

Fear

Prolific Poster
If you are overclocking just for gaming then you are really wasteing your time as that CPU already has the GPU outclassed you would be better putting your money into a better GPU if you are wanting to improve your gaming graphics.
 
I see I can upgrade the cooler and the PSU to 750w for £30 or so. I'm looking for something relatively upgrade-friendly so that seems a worthwhile investment (as the budget ceiling climbs ever higher).

If you are overclocking just for gaming then you are really wasteing your time as that CPU already has the GPU outclassed you would be better putting your money into a better GPU if you are wanting to improve your gaming graphics.


Here's the other side of the coin. The differences in price between the various corei5 CPUs is so much smaller compared to the difference between a 560 ti and a 570 (£76!), or a 570 to a 580 (a further £57). Of course I could just opt for one of the cheaper, locked CPUs (which I suppose would mean I could settle for a less expensive case, cooling or even motherboard). Something else to mull over, I guess.

Thanks for the comments, guys.
 
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