Gaming/Home PC Setup

c-hri-s

Bronze Level Poster
I bought a Chillblast several years ago which has lasted me well, but it's getting a bit unreliable and I'm fed up with my mothers £300 eBuyer job outdoing my PC on Windows-based tasks.

I want something that will let me play the current games, and give me a bit of scope for the releases of the next year or two ahead. Most of the time when not gaming I want a blazing fast Windows machine for browsing, graphics, multitasking, etc.

I've come up with the following which is (just about) in budget. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ 500R WHITE MID TOWER CASE
Overclocked Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core (3.40GHz @ max 4.80GHz)
ASUS® SABERTOOTH P67 (NEW REV 3.0): USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, THERMAL ARMOR!
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)
1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
RAID 1 (MIRRORED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD) (£9)
10x LG BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£65)
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)
COOLIT ECO II A.L.C FAT BOY (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£79)
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Thanks
 

MadMan

Super Star
what is your budget? I really doubt you need an overclocked pc and you could downgrade to the z68 motherboard which should be more than enough. I also think 8gb ram would be enough and the triple cooler is very good if you dont overclock. With the changes youd save a lot of money and this could be invested into a gtx 580 which would increase your gaming experience.
 

c-hri-s

Bronze Level Poster
Thanks.

Making those changes brings it down to about £1530 from £1600 (but with a 580 instead of a 570). I'll have a think about that - I want to make sure it's a blazing fast windows system as well as a gaming platform, hence my choices for an overclocked processor and a bit more ram.
 

tom_gr7

Life Serving
With madman's changes sounds good mate, only thing i'd do is a get a beefy 1050w corsair for sli of 580's :)
 

MadMan

Super Star
an i7 is already very powerful and fast and if your using the pc for multitasking and gaming it should be more than enough, even an i5 would suffice. You have selected an ssd so i assure you it will be very fast.
 

Teaz

Godlike
Stock clocks for an i7 is fast enough, equiped with a balanced system and it should breeze through pretty much any of your requirements. Not sure if you need raid 1 with the second storage, because if not raided, its a total of 4gb of space unless you prefer it to be backed up automatic than manual then stick with the raid.
 

c-hri-s

Bronze Level Poster
Stock clocks for an i7 is fast enough, equiped with a balanced system and it should breeze through pretty much any of your requirements. Not sure if you need raid 1 with the second storage, because if not raided, its a total of 4gb of space unless you prefer it to be backed up automatic than manual then stick with the raid.

Thanks. I went with the raid to provide some "don't need to think about it" backup. I still back up the critical information to an external NAS drive, but having suffered disk failures in the past I can do without the pain of rebuilding things when they go wrong.
 

Teaz

Godlike
I've readjusted the spec to balance it out:

Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ 500R WHITE MID TOWER CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)

Graphics Card
1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 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)

3rd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

RAID
RAID 1 (MIRRORED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD) (£9)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
10x LG BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£65)

Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W PRO SERIES™ HX750-80 PLUS® SILVER MODULAR (£116)

Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO II A.L.C ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER (£59)

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)

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

Total: 1550

Configure it here :)

I took out the K variant out. The normal should fit well. You can still overclock it but not to crazy clocks as the K version. I've also popped in a quality mod psu which I'd recommend any day over a normal psu as it helps prevent clutter inside the case :).
 
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Teaz

Godlike
It might be but I think it really isn't. It's still budget range and is a small form factor so should make a good addition to the mod psu and the flexible case :)
 

Teaz

Godlike
I was aware of that :) But I popped it to the first motherboard. upgrading it is still in budget.
 

Karnor00

Bright Spark
I'm no expert on SATA, but I notice you have 3 storage devices with SATA 6GB/s capability but the motherboard only has 2 SATA 6GB/s slots. So you would end up with one, or possibly both of the Caviar Black drives being plugged into a 3 GB/s SATA slot. They should still work, but I don't know what practical impact this will have on their performance - perhaps someone else does know?
 

Karnor00

Bright Spark
Yup, that one has 4 SATA 6GB/s connections but it costs c.£200 more. What I don't know is what practical impact this is going to have on your HDD speed and so whether this is money well spent or not - that board is otherwise probably overkill for your setup.
 

Teaz

Godlike
It really isn't overkill that board. When it was first released, it was the announced by asus as the first starting motherboard for the P67 line up. Some people tend to mistake the sabertooth as a next ROG motherboard but it isn't.

the hard drive impact isn't big since hdds don't fully utilise 6gbs properly so 3gbs is fine.
 
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