£800 Gaming machine spec check

mickyflinn · 22 Sep 2011 at 22:42

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS ATI Radeon HD 6950 IceQ X Turbo 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Dirt3 & Deus Ex PC Games £209.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £173.99
1 x Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (CSSD-F120GB3-BK) £124.99
1 x MSI Z68A-G45-B3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £100.00
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £64.98
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £44.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B) £43.99
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £821.90 (includes shipping : £12.50).

Any tweaks ?

logi-cat · 22 Sep 2011 at 23:58

Everything looks good, i would change the motherboard to a Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3. You get PCI-E 3.0 support for next generation graphics card and i think it also supports ivybirdge proccesor. Nice option to have.

olivier renault · 23 Sep 2011 at 01:47

That's looking nice for the money. I would check the memory fits underneath the gelid cooler, or at least if you can use the secondary channels without interfering with the cooler.

Or just get some XMS3.

I also prefer the M4 SSD.

You sure you won't need a hard drive?

I'm always wary of cheap samsung optical drives, and would pick up the LG myself.

Dunno about the motherboard. Don't know how it is at handling overclocking. £130 motherboards have better qualities in that regard.

If it is getting to expensive to upgrade, I'd drop the cooler and stay stock for a while.

mickyflinn · 23 Sep 2011 at 18:58

This build is for my friend, the msi board will be easy to for him overclock with oc genie2. Looked at the m4 but has much lower write speeds and good point about the ram.

mp260767 · 23 Sep 2011 at 19:49

mickyflinn said:
Looked at the m4 but has much lower write speeds

reason the m4 was pointed out was due to the reliability of it, been a few issues with various ssd's, would suggest checking the hard drive forum and see if there are any issues with the force series 3.

ByMRK1 · 23 Sep 2011 at 19:58

LOL Nope forget what I spec'd pricier and basically the same as yours, sorry first time at spec'ing a build!

olivier renault · 23 Sep 2011 at 21:36

Write speeds don't matter really, unless you doing a lot of writing of course. The M4 is plenty fast, and got faster with latest firmware, plus it has none of the stigmas and bugs of the sandforce drives.

Just saying... There's more to it than just speed.