Critique my £2000+ full system upgrade

Kraven · 13 Oct 2011 at 23:44

Hi Guys,

I am looking at a full system upgrade, monitor, peripherals, the lot. I've picked out my bits just waiting on a couple to come back in stock, what I would like is some thoughts on this spec.

Some things to note. I've gone with the 2600k over the 2500k for future proofing and peace of mind. Also gone with that particular keyboard because of lack of space currently might upgrade later down the line, I know there is a 2012 mamba floating about so I may hold off getting this until OC get this in stock. Always been a bit iffy picking ram so not sure if what I selected would be decent.

I would like to overclock the cpu as much as possible.

Would appreciate all thoughts, what you reckon?

stulid · 13 Oct 2011 at 23:50

Very nice, but,

All the RAM guides for Sandybridge say 1600MHz RAM is fine, so heres some Black stuff - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-299-CS

And get a single large HDD - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-097-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1955

The last thing is the screen, were you thinking of getting Nvidia 3D glasses at a later date? as the monitor isnt compatible, instead it features its own processing and 3D shutter glasses to turn a 2D image into a sort of persuado 3D. If you just wanted it for the 120HZ refresh rate then its cool

image.

Kraven · 13 Oct 2011 at 23:58

Would higher spec ram not make it easier to overclock?

Also I opted for two 1tb drives, as SSD would be for OS and others would be for games and then other for storage.

The monitor I would only be using for 2D, not a fan of 3D at all!

Reaper 392 · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:01

i know you say theres a lack of space which might make this a problem, but would you be interested in using three smaller monitors in Nvidia 3D surround, or would you prefer the single big monitor?

if your going for the single big monitor then i'd take something like this instead:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung S27A950D 27" 120Hz 3D Widescreen Ultra Thin LED Monitor - Glossy Black £574.99
2 x Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "GOOD Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £371.99 (£743.98)
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £159.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £148.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 600T Midi Tower Case - Limited Edition White £139.99
1 x Lepa G-Series 900W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £129.98
1 x Razer Mamba Wireless Laser Gaming Mouse £103.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD20EARX) £58.99
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3) £54.98
1 x LG CH10LS20 10x BluRay-ROM / 16x DVD±RW Lightscribe Drive - Black (Retail) £47.99
1 x Roccat Arvo Compact Gaming Keyboard £42.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
Total : £2,488.84 (includes shipping: FREE).

if this is too expensive then i can cut it back by choosing two of these GTX 570's instead, along with a smaller PSU

i've kept all the same peripherals because i dont really know much about them to be honest (although what youve chosen seems a bit pricey). ive also kept the case because i assume thats the one you like the looks of the most out of OcUKs range

i guess you already know that the i7 2600k makes pretty much no difference in gaming (except for one or two of them). i would personally recommend you save the money and get the 2500k, but you said you'd prefer the 2600k so i reluctantly put it in

*edit*
oops, just noticed you had two HDDs, swapped HDD as per stulids suggestion

also, it looks like its just a typo having read the rest of your post stulid, but i guess you mean isnt compatible (wouldnt normally bother bringing up typos, but its quite an important one)

stulid · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:02

Kraven said:
Would higher spec ram not make it easier to overclock?

Also I opted for two 1tb drives, as SSD would be for OS and others would be for games and then other for storage.

The monitor I would only be using for 2D, not a fan of 3D at all!

You overclock the CPU separate to the RAM, just by altering its multiplier (34X) to say 45X and a touch of Vcore extra, the RAM guides show very little gain after going past 1600MHZ.

Your other two comments are justified then.

The monitor certainly is good, and the 120HZ will allow faster fps in games also.

And two HDD sounds like what you need.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/sandy-bridge-ddr3_8.html#sect0

Therefore, we believe that inexpensive DDR3-1600 SDRAM with not very aggressive timings would be the most reasonable choice for contemporary LGA1155 systems: in our opinion, memory like that offers the best price-to-performance ratio today.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/8The

sweet spot appears to be at DDR3-1600, where you will see a minor performance increase over DDR3-1333 with only a slight increase in cost. The performance increase gained by going up to DDR3-1866 or DDR3-2133 isn't nearly as pronounced.

isnt

Thats the one.

Reaper 392 · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:08

stulid said:
And two HDD sounds like what you need.

unless the OP is recording his gameplay or wants a raid system for safety then surely the single big HDD would be more sensible with OS, smartcaching and some games on the SSD and less used games and storage on the big HDD

stulid · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:10

Reaper 392 said:
unless the OP is recording his gameplay or wants a raid system for safety then surely the single big HDD would be more sensible with OS, smartcaching and some games on the SSD and less used games and storage on the big HDD

He wants one for games and one for storage, sounds reasonable, but not what I would do.

fowler002 · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:24

reaper wouldn't the heat spreader on the ram interfer with the silver arrow?

kraven did you look at http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-042-OP&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= black version of the case, also from what I've read the h80 is just as good as the h100. combo is out of stock at the moment tho.

Deluxe1 · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:32

I would get the 650D case the H100 will fit better in that.

stulid · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:37

Forgot about this - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-057-CS&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=1489

Perfect for a H100,

Reaper 392 · 14 Oct 2011 at 00:39

fowler002 said:
reaper wouldn't the heat spreader on the ram interfer with the silver arrow?

kraven did you look at http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-042-OP&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= black version of the case, also from what I've read the h80 is just as good as the h100. combo is out of stock at the moment tho.

oh bugrit, your right. kraven, change it to the equivalent corsair XMS3 if you end up going for my build

(i originally had the antec khuler 920 in the build which would have been fine, but to save money ii changed the cooler and forgot about the ram)

Kraven · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:36

Reaper 392 said:
i know you say theres a lack of space which might make this a problem, but would you be interested in using three smaller monitors in Nvidia 3D surround, or would you prefer the single big monitor?

if your going for the single big monitor then i'd take something like this instead:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung S27A950D 27" 120Hz 3D Widescreen Ultra Thin LED Monitor - Glossy Black £574.99
2 x Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "GOOD Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £371.99 (£743.98)
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £159.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £148.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 600T Midi Tower Case - Limited Edition White £139.99
1 x Lepa G-Series 900W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £129.98
1 x Razer Mamba Wireless Laser Gaming Mouse £103.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD20EARX) £58.99
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3) £54.98
1 x LG CH10LS20 10x BluRay-ROM / 16x DVD±RW Lightscribe Drive - Black (Retail) £47.99
1 x Roccat Arvo Compact Gaming Keyboard £42.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9) £41.99
Total : £2,488.84 (includes shipping: FREE).

if this is too expensive then i can cut it back by choosing two of these GTX 570's instead, along with a smaller PSU

I would definitely be looking at just the single monitor, 3 monitors is a bit overkill for me.

I have thought about going for the extreme4 instead of the ASrock extreme7 but I dont mind paying a bit more for a better board.

The reason I went with the Corsair PSU is I've had one for the last 4 years and its been perfect. I have had other PSU brands die on me in the past so I think I would prefer to stick with them but I have been out of the game quite a while.

I doubt I would go for the western digital 2tb drive mainly because of all the positive reviews I've read about the Samsung, its not that much more for two of them.

The silver arrow cpu cooler, as fowler said looks like there might be some problems using that, but also that is quite an ugly cooler with the fans! I'll have a window on this system and with the reviews I've read I am quite happy sticking with the Corsair one and it does look quite snazzy in a PC! However I will do some more reading and decide whether I'm better off going with the smaller version.

Kraven · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:41

stulid said:
You overclock the CPU separate to the RAM, just by altering its multiplier (34X) to say 45X and a touch of Vcore extra, the RAM guides show very little gain after going past 1600MHZ.

Ah that's good to know thanks.

Reaper 392 said:
unless the OP is recording his gameplay or wants a raid system for safety then surely the single big HDD would be more sensible with OS, smartcaching and some games on the SSD and less used games and storage on the big HDD

stulid said:
He wants one for games and one for storage, sounds reasonable, but not what I would do.

I chose the two because I thought I would be doing a lot of data reading and writing for the storage drive, and thought it would be best keeping them separate for better performance. My current system has OS on one Raptor and Games on another raptor with storage on a standard drive.

I planned on having the OS on the SSD with programs etc, but keep games and storage on the other two standard drives.

Deluxe1 said:
I would get the 650D case the H100 will fit better in that.

I think the case I chose fits the H100 fine also, think I saw a vid of one with it fitted could be wrong though.