New £1300 build check request

d3sign3r

d3sign3r

d3sign3r

Associate
Joined
22 Oct 2011
Posts
18
Hi Overclockers

I am hoping to draw on the expertise of people from the OCUK forum in checking my new build setup. There is always that niggling worry at the back of my mind that I have missed a vital component or something is not going to fit.

Here is the setup:

Processor:
Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge)

Mobo:
Asus P8P67 DELUXE Intel P67 (Socket 1155)

GPU:
MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 1024MB

Memory:
G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit

Cooler:
Akasa AK-CC4008HP01 Venom Voodoo CPU Cooler

SSD: x2 Fast (striped) Raid
OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive

Drives: x2 Fast (striped) Raid
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache – OEM

Monitor:
Iiyama ProLite E2773HDS 27"

Case:
Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case
- 1 x 2.5" Drive Bay

DVD:
OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter

Wireless:
OcUK Value 300Mbps

Compound
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound

Power:
OcUK Battle 650W Dual Rail High Efficiency Modular '80 Plus' Power Supply
- 2 x 6+2 pin PCIe connectors for GPU
- 4 X SATA connectors for SSD and Seagate drives

Keyboard and Mouse
Already have these

Concerns:
1: The size of the Venom fan. I think the width of case and height of ram are ok.
2: The 2 x SSD 2.5", i think there is room in the case for 1ssd with the mobo and 2ssd in a 3.5" bay. Do they need to be together, would 2 fit on top of each other in that 2.5 bay?

If anyone could see any other obvious problems or concerns I would really appreciate it. Nothing worse than having a system arrive to find you got something wrong or something missing and have to wait!

Thanks
 
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You are aware that strips increase your chances of losing data because of disk failure? When either disk fails the strip is broken and you have lost your data. CDs / DVDs are not a reliable backup media, plus the number you need even with dual-layer DVDs is huge. Hopefuly you have an external USB HDD or a NAS to store those files you really can't afford to lose.

Also, you haven't said what you want to use your new PC for. Presumably gaming, anything else beyond the trivial stuff - Internet, Office and so on?
 
Everything looks great, but one big concern I see is the PSU, its an unbranded one. get something like OCZ/Corsair much safer using those.
 
Thanks for the relpies there is some good stuff to think about there.

I am a graphic designer, I will be working on this computer. I do a lot of work with the Adobe CS suite, particularly Photoshop and Illustrator. (never much video work).

I thought the i7 would give that extra power over the i5 when working with large files. As a secondary use I would like to have a reasonable gaming system.

I intend to overclock as much as possible. I thought the Z68 is just a P68 with onboard graphics. Since I have a GPU in the list I didnt see an advantage, I will take another look.

I have two 500g backup drives.
 
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For graphic design work the Iiyama may well not be a particularly suitable monitor as it has a TN panel. If accuracy of colour matters at all, I strongly suggest you look for an IPS panel screen instead, though it may not be as good for gaming. Unfortunately a 27" IPS panel screen is £££.... If you can't stretch to the Dell Ultrasharp U2711, I believe the Hazro screens have IPS panels, or some of them do. If you need accurate colour then a Spyder or similar is probably needed as well.
 
NO disguised swearing!

I have changed to fowlers: Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68mobo, and the more expensive power supply and upgraded the screen to a Hazro (damn they look incredible quality).

The build has gone from £1300 to £1500, please stop giving me advise!
 
You did ask... :D

Since gaming is a secondary use and the Z68 motherboard includes a DVI connector and on-board graphics, maybe you don't need the separate GPU? And are you sure you need to overclock? An H67 mobo will be cheaper, include on-board graphics, but you can't overclock it. There are also cheaper Z68 mobos, do you really need the fancy audio and the eSATA on this board?

I find on-board graphics fine for Photoshop, and that's with a 3-yo mobo. More RAM might help if I'm producing a panorama from several big shots, but otherwise it seems fine.

The change of PSU. As a genuine question to everyone, given the original choice is a OcUK rebrand and it's a modular PSU, just how bad will it be?

The question I would always have when anyone recommends component B over component A is why?
 
cats_five said:
Since gaming is a secondary use and the Z68 motherboard includes a DVI connector and on-board graphics, maybe you don't need the separate GPU?

The change of PSU. As a genuine question to everyone, given the original choice is a OcUK rebrand and it's a modular PSU, just how bad will it be?
Click to expand...

If gaming you need a dedicated graphics card. Also, some design apps harness the GPU for extra umpf.

OcUK PSUs are rebrands of CHEAP (read 'and nasty') power supplies. The power supply needs to be the most reliable thing in the rig, if it fails it can take the other components with it. It's the one component where quality should be the most important factor in the decision.
 
Dropped the 2nd SSD as imo its not worth it, this keeps you in budget, not the best mobo, but I doubt youd need more than this offers
Got the decent monitor, added RAM upto 16 gig for your work, along with keeping the i7 in, still got a 560Ti for that bit of gaming, and most importantly a solid PSU


YOUR BASKET
1 x Hazro HZ27WC 8-Bit 27" LED Widescreen Professional Monitor - Black £349.99
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £259.99
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £159.98
1 x Asus P8Z68-V LX Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £81.59
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £78.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9) £75.98
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £62.99 (£125.98)
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £59.99
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 620 CPU Watercooler (Socket Intel LGA 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AMD AM2 / AM3 / AM2+ / AM3+) £39.98
1 x Silverstone Precision PS03B Midi Tower Case - Black £37.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222AB/RSMS 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black/Silver/Biege) - Retail £18.98
Total : £1,313.57 (includes shipping : £20.10).

 
billysielu said:
If gaming you need a dedicated graphics card. Also, some design apps harness the GPU for extra umpf.
Click to expand...

The OP says that "Gaming is a secondary use". I guess it depends on what game and what expectations he has. I'd be inclined to try the on-board graphics and see if an upgrade is needed, given we have no idea what games he wants to play.

"some design apps" - but do his version(s) of Photoshop and Illustrator do that? Again we don't know if he has CS5 or CS4 (which I believe do) or something earlier. Does he use another design app he hasn't told us about?

And does he actually need that? Is he doing 3D work or rendering videos? I use CS4, my CPU is a Phenom X4 and it's onboard graphics are fine for editing photos from a 14Mpx camera. The files are PSD produced from PEF, they often have the base layer duplicated.

I'm one of life's pragmatists. Aa he is getting a board with a built-in GPU I'd suggest he trys it 'as is' and buys a separate GPU if he finds it's necessary. We also don't know what he is using at present but my suspicion is that what he will build will be a huge upgrade, even if he drops back to an i5-2500K and he will be thrilled with the performance.
 
95thrifles said:
Dropped the 2nd SSD as imo its not worth it, this keeps you in budget, not the best mobo, but I doubt youd need more than this offers
Got the decent monitor, added RAM upto 16 gig for your work, along with keeping the i7 in, still got a 560Ti for that bit of gaming, and most importantly a solid PSU


YOUR BASKET
1 x Hazro HZ27WC 8-Bit 27" LED Widescreen Professional Monitor - Black £349.99
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £259.99
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £159.98
1 x Asus P8Z68-V LX Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £81.59
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £78.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9) £75.98
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £62.99 (£125.98)
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £59.99
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 620 CPU Watercooler (Socket Intel LGA 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AMD AM2 / AM3 / AM2+ / AM3+) £39.98
1 x Silverstone Precision PS03B Midi Tower Case - Black £37.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222AB/RSMS 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black/Silver/Biege) - Retail £18.98
Total : £1,313.57 (includes shipping : £20.10).

Click to expand...

You'll never run that monitor with that GPU need to be looking at 6950 for the 2gb of Vram.
 
Appologies for the swearing, it was a joke and only a mild swear word, but rules are rules.

Although some very good suggestions for price reduction. Once I go up in price I find it very difficult to come down.

95thrifles. I really dont wanna drop that second SSD. Two SSDs give me a Raid speed of up to around 900MB/sec on raid Sata 6gb. That means a double in the real time performance of: Startup, opening design programs, saving files, windows and application scratch files, etc. As I am a designer I spend a lot of time with multiple CS5 programs opening saving large files etc.

Good idea with the Ram to 16gb, but I can leave that for an upgrade down the road.

Cats: When I say gaming I mean that I have COD Black ops, Battlefield 2, Crysis warhead, witcher 2 and a few other games like that in my sites.

Mr May: I would love to go for the 6950 but I have already gone up £100 and 5 models to get to the GTX560ti, and I dont really want to go over £1500. Thanks for raising the issue, I checked the msi website and noticed the GPU does support the 2560x1600 thankfully. I dont need ultra settings, perhaps I can run at 2560x1600 on medium or high, or bring down the resolution to run ultra settings.

I am sure any settings with that setup will far surpass my current 9500GT
 
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if you don't need all the fancy bits and bobs the asrock provides(only suggested it due to you choosing the similar priced p67 mb) you could go for a cheaper motherboard

if you don't need the pci-e 3.0 support(for when the pci-e 3.0 graphics cards come out)

for single card(i.e. not planning on sli)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-364-GI

can't tell you if its better than the asus that mr may suggested, stulid maybe able to enlighten us if he sees this thread.

if you want possibility of sli in the future(will be needed to get decent fps on higher setting at the native res of the monitor you've chosen, however there will be vram issues with the 1gb cards in some games)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-368-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

if you want pci-e 3.0 support

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-192-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

or

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-191-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

not sure what the spec differences are for the £10 cost difference.
 
Thanks for the mobo tips fowler I will take a look at them.

I was just wondering... I have chosen the MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 1024MB
I hope that will be ok run some games at 2560x1600 with medium settings or reduce resolution for ultra.

Do you think it would be better to beg borrow or steel another £51 for a Radeon HD6950 2 gig.

Or stick with the GTX 560Ti and when I can save another £179.99 or the prices come down add another GTX 560Ti for the SLI ?
 
Gonna keep the Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3. Looks like a great board with future proof for PCIe 3.0 and the IvyBridge.

Gonna go with Mr Mays suggestion of the 6950: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6950 TOXIC 2GB. Good overclocking potential and I really like the idea that you can flash the bios to a 6970.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
 
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