Hey OC'ers
After a couple of years being desktop-less, I've decided to get back into the scene. I've recently jumped ship and bought a 13" MacBook Pro (sorry for swearing) for added portability in comparison to the 15" Windows lump I was carrying round. So the plan has been to replace my half-hearted desktop replacement laptop with the real McCoy and have a two system/device setup.
The budget is about £500 but could stretch to £600 if worthwhile. It must be a fairly competent gaming rig, be capable of a light amount of video encoding but most of all have a decent level of upgradability.
Being a little behind the times with current tech I'd love for some critical opinions on what I've chosen so far:
After a couple of years being desktop-less, I've decided to get back into the scene. I've recently jumped ship and bought a 13" MacBook Pro (sorry for swearing) for added portability in comparison to the 15" Windows lump I was carrying round. So the plan has been to replace my half-hearted desktop replacement laptop with the real McCoy and have a two system/device setup.
The budget is about £500 but could stretch to £600 if worthwhile. It must be a fairly competent gaming rig, be capable of a light amount of video encoding but most of all have a decent level of upgradability.
Being a little behind the times with current tech I'd love for some critical opinions on what I've chosen so far:
- CPU Intel i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail £165.74
- Motherboard ASRock Z68 PRO3 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio ATX £72.66
- GPU Gigabyte GTX 560 OC Edition 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI Mini HDMI PCI-E £137.97
- HDD Seagate 1TB Barracuda 3.5" 7200RPM SATA-III Hard Drive £75.10
- PSU OCZ Fatal1ty Series 550W Modular £39.96
- Memory Crucial 8GB (2x4GB) DDR 1600Mhz Ballistix Sport Memory CL9 £38.10
- Optical Samsung SH-222BB SATA DVD Optical Drive OEM £13.98
- I've gone for the Z68 chipset on the basis that the Z77 isn't readily available and expensive.
- I've gone non-SLI/X-Fire mainly from a budget perspective (2x GPU's) but I'm considering whether it would give me better upgradability in a years time if I bought a capable motherboard.
- I originally chose a HD6850 after reading an Anandtech article which praised the card for bang-for-buck but the GTX 560 seems to be a better card for £10 or so more.
- The AMD Bulldozer range did tempt me from a value point but I've not done a lot of research on them so unaware if its worth the saving.
- I've yet to find a case which has the sort of build quality I'd like so I'd appreciate recommendations.