Is this overkill?

McDaniel

McDaniel

McDaniel

Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2003
Posts
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Location
Essex
So - i've not done any real upgrade to my PC in a few years now so looking to splurge a little bit.

Things I do want:

27" Screen (do a lot more movie watching on PC now)
120HZ - for FPS, also looking for some 3D exposure (Games/BluRay)
SSD for OS
High end gaming specs - with 3-4years future proofing (excepting there could be a upgrade to GPU sooner then rest)


Asus VG278H 27" TRUE 120Hz 3D Widescreen LED Monitor with NVIDIA 3D Vision 2.0 Glasses - Black £523.99
Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "Phantom" 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £339.98
Thermaltake Level 10 GT Visionary Full Tower Case - Black £209.99
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £163.99
Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-GEN3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £122.98
Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £119.99
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX) £119.99
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD20EARX) £107.99
XFX 850W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £99.98
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9) £89.99
Corsair Hydro H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3) (CWCH100) £82.99
Logitech G510 Gaming Keyboard (920-002762) £69.98
LG BH10LS38 10x BluRay-RW / 16 x DVD±RW Lightscribe Drive - Black (OEM) £69.98
Corsair Vengeance 1300 Professional Gaming Headset £54.98
Saitek Cyborg R.A.T. 5 4000 DPI Gaming Mouse £49.99
Boogie Bug AimB.Pad XL Gaming Mouse Surface £16.99


Sub Total : £1,869.83
Shipping : £22.20
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £378.41

Total : £2,270.44


Now - you may be questioning the HDD setup, my theory (correct me If i am wrong...)

SSD = OS
1TB WD Drive = Steam/Origin/Games
2TB WD Drive = Gen Storage

I love the Thermaltake Case - so no changing my mind on that one; I also plan on Overclocking hence the H100... I was tempted by a full watercooling setup but not confident enough lol.

I also read the Asus screen was pretty good, I was looking at the Sam 27" panels and a 7950 for 3D or a BenQ also.

Thoughts?
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus VG278H 27" TRUE 120Hz 3D Widescreen LED Monitor with NVIDIA 3D Vision 2.0 Glasses - Black £523.99
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 680 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (02G-P4-2680-KR) £429.95
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST3000DM001) £161.99
1 x Corsair Obsidian 650D Gaming Midi Tower - Black £145.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £119.99
1 x XFX 850W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £99.98
1 x Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £99.95
1 x LG BH10LS38 10x BluRay-RW / 16 x DVD±RW Lightscribe Drive - Black (OEM) £69.98
2 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £33.59 (£67.18)
1 x Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £21.98
Total : £1,937.62 (includes shipping : £22.20).



Rather than 2 smaller HDDs go forone 3tb hdd.

As for RAM if you where to order today i would buy 2 of these: http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-314-CS
 
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It all looks pretty sensible actually , should be a nice build.

The only things I would recommend changing are the CPU cooler and RAM.

The H100 does look cool and it performs well - but it is very expensive for the performance it provides and it is rather loud. Have a look at this review which compares the H100 with a £50 air cooler (the Thermalright Archon), the next page along shows the noise levels. Therefore, I would strongly suggest you go for a nice air cooler - like the Archon mentioned above or a Thermalright TRUE/VenemousX/Silver arrow, Prolimatech Megahalems, BeQuiet Dark rock Pro, Noctua NH-D14, Alpenföhn K2 etc.

As for the RAM, the vengeance stuff is nice, but tbh it isn't great value and the heatsinks can get in the way if you are using a large CPU cooler. Instead I would recommend one (or two if you feel you need 16GB of RAM) of these kits (its specs are the same as the vengeance).

The ASUS monitor does look nice, but there do seem to be some complaints about backlight bleeding. Personally, I would go with the Samsung 120Hz 27in (with a HD 7950) or the BenQ XL2420T with the Nvidia card.

Finally, if you are going for 16GB of system RAM and a 3GB VRAM graphics card then make sure you are running a OS which can handle more than 16GB of total memory (Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit can only handle up to 16GB) - so Windows 7 Professional is probably your best bet.
 
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You could shave corners, but it does all fit. If you're going for a 27 inch 3D monitor then you do need a beefy graphics card. The CPU you've chosen is right.

You could go for a seagate momentus XT hybrid drive for Steam, that's what I use. I have a 180GB (upgraded from 100GB) SSD boot drive, and I use Gamesave manager to move whatever game I'm playing across to the SSD with symbolic links, meanwhile any other game I play the momentus will help a little with. So for example at the moment I'm running through DA2 so that's symbolic linked to the SSD and runs fast, but if I wanted to play Skyrim for a while and I didn't move it across the momentus should make it a bit faster than if it was just on a normal drive.

The motherboard you've picked is appropriate, as is the memory... nothing in the spec stands out as over the top compared to the rest of it. The question is if you're really going to see a benefit in it.

As for graphics cards and 'future proofing', in my opinion that's a great big bear trap. You spend a fortune now on a graphics card that's way more than what you need and in 2 years time when the cheaper card would be showing it's age the card is still good... instead you could spend half the money and in 2 years time spend the same and you'd be better off overall. Have a look at Tech Power Up graphics card reviews to find the best bang for buck. Still though, you do need something powerful for 3D gaming on a large monitor.
 
Would another option be (might be more pricey) to SLI 2 mid range cards?

cmdr_andi:

I have been dabbling in some video editing (very basic) so was thinking the additional RAM would be good for that; I will go with a Windows 7 Pro edition if the additional RAM will help, if not i'd drop to 8GB Dual Chan and Windows Home. That said I will switch kits.

I Did read the H100 was loud so was going to swap the fans out with quieter ones; I personally want to avoid air just for a change and to try something new, this seemed a good stop gap before full watercooling which as I said does scare me a bit! I am a visual learner so wouldn't feel confident reading up on it and going solo.

jamesfreddie:

Seems your view follows andi's with the ram switch out and air cooler - though you have chosen a different case but I will go with the GT10.

I wont be buying until July time, when my deferred bonus comes in - so things are likely to change a bit by then, just wanted to get a rough budget/spec in mind.
 
McDaniel said:
cmdr_andi:

I have been dabbling in some video editing (very basic) so was thinking the additional RAM would be good for that; I will go with a Windows 7 Pro edition if the additional RAM will help, if not i'd drop to 8GB Dual Chan and Windows Home. That said I will switch kits.
Click to expand...

jamesfreddie said:
I don't think it will be of benifit to go with 16GB unless you are doing a lot of photoshop and video editing.
Click to expand...

:)
 
It's not really watercooling in spirit...

The idea behind watercooling is to take a large amount of water and use it as a heat reservoir, adding the heat from several components into the water, and constantly reducing the temperature of the water towards ambient. By doing that the total mass of water shouldn't be greatly above ambient, and when you have a good loop that is what happens. The faster you have the water going around the lower the difference in temperature between the waterblocks and the water. The faster you have the fans running/bigger the radiator the lower the difference between air and the water.

The closed loop coolers are perhaps a nice convenient way of watercooling, but all they really do is move the fan from inside the case to out. Sure it does have an impact on temperatures but it's not fundamentally different to air cooling.

You're going to end up going Ivy Bridge (it comes end of April) which means you'll get the equivalent to a 2500K which is a 3750K, it's a 77W part, so you don't need sophisticated cooling on it to be silent. Power consumption is way down on CPUs compared to a few years back, but the air coolers are still just as good.

Where you do want to do a bit of research, if you want it quiet, is on the graphics card side of things. I got a non-standard 580 for that reason, because I wanted something that ran very quiet. Watch though because some of the high end looking cooling systems on non-reference graphics cards are gimmicks and are loud. Powercolor PCS for example is a dog - I DSRed mine.
 
End of April I heard (for the quad core Ivy Bridge).

If the OP wants to wait then that is fair enough, though the clock-for-clock performance increase is only expected to be 5-15% over sandy bridge (depending on applications).

If the OP is currently sitting without a decent PC then I would just buy now, but if he can afford to wait a month then he should be able to get a bit of extra performance for the same money.

As for the H100 + extra fans - that does kind of stump me. Since it is a unit that costs ~£80 that provides the cooling performance of a £50 air cooler - then you need to add £40 worth of fans to make it almost as quiet as a £50 air cooler. Personally, I would either take the jump and try proper custom watercooling, or go for a good value, nice performance and quiet air cooler.
 
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cmndr_andi said:
End of April I heard (for the quad cores).

If the OP wants to wait then that is fair enough, though the clock-for-clock performance increase is only expected to be 5-15% over sandy bridge (depending on applications).

If the OP is currently sitting without a decent PC then I would just buy now, but if he can afford to wait a month then he should be able to get a bit of extra performance for the same money.

As for the H100 + extra fans - that does kind of stump me. Since it is a unit that costs ~£80 that provides the performance of a £50 air cooler - then you need to add £40 worth of fans to make it almost as quiet as a £50 air cooler. Personally, I would either take the jump and try proper custom watercooling, or go for a good value, nice performance and quiet air cooler.
Click to expand...

i7-920 (think its a 920, first i7 chips from a few years back)
560Ti
8GB Ram
60GB SSD (1st gen ones, not like current - can't remember)

/edit just checked ocuk history it was a 920 i7 chip, got the system Jun 09

PC is fine for now - I wont be buying until July; just getting budget ready that's all.
 
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Man, that is still a nice PC.

For gaming (ie when limited by the graphics card) and doing video editing (where the i7 920's hyperthreading helps it out) you actually won't see much of a performance jump - especially if the i7 920 is overclocked (most will hit 3.8-4.2GHz with a decent cooler).

You could just upgrade the graphics card, PSU (if needed), SSD (a bigger one) and the CPU cooler (if needed) and it will feel pretty much as fast as a new i5 system.
 
cmndr_andi said:
As for the H100 + extra fans - that does kind of stump me. Since it is a unit that costs ~£80 that provides the cooling performance of a £50 air cooler - then you need to add £40 worth of fans to make it almost as quiet as a £50 air cooler. Personally, I would either take the jump and try proper custom watercooling, or go for a good value, nice performance and quiet air cooler.
Click to expand...

I very strongly agree. I said above about what I thought of the self contained water coolers... and you've mentioned the price here too.

If he's going for a proper loop then he's going to have to drop a bit more money on it - I used to run a custom AquaComputer one, NB/SB/GFX/CPU and in all honesty air cooling has caught up and watercooling is definitely in the area of wanting to do it rather than being able to justify the cost. However if he wants to watercool then the graphics card should be the main target not the CPU.

For Ivy Bridge he can get away with a 25 quid cooler and he'll be happy. It won't be stellar performance but it'll be cool enough even under full sustained load.
 
Some food for thought their guys, I could save on some bits by keeping what I have and potentially put that saving into watercooling.

I assume Ivy Bridge is the next iteration of CPU's?
 
Yep. It's a die shrink of Sandy Bridge. It'll use less lower, have a bit more graphics on-board (you'll benefit from that with quick sync) and it's a little bit faster, clock for clock. Sadly there's no pressure on Intel to push anything more powerful out, so they'll basically re-doing Sandy Bridge but with a bigger profit margin.

Motherboards are due out in just over a week, and the chips themselves at the end of April.
 
Aye, Ivy Bridge is the new generation of the Intel CPUs. They basically use the same design as sandy bridge, but the main change is the smaller (and thus more energy efficient) 22nm process (compared to 32nm Sandy bridge) and a more powerful onboard GPU. Hence instead of 95W thermal design power (TDP) of the Sandy Bridge quad core i5 and i7 CPUs (or 130W on the i7 920), the quad core Ivy Bridge CPUs will only have a TDP of 77W (as mentioned by the halk).

This not only means use spend less money on electricity - it also means they are much easier/quieter to keep cool. Hence elaborate watercooling may simply be overkill - as a good air passive cooler (or one with a very slow, silent fan) will keep them cool for a low cost and make no noise.

Intel probably could have made a hex core LGA1155 Ivy Bridge (due to the big die shrink) - though they didn't, probably because there is not much competition from AMD and they don't want to cannibalise the sales of their higher-end LGA2011 platform which does offer hex core (for a high price)

The big unknown at the moment with Ivy Bridge is overclocking - looking at this article (admittedly with early chips) it doesn't seem much better than sandy bridge.
 
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Not much better but then Sandy Bridge seem pretty good at overclocking anyway!

I wonder if my friend gets Intel discount working for them! :D
 
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