Ist ever new build complete. Further advice needed.

[Porceliamone]

So, I'm pretty new to this and I've just completed my first build from scratch with the help of some of the memebers of this forum, for which I am grateful after recently reading a rather hilarious thread about a guy who asked for advice on a build after spending £900 on what most people thought was a pile of steaming...you get the picture!

I now have the following rig up and running:

Gigabyte Z77-D3H
i5 3570 @4.4GHz
Prolimatech Megahalem CPU cooler with x2 Techlabs 120mm 2000RPM fans
16Gb Corsair Dominator (2x8) 1600MHz Dual channel
V+200 120Gb SSD
Seagate Barracuda 2Tb HDD
Pioneer BDR-207MBK 12x BluRay RW / 16x DVD RW
MSI HD 6870 OC 1024MB GDDR5
OCZ ZT 650W 80+ Bronze PSU
Fractal Design Arc Midi Tower
Win 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit

My questions are as follows:

Are there any further (no-need-to-be a computer genius) tweaks I can make to make this system perform better? I.e. settings/software tweaks that incur no cost?

I know the best advice is to update all drivers once you've completed a build but is there any easier way to do this other than checking every single device/driver on my system, one by one and manually through Windows?

I'm also interested in monitoring things like CPU/GPU temperatures and so on. Is there freeware out there that does this reliably?

Any tips gratefully received.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Doomedspeed]

Looks a great build. No more tweaks needed really.

Updates will be done by windows, GPU updates can be done via the offical websites, though normally they are beta drivers.

CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HW monitor, Core Temp, HWinfo64. all are good temp sensors and free.

For GPU overclock, if youre interest, MSI afterburner is the best one to use.

 

[Mei]

most tweaks other than oc would be windows tweaks
it depends how crazy you want to get with it, running a stripped down windows, no aero lots of it uninstalled

unless you are playing games for possible money tho i wouldnt bother tho u might like eeking out that last bit of performance i guess

 

[Porceliamone]

Thanks guys.

I'll check out some of those packages.

My GPU comes with Afterburner so I'll have a play with that although I doubt I'll fiddle too much as most of the time I'll be editing photo's and making timelapse movies.

I tremble and fear the temptation is too strong and I will however end up buying Guildwars 2 though. I played the first one for years, almost hit Rank 10 in PvP which was quite an achievement. Christ, I still log on to 'flash my tiger' once in a blue moon. Ah, the days...

However, it stole my life. I don't think I could possibly fit it in again like I did back then.