Ivy Spec check and video card choice

chriscubed

chriscubed

chriscubed

Associate
Joined
7 Jan 2010
Posts
886
Looking to spend some hard earned dough on an Ivy system. I have monitor, keyboard, mouse etc already.

Gaming in 1080p, not sure what video card to go for - want to be able to play BF3 and other new games with decent settings, but doesn't have to be ultra-high.

Also not sure if the A50 cooler will fit in my Fortress, any advice on that or alternatives would be good. Planning on clocking the 3570k to about 4.5 without going crazy on volts/temps.

Any other suggestions for the spec below would be good too.

Budget - hard to nail down as I can spend whatever is necessary, but don't want to go over the top.

Here's my draft basket:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £173.99
1 x Asus Z77 Maximus V Gene Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £155.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST3000DM001) £134.99
1 x Silverstone Fortress FT03 Tower Case - Titanium (SST-FT03T USB 3.0) £129.98
1 x Sandisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £99.95
1 x Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10) £89.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x Silverstone SST-SOD02 Slimline Slot Loading 8x DVD±RW SATA Drive - Retail £52.99
1 x Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £20.99
Total : £913.85 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
Heya, I'm new here so take what I say with a pinch of salt but I think you could probably go for a cheaper motherboard without much performance drop. Also with the single 3gb hard drive I think you'll find that bottlenecks your load times and such. Maybe x2 1gb in RAID 0 would be better. I've been advised here to get a SSD for the OS if at all possible, they're about £65.

I'm also looking to upgrade to an Ivy Bridge and I'm wondering if there is any motherboard or card that makes use of the onboard HD 4000 or does that basically become totally redundant when you plug something else in?
 
Idleman said:
Just checked, you should have no problem housing the A50.
The cooler is 159.5mm and the case cooler limitation is 167mm.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's one concern off the list!

SAFry said:
Heya, I'm new here so take what I say with a pinch of salt but I think you could probably go for a cheaper motherboard without much performance drop. Also with the single 3gb hard drive I think you'll find that bottlenecks your load times and such. Maybe x2 1gb in RAID 0 would be better. I've been advised here to get a SSD for the OS if at all possible, they're about £65.
Click to expand...

Well, the mobo is MATX so there aren't a lot of choices, but I'd be open to suggestions of any other z77 MATX boards that would be cheaper.

The hard disk issue - I already include an SSD in the original post :)

SAFry said:
I'm also looking to upgrade to an Ivy Bridge and I'm wondering if there is any motherboard or card that makes use of the onboard HD 4000 or does that basically become totally redundant when you plug something else in?
Click to expand...

I believe the IGP output is disabled when you plug in a discrete card, however there are other benefits such as QuickSync and Lucid Virtu MVP - there are a number of threads that cover this in more detail.
 
Oh yeah, there is your SSD right there ;)

Somebody here told me I could save money by using a Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 but I was going to use a Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 because it has the SSD quick start support. Is the micro ATX just a personal design preference or am I missing something?

I was planning on using my existing ATI HD 5870, just that the chip and the motherboard also have graphics and it seems a shame they all go in the bin! I built a budget AMD PC for my mate and the onboard graphics does hybrid crossfire with the discrete card.

*Edit* sry, original post again, you already have the case that's MATX, NM
 
Last edited:
 
A few adjustments - cheaper motherboard and added a 7850 video card. Will this 600watt PSU be enough for Ivy and the 7850?

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H785QN2G2M) £184.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £173.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST3000DM001) £134.99
1 x Silverstone Fortress FT03 Tower Case - Titanium (SST-FT03T USB 3.0) £129.98
1 x Asrock Z77 Extreme4 M Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £99.98
1 x Sandisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £99.95
1 x Samsung Green 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz 30nm Dual/Quad Channel Kit (MV-3V4G3D/US) £96.98
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x Silverstone SST-SOD02 Slimline Slot Loading 8x DVD±RW SATA Drive - Retail £52.99
1 x Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £26.99
Total : £1,072.33 (includes shipping : £13.75).

 
Last edited:
I saw that 7850 on offer.. price looks good but I'm not so sure about the cooler. Pretty happy with the choice of the HIS now I think.

I'm interested by your comments on the SSD though, the stats look worse than that of the SanDisk - why would you prefer a Crucial M4?
 
chriscubed said:
I saw that 7850 on offer.. price looks good but I'm not so sure about the cooler. Pretty happy with the choice of the HIS now I think.

I'm interested by your comments on the SSD though, the stats look worse than that of the SanDisk - why would you prefer a Crucial M4?
Click to expand...

Well the 7850 is a good GPU, and not hot/loud with the reference cooler. I do agree the HIS looks nicer, and probably cools a bit better.

Everyone on here tends to recommend the M4 because it's known to be reliable. There was a slight issue with them, which Crucial fixed in a firmware update very promptly. They have been around long enough to know that its a good choice. For £8 more, I'd get the M4 if you can.
 
beejjacobs said:
Well the 7850 is a good GPU, and not hot/loud with the reference cooler. I do agree the HIS looks nicer, and probably cools a bit better.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, it's worth a look I agree, but I think the cooling should be better for my needs.

Everyone on here tends to recommend the M4 because it's known to be reliable. There was a slight issue with them, which Crucial fixed in a firmware update very promptly. They have been around long enough to know that its a good choice. For £8 more, I'd get the M4 if you can.
Click to expand...

I think I'll take your advice on this one. The proven product is probably the one to go for really, and the M4 has the added advantage of being in stock at OcUK.
 
This is my spec that I would advise you to build

1) Intel Core i7-3770K (257.99) Very good processor, by benchmarks by passmark it is 8th fastest in the world.

2) Gigabayte Z68AP-D3 (84.98) http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-364-GI, good cheap mobo it runs my 2700k on 5ghz on good safe voltages, however cant do SLI.

3) Ati radeon 7850 it was mentioned above

4) CM Storm Scout + Coolermaster Silent Pro 700W Modular PSU (134.99) It is not on this site, hopefully admins wont get angry at me for this, but if you`ll want it you`ll find it, Good big case with very good PSU

5) 8gb ram (44.99) http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-299-CS, I think 16 gb is overkill, you can find 1866 on other websites for same price. I have 8gb and never get to use it, never went past 4gb.

6) Antec Kuhler 620 (54.98) http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-005-AN, Great cooler but buy extra fan so you`ll get Push-Pull config, it will easily rival top end CPU cooling (non custom), not so hard to install either, 2700K OC to 5ghz runs at 70C on 100% load all cores, on this cooler.

7) SSD and HDD is for your choice, since I dont know how much stuff you store ect...

With your SSD and HDD my total price would be 992 pounds.

Mainly I would advice to change CPU and CPU cooler and amount of RAM since I think it is an overkill :)
 
Last edited:
The Z77-UD3H replaces the Z68AP-D3 and is cheaper/newer and has a UEFI BIOS.

A Antec Kuhler620 even with a second fan in push/pull will not rival a top end air cooler. the radiator is just too thin and lacks surface area.
 
I have the Fortress 03, and use a Gelid Tranquillo in it. I had to mount it in reverse and run the CPU fan in pull to avoid clearance issues with the angled blower in the case. It still easily cools an overclocked 2500k
 
stulid said:
The Z77-UD3H replaces the Z68AP-D3 and is cheaper/newer and has a UEFI BIOS.

A Antec Kuhler620 even with a second fan in push/pull will not rival a top end air cooler. the radiator is just too thin and lacks surface area.
Click to expand...

I got fed up with the noise of the sealed unit water coolers. The pumps make a racket, better off with a tower cooler IMO - especially in a case like the Fortress that has decent directed airflow in the CPU area.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom