McFinal Spec Check (and cooler issue)

Soldato
Joined
16 Jul 2004
Posts
14,075
Hi,

So after many moons of deliberation I have finally decided to take the plunge TODAY and purchase some new PC stuffs. As I have mentioned infinite+1 times before, I currently have an Athlon X2 4400+, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 GTX and mechanical HDD that's been going for nearly 6 years doing everything from gaming to Internet to SQL Server and VMs. I want this new spec to go as long.

@all: Please check my spec and let me know if anything is odd or I've made a mistake. I've also to decide on which cooler to get. I'm interested in ultra quiet operation and lowest possible temperatures, but it also has to fit in my Antec P180 - I've heard the Noctua NH-D14 doesn't fit with the RAM I've specified?

The spec:

Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68
Asus GeForce GTX 580 Matrix 1536MB
OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 Max IOPs
Pioneer 24x Internal S19LBK
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g)
SeaSonic X760 SS-760KM

I'll be keeping my current case, sound card (Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music) and 2x1TB storage drives.

Thanks!
 
Looks very nice :)

How about considering a Gen 3 Z68 board for PCI3 / Ivybridge nice upgrade path?
I considered the Z68 but there are two issues:

1. I can't order it like RIGHTNOW
2. I will not ever be 'upgrading' to Ivy Bridge or PCI-E 3.0 or pretty much anything else ever, it will be a total refresh :p

I will build this PC this weekend and that will be it for the next 5 years. I may upgrade a HDD, as that's all I had to upgrade on the Athlon X2.

Ja there were certainly a possibility, but I really fancied the Vengeance RAM for some reason!

So, any thoughts on the Noctua fitting in my Antec P180? Is the Noctua a very quiet cooler and fan combo?
 
I considered the Z68 but there are two issues:

1. I can't order it like RIGHTNOW
2. I will not ever be 'upgrading' to Ivy Bridge or PCI-E 3.0 or pretty much anything else ever, it will be a total refresh :p

Haha, fair does. That MSI board is in stock RIGHTNOW though :)

Ive no idea on the case size, sorry.
 
I have just had a brainwave. Should I get a 3GB card?

This may sound a silly question, but bear in mind my 6 year old card is 512MB - I paid something like £550 back then to get the 512 over the 256, and today 256MB would be tight. In fact, 256MB would have been tight a year or more ago; I think the 512MB has helped me hold out. £50 more now for 3GB over 1.5GB could put another year on this PC's life.

Does that logic make sense to anyone else but me?
 
2x 6950 over the gtx580?
pro version of the mb?
I'm an nVidia fanboi, sorry :p

Pro version of the MB is only +2 6GB SATA as far as I can see, and my old mechanical drives shouldn't saturate 3GB let alone 6GB! Any future drive upgrades will likely be storage driven and not performance.
 
Also, what are the improvements from Z68 Gen 2 to Gen 3 other than PCIe and Ivy Bridge?

None, the older boards will still take Ivybridge, theres bound to be a BIOS update to support it, with the lack of the newer switches you just wont have PCI3.0.
 
So, I've clicked buy and it's all winging it's way to me on Friday. The final spec was as follows:

Intel Core i7 2600K
16GB (4x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Low Profile
Asus P8Z68-V
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS Edition
3GB Zotac GTX 590
Seasonic SS-760KM 760W
Noctua NH-D14

I decided I may as well get the 590 over the 580 for what they are extra.

Thanks for all your help guys! <3
 
Back
Top Bottom