Inspired by this board and other places over the last few months I have decided to have a crack at building a new system for myself. Have built a couple in the past but nothing for last approx. 8 years so I had a little bit of catching up to do.
Hopefully I am along the right lines but if I am not I would really appreciate an comments and recommendations.
The system will mostly be used for gaming with browsing and media viewing thrown in. I am interested in overclocking CPU straight away (never done this before so a motherboard that makes this as simple as possible would be an advantage) and later probably running crossfire cards.
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATi Radeon HD 7950 Windforce 3X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £259.99
1 x OCZ Vertex 4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (VTX4-25SAT3-256G) £199.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x CM Storm Stryker Full Tower Gaming Case - White £139.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x XFX Pro Series 850W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £89.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £73.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9) £59.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 412S CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £28.99
1 x Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card with built in Headphone Amp £25.99
Total : £1,176.41 (includes shipping : £13.75).
Hopefully I am fairly close to being on the right track. I have spent quite a bit of time chopping and changing some of the parts however so would appreciate thoughts on them.
PSU: I may be overshooting on the size required here but given upgrades I hope to do later it seemed safer to aim well over. Would a 750w suffice?
Case: Was originally going for NXZT Phantom in gunmetal but a friend is able to get hold of some types of case for me so had the option of the Stryker or the HAF-X and decided on the styker but this is by no means set in stone if there is a better argument to be mad for the HAF-X.
CPU cooler: Again from a friend, seems to be well reviewed and able to handle a decent overclock.
Memory: Chose low profile even though I think normal would be ok with this cooler just incase I later need/ want to change to a larger cooler.
Motherboard: Was offered either ASrock extreme 4 or 6 from my friend but these boards seem to have mixed reviews/ opinions about them so decided to play safe with my original choice of Gigabyte but also looked at the mPower.
Drives: Happy with the HDD as I have one already and it has never steered me wrong. SSDs I do not know much about, originally was set on Samsung but heard the Vertex 4s talked up a lot recently so changed to one of those instead.
GPU: Toss up between Gigabyte or IceQ. Both seem to have strong reviews/ support. Gigabyte RMA was appealing but in the end the decision was so close TBH I made the final choice on aesthetics.
Sound card: Have no idea what I am looking at with regard to these but I do plan to invest in a decent set of speakers for gaming later so thought I would add one.
Hope I haven't made any glaring errors there. Thanks in advance for any suggestions/ improvements made.
Hopefully I am along the right lines but if I am not I would really appreciate an comments and recommendations.
The system will mostly be used for gaming with browsing and media viewing thrown in. I am interested in overclocking CPU straight away (never done this before so a motherboard that makes this as simple as possible would be an advantage) and later probably running crossfire cards.
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATi Radeon HD 7950 Windforce 3X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £259.99
1 x OCZ Vertex 4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (VTX4-25SAT3-256G) £199.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x CM Storm Stryker Full Tower Gaming Case - White £139.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x XFX Pro Series 850W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £89.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £73.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9) £59.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 412S CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £28.99
1 x Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card with built in Headphone Amp £25.99
Total : £1,176.41 (includes shipping : £13.75).










Hopefully I am fairly close to being on the right track. I have spent quite a bit of time chopping and changing some of the parts however so would appreciate thoughts on them.
PSU: I may be overshooting on the size required here but given upgrades I hope to do later it seemed safer to aim well over. Would a 750w suffice?
Case: Was originally going for NXZT Phantom in gunmetal but a friend is able to get hold of some types of case for me so had the option of the Stryker or the HAF-X and decided on the styker but this is by no means set in stone if there is a better argument to be mad for the HAF-X.
CPU cooler: Again from a friend, seems to be well reviewed and able to handle a decent overclock.
Memory: Chose low profile even though I think normal would be ok with this cooler just incase I later need/ want to change to a larger cooler.
Motherboard: Was offered either ASrock extreme 4 or 6 from my friend but these boards seem to have mixed reviews/ opinions about them so decided to play safe with my original choice of Gigabyte but also looked at the mPower.
Drives: Happy with the HDD as I have one already and it has never steered me wrong. SSDs I do not know much about, originally was set on Samsung but heard the Vertex 4s talked up a lot recently so changed to one of those instead.
GPU: Toss up between Gigabyte or IceQ. Both seem to have strong reviews/ support. Gigabyte RMA was appealing but in the end the decision was so close TBH I made the final choice on aesthetics.
Sound card: Have no idea what I am looking at with regard to these but I do plan to invest in a decent set of speakers for gaming later so thought I would add one.
Hope I haven't made any glaring errors there. Thanks in advance for any suggestions/ improvements made.