New Gaming Rig Advice

[khazbee]

So the time has finally come after 5 long years of battling with the missus, I have permission to buy a new PC

I don't want to build it myself, I just want it to arrive and not have to mess about (I once cracked a CPU whilst applying a heatsink so I'm a bit scarred).

I have a budget of approximately £1700.

One thing to note is I can't run higher resolutions than 1680x1050 (unless I upgrade the monitor) so an SLI or Xfire setup probably wouldn't benefit me and I don't really care about more than 60fps (I can't see a difference beyond 60fps). This rig is purely for playing games, nothing serious.

I'd like something quiet although I can tolerate noisy fans/gpu etc as I play with headphones a lot of the time.

I played around with the configurator and had something pretty decent but when it came to PSU's the 850w and 1200w models were out of stock and I didn't have much choice when it came to GFX cards (4 of the 7 were out of stock and I would like a Sapphire 7950 3GB ideally)

I am utterly clueless about motherboards so any advice there's appreciated, I have quite a few external peripherals such as USB HDD's and like to charge phones via USB while I work.

I came up with the following for £1480 but bear in mind that's not got a decent GFX card or PSU, please feel to edit/amend/advise as you see fit.

Specification
OcUK Tech Labs - Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced Big Tower Case - Noise Dampened

Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail

Stage 3: Overclock of CPU - 20% Overclock (Proceesor speed x1.20)

Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2)

Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard

Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI316G160C9K)

MSI HD 5450 1024MB GDDR5 Low Profile PCI-Express Graphics Card

Samsung 250GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD250BW)

Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST3000DM001) HDD

Pioneer BDR-207EBK 12x BluRay RW / 16x DVD±RW 128GB - Retail

Corsair 2013 Edition Gamer Series GS 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020063-UK)

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-Bit - OEM (FQC-04649)

Full Cable Management

OcUK Tech Labs - Zaward Golf III Fan 120mm

Standard Build Systems - Approximately 5-7 working days

 

[khazbee]

I played around with the configurator a lot and didn't really like the choices I was looking at (GFX cards and memory in particular) so have press ganged a pal into helping me build the following

Sapphire HD 7970 VAPOR-X GHZ 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express

Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail

Asus Z77 Sabertooth Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard

Samsung 250GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD250BW)

Cooler Master HAF X Gaming Tower Case - Black (RC-942)

Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI316G186C0K)

Pioneer BDR-S07XLT 12x BluRay / 16x DVD±RW 50GB Drive - Black (Retail)

Corsair Hydro H80i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD

Corsair Enthusiast Series TX 850W V2 High Performance '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply

I get a 7970 3GB over a 7950 2GB and 1833mhz memory plus water cooling and a Blu Ray/DVDRW for less money although it will still need over clocking and I doubt the cable management will be anything like as good as the guys at OC would put together but it's a considerable saving (£300 plus).