Spec Check before I spend £600+

Goose

Goose

Goose

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
Kent
Been umming and aahing for a while about this but think i'm ready to go for it. I've not upgraded in about 2 1/2 years so i'm not all that up on whats new and good.

I'll start with what I dont need - Monitor, Case, OS, Mouse, Keyboard, Speakers and gfx card (see sig.).

And now for what I do need (this is a gaming rig btw).

CPU

i5-2500K

Fairly standard choice I think.

Motherboard

MSI Z68A-GD55-G3

To be honest i pretty much picked this at random as i have no clue what board i need/should go for.

SLI is important as i may get second 460 at some point rather than upgrading to a better single card. I guess being Ivy Bridge ready cant hurt. No idea if i need a Z68 board or not.

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

Memory

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey

I've seen this suggested a lot so figured it must be ok.

Storage

Crucial RealSSD M4

Again, I think this is a fairly obvious choice. What i'd like to know is whether or not i should get a new HDD drive for storage. I've been planning on using my current drive (a 500gb WD drive purchase 2 1/2 years ago) but am wondering if things have moved on enough that getting something newer might be a good idea.

Cooling

Akasa Venom Voodoo

I was really hoping to get a Silver Arrow but since they seem to have been out of stock everywhere for ages I went for the Voodoo.

Suggestions are welcome - noise is important and dont really want to spend more than £50.


PSU

Lepa B-Series 750W

Really wanted to get something modular and powerful enough for SLI and/or more power hungry single card upgrade in the future.


That's pretty much it. All comments are appreciated.

Thanks
 
CPU : Not much choice :)
Motherboard : It's a gen3 motherboard, meaning PCI express 3 compatible. I'd get a gen3 if it fits your budget, otherwise a £130 Z68 board will do just fine.
Memory : Corsair XMS3 also favoured. I have the HyperX in a AMD build and it works as expected (low voltage, cas9 timing, 1600mhz).
Cooling : Dunno about the voodoo.
Storage : Crucial M4 would be my choice as well.
PSU : Fine for 460 SLI. Rule of thumb, 750W for 2x 6950 / 560ti / 6970. 850W for 570, 580. I would also make sure the PSU has 4 PCIE connectors for SLI / XFIRE.
 
Last edited:
olivier renault said:
CPU : Not much choice :)
Motherboard : It's a gen3 motherboard, meaning PCI express 3 compatible. I'd get a gen3 if it fits your budget, otherwise a £130 Z68 board will do just fine.
Memory : Corsair XMS3 also favoured. I have the HyperX in a AMD build and it works as expected (low voltage, cas9 timing, 1600mhz).
Cooling : Dunno about the voodoo.
Storage : Crucial M4 would be my choice as well.
PSU : Fine for 460 SLI. Rule of thumb, 750W for 2x 6950 / 560ti / 6970. 850W for 570, 580. I would also make sure the PSU has 4 PCIE connectors for SLI / XFIRE.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comments. The motherboard i chose is only £124 so presumably its decent choice given that its gen3?

As far as i can tell the Lepa PSU does have 4 PCIE connectors so should be fine.
 
 
Thanks for the suggestions Dave.

Do i really need to spend £160 on a motherboard? What does the Asrock do that a £130 board doesn't?

Your choice of cooler + fans also comes in at £80 which is more than i really want to spend. I'd rather save £30 on the cooler, £30 on the motherboard and stick with a 128gb SSD.
 
 
This is what i've settled on so far. The Asrock seems to get good reviews and be popular so i'll just bite the cost. I've decided to leave off a cooler for now. I think i'll just stick with the stock Intel cooler until the silver arrow becomes available.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £167.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £159.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £139.99
1 x Lepa B-Series 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £74.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B) £43.99
Total : £598.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 
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Goose said:
This is what i've settled on so far. The Asrock seems to get good reviews and be popular so i'll just bite the cost. I've decided to leave off a cooler for now. I think i'll just stick with the stock Intel cooler until the silver arrow becomes available.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £167.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £159.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £139.99
1 x Lepa B-Series 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £74.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B) £43.99
Total : £598.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).

Click to expand...

You'll have to check if Silver Arrow will fit with that Ram !
 
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