spec please :)

[omgitsdavie]

Hey guys, i figured it was time to stop lurking and "get involved" so to speak lol

I was about to embark on my first proper gaming PC build about 2 years ago, when i unfortunately lost my job, and slowly lost interest in the idea. Now im in a position to pick back up where i left off (and really eager - mainly to the BF3 videos i keep watching lol!), but as you can imagine, technology changes a LOT in 2 years and im kinda stuck when it comes to components, sooo i guess im asking for your input with regard to my spec.

I already have -

Cosmos S case
Be-Quiet 1200w PSU
Asus Xonar Essence ST Sound Card
monitor/mouse/keyboard etc.

Id like to attempt my first water cooled build with this one, so with the case being around for a while, i figure people will already have an insight as to what combos of rads/fans/res' etc work well in this case. Im not going to be looking at clocking it,or at least not straight away. Budget wise, im probably looking to spend around £1500, however there is a little movement in this if needs be

Thanks!

 

[Reaper 392]

i have no idea about watercooling, but you should be able to get some decent watercooling with the remaining money from this:


YOUR BASKET
2 x MSI GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £249.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £183.98
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor £161.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £144.98
1 x G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL ) £69.59
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £39.98
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
Total : £1,128.48 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 

[Pete.Dakota]

If this is your first build I wouldn't suggest watercooling. Unless for some reason you really really want it, there's not much point adding £s to your basket and giving yourself a lot to learn if an air cooled rig will suffice. Especially if you're not planning to OC.

What res do you play at? I'm going to assume you play at 1080p for the sake of speccing. I'm also assuming you have a DVD-RW:

MSI GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £249.98

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - £161.99

Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** - £159.98

OCZ Reaper Low-Latency 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C6 1600MHz Dual-Channel (OCZ3RPR1600C6LV4GK) - £79.99

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) - £39.98

£703.93 inc. tax and delivery.

The CPU will come with Intel's stock cooler, which will more than suffice until you want to start OCing. A single 570 at 1080p will run BF3 nicely. Your current PSU is fine, unless it happens to be really old or it's one of those budget 1kW+ that doesn't have a strong enough 12v rail to power a decent GPU.

Pick up a couple of extra/better fans if you feel like it. I'm not sure what your case already has or what it's potential cooling is like. Two intake and two exhaust will be fine. So for less than half your budget you're off to a great start. I'd suggest getting the build done and sticking with it for a few weeks, see how loud it is and how it performs, then you've got all that extra money to SLI the graphics and provide better cooling if you want to OC down the line.

IMO there's no point throwing £1.5k at just the tower for a first proper build. Chances are you'd be more than happy with an £800 rig once you've actually got it up and running.