Desktop gaming spec - comments welcome

[Toxophilix]

I'm new to posting here and would welcome comments on this spec (see below), which is for a PC mainly intended for gaming under Windows 7.

Please feel free to comment on anything, but the particular points I'm most doubtful about are:

• Is the CPU cooler under/overspecified or in any way a sane choice? (I'm hoping that liquid cooling will be a little quieter than pure air-cooling but I have no experience with it.)
• Also related to the question of noise, would the Antec Quiet case (or some other) give a noticeable benefit.
• Any thoughts on the IIYAMA E2273HS screen? I'm looking for a 1080p screen that is no bigger than 24" and no more expensive than, say, £250. (It doesn't seem worth blowing cash on this to me as I imagine 1080p will be superseded in the next year or so.) I would be using it alone so viewing angle is not an issue.
• The configurator tells me the 750W PSU is overspecified but I want to leave headroom for a possible future graphics upgrade and maybe an SSD. I'm thinking 750W should be fine for that (the configurator is telling me that I could get away with 600W now). Sound reasonable?

Btw, I'm specifying Win 7 Pro because I might want to upgrade the RAM to something over 16GB at some point. I guess I could stick with Home Premium until then, though.

Incidentally, this spec comes to about £1,400. I'm open to spending a few hundred more if it seems worthwhile. Obviously I'm also open to spending less

Thanks.

Case
PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-3820 (3.6GHz) 10MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P9X79: INTEL® SOCKET LG2011
Memory (RAM)
16GB SAMSUNG QUAD-DDR3 1333MHz (4 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX750 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£86)
Processor Cooling
INTEL CERTIFIED LIQUID CPU COOLER FOR SOCKET LG2011 (£78)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£16)
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£109)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor
IIYAMA E2273HS 22" LED WIDESCREEN, HDMI/DVI-D 1920x1080 (£119)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days

 

[keynes]

1) Is the CPU cooler under/overspecified or in any way a sane choice? (I'm hoping that liquid cooling will be a little quieter than pure air-cooling but I have no experience with it.)
2) Also related to the question of noise, would the Antec Quiet case (or some other) give a noticeable benefit.
3) Any thoughts on the IIYAMA E2273HS screen? I'm looking for a 1080p screen that is no bigger than 24" and no more expensive than, say, £250. (It doesn't seem worth blowing cash on this to me as I imagine 1080p will be superseded in the next year or so.) I would be using it alone so viewing angle is not an issue.
4) The configurator tells me the 750W PSU is overspecified but I want to leave headroom for a possible future graphics upgrade and maybe an SSD. I'm thinking 750W should be fine for that (the configurator is telling me that I could get away with 600W now). Sound reasonable?

1) Unless you are planning to overclock the cpu a liquid cooler wouldn't be essential, I don't think there is a significant difference in noise between the intel liquid cooler and the triple copper heatpipe but you could verify it with PCS.
2) My understanding of quiet cases is that there will be a trade off between lower noise levels and cooling/temperature of your components.
3) From previous threads the IIYAMA monitors are very good.
4) For gaming 8gb memory ram is plenty, I wouldn't expect you need more than 16gb in the near future and I assume by the time you need 32gb memory you will need a complete new system. I'd stick with 8gb memory ram and windows 7 home. I'd also suggest the i5-3570 unless you are planning to run more cpu intensive applications apart from gaming.

 

[Toxophilix]

For gaming 8gb memory ram is plenty, I wouldn't expect you need more than 16gb in the near future and I assume by the time you need 32gb memory you will need a complete new system. I'd stick with 8gb memory ram and windows 7 home. I'd also suggest the i5-3570 unless you are planning to run more cpu intensive applications apart from gaming.

Excellent thoughts, thank you. Makes sense and slashes a lot from the cost.

 

[keynes]

Excellent thoughts, thank you. Makes sense and slashes a lot from the cost.

Thanks for the rep
I forgot to add that 750w PSU will be plenty, if you plan to go with the i5-3570 you could consider the P8Z77-V motherboard that supports SLI + 750w PSU. It will allow you to add a 2nd GTX 670 in the future, if needed, to improve gaming performance. A pair of homeplugs should provide a more reliable connection than a wireless card if that is an option.

 

[Toxophilix]

you could consider the P8Z77-V motherboard that supports SLI + 750w PSU. It will allow you to add a 2nd GTX 670 in the future, if needed, to improve gaming performance.

Hmm. Actually, if I went SLI right now with that motherboard it would still come out cheaper than my original spec. Wow.

Have some more rep!

I'll look into homeplugs.

 

[Wolvo7]

Just to add to it with your budget you could consider an SSD, not essential but will speed up load/boot times. Also if you plan to add some more HDDs in addition to SLI I'd go with a 850W for extra headroom.
Lastly regarding SLI you could get a single card right now and add another one a bit later down the line when you feel you need to as the 670 will likely be cheaper by then.

 

[Toxophilix]

Just to add to it with your budget you could consider an SSD, not essential but will speed up load/boot times. Also if you plan to add some more HDDs in addition to SLI I'd go with a 850W for extra headroom.
Lastly regarding SLI you could get a single card right now and add another one a bit later down the line when you feel you need to as the 670 will likely be cheaper by then.

That's a good point. I'll probably go with a single card for now.

Regarding SSDs I'm in two minds.

One the one hand, boot-up time is not really an issue for me. I'm usually making coffee while that's going on so I don't even notice it.

Then again, shorter loading time for applications and better general responsiveness when the system needs to load a library, say - I can see that being nice to have. And I have read that nothing contributes to the subjective impression of a faster system so much as changing from an HDD to an SSD.

Part of me thinks that, while we are in this HDD/SSD transition era I will stick with the old technology and switch once SSD has become the mainstream.

I am also thinking of getting a new laptop and I'm thinking of going SSD-only on that, as it seems sensible to get rid of a mechanical drive from something you carry around (although I've actually never had a laptop HDD fail on me *touches wood*). Of course, the capacity would be limited but I don't need to carry masses of data on a laptop.