Mid-High end gaming PC

[Ryka]

Hello, I'm looking to order a PC that can handle existing games on max settings at 1920x1080 resolution, primarily Starcraft 2 on "extreme" settings and WoW with everything maxed.

I've got a reasonable idea what I'm after but I'm unsure about about a couple of parts, specifically the GPU and CPU. Here's a spec I've come up with which I hope could perform as well as I'd like:


Case
ANTEC NINE HUNDRED TWO - UK, The Ultimate Gaming Case, Evolved
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-950 (3.06GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI
Memory (RAM)
6GB KINGSTON HYPER-X TRI-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (3 x 2GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1280MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX570 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11, 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB OCZ VERTEX 2 SATA II 2.5" SSD (upto 285MB/sR | 275MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
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 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£76)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE (£19)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor
24" Wide TFT Silver/Black 1920 x1080 2MS D-Sub, DVI, 23.6" Panel (£149)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 13 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,469.00 including VAT and delivery.

I'm also a little unsure about whether or not SSDs are worth the price when it comes to gaming. Would the Caviar green HD be good enough for gaming? Price is not a huge issue to me but I don't like paying a premium for very marginal increases in performance.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I'm hoping this PC will last me a good 3-4 years, future proofing is somewhat important to me.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Phoenix]

I wouldn't bother with 1600mhz RAM, 1333mhz is good. The caviar green seems to be great for gaming, I've just been playing Dawn of War 2 with it and It loads everything reasonably quickly. Definitely get the silver warranty though.

 

[PCS]

Great spec! This should be able to play the games you have mentioned on max settings without any problems, and I would definitely recommend the SSD for speed - this will make your PC boot and load programs ultra fast.

 

[Ryka]

I wouldn't bother with 1600mhz RAM, 1333mhz is good. The caviar green seems to be great for gaming, I've just been playing Dawn of War 2 with it and It loads everything reasonably quickly. Definitely get the silver warranty though.

I've seen this a lot (regarding the RAM). Is the 1333mhz RAM actually better or is there even a 1% performance gain using the 1600mhz RAM? If there's a 1%/1 fps gain from using 1600mhz it seems worth it to me for a £1 difference in price.

If the 1333mhz RAM actually performs better I'll switch to that for sure.

As I understand it the 1600 mhz RAM improves potential performance but not many processors are actually making use of that extra potential unless overclocked but I'm no techie, just been reading up a bit here and there in the past weeks.

 

[Phoenix]

The 1333mhz RAM is more stable and from what i've seen the 1600mhz RAM usually performs exactly the same in games with some exceptions where it scored 0.1 FPS more than 1333mhz which isn't even a single frame so there's no real gain.

 

[Ryka]

The 1333mhz RAM is more stable and from what i've seen the 1600mhz RAM usually performs exactly the same in games with some exceptions where it scored 0.1 FPS more than 1333mhz which isn't even a single frame so there's no real gain.

1600mhz RAM is unstable? Do you mean my system is going to crash frequently? That sounds pretty worrying, why would pcspecialist sell unstable RAM?

Edit: The price difference seems to have increased to £7. Bit of a no brainer now.

 

[Phoenix]

No it won't keep crashing your system, if there were any major problems with it PCSpecialist would remove it (like they did with the terrible XMS-3 RAM that Corsair makes) it's just that the Samsung RAM will be more stable.

 

[Ryka]

No it won't keep crashing your system, if there were any major problems with it PCSpecialist would remove it (like they did with the terrible XMS-3 RAM that Corsair makes) it's just that the Samsung RAM will be more stable.

Well I'm none the wiser as to how/in what way 1600mhz RAM is less stable then.

Regardless, I've noticed a problem with my spec. I've already got a wireless network card which I'm going to be swapping into this new machine but due to the graphics card and sound card taking up all the PCI slots it's not going to work as I had hoped. Is there some way round this? I'm aware wireless is terrible for gaming but have no choice right now sadly.

 

[Phoenix]

You could use a PCI-E wireless card instead of the PCI wireless cards, 1600mhz RAM is just more likely to need to be re-setup in the BIOS.

 

[Len]

Do you plan on adding another GPU in future? if so you need a bigger PSU

 

[Craig]

You could use a USB Wireless card also.

 

[Ryka]

Thanks for the advice everyone, I've ordered a (hopefully) good usb sound card to go with my existing PCI wireless card.

I won't be taking advantage of SLI or crossfire with this machine but possibly my next machine (hopefully 4-5 years down the line!) will involve some sort of dual/tri graphics setup.

Almost completely decided now, just trying to decide upon a case.