new gaming pc

[keynes]

Hello,
I am looking to purchase a desktop to play games and watch 3D movies. I have chosen the following:

CaseCOOLERMASTER CM STORM ENFORCER - GAMING ENTHUSIAST CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2700k Quad Core (3.50GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SATA-II 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk
1TB SEAGATE Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s HDD, 32MB Cache (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£43)
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX850 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£99)
Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO II A.L.C ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER (£59)
Sound Card
Asus Xonar DG 5.1 SoundCard & Headphone AMP *Award Winner* £20
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI CARD (£16)
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
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,549.00 including VAT and delivery.


I would like to get some feedback on the chosen parts, I do not have any knowdlege on what motherboard, case or cooler I should choose. I am planning to use an ASUS 27 VG278H monitor with this CPU and ideally I'd like to get a pc that I do not need to upgrade for at least 2 years. I'd appreciate any feedback and thanks in advance.

 

[Music Guy123]

Are you planning on overclocking, if not then I 'd suggest dropping to the 2600 cpu. I'd suggest upgrading the mobo one notch. You can drop the gpu to a 1.5GB unless you are going to be using multiple screens. For the HDDs, do you need two of them, I would recommend an SSD and then an HDD for storage. I'd suggest upgrading the psu one notch so that you can sli in the future when one gpu starts to struggle. For cpu cooling, as long as you aren't overclocking, you can drop this right down to the triple copper cooler. I don't recommend liquid cooling but it is your choice. For the soundcard, onboard is good, do you have analogue or digital speakers? Do you really need the wifi card? If so, I would recommend thinking about homeplugs before it. Otherwise, looks like it is going to be a solid spec, what is your budget?

 

[Rakk]

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SATA-II 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk
1TB SEAGATE Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s HDD, 32MB Cache (7200rpm)

For the HDDs, do you need two of them, I would recommend an SSD and then an HDD for storage.

Noting that there is nothing wrong with having two drives, however if you are going to, make sure the fastest one (the SEAGATE in your spec rubensolo) is in the slot for the first hard drive because that's where your OS will be installed and its better to have that on the faster drive, or if you go for an SSD then the SSD.

Personally I still think SSD's are overpriced, but that's just my own personal opinion, some people say they now couldn't have a PC without one

 

[TheKeir]

Yeah you need to put put the seagate in the first slot. I would recommend a Caviar Black if you can afford it, or maybe a small SSD as the first drive instead.

 

[keynes]

Are you planning on overclocking, if not then I 'd suggest dropping to the 2600 cpu. I'd suggest upgrading the mobo one notch. You can drop the gpu to a 1.5GB unless you are going to be using multiple screens. For the HDDs, do you need two of them, I would recommend an SSD and then an HDD for storage. I'd suggest upgrading the psu one notch so that you can sli in the future when one gpu starts to struggle. For cpu cooling, as long as you aren't overclocking, you can drop this right down to the triple copper cooler. I don't recommend liquid cooling but it is your choice. For the soundcard, onboard is good, do you have analogue or digital speakers? Do you really need the wifi card? If so, I would recommend thinking about homeplugs before it. Otherwise, looks like it is going to be a solid spec, what is your budget?

Morning, Thanks for the prompt reply. My budget is around £1600. I am not planning to overclock so I could downgrade it to 2600, regarding the HDD I do not need 2 of them but I took some of the suggested options and downgraded to 500gb rather than SSD. I'd like to know what are the advantages of upgrading the mobo and which one would you suggest? I am planning on getting the Logitech Z506 Surround Sound Speakers. I have 2 internet connections at home one wired (virgin) and wireless (talk talk provided by my landlord). Since I use the computer for work (marking online) I need constant internet connection and occassionally the wired connections goes down due to maintenance which is why I would like to have the option of both wired and wireless connection. I will be only using one monitor but I was not aware that the 3gb gtx 580 is more suitable for more than 1 screen. Thanks again for your help.

 

[keynes]

Good morning,
Thanks for the reply. I wasn't aware the first hard drive would be use for the OS, what size of an SSD would you recommend?

 

[NMEBowen]

Im guessing by the very nice choice in monitor your going for 3d gaming with that in mind id keep the 3gb version of the gtx 580 as you will most likely need it for that screen other than that the majority of suggestions are good ones.

Go for the 2600 series i7 as you wont need to overclock that allows you to drop to the tripple copper cpu cooler.

The motherboard could go up a notch allowing you to sli in the future, also the onboard sound will be better allowing you to drop the soundcard as the motherboard will atleast have 5.1 and spdif.

Id also advise you as the others have by putting atleast a 500gb seagate drive as your primary drive this will allow faster booting.

Then if you have the spare coin you can always up the psu to the corsair 1050w modular psu allowing you to add a second gpu at a later date also without faffing around and changing your whole wiring loop.

hope this all helps and best of luck with your pc.

 

[TheKeir]

The only difference between the K and non-K intel processors is that the K ones can be overclocked, so you should definitely downgrade to the 2600.
With regards to the hard drive if youre going to get a 500gb I strongly suggest getting the seagate barracuda. Whichever hard drive is fastest, put that in slot 1 of the HDDs.
The GTX 580, whilst its great for more than one monitor, it is also awesome for just one monitor. It will be able to max out absolutely any game you throw at it.
Hope this helps

 

[TheKeir]

Good morning,
Thanks for the reply. I wasn't aware the first hard drive would be use for the OS, what size of an SSD would you recommend?

If you're going with a setup of an SSD to boot the pc up, and then a storage HDD aswell, then get the smallest SSD. However it could be considered a slight waste of money if all you're using the SSD for is booting the pc up.

 

[keynes]

Morning,
Thanks for the reply. What would be your choices as the 1st and 2nd hard drive? I would not prefer to use SSD since they seem pretty expensive.

 

[NMEBowen]

500gb seagate 1st drive then you can use anything even the cheeper drives as your 2nd aslong as your 1st drive is fast for os and any bigger games you maybe playing.

 

[keynes]

The only difference between the K and non-K intel processors is that the K ones can be overclocked, so you should definitely downgrade to the 2600.
With regards to the hard drive if youre going to get a 500gb I strongly suggest getting the seagate barracuda. Whichever hard drive is fastest, put that in slot 1 of the HDDs.
The GTX 580, whilst its great for more than one monitor, it is also awesome for just one monitor. It will be able to max out absolutely any game you throw at it.
Hope this helps

Sorry for the later reply, it seems you answered my question but I forgot to reload the page. I will go got the 500gb barracuda as the first hard drive. Thanks agains for your help.

 

[TheKeir]

Morning,
Thanks for the reply. What would be your choices as the 1st and 2nd hard drive? I would not prefer to use SSD since they seem pretty expensive.

I would personally suggest going with a single 1TB Caviar Black hard drive (or if you want just 500gb, then a seagate barracuda). Basically a better hard drive means quicker loading times for files and games (but it won't affect game performance, just loading times). So if you don't mind waiting a few seconds more to load things, then an SSD is not needed.

 

[TheKeir]

Sorry for the later reply, it seems you answered my question but I forgot to reload the page. I will go got the 500gb barracuda as the first hard drive. Thanks agains for your help.

That's a nice fast HDD, should be good are you going with another HDD then, a standard 500gb by the sounds of it? If you're going with a setup of barracuda500/standard 500, its actually cheaper, and gives better performance, to do a 1tb caviar black single hdd.

 

[NMEBowen]

actually certain games like battlefield3 and certain others benifit greatly from a faster harddrive.

 

[Music Guy123]

This is what I would get:

Case
COOLERMASTER CM STORM ENFORCER - GAMING ENTHUSIAST CASE Cases aren't really my area so someone will have to check this, I would probably get a bigger one though.
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics Fine for you.
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V/GEN3: PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX Sli ready, great mobo.
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT) Should be plenty, can add more later.
Graphics Card
3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready Not sure whether you really do need 3GB.
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW) Very fast SSD, makes your pc much faster.
2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) Fast, solid, reliable and plenty of space.
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1050W PRO SERIES™ HX1050-80 PLUS® SILVER MODULAR (£159) Plenty of power.
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19) Plenty of cooling
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD) No need for a soundcard.
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£16) I would get homeplugs if you could as they are much more reliable, don't really know what you mean about wired being unreliable but your choice.
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5) Forgot to upgrade this to the gold - sorry!
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,527.00 including VAT and delivery. In budget, even if you put the gold warranty in.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-sandy-bridge-pc/

 

[Music Guy123]

This thread seems to move too fast for my typing! I would strongly recommend an SSD, they speed up your system huge amounts. The caviar black is also a very fast drive but nothing near an SSD.

 

[Music Guy123]

If you don't want the SSD, you could just have one HDD and keep the caviar black 2TB. It is a very fast drive out there, probably the fastest apart from its bigger brother the velociraptor.

 

[keynes]

This thread seems to move too fast for my typing! I would strongly recommend an SSD, they speed up your system huge amounts. The caviar black is also a very fast drive but nothing near an SSD.

Hello,
Thanks for your reply and quote. What I meant by the internet connection is that sometimes my internet provider do stop the service for maintenance and the only way I can get the other connection available is through wireless since the router is not close to my pc. I wasn't aware of what a homeplug is until I search for it on google. Would it be easy to set up?
I noticed the OS cost (£79) since it is my first time purchasing a computer through PCspecialist I do not know whether it will be too much hasle to actually not choose an OS and install it myself, I do have Windows 7 on a CD but I have never attempted to install it in a pc for the first time only upgrade or reinstall it. If I do not choose the OS would that mean I need to install all the other software as well?
Thanks,
Ruben

 

[Music Guy123]

If you don't choose the OS it will be fine, you will probably have to install drivers but that is given on a CD for you or is available on the website. for the OS, you need to have a free product key, having the disk won't help unless there is a free product key. Homeplugs are very easy to setup as long as you can get to the router and you are on the same fusebox as the router.