Thoughts on this spec?

[Teaz]

Any thoughts to anything that could be changed? mainly used for cs5, lightroom an high res RAW photo works and gaming along with everyday, will spend long hours on this from day to day so it will be on quite aot and will at times link it up to my tv for dual screen on use so wondering if the 750 psu is fine or go back down to the 650 psu? also will the psu degrade much over the years?

another Q is the hardrives; wondering how much longer till the gen3 ssd as it would be nice to grab it all in the bundle from pcs but waiting feels like forever right now so wondering if i should stick with the ssd and go with it or just use the 2tb drive as the main drive an wait for the new ssd and get it when its out?

Case
COOLERMASTER CM STORM SNIPER - NEXT GEN GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics

Motherboard
ASUS® P8P67 DELUXE: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, CrossFireX™ / SLI SUPPORT

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
1536MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX580 - 2 DVI,mHDMI - DirectX® 11, 3D Vision Ready

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
240GB OCZ VERTEX 2 SATA II 2.5" SSD (upto 285MB/sR | 275MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£49)

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W PRO SERIES (HX750) 80+ MODULAR PSU (£118)

Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£59)

Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Titanium - Fatal1ty Professional Series (£99)

Network Facilities
2 x WIRELESS N 300Mbps PCI CARDS (ONE SPARE FOR OTHER PC) (£33)

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

 

[StrangeBacon]

How much is this costing?

You could go with the onboard sound card, its surprisingly good, unless you have a big speaker system you wont notice masses of difference.

The i7 2600k is suited to overclocking, if thats what you're into fine, if not the i7 2600 or the i5 2500 would suit the purpose fine.

Although the GTX580 can use alot of power and run fairly hot the advanced cooler wont be needed unless you're overclocking, the triple copper one at £19 is fine.

Power supply is fine, im jealous of the SSD, and you might not need 8gb of ram, games use 4gb at most and you could have 2gb more for additional tasks, may be able to get away with 6gb.

Apart from that, most of its simply money saving ideas, its a beast of a spec and im rather jealous

Good Luck!

 

[Teaz]

All of that is costing 2k which is my budget but if no ssd it will save alot but i will be purchasing an ssd in the end lol.

im a big audiophile so i required the sound card so i thought id invest in one as i dont know how well the sound board works but i may reconsider an see.

yes i will be overclocking so ill stick with the K too so i decided to go for the advanced cooler as ill be adding 2 extra fans to the case after aswel to maintain cooling levels.

id personally go for 6gb but the sandy bridge builds dont come with 6gb, only 8gb lol id stick with 4 but its not enough for me as my large RAW photo works and loads on lightroom and cs5 are tad sluggish so i went for the 8gb.

was hoping that all this will last me at 3-4years hopefully with that motherboard

 

[StrangeBacon]

You seem to know what you want lol as a system it'll perform well.

Im hoping to get an SSD soon too, id get one now if its within your budget, a friend has one, the boot times and program speed is unbelievable

Might be worth going for the 1000w power supply if you can stretch the budget as it allows for SLI in the future and more peace of mind when OCing, always possible to upgrade it later, but in my experience fitting a new power supply and re-cable tying is a pain!

Hope this helped

 

[LFFPicard]

That is pretty much my spec although i had a couple of tweaks.

- If you only gaming and listening to music just got the the Creative Gamer card at £69 and save £30, there is no real difference and it will suit fine, thats what i have now and what goes in my new machine.
- I chose the same hard drives as you, but i am holding out until the new SSD's before i buy my spec.
- You could dial down the colling a little, its purely preferance. I have water cooling at the moment and will never use it again, it completly restricts my ability to upgrade and a pain to keep topped up.
- Do you really need 2x Wireless? I am a gamer and would never use wireless, i am sticking to the onboard lan ports but again its preferance.
- I agree with the power supply, but i wouldnot go as far as 1000w but maybe 850w that will be fine for future sli.
- Memory, it's a tuff one.. i know everyone always says games dont use more than 4gb etc etc, but thats now. What about 2years down the line? 2years ago games didnt use more than 2gb ram. I would say 8gb is fine especially with your photoshop work. People dont realise that once you load your images in photoshop etc it is all loaded into the ram, as soon as you start working on hi res images your ram disappeares rather quickly. This is especially true in InDesign. Myself i went for 16gb ram, massive future proof as i dont plan to add anything apart form a second graphics card in a few years.

Hope it was useful advice.

 

[StrangeBacon]

Memory, it's a tuff one.. i know everyone always says games dont use more than 4gb etc etc, but thats now. What about 2years down the line? 2years ago games didnt use more than 2gb ram. I would say 8gb is fine especially with your photoshop work. People dont realise that once you load your images in photoshop etc it is all loaded into the ram, as soon as you start working on hi res images your ram disappeares rather quickly. This is especially true in InDesign. Myself i went for 16gb ram, massive future proof as i dont plan to add anything apart form a second graphics card in a few years.

Thats a very good point, ram is rediculously easy to upgrade too, so its a personal preference, more now or more later, depends on your budget. Choices, choices!

 

[LFFPicard]

It's strange how many times people have recommeded 4gb on a £1.500 machine. A machine of that expense is meant to last, the ram will not last half as long as the PC will. everyone seems to forget about ram when thinking 2-3years down the line :/ It's actually kind of frustrating people of all skills dont even think about RAM.

 

[StrangeBacon]

Again, its possibly due to the relative ease of upgrading ram down the line and the need to keep the initial cost of the machine as low as possible.

Its a good ethos, most companys would reccommend higher specs just to get more money out of a customer that, often, doesnt know as much as them about PCs.

2-3 years down the line when more ram is needed, the same amount would most likely be alot cheaper than it is now.

 

[StrangeBacon]

Whoops, double post, please delete

 

[Teaz]

-thanks for the advice! i thought about the sound card myself but i thought id invest in a decent sound card that will survive me through the many years time.
- the ssd is indeed around the corner but i cant hold out any longer! lol ive been browsing back and forth for the past 3 months and researching on good components for the pc while reading peoples specs and info for the pc as ive waited for the sandy bridge but this ssd seems certainly forever with no release date on the news for them lol so i may just decide to grab it seperately altho it would be alot better if it could of been all bundled in one pc.
-the cooling id go with the titan but after seeing 1 in real life, its massive! and yet heavy haha so id stick with the liquid cooler since it was pretty much maintenance free and alot smaller rather than the fans which will certainly pull some amount of dust in some point lol
- the 2 wireless cards i certainly do as i will be moving the pc about in the house quite frequent while at point i wont need to move it, ill be using the ethernet cable and the spare is for another pc in another room.
- i dont think ill be doing any triple or double sli-ing anytime soon so i stuck with just the 1 single graphics card an will mainly hook it to 1 monitor while other times ill hook it up to 2 screens which will be my tv but not long use so im fine with the 750. plus in future if i ever did wanted to sli i will prob invest on a new psu then where im sure new psu are more better than today or similar in tech advancements
-and ill stick with the 8gb so far as ram upgrade will be easy as paying for a pack of sweets besides the waiting in line part lol

thanks for the advice again StrangeBacon and LFFPicard any chance you two would know any news for the release dates of the gen 3 ssds? care to file in ;P

 

[LFFPicard]

Well rumours float around one such rumour is February. Cant say for sure as there should of been some conrete news by now.
Personally I think it will be more March/April before we see them, nice kickstart to the end of the financial year and start of new one.

Luckily I am still saving for my PC as my house as appauling for finance due to rest of family, so I got a couple months saving yet to go so I am more anxious about the PC as a whole as apposed to the new SSD's

 

[Teaz]

march and april was what i thought but that wait is whopping long..
ive been anxious about my pc for far too long now lol if no news by the end of this feb i may just stick with 1 drive an grab the ssd later as i really want that ocz ssd 400gb drive! in my opinion its the perfect boot up drive and size! lol

 

[LFFPicard]

I just wish they would hurry up with 1-2TB SSD's My Steam library is HUGE and you cant spread it across more than one drive, i would love some of those games on a SSD as they would run soooo much quicker :/ Guess i will have to put up with 400gb

 

[StrangeBacon]

I just wish i had the money haha still not long till i can get one, the wait's agonising!