First Time Gaming Build. How is this?

[ErroneousDylan]

Hello. I've been lurking this place for awhile now since it has such a wealthy collection of information and so I figured I'd post here and get some recommendations or comments.

I've never build a machine before so I've been trying to do as much research as possible but I still don't know enough or have any experience with these types of things to know if what I am getting is going to be sufficient or not.

I have a budget of about 1,500 to 1,800 USD. My goal would be to play pretty graphic intense games like Elder Scrolls with full HD packs or FarCry 3 on high+ settings.

Item List:
Processor: Intel i5 3570k 3.4GHz
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V LK ATX
Video Card: Gigabyte GTX 670
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
PSU: Rosewill CAPSTONE Series CAPSTONE-750-M 750W
Case: NZXT Tempest 410 Elite
Monitor: ASUS VS Series VS247H-P Black 23.6"
Sound Card: ASUS XONAR DG
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" SATA
Fans: 4x Cooler Master 120mm & 2x Xigmatek 140mm
PSU Cooler: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 EVO
Fan Controller: NZXT Sentry Mesh 5 Channel 30W
Input Device: ASUS 24x DVD/CD Burner SATA
Keyboard: Gigabyte Mechanical
Mouse: Razer DeathAdder
OS: Windows 7 Home SP1 64-bit

The total comes up to about 1,650 USD.

As you can see, I am building completely from scratch. I have no peripherals so I had to include them as well. Does anyone see any immediate problems with this build or inefficiencies? It would really mean a lot to me if I could get some advice. Thank you for much for reading!

Dylan,

ETA: Changed a few products based on suggestions.

 

[smorizio]

i would swap out the slow ram for standard 1600 ram. make sure it 1.5v and low profile if your going to toss in an after market heat sink. with most people the onboard sound is fine. i would use that money for wifi card or a ssd.

 

[TheBigTroll]

much better option here
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wqcU

-faster ram
-better motherboard
-modular power supply built by superflower
-you dont need a sound card unless you have some really good headphones
-slimmer and more efficient monitor
-you dont need extra fans. the ones you have are not that good to begin with. and no need for a fan controller
-MUCH better case. and is silent as well
-have a SSD
-cheaper keyboard. built by filco. no backlighting and all that fancy jazz but its a functional mechanical keyboard
-cheaper mouse, but if you are left handed, just get it

 

[ErroneousDylan]

i would swap out the slow ram for standard 1600 ram. make sure it 1.5v and low profile if your going to toss in an after market heat sink. with most people the onboard sound is fine. i would use that money for wifi card or a ssd.

Sweet, thanks. I removed the soundcard. I'm a bit of an audiophile but I have a separate computer for that and I'm not about to spend 200$ on a sound card for gaming so I'll take the 30 bucks I save and get some better RAM like you suggested. I assume these will be fine:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145345

I didn't know there was a difference between 1333 and 1600 but now I do! Thank you.

 

[ErroneousDylan]

much better option here
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wqcU

-faster ram
-better motherboard
-modular power supply built by superflower
-you dont need a sound card unless you have some really good headphones
-slimmer and more efficient monitor
-you dont need extra fans. the ones you have are not that good to begin with. and no need for a fan controller
-MUCH better case. and is silent as well
-have a SSD
-cheaper keyboard. built by filco. no backlighting and all that fancy jazz but its a functional mechanical keyboard
-cheaper mouse, but if you are left handed, just get it

1.I've upgraded the ram to 1600 instead of 1333. Thank you.
2. What makes the Gigabyte MOBO much better? From what I saw it seemed to be almost the same. Even the same price tag. From what I've read, I hear ASUS is more reliable also.
3. Good point. I'll go modular.
4. Removed.
5. I don't know enough to disagree so if it truly is better for 20 bucks, I'll do it.
6. The only reason I was going with extra fans + a fan controller is that my room can get VERY humid and hot at times. The controller just to keep things quiet. While I understand it is not important to performance, I do like the blue LED fans.
7. I'm pretty sold on this NZXT Tempest 410 Elite. I do like that the one you linked me has sound dampeners but (to me) it's a bit of an eye-sore.
8. I like SSD but I'm afraid I'm not tech-savvy enough to figure out RAID and separate drives. Would I put JUST my OS on the SSD? What about my games? If I have more than 128GB worth of games + OS am I S.O.L?

 

[smorizio]

if you like blue glowing led look into nxzt led strips. there cheap and have an on/off button to turn them off. with an ssd i have 120g intel one and 500g data drive. there not set up as raid or anything. the ssd is the boot drive and main game/program drive and the 500g drive is the storage drive. all you do on the first build and install is not plug the sata power cable into the hard drive. instal windows on the ssd and then reboot. when you go back into windows..let windows boot to the desktop then shut the system down and unplug power from the wall. let the ps and mb drain then connect the sata power back to the main hard drive.boot back into windows. if the data drive does not show up under my computer you have to use windows disk manager to format and give your data drive a drive letter. new game or games that you may play once a month you install or your data drive.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77V_LK/
the board does nto have the usb flash back as there more $$ mb but it does have windows 8 fast boot. your into the os in 6 sec. and does have a nice clean efi bios.

 

[ErroneousDylan]

if you like blue glowing led look into nxzt led strips. there cheap and have an on/off button to turn them off. with an ssd i have 120g intel one and 500g data drive. there not set up as raid or anything. the ssd is the boot drive and main game/program drive and the 500g drive is the storage drive. all you do on the first build and install is not plug the sata power cable into the hard drive. instal windows on the ssd and then reboot. when you go back into windows..let windows boot to the desktop then shut the system down and unplug power from the wall. let the ps and mb drain then connect the sata power back to the main hard drive.boot back into windows. if the data drive does not show up under my computer you have to use windows disk manager to format and give your data drive a drive letter. new game or games that you may play once a month you install or your data drive.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77V_LK/
the board does nto have the usb flash back as there more $$ mb but it does have windows 8 fast boot. your into the os in 6 sec. and does have a nice clean efi bios.

I thought it looked like a nice board. It has good reviews, any way. However, I'm not so sure I want to go Windows 8, at least for gaming. I've heard some pretty terrible stuff about it. Have you tried it?

 

[smorizio]

been running it from the time they let people download it. right now running the oem 64 bit windows 8. not hard core gamming have 8g of ram and intel 3450 on a saberttoth mb and a 550ti video card. my main game was city of heroes till ncsoft closed the servers down few months ago. been playing wow on and off. all the mmo and software i downloaded new and olkd has worked fine in windows 8. (if you dont like the tiles use stardoc software to make windows 8 look like 7.

 

[TheBigTroll]

1.I've upgraded the ram to 1600 instead of 1333. Thank you.
2. What makes the Gigabyte MOBO much better? From what I saw it seemed to be almost the same. Even the same price tag. From what I've read, I hear ASUS is more reliable also.
3. Good point. I'll go modular.
4. Removed.
5. I don't know enough to disagree so if it truly is better for 20 bucks, I'll do it.
6. The only reason I was going with extra fans + a fan controller is that my room can get VERY humid and hot at times. The controller just to keep things quiet. While I understand it is not important to performance, I do like the blue LED fans.
7. I'm pretty sold on this NZXT Tempest 410 Elite. I do like that the one you linked me has sound dampeners but (to me) it's a bit of an eye-sore.
8. I like SSD but I'm afraid I'm not tech-savvy enough to figure out RAID and separate drives. Would I put JUST my OS on the SSD? What about my games? If I have more than 128GB worth of games + OS am I S.O.L?

-just dont get those corsair haircomb ram sticks. stick with the ones i suggested
-the ud3h has more features than the LK. the LK has exactly enough features for me, but its nicer to have some more in case you ever need it. plus, its only 2 dollars more after a MIR so why not.
-well case fans hardly make a difference in my room. i almost removed them all
-i dont see the problem with my case. its just a plain black box, what cases were meant to be. its a design you dont get bored of over time (anything that looks fancy/gamer like now wont look the same to you in the future)
-the SSD is to store the os, your applications, and some games that you feel need speed. after you have set all that up, you connect your hard drive to the system and get windows to detect it. then you can store whatever media you want