Gaming and Photoediting Build

[billyjiahaogao]

Hi guys,

I'm looking to build my first rig, I'm looking to do a bit of gaming and photoediting along with a bit of work of course

Approximate Purchase Date: Start of September 2011

Budget Range: £1,100

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Photoediting, Work

Parts Not Required: Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Windows 7

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Parts Preferences:

Overclocking: Mild

SLI or Crossfire: If it gives a better performance

Monitor Resolution: 1920x1200

Additional Comments:

Currently looking at:

Intel i7 2600k - https://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecial...t+LGA1155+Processor+-+Retail+?productId=43214

Asus P8Z68-VPRO - https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Com...DDR3+PCI-Express+Motherboard+?productId=44425

Corsair H80 Cooling - https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Com...H80+Water-Cooling+CPU+Cooler+?productId=44803

Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B 8GB x 2 (Total 16gb) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMZ...1C/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1313580927&sr=8-17

Crucial m4 128GB SSD - https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Com...A-III+Solid+State+Hard+Drive+?productId=44258

Samsung SH-B123L BluRay ROM - https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Co...+Optical+Drive+-+Black+(OEM)+?productId=45436

Asus 1GB Radeon HD 6850 x 2 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-Radeon...1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1313581200&sr=1-1

Corsair 850w PSU - https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Com...sfire+Compliant+Power+Supply+?productId=43907

Fractal Design R3 - https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Com...Pearl+Gaming+Midi+Tower+Case+?productId=41375


Can anyone see anything I've missed out? I've got a 1TB SATA drive lined up already for main storage. Currently the price stands a tad over £1,100 which I'm okay with, but always looking to make things cheaper.

I was considering dropping down to an Intel i5, I was looking to mildly overclock anyway (hence the water cooler), but don't know how much of a performance drop will be involved with a 2MB smaller cache. 16GB ram seems a bit overkill, but I don't want to use my SSD as a scratch disk at all, hoping to keep everything on the RAM.

I'm not looking to game over 1920 x 1200, but I'd like to game with game settings set as high as possible. I understand this might be a strain on stuff like Crysis, but I'm looking forward to Diablo 3 and the new Battlefield.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Outlander_04]

Its a good build , but if it was me

Id drop the water cooling and fit a Hyper 212 . They're cheap and they're plenty for a cool running sb even if you do lots of overclocking .

Id also drop the 6850's and use a single 6950 .

And I'd add a second hard drive for data security .

 

[billyjiahaogao]

Its a good build , but if it was me

Id drop the water cooling and fit a Hyper 212 . They're cheap and they're plenty for a cool running sb even if you do lots of overclocking .

Id also drop the 6850's and use a single 6950 .

And I'd add a second hard drive for data security .

Thanks for your reply!

I've had a look at the Hyper 212's, they've got some great reviews about performance but people say it's quite difficult to install, how did you find it? I've never really put together a PC from stractch before, only taken off stock components and put them back on so a little worried about installation.

I was looking at the 6950 as well, and paying a few more quid for the 2GB version.

And of course I'll add in more hard drives, at the moment all my data is stored accross a few portable hard drives, looking forward to having them all in one place.

 

[sighnbox]

Hi there im all so doing a new build and thinking of the LGA115 socket Core i7 2600K but was looking at the Asus P8P67 Deluxe board can you please tell me why you choose the Asus P8Z68-VPRO board ???

 

[billyjiahaogao]

Hi there im all so doing a new build and thinking of the LGA115 socket Core i7 2600K but was looking at the Asus P8P67 Deluxe board can you please tell me why you choose the Asus P8Z68-VPRO board ???

Hey, I too was looking at the P67 motherboard before I realised that there was a newer version. Having been out of the desktop scene for near 10 years everything was a bit confusing, all this multi core processor stuff

I believe that the P series 1155 socket motherboards didn't actually allow you to use the integrated graphics that were provided by the Sandy Bridge, which supposedly arn't that bad. You had to use the H series, but there weren't many high end H series motherboards.

This is fine if you're using a separate graphics card with the P series, the only benefit to the Z68 graphically is the ability to switch between the Intel build in graphics and the separate graphics card depending on when its needed, saving you power consumption and heat.

Otherwise, there's SSD caching, where you can put you're most used files on a small SSD for faster loading.

I thinks thats it, someone correct me if I'm wrong though. No particular reason for me to go with the Z68, but I figured for £15 pounds more, why not grab the newer spec which combines the H and P chipset benefits

 

[sighnbox]

So the Z68 board still allows me to buy a good graphics card as even tho mainly editing etc and no gaming at all I still want two moiters (say one for tools and one for film preview) but allso want to hook up to the TV as well so I can view my stuff from the HD on the TV. Ive just looked at the Asus site and there many P8Z68 boards whats the top one >??????

 

[billyjiahaogao]

So the Z68 board still allows me to buy a good graphics card as even tho mainly editing etc and no gaming at all I still want two moiters (say one for tools and one for film preview) but allso want to hook up to the TV as well so I can view my stuff from the HD on the TV. Ive just looked at the Asus site and there many P8Z68 boards whats the top one >??????

From the P8 range, there's a deluxe version as well - P8Z68 Deluxe. In the Z68 chipset range from Asus they also do a Maximus range, with the best being the Extreme version.

 

[billyjiahaogao]

Right, just stood up to the post and placed an order

Went with outlander_04's suggestion of a 212+ cooler, the reviews of it looks great and theres a few installation videos on youtube, looks a bit fiddly but not too bad http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...N52wVrPYb3Skqz79g&sig2=dBldUJD-GhBqKCuV-NmhBQ

Also went with his/her's suggestion of a 6950 single, after reading about how some games don't have crossfire support. Hopefully should be enough to run most of my games in brilliant detail and I can always save up for another 6950 if I ever want to run crossfire in the future.

 

[Proximon]

Best answer selected by Proximon.