8bit_architect

Honorable
Aug 26, 2012
7
0
10,510
Hey, I built a system a few month's back when Ivybridge (Gen 3 i-core) came out, and I was looking for opinions on where I could have done better price-to-performance wise (or just general quality of the build).

Core i5-3570k (I purchased this and the motherboard for a $150 or so discount from Micro Center)
Asus p8z77-v Pro (Rev. 3)
Cooler Master Hyper 212
Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid (850w)
2x Crucial Ballistix 8GB DDR3 1866 (got this rather than 2x 4GB because I'm getting into hobby game design and I figured I don't have to replace 2x 8GB if I need more memory)
2x EVGA Gtx 660ti FTW edition (3GB) (I originally had one 560 ti, but I wanted to be able to run 3d and/or surround eventually)

For storage I have
Seagate Barracuda 1TB
2x Samsung 830 128GB (currently my OS resides on one of these, but I plan on reinstalling at some point and dropping it on these in RAID 0 or on my 840 Pro)
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (I wish I hadn't bought this. Just more money for performance I didn't need, but it came with AC3...)

All this in a Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced (Blue Edition), using 2 Dell u2412m monitors (like I said, at some point I'd like to get another for surround, and If I can find a deal I like, a 3d monitor in addition to this.)

In addition to general price-performance comments, how do you think I could do with overclocing on this build (without adding more cooling, although if you have any suggestions for cooling systems that would allow me to overclock more, feel free to share.) I will post pictures of the inside at some point for opinions on how well I routed wires, but I may do that in another thread.
 
I personally would have gone with two 4GB 670 if you wanted surround / 3d surround.

A single 2GB 670 is enough for 3d on one monitor.

The 660ti has a bottleneck on memory bandwidth - it won't show up on a single monitor, but with three monitors, you're screwed; the lack of bandwith and additional lack of VRAM is going to hurt.

(Other than that, you're good, although 16GB ram is silly overkill. With GIMP, BF3, and 20 tabs in Chrome running all at once, I've never seen my computer use even 7GB, when I have 8 and no pagefile.)