Build Completed, your thoughts?

[Freezymcgee]

Hi friends, just completed my 1st build with the help of a friend on my new system, budget was about $900 with no monitor needed. Also I live in Canada where computer hardware can cost 5-10% more in most cases.

Case - NZXT Guardian 921 Gaming Case with Blue LED
CPU - i5 2500k
Mobo - Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3-B3 Intel Z68 chipset
PS - OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W
RAM - G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB(2x4GB)1600MHhz DDR3
GPU - EVGA Superclocked Geforce 560 Ti 1GB
HDD - Western Digital Black 1TB 6GB/s
CD - Asus Black 24x Optical Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

If anyone can hit me with any pros, cons, limitations or any other relevant information it would be appreciated.

[Deleted]

Well, you have the best gaming processor available right now, and an excellent graphics card, you have a really good computer!

[Deleted]

Not that far from my build. Congratulations on your new computer!

[Psii]

Holy crap are you reading my mind?
I quite literally a week ago built that thing (exception video card/double ram).
No issues so far with it.
Haven't pushed it too hard yet though (clocked it up to 4.4 and working fine).

[Deleted]

Haven't pushed it too hard yet though (clocked it up to 4.4 and working fine).

I clocked mine to 4.5 almost immediately. Then I played around a bit and had it stable at 4.8. I wasn't having any real temperature issues, but seeing as it is summer and all and it can get pretty warm I decided to downclock it back to 4.5. I didn't notice much difference anyways compared to 4.8 :-)

[Psii]

I clocked mine to 4.5 almost immediately. Then I played around a bit and had it stable at 4.8. I wasn't having any real temperature issues, but seeing as it is summer and all and it can get pretty warm I decided to downclock it back to 4.5. I didn't notice much difference anyways compared to 4.8 :-)

Ya I hear ya.
I haven't had any real reason to try it higher yet lol.
I don't think I've pushed it past 3gigs yet lol.

[BicycleMafioso]

Hi there!

Your build looks very well-rounded, and I don't see any point to rain on your parade.
But if I were to change anything personally, I'd add a CPU-heatsink. Regardless whether you overclock or not (although you do have a Z68 board and a K-labelled CPU), the temperatures can take a decent dive, as would the soundlevels.
If you want to cut costs somehwere to enable it, the PSU could drop to 500w safely with plenty of headroom left, and the HDD could be replaced by a Samsung Spinpoint F3.

But I'm nitpicking, it looks good as-is.

[Psii]

But if I were to change anything personally, I'd add a CPU-heatsink. Regardless whether you overclock or not (although you do have a Z68 board and a K-labelled CPU), the temperatures can take a decent dive, as would the soundlevels.

Yup agreeing with this.
Grab a Hyper 212+ for like 20-30$ depending where you are and laugh to the bank.

[Uggorthaholy]

Yup agreeing with this.
Grab a Hyper 212+ for like 20-30$ depending where you are and laugh to the bank.

Agreeing, but go to a noctua or even the corsair A70. I've heard better things about their performance vs the 212

[Deleted]

OPs build is well rounded and balanced.

If you have money to waste you might feel like getting a dedicated Soundcard like the Creative X-Fi Gamer or the Asus Xonar Xense. Just in case you feel like throwing more money at the system.

[Fuzzykins]

Agreeing, but go to a noctua or even the corsair A70. I've heard better things about their performance vs the 212

I'd hope the A70/NH-D14 was significantly better for over twice the price.
Also, I disagree. It's better to find out if your chip can go high enough to make it worth it and spend an extra $30 than buy an NH-D14 just to have your CPU crap out at anything above 4.6.

[Freezymcgee]

Thanks for the input guys,

my friend told me the stock intel heatsinks are not to bad in comparison, but I will definitely pick up one of those named ones for overclocking.

the power supply is a little big but I wanted the ability to upgrade the video card in the future.
I figured that the CPU would stand up longer then the GPU as far as good performance in games over the next few years.
is that the case?

[BicycleMafioso]

OPs build is well rounded and balanced.

If you have money to waste you might feel like getting a dedicated Soundcard like the Creative X-Fi Gamer or the Asus Xonar Xense. Just in case you feel like throwing more money at the system.

A dedicated sound card is quite neat for gaming. Sound becomes more vivid and with more depth, not to mention that good sound is always good sound. I was playing BFBC2 with on-board sound and a pair of Siberia V2, and I realised how awful it was. I'm now rocking a dedicated sound card and a pair of Sennheiser PC360. Night and day.
I've also heard that you can gain a bit of FPS from using a soundcard, as the CPU/motherboard don't have to send resources to the onboard sound-chip.
If this sounds interesting to you, I can recommend against the Creative series, and recommend either an ASUS Xonar DX or better yet, the ASUS Xonar STX.
The STX is the same one featured in the Xonar Xense-combo, but without the (very good) Sennheiser PC350, if you feel like buying your own headset. If not, the Xense get my recommendation as well.

Thanks for the input guys,

my friend told me the stock intel heatsinks are not to bad in comparison, but I will definitely pick up one of those named ones for overclocking.

the power supply is a little big but I wanted the ability to upgrade the video card in the future.
I figured that the CPU would stand up longer then the GPU as far as good performance in games over the next few years.
is that the case?

The intel heatsink is very fine for when one doesn't overclock. It's only meant to handle stock settings, which it admittedly does well. But once the clocks start to creep upwards, it quickly falls to unacceptable.

Get the Coolermaster Hyper 212 plus if you have price-concerns.
Get the Corsair Hydro-series H70 or Antec Kühler H20 620 or 920 if you have space-concerns (expensive).
Get the Noctua NH-D14 if you have heat-concerns (expensive, but not as expensive as the middle three choices. Also easily the best cooling-device listed here).

[Adappy]

A dedicated sound card is quite neat for gaming. Sound becomes more vivid and with more depth, not to mention that good sound is always good sound. I was playing BFBC2 with on-board sound and a pair of Siberia V2, and I realised how awful it was. I'm now rocking a dedicated sound card and a pair of Sennheiser PC360. Night and day.
I've also heard that you can gain a bit of FPS from using a soundcard, as the CPU/motherboard don't have to send resources to the onboard sound-chip.
If this sounds interesting to you, I can recommend against the Creative series, and recommend either an ASUS Xonar DX or better yet, the ASUS Xonar STX.
The STX is the same one featured in the Xonar Xense-combo, but without the (very good) Sennheiser PC350, if you feel like buying your own headset. If not, the Xense get my recommendation as well.

1. The big question is was the difference in sound quality from the change in headphones, or the change in sound card? I know going from my Corsair HS-1 to my Audio-Technica ATH-AD700's (plus Zalman clip-on mic to make it a "headset" ) on onboard sound (well, the HS1 was USB, so it had its own "sound card", but close enough) was a MUCH larger difference than going from the audio jacks of my P8P67 Pro to my Xonar DX (with the A-T headphones). That said, the DX was definitely an improvement, particularly for listening to music (sounds slightly clearer/cleaner) but not as much as changing headphones was. Point is... getting a sound card probably won't do much on a cheap/crappy set of headphones/speakers.
2. I'm pretty sure to gain FPS from using a soundcard, the game/software has to support hardware acceleration. Even then, the FPS difference would be fairly small.

That said, a sound card can be a nice addition if you have the extra money for it. It should improve overall sound quality, and will have some gimmicky effects to play with (simulated 7.1 surround headphones, etc), which may or may not be good (I know BFBC2 sounds pretty cool with "7.1" enabled, wouldn't say it sounds exactly like sitting in a room with a real 7.1 surround setup though... nor would I want to use it in multiplayer)

[BicycleMafioso]

1. The big question is was the difference in sound quality from the change in headphones, or the change in sound card? I know going from my Corsair HS-1 to my Audio-Technica ATH-AD700's (plus Zalman clip-on mic to make it a "headset" ) on onboard sound (well, the HS1 was USB, so it had its own "sound card", but close enough) was a MUCH larger difference than going from the audio jacks of my P8P67 Pro to my Xonar DX (with the A-T headphones). That said, the DX was definitely an improvement, particularly for listening to music (sounds slightly clearer/cleaner) but not as much as changing headphones was. Point is... getting a sound card probably won't do much on a cheap/crappy set of headphones/speakers.
2. I'm pretty sure to gain FPS from using a soundcard, the game/software has to support hardware acceleration. Even then, the FPS difference would be fairly small.

That said, a sound card can be a nice addition if you have the extra money for it. It should improve overall sound quality, and will have some gimmicky effects to play with (simulated 7.1 surround headphones, etc), which may or may not be good (I know BFBC2 sounds pretty cool with "7.1" enabled, wouldn't say it sounds exactly like sitting in a room with a real 7.1 surround setup though)

Well composed thoughts. And I agree for the most part. But to add my own thoughts;

I'm still using my Siberia, but now dedicated for my laptop (except, you know, at this time, when I'm wearing the Sennheiser anyway!) because I can now afford to lose them to breaking in travel et c.
The integrated soundcard in my laptop is obviously better than my desktop, but still, I can discern a difference between using my Sennheiser and my Siberias. It's not as big as I would've thought, but I'm not regretting the purchase, as they are faaaar more comfortable to wear than the Siberias, and the microphone is ridiculously much better. Also, the sound is quite easy to tell the difference of.

I had looked at a similiar solution to yours before buying these, but I ended up buying them despite phones/clip-on mic being more value for money.
The difference with the soundcard in BFBC2 was the biggest though; Explosions were almost purely static with the integrated sound card. Now, the BF-series, even the BC2 game are well-famed for its sound, so I might use an extreme example. But integrated soundcards don't have the ability to pick up all the frequencies et c.
I noticed a bigger improvement from getting a soundcard.
However. The actual difference between sound-card and sound-card is surprisingly small. There's not a whole lot you can do different from a budget one to a super-expensive one, except amps, higher quality-caps et c. (I'm exaggerating, but only slightly). Mostly it's just drivers.
So if you had a budget, I'd put the vast majority of that in good phones, and only a fraction on the soundcard.
Going from on-board to dedicated is a big upgrade, but switching dedicated to dedicated, not a diff at all.
So I'd put with a 500USD-budget (totally imaginary budget, with imaginary prices) I'd put 100 toward a card, and the rest toward good quality phones. The difference in phones is where you'll get more for your money.

(I also got the Xonar DX, but I purposefully omitted that, since it was something I recommended; I prefer not to recommend my own products, but I also wouldn't ever get something that I wouldn't recommend - ie, I try to pick parts very carefully. :P)

[Adappy]

Well to be fair... the Corsair HS1 I had before was pretty crappy sounding (very harsh upper-mid range)
Also... I just tried playing BFBC2 with just 8 channel input enabled in the Xonar control panel (without Dolby Virtual Speaker/7.1 Speaker Shifter) and uh... I can see why you said you noticed a big difference, it sounds much better than 2 channel mode (never tried just 8 channel mode without the virtual 7.1 stuff before) So thank you for indirectly making me realize the potential of my sound card