Pre-Order PC Build Check.

[Deleted]

I've decided to build myself a new computer, and over the past month or so (which I've spent selling my old technology on eBay to save up the cash for this build,) I've been doing a fair amount of research into which parts I'd like to use for my build.

My final basket can be viewed here, using this URL:
http://www.scan.co.uk/savedbasket/e6...1faaf2e338a481

I am from the UK and my preferred vendor is Scan.co.uk, as they offer Scansure insurance on your build which allows you to return parts for replacements should you accidently damage them during installation. However, if there are any UK vendors that offer parts significantly cheaper, I'd be happy to have a look. I have a maximum budget of around £950-1000. This includes several accessories, though. Without OS, Headset, Keyboard or Mouse, I'm looking to spend £750 or less. I'm willing to add a little if there's a justifyable upgrade, though.
With the Scansure insurance, my current basket comes up to £945 or so. If it's a solid build and you wouldn't change anything, great, tell me. If there is some room for improvement for little/no extra investment, an error in my build, or something else you'd change or like to comment on, then throw me a reply!

I'll list the parts individually, despite giving a link to my basket:

Computer

1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9ms, NCQ
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-s...cache-89ms-ncq

Fractal Design Define R3, Black Pearl, Mid Tower Case w/o PSU
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/fract...r-case-w-o-psu

Corsair Memory Vengeance Black 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 XMP Dual Channel Desktop
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-%...-9-24-xmp-150v

Intel CPU Core i5 2500K Unlocked Sandy Bridge Quad Core Processor OEM
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...-cache-95w-oem

MSI P67A-GD53 (B3) Intel P67 Express Socket 1155 Motherboard OC Genie II
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-p...-raid-sata-atx

LG 22x SATA BLACK DVDRW GH22NS70
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/lg-gh...sata-black-oem

650W Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650M Power Supply (PSU)
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/650w-...-eps-12v-quiet

MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti HAWK NVIDIA Graphics Card - 1GB +Free Batman: Arkham City
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-m...vi-i-mini-hdmi

Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coole...m2-am2plus-am3

Accessories:

Corsair HS1 Gaming Audio Series Headset with MIC USB 7.1Ch
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...-51-and-71-usb

Logitech Wireless Gaming Mouse G700
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/logit...i-rechargeable

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM Operating System
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/micro...tem-single-oem

Not included in the basket/£950 budget

I'd also be buying a screen for £130, which is the BenQ G4020HD 24inch Widescreen LCD Monitor.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/BenQ-G2420HD...6371317&sr=8-1

And a keyboard for £25, which is the Microsoft Sidewinder X4 Keyboard.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Si...6371551&sr=1-2

If there any any suggestions for 23-24" screens in the £130 price range, or keyboards in the £25-40 price range please don't hesitate to post.
A big thanks in advance, I appreciate it's a lot to read and think about, but the feedback here is thoroughly awesome.

[taekvideo]

Looks great to me. Getting a 570 instead of a 560ti would be the best way to improve it (if you can afford it)... about a 20% graphics performance increase.
What you have will work great though.

[Meleti]

Looks great to me. Getting a 570 instead of a 560ti would be the best way to improve it (if you can afford it)... about a 20% graphics performance increase.
What you have will work great though.

At the risk of sounding like an AMD fanboy, the 6950 thrashes the 570 if OP is willing to put money into an upgrade. 560 vs 6870 is a bit more even, but the 6950 performs quite a bit better than a 570.

[Drunkenvalley]

For the RAM... http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-%...9-9-24-xmp-15v
This is much more future-proof, in the event you want to go for a different and larger air-cooler in the future. I think the Hyper 212+ fits by default though.

At the risk of sounding like an AMD fanboy, the 6950 thrashes the 570 if OP is willing to put money into an upgrade. 560 vs 6870 is a bit more even, but the 6950 performs quite a bit better than a 570.

No.

[Deleted]

For the RAM... http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-%...9-9-24-xmp-15v
This is much more future-proof, in the event you want to go for a different and larger air-cooler in the future. I think the Hyper 212+ fits by default though.[/URL]

Noted, and changed. Thanks. Looks far nicer too, I'm not a big fan of the large profile/fancy-pants look.

At the risk of sounding like an AMD fanboy, the 6950 thrashes the 570 if OP is willing to put money into an upgrade. 560 vs 6870 is a bit more even, but the 6950 performs quite a bit better than a 570.

I don't want to step on your toes, but as far as I know the 570 is a fair bit more powerful on most benchmarks. Most comparisons are made between the 560Ti and the 6950, not the 6950 and 570 for performance reasons.

The 570 is out of my budget, however, there is a 2GB 6950 available for £13 more than my current selection 560Ti.

I had opted for the 560Ti as it overclocks like stink, and the reviews I've read to tend to lean towards it in the comparisons of 6950/560Ti, if only for price-performance reasons.

Would purchasing a 2GB 6950 be a more solid investment than the 560Ti? I've read that the 6950 has had some driver issues, and I've never used an AMD card (although, I've always always used AMD processors, this will be my first intel, so I'm by no means a fanboy of anyone in particular,) so I've opted for the 560Ti for familiarity. Are there any people who have experience of both who can comment on this? Is there a performance/overclocking advantage to either?

One thing I can think of for the 6950 is that it would be slightly more future-proof than the 560Ti, as although at the moment we don't need 2GB of VRAM, in the future this may be a neccessity, and it seems the 6950 crossfire scaling is better than the 560Ti SLI scaling.

This is the card I had in mind:

MSI HD 6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition/OC AMD Radeon Graphics Card - 2GB
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-m...mhz-1408-cores

[Drunkenvalley]

HD 6950 over the 560ti is a sound investment in pure FPS, but mind you that it seems the nVidia cards are better for anti-aliasing.
Though this visual effect is fairly unimportant unless you're very nitpicky.

[Xuvial]

Aww no Mushkin RAM listed on scan.co.uk

@ OP, great build

A quick thing to note about that PSU: If in the future you find yourself wanting more graphics horsepower with another GTX560 Ti, a TX650 will not be able to handle the power requirements for two of those cards. That's a very nice build but it'll really struggle on Crysis or BF3 (or any demanding GPU-based game) if you want to run at high settings at 1920x1080 and it'll only get worse with upcoming games.
My advice is to stretch your budget a bit to accommodate an HX850: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMPS...6377441&sr=1-1
It doesn't cost *too* much more than a TX650, it's modular which means noticeably less cable mess/management problems (the amount of cables coming out of a TX650 will drive you mad), and most importantly it gives you expansion for future GPU upgrades, enough overclocking headroom to put a fat overclock on everything. For it's price it's the best PSU I could find on scan.co.uk, you won't regret the investment.

But if you're fine with medium settings on the more demanding games, then your current build will more than suffice

[Drunkenvalley]

What? Struggling in Crysis @ high? Pff, that's really 4 years ago now. Beyond that, I'd really suggest you bring some sources on the BF3 performance requirements.

Because developers are increasingly aware of limitations of users' hardware, you'll largely see very few of them actually pushing the limits of your PC for a long time ahead. A GTX 560 ti will serve you up to several years without a hitch, short of very specific games that are designed to be really intense or extremely unoptimized.

All in all, your worries are largely unfounded in my opinion, Xuvial.

[zRares]

The pc looks fine and it will work at max settings in games, but i would put a few more $ and buy a gtx 570 GLH edition...and if you dont use 3 monitors or so.. dont even think to go with ATI gpu... NVIDIA rocks

[taekvideo]

Noted, and changed. Thanks. Looks far nicer too, I'm not a big fan of the large profile/fancy-pants look.



I don't want to step on your toes, but as far as I know the 570 is a fair bit more powerful on most benchmarks. Most comparisons are made between the 560Ti and the 6950, not the 6950 and 570 for performance reasons.

The 570 is out of my budget, however, there is a 2GB 6950 available for £13 more than my current selection 560Ti.

I had opted for the 560Ti as it overclocks like stink, and the reviews I've read to tend to lean towards it in the comparisons of 6950/560Ti, if only for price-performance reasons.

Would purchasing a 2GB 6950 be a more solid investment than the 560Ti? I've read that the 6950 has had some driver issues, and I've never used an AMD card (although, I've always always used AMD processors, this will be my first intel, so I'm by no means a fanboy of anyone in particular,) so I've opted for the 560Ti for familiarity. Are there any people who have experience of both who can comment on this? Is there a performance/overclocking advantage to either?

One thing I can think of for the 6950 is that it would be slightly more future-proof than the 560Ti, as although at the moment we don't need 2GB of VRAM, in the future this may be a neccessity, and it seems the 6950 crossfire scaling is better than the 560Ti SLI scaling.

This is the card I had in mind:

MSI HD 6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition/OC AMD Radeon Graphics Card - 2GB
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-m...mhz-1408-cores

Yea 6950 and 560ti are about on par. They vary from game to game. Same with 570 and 6970.
Getting a 2gb of either is a huge advantage if you run several monitors... but it won't help at all with just a single 1080p monitor.

[Deleted]

It doesn't cost *too* much more than a TX650, it's modular which means noticeably less cable mess/management problems (the amount of cables coming out of a TX650 will drive you mad)

The TX650 is actually modular. I'm really fussy about cable management so it was the first thing I looked for. As for your power supply, thanks for the suggestion, but right now for me its out of my budget and also a little overkill for my power requirements. If I were to go SLI or crossfire down the line I'd likely upgrade PSU at the same time, but what is more likely is just going for a newer single card which is a little less power demanding than a two card setup.

Thanks for your input though.

[Drunkenvalley]

The TX650 is not modular. The M model however (listed in your OP)...

[Deleted]

The TX650 is not modular. The M model however (listed in your OP)...

Well spotted.

To correct my precious post: The TX650M in my build is modular.

*hat-tip to drunkenvalley*

[Xuvial]

What? Struggling in Crysis @ high? Pff, that's really 4 years ago now. Beyond that, I'd really suggest you bring some sources on the BF3 performance requirements.

By "high" I wasn't talking about the specific name given to each game's graphics settings. I was just talking about generally high, in Crysis's case it would be Very High or Enthusiast.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforc...0-ti-review/14
Pushing 47fps on Gamer and 29fps on Enthusiast isn't what I call "lawl 4 years ago".
34 fps in Crysis 2 on max settings: http://www.guru3d.com/article/crysis...e-benchmarks/9

Also regarding BF3, the requirements have been out for a while now (google reports several reputable sources). Frostbyte 2 will make extensive use of the latest GPU setups and it will be similar to Crysis in terms of futureproofing. There's quite a bit of info flying around, some of it from DICE developers themselves.

Anyway, he's made up his mind about the PSU so it's all fine.

Because developers are increasingly aware of limitations of users' hardware, you'll largely see very few of them actually pushing the limits of your PC for a long time ahead. A GTX 560 ti will serve you up to several years without a hitch, short of very specific games that are designed to be really intense or extremely unoptimized.

All in all, your worries are largely unfounded in my opinion, Xuvial.

So are yours, in my opinion >_>
The entire reason the high-end and enthusiast GPU market exists is because of games and resolutions that utilize that power. Folding isn't the only thing people do with their expensive GPU's.

[Deleted]

By "high" I wasn't talking about the specific name given to each game's graphics settings. I was just talking about generally high, in Crysis's case it would be Very High or Enthusiast.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforc...0-ti-review/14
Pushing 47fps on Gamer and 29fps on Enthusiast isn't what I call "lawl 4 years ago".
34 fps in Crysis 2 on max settings: http://www.guru3d.com/article/crysis...e-benchmarks/9

Also regarding BF3, the requirements have been out for a while now (google reports several reputable sources). Frostbyte 2 will make extensive use of the latest GPU setups and it will be similar to Crysis in terms of futureproofing. There's quite a bit of info flying around, some of it from DICE developers themselves.

Anyway, he's made up his mind about the PSU so it's all fine.

So are yours, in my opinion >_>
The entire reason the high-end and enthusiast GPU market exists is because of games and resolutions that utilize that power. Folding isn't the only thing people do with their expensive GPU's.

Regardless of the capability of the 560Ti/6950 with upcoming games, I'd rather not start an argument between anyone on this thread and I'd like to keep this civil and on topic. Unfortunately it's slightly irrelevant what the hardware can run as it's constrained within a pretty tight budget. I'd obviously like to get the most I can out of my money and I know that in the coming years it will become out-dated and not run things at their maximum potential, but a budget is a budget so unfortunately, this is irrelevant.

Back on topic.

I'm leaning towards the 560Ti rather than the 6950, reasoning being that in the benchmarks the cards are so close with the 6950 having the slight advantage but both cards can be overclocked. The 560Ti overclocks like a beast and gains some significant performance, moreso than the 6950 OC'ed if the benchmarks I'm reading are correct. Plus, the added PhysX support is nice. The card I've chosen is a MSI Hawk model at a GPU core speed of 950mhz (over the reference of 822mhz,) with yet more room to overclock, so it seems pretty solid. I figure by the time we need to see 2GM of VRAM on a GPU for games to run smoothly, both the 560Ti and the 6950 will be outdated and I'll be in the market again for a replacement. Since I'm not running a multi-screen setup the 2GB of RAM in the 6950 is unfortunately not too much use to me at the moment.

Question.
How far are people overclocking their 2500K's with the CM Hyper 212+? I know it's a low/mid range cooler, but I'm hoping for a cool overclock at around 4ghz.

[Drunkenvalley]

Sandy Bridge can be pushed pretty far on mostly any cooler. Hell, apparently you can go 4.4GHz with a Corsair H60.

33% overclock with just a single 120mm radiator? Entirely possible, even if the temperatures are higher than with an NH-D14. Exactly how the CM Hyper 212+ is however a little up in the air for me, sorry. Hopefully the above gives an idea though.

Sandy Bridge needs some fairly high overclocks to reach any temperatures you could classify as dangerous.

[Deleted]

Entirely possible, even if the temperatures are higher than with an NH-D14.

How are your temps with the NH-D14 out of curiousity?
It's out of my budget at the moment, but (curiously,) the NH-D14 and the H60 were my first thoughts for future upgrades when I need a higher overclock.

[Drunkenvalley]

I was only running 4.4Ghz. Highest temperature I was able to reach with IBT was 65 degrees. Prime95 hit some 55-58 degrees.