New Rig.. [Archive] - Timeless Gaming

Malkryst

31-10-2011, 04:52

That looks fairly similar to the PC I have that I bought from http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/, except that I've got a 570GTX (not sure if the 580GTX was out when I bought my PC 8 months ago).

Funnily enough I had planned to build my own PC this time too, but I picked up a nasty injury in my arm and hand that put paid to that, so I spent ages looking for a PC manufacturer that would let me pick out parts rather than just a premade build with potential bottlenecks like Dell does (I used to buy Dells) - PC Specialist were pretty good and their tech support fell over themselves to help me, both when I had some queries about certain parts before buying, and again after I'd bought it when my initial build developed a fault in the first month - they couldn't identify the fault remotely so they took the whole PC back and did a full rebuild with new parts at no charge to me (I wasn't upset - the first build couldn't overclock as high as the rebuild).

Your build will certainly handle BF3 at max settings and 60fps - mine does and it's not as powerful graphically as the PC you linked. I don't see a weak point in your build, but then I'm no expert on mobos and in my experience that's where bottlenecks usually lie in manufacturer-built PCs (Dell used to be bad for that).

I have that same CPU - the i7 2600K overclocks well, but mine took a fair bit of bedding in - PC Specialist said it was overclockable to 4.8GHz, but we finally managed to get mine stable at around 4.6GHz (admittedly my PCs are sited in quite a warm room and I've had overheating issues before on other PCs without any overclocking). Apparently the speed differs for every i7 2600K depending on the quality of the chip and if there were many flaws in the silicon when Intel pressed it (or whatever the technical term is) - some people have pushed their 2600k as far as 5GHz with liquid cooling - you may not get 4.7GHz - you may get more, you may get less.

Though if you've been building your own PCs you probably know more about overclocking than I do - my i7 2600K was my first overclock and I wasn't expecting so much mucking about with BIOS settings initially before it was stable (took about ten days of changing settings then stability testing for a day or two with each tweak) - apparently some of them bed in sooner and mine was just temperamental.

I also went for liquid cooling (it's some kind of heat conducting lubricant in mine, not water) and an SSD for my main drive and they've made a huge difference - coolest and quietest running PC I've ever had and the OS runs really smooth from the SSD, as do any games with long load times that I install there. In fact my one regret is that I didn't get a bigger SSD - I may just buy another SSD tbh.

That Corsair 600T case is superb, if huge - I have that too (and the same PSU your build has) and it's really easy to take both sides off the case if need be and all bays are adjustable (including for diff sizes of mobo - you can even move the power supply cage around if you need to) with lots of places to mount fans (you can even adjust fan speeds on the case to run quieter or cooler - full speed is pretty quiet though so I leave it on that), a superb cable tidy area on one side, plus all the mesh areas have dust filters which are doing a superb job of keeping the inside of my PC clean - I just have to take the lower front panel off occasionally to shake/brush/blow the dust off it, as that's where the main fan sucks in the air to cool the case.

The case is huge though - much taller, longer and especially wider than any tower PC case I've ever had before - it was almost an issue for me (had to move a shelf upwards a few inches above my wall-facing desk) but it may not matter to you. The case is probably the one thing I'll keep and use in my future gaming PCs though - my only complaint is that sometimes when it's heating up after initial boot-up you can hear some heat expansion noises (side panels I think as they're metal - though most of the outer case is cool to the touch so it may be something else), but it settles down fairly quickly. Plus imho the case looks classy and not overly gauche like those over the top "extreme gaming" cases with tons of LEDs, grilles and colourful but useless plastic bits stuck on the front/sides to make it look "cool" - they just look childish usually. Oh and the front USB slots are on the top of the case, not the front panel, which seemed odd to me (my PC sits on a desk so I have to stand up to plug in USB devices, lol), but I guess it would make sense if you put your PC case on the floor like many people do. Mine came with a couple of USB3 slots and tons of USB2 ones.

Here's the stats of my gaming PC for comparison: Intel i7-2600k quad core (overclocked to 4.6GHz) with Coolit Eco ALC liquid cooling, ASUS P8P67 Pro mobo, nVidia GeForce GTX570-1280MB, 8Gb Kingston dual-DDR3 1600MHz RAM, 60GB OCZ Vertex 275Mb/s SSD, 1Gb Western Digital 6Gb/s HDD, Corsair Graphite 600T case

It cost me about £1,200 last February, but I didn't have to pay VAT as I live in a VAT-free area, so including UK VAT it would have been comparable in cost to the PC you linked

The ASUS P8P67 Pro mobo does have a problem with its 3Gb/s SATA slots, but as I was only using 6Gb/s SATA slots it didn't affect me.

I use a HP ZR24w 24inch S-IPS 16:10 1920x1200 monitor with it that I bought from Ebuyer which is the best monitor I've ever had and great for gaming (noticeably better quality than TN-style TFT LCD panels) - the only potential drawback is that it lacks an HDMI port, but I plug my SkyHD TV set-top box through the 1920x1080 Iiyama monitor on my other PC and I don't own a current gen console so the lack of HDMI wasn't an issue for me. Ebuyer managed to deliver it to me the day after I ordered it, when Lambdatek (BT) let me down on the same monitor (Lambdatek couldn't even confirm they had any in stock two weeks after I'd placed the order with them - they didn't even email confirmation of my order to me!) - I've used Ebuyer several times since and that delivery speed was no fluke as they delivered a printer to me within 24 hours of ordering too (almost unheard of seeing as I'm basically not in the UK - even Amazon take 2-3 days and they have a warehouse in one of the other Channel Islands just 27 miles from where I live) - Ebuyer were cheaper than Lambdatek too, so I recommend them for buying peripherals.