Crave buys a new pc

Since my faithful dell XPS laptop is approaching it's inevitable end, i am in desperate need for a new gaming pc. Since laptop gaming is kinda suboptimal imo, i have decided to build a desktop pc this time. The aim is to build a pc whose parts are on a very equal performance level.


These are the components i have selected thus far:


Memory: 16GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance black PC3-12800U CL9-9-9-24
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K Boxed, LGA1155
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Superclocked, 2048MB DDR5, PCI-Express
Mainboard: Gigabyte Z77-D3H, Intel Z77, ATX
Power Source: Corsair Builder Serie CX600 V3 Non-Modular 80+ Bronze, 600 Watt


So... Questions:
Have i missed anything? (apart from drives)
Will the i5 CPU bottleneck my GTX680?
Should i downgrade to a GTX660? (very cheap right now)

 

Your anticipated build is spunk worthy. The i5 will work the 680 fine I suspect, I would definitely recommend you get yourself a Samsung 830 or 840 256GB boot drive for starters, too.

The 660 is a fine card, but lacks the firepower of a 680, whether you want to save the cash and go with a lower spec is up to you.

I would prefer to see a heftier PSU with a 680 in the box if you intend to overclock the cpu as well mind. 750W to be safe I would say. Time you have thrown in a few case fans etc.

If you are looking at aftermarket cooling, check out the Antec H20 620 Like I have. Silent, cool and no stress on the mobo and also no worry about fitting the RAM under it.

Money no worry; Get the Asus Sabertooth Z77 mobo.

 

Not at all.

If you want to downgrade the graphic card, buy a GTX660ti, but then again why downgrade the 680 it is

I agree, once you try ssd's you never look back at the old mechanical drives.

 

I have my games on a 1TB WD caviar black, about 500gb worth. I don't think the end is nigh for mechanicals quite yet, they are cheap, have the capacity and pretty reliable now. But for W7, booting, general apps etc a SSD is now a must in my book. The whole machine goes up several notches in performance, I think because the CPU can now get the data it wants pronto, instead of waiting, so CPU utilisation increases, and the general background stuff happens immediately, booting- my machine is at the desktop within about 20 seconds of pushing the power button, shuts down in 10 seconds. And because you're only dragging game data off the mechanical drive, not everything else going back and forth to it, I do believe games load faster, unless I am imagining it.

No modern rig should really be without a SSD boot drive now. I think you really want 128GB minimum mind, my 256GB samsung with my W7 install and some other gubbinz is 90GB full already- anything less than 128GB would be a waste of time IMHO.

 

i actually found this:
Samsung 840 Series MZ-7TD250 - Solid-State-Disk - 250 GB - SATA-600

it's alot cheaper than the 256 gb version from samsung - any idea why the huge difference? Is having a non-dividable-by-8 size harddrive worse or something?

 

Check the read and write speeds specced on the SSD drive. There's huge differences in those. I've seen some really crappy SSD's, that are basically worse than normal HD's.

Samsung MZ-7TD250BW
Data transmission
Read speed 530 MB/s
Write speed 240 MB/s
Random write (4KB) 44000 IOPS
Random read (4KB) 95000 IOPS

And the 256 version
Data transmission
Read speed 540 MB/s
Write speed 520 MB/s
Random write (4KB) 90000 IOPS
Random read (4KB) 100000 IOPS

So there's a huge difference there. I have 128gb SSD (don't remember the manufacturer A-Data maybe) with something like ~450mb for both read and write. It insta starts windows and apps located there. It cost something around 120 euros (160$) year ago. So it was "cheap" with decent specs and has been working fine.

So my advice is to check the specs and go for the one with the highest RW speeds And if there budget restrictions, I thing the non-brand ones are ok too.

 

Read this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6337/samsung-ssd-840-250gb-review

Basically the Samsung 840 uses new technology. Not crappy in anyways according to the article, but you might get a better with same investment.

 

I was told that basically in the world of SSD, reliability is paramount. If you neglect everything else when buying fine but do not neglect reliability. On this score basically, you are looking at either Samsung or intel. I chose Samsung because they make their own NAND, and also they have their own controller. I think OCZ make the very fastest drives but the 830 Samsung and now the 840 are good kit. I would personally go for the 250/256GB versions as they will live longer and also you can put more of the drive into redundancy than you could with smaller ones- redundancy is needed for when bits of the NAND begin to die.

Take care when installing W7 on your flashy new boot drive, that you force Windows to inject the right drivers for your drive (should be intel with a peculiar serial number like 9.10.11.09 etc), otherwise you will get some bog standard Microsoft generics installed by W7 and they will limit the performance of the drive substantially. This means having the correct intel drivers on a USB drive ready during the W7 install process. W7 originally shipped with very old clunky SSD drivers which will work but they are not optimal for the more modern drives.

Also take care to install the Samsung SSD magician socftware, and turn off W7's habit of file indexing as it is not necessary and will only add workload to the SSD and affect its life. The magician software also contains some useful utilities and a drive cloner etc.

 

Hmm you power supply is that 600 true watts ? I would go for a 700 myself this is just my thoughts, but i learned the hard way when it comes to power supplies