PC spec. - questions

[Paulus]

Recommended config:
- Corsair 600T, Graphite Series, Black Mid Tower Gaming Case
- 120mm Akasa Apache Black Ultra Silent Fan
- (32cm Sharkoon 3-pin Fan Extension Cable)
- (30cm AKASA AK-CBFA01-30 4 Pin to 4 Pin PWM fan extension cable -)
- (Scan 3XS System - 1year Onsite Warranty (Mainland UK) [2nd year return to base])
- Asus P8P67 Pro, Intel P67 - Rev3!
- Intel Core i5 2500K "Unlocked" 3.3Ghz Quad Core, 6Mb Cache, overclocked by our 3XS engineers to 4.7Ghz
- CPU Cooler - Corsair Cooling H50-1 Hydro Performance
- 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 DDR3 1600Mhz, CAS 9-9-9-24
- EVGA GTX 570, 1280Mb, 732Mhz GPU 480 Cores, 3800Mhz GDDR5
- 850W Corsair HX Series Modular (Dual Graphics Cards)
- 2 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache
- *Sata 6GB/s Hard Drive Not Required*
- 90GB Corsair Force, SandForce SSD, Read 285MB/s, Write 275MB/s
- *Storage Hard Drive Not Required*
- LiteOn IHOS104 - 4x Blu-Ray, & DVDRW
- Scan AK-ICR10 Multi Card Reader with 2.5" Sata Support
- Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - OEM

Total £1,503.52 (inc. VAT)


I am interested in your opinions of the components chosen and answers to the following questions:

Questions:
The case:
I have no idea which case to choose or what I should be looking for. Which would you choose? Any general advice? I initially had the Coolermaster CM 690 II Lite.
Options are (for details, see link below):
-Coolermaster CM 690 II Lite, Black, Mid Tower Case (£48.29) subtract £57.31
-Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus, Black, Mid Tower Case w/o PSU (£47.89) subtract £57.71
-Lian Li PC-60FNB Black Aluminum Mid Tower Case (£68.49) subtract £37.11
-Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two, Tower Case (£77.98) subtract £27.62
-Antec P183 V3 Mid Tower - Built in accoustic sound proofing (£96.98) subtract £8.62
-Antec P193 Advanced Super Mid Tower Case, Black, Door, w/o PSU (£101.98) subtract £3.62
-Corsair 600T, Graphite Series, Black Mid Tower Gaming Case (£105.60)
-Silverstone Fortress FT01B, Black, Mid Tower, Full Aluminum (£116.69) add £11.09
-Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred Full Tower Case, Black with side window (£104.97) subtract £0.63
-Coolermaster RC-1100 V2 Cosmos S Sport Black Full Tower Case (£118.98) add £13.38
-Silverstone Fortress FT01B-W Tower Case Black (£128.98) add £23.38
-Silverstone Temjin TJ07B-W, Black, Aluminium Tower Case with Window ** (£139.95) add £34.35
-Corsair Obsidian Series 800D, Black, Full Tower Case, with Side Window (£169.98) add £64.38
-Silverstone TJ07B Black Aluminium Full Tower Case (£189.19) add £83.59

CPU cooler:
I think I might upgrade to: Corsair Cooling H70 Hydro Performance (bigger fan? worth it?)

Power supply:
I chose 850W Corsair HX Series Modular as I thought this would allow for future upgrades. But any advice would be appreciated.

Hard drives:
There are 3GB/s and 6GB/s interfaces. Does this make any difference? (i.e. I thought read/write speeds were slower than this). Good choice atm?

Video card:
1280Mb EVGA GTX 570, 732Mhz GPU 480 Cores, 3800Mhz GDDR5
I was hoping to hit a sweet spot for price vs. performance. Decided to go for nVidia instead of ATI, but I get the impression that arguing for one over the other is almost impossible to do in general. Any advice would be helpful though (see link below for the options)

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ConfigureSystem.asp?SystemID=1199



Any advice is appreciated. Please ask if more information is needed. Thanks in advance.

[snake1832]

Case: depends on you preference really, are you going for looks or do you need cooling performance (do you intend to oc even more)? Antec cases are pretty good quality in general and look cool imo so they are worth a shot.

Cpu cooler: for that price range, the H70 is probably amongst the best cpu cooler. However, it is up to you to decide if you want to oc further. If not, then maybe a lesser cooler will do the job just fine. For absolute performance, go for H70. If you want a cheaper one but still fancy water cooling, consider the H50.

Graphics Card: I believe GTX 560 is a better bang for the buck card if you intend to use nVidia, although the GTX 570 is not a bad choice either. It depends what you want to run at what resolution and seeing if the 560 can tick all the boxes for you.

Hope this helps

[lego batman]

Case - think about if you care about noise levels. While the specs above aren't especially loud, any case with a door and no side fans will be quieter than those with mesh fronts like the antec 1200.

Hard drives - yes, all mechanical ones are unbottlenecked at 3Gb/s. It's only the fastest SSDs that benefit from 6Gb/s

From Menelmarar on [H]:

6Gbps * 80% = 4.8Gbps
(SATA like many transfer protocols uses 8B/10B encoding. This is a mapping algorithm that uses look-up tables to map every 8bits of data into 10bit chunks. Then the 10bit chunks are transmitted. This allows for perfect zero sum transmission with no long strings of 1's or 0's which cause the transmission to suffer from voltage shift which occurs with continuous DC energy. There may be other pro's as well. Edit: DC voltage cannot pass through transformers, many transmission line's are terminated with transformers, Ethernet often is for example.)

4.8 Gbps / 8 = 600 MB/s (There are 8bits in a byte)

[Paulus]

Case: depends on you preference really, are you going for looks or do you need cooling performance (do you intend to oc even more)? Antec cases are pretty good quality in general and look cool imo so they are worth a shot.

Cpu cooler: for that price range, the H70 is probably amongst the best cpu cooler. However, it is up to you to decide if you want to oc further. If not, then maybe a lesser cooler will do the job just fine. For absolute performance, go for H70. If you want a cheaper one but still fancy water cooling, consider the H50.

Graphics Card: I believe GTX 560 is a better bang for the buck card if you intend to use nVidia, although the GTX 570 is not a bad choice either. It depends what you want to run at what resolution and seeing if the 560 can tick all the boxes for you.

Hope this helps

Thanks that is helpful. I guess I do not care much about looks. Space and cooling are probably more important. Is there perhaps not much between the cases? Coolermaster CM 690 II Lite vs. Corsair 600T?

The H50 was recommended without any justification (I previously had just the basic fan in that category). I doubt I will want to overclock the CPU further, but I guess I do want nice, reliable temperatures. I guess I need to know what is reasonable given the provided overclock.

I guess I will want 2x 1920x1200 monitors, but not for gaming. But for any games, I guess I would be interested in how well it can perform at 1920x1200 at max specs. Which games? I'm not sure. Call of Duty or BF3 are 2 likely examples.
Edit: The specs of the GTX 560 practically look better in many ways! Is it sort of overclocked? More cores and memory vs. the other stats? I guess the difference will probably be unnoticeable in most cases and I should stop worrying?

And how do I thank people on this forum?

[Paulus]

Case - think about if you care about noise levels. While the specs above aren't especially loud, any case with a door and no side fans will be quieter than those with mesh fronts like the antec 1200.

Good point. I do care about noise levels. I guess I want a compromise between noise and good airflow - but looks are probably less important, although the more I look at pictures the more I will probably change my mind about that! I guess I need to read reviews for all the cases; I just thought some may know that a particular case is really well-known (well-tested) and good in certain ways. But the tip about side fans is helpful, thank you.

Hard drives - yes, all mechanical ones are unbottlenecked at 3Gb/s. It's only the fastest SSDs that benefit from 6Gb/s

Thank you!

[Skulltrail]

Instead of an H50 or H70, give the Antec Kuhler H2O 620 a look; it seems to keep pace with the H70 while being quite a bit quieter and £10 cheaper.

Review here: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=4

If you prefer air cooling, the Thermaltake Silver Arrow for £53 is very good and quiet, but looks aren't to all tastes.

Case - if you don't mind spending a bit, a Silverstone FT02 is very cool and decently quiet, and looks lush with the red interior: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...window-w-o-psu

If budget is more of an issue, the Fractal Design cases are very quiet and discreet.

I am presuming this is 3XS? If so, if the options aren't listed don't be afraid to ask - if they stock it, it can be included.

[thestjohn]

When I saw your spec in your first post I also thought "has he seen the Antec Kuhler?" but I see Skulltrail has beaten me to it. Looking into one myself.

another review of it here. http://www.kitguru.net/components/co...cooler-review/

[Paulus]

Instead of an H50 or H70, give the Antec Kuhler H2O 620 a look; it seems to keep pace with the H70 while being quite a bit quieter and £10 cheaper.

Review here: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=4

If you prefer air cooling, the Thermaltake Silver Arrow for £53 is very good and quiet, but looks aren't to all tastes.

Case - if you don't mind spending a bit, a Silverstone FT02 is very cool and decently quiet, and looks lush with the red interior: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...window-w-o-psu

If budget is more of an issue, the Fractal Design cases are very quiet and discreet.

I am presuming this is 3XS? If so, if the options aren't listed don't be afraid to ask - if they stock it, it can be included.

Wow I like the sound of that cooler. Thanks for the tip - I had not considered components that are not listed! Seems its out of stock atm though :-(

[ik9000]

+1 on the FT02 case, though I'd go for the all black FT02B and without a window. wanted one for ages, excellent cooling and excellent low noise, space for everything you'd want and looks good to boot. Bit big, depending on your want - but only front to back, top to bottom it's no different from my mid-tower case. Sadly it doesn't come cheap at circa £190.


CPU cooler, prolimatech megahalems does well and used to beat the H50 in the reviews, not sure how it fares against the H70. As there's no pump involved, the noise is lower - according to the reviews I read the H50 pump was more audible than the fan, and as the pump isn't changeable, you're stuck with it.

The Apache is a cracking fan - buy more of them depending on which cooler you get.

Why not up the BluRay Drive? http://www.scan.co.uk/products/lg-bh...-plus-software

[ik9000]

the p8p67 deluxe includes a mount for putting 2 USB3 on the front of your machine. Plus it has better overclocking features, though the Pro is still very good in its own right. Also boasts dual gigabit Lan - cos obviously we live in S. Korea where the infrastructure allows us to benefit from such bandwidth.... yeah don't buy it for the DGbL

[lego batman]

Another vote for going with the FT02 if you can - it's extremely well reviewed on SPCR.

To save some money you could try to get the Raven instead since it is around £50 cheaper and essentially the same according to the SPCR review. Personally I think the Raven is ugly though

[ik9000]

Another vote for going with the FT02 if you can - it's extremely well reviewed on SPCR.

To save some money you could try to get the Raven instead since it is around £50 cheaper and essentially the same according to the SPCR review. Personally I think the Raven is ugly though

it's not really the same - horrid plastic outer, slightly different HDD arrangement and not as refined IMO - having looked at both cases there's simply no way I'd get the raven. Ever.

[snake1832]

In any case, the 560 should be fine for you. It also has amazing oc potentials if you ever need it. Plus, give it a few months and prices will start to fall and you can grab a cheap sceond one to sli too.

[Paulus]

Sorry for the long delay. I hope I am OK to continue posting in this thread. The "Antec KUHLER H2O 620 CPU Liquid Cooler" is just due in a week though, so I had to wait really.

So, here is the spec. I have planned now. Any last minute recommendations are appreciated! Thank you so much for all your help!

3XS Vengeance P67 PC - Custom Series

120mm Akasa Apache Black Ultra Silent Fan
30cm AKASA 4 Pin to 4 Pin PWM Cable
Scan 3XS System - 1year Onsite Warranty (Mainland UK)
Scan System Configuration
Scan System Configuration (Details confirmed at checkout stage)


Case: Silverstone Fortress FT02S v1.4 Full Tower Aluminium Case

1 Asus P8P67 Pro, Intel P67 - Rev3!
1 Intel Core i5 2500K, 3.3Ghz Quad Core, 6Mb Cache professionally overclocked by our 3XS engineers to 4.7Ghz

1 Antec KUHLER H2O 620 CPU Liquid Cooler

1 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 DDR3 1600Mhz
1 1Gb MSI GTX 560 Ti, 880Mhz GPU, 384 Cores, 4200Mhz GDDR5
1 850W Corsair HX Series Modular (Dual Graphics Cards)
2 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache
1 60GB Corsair Force, Sandforce SSD, Read 285MB/s, Write 275MB/s
1 LG BH10LS30 - 10x Blu-Ray Writer & DVDRW - Retail Box + Software
1 Standard 3XS System Warranty - 2 Years (1st Year Onsite / 2nd Year Return to Base)

[ik9000]

Nice I want, I want.

[ik9000]

tell you what, you don't really need that system. I think you'd rather have the feel good factor of helping others. I suggest you donate that system to poor old me.

What do you mean what would you get in return? Ok, ok I'll let you have my vintage Athlon 750 machine - it'll be a priceless antique one day. Just think of it as an investment for the future.

Now I can't say fairer than that