New Gaming Build

[wincmd]

What do you think of this spec for gaming and music production in cubase

Core i5 2500K
AMD HD 7970 is this ok for 2 1920x1080 monitors
Corsair Vengeance Jet Black 1600 MHz
EVGA Z68 FTW motherboard
Corsair HX1050
Coolermaster cosmos s
Corsair Force GT 120gb SSD
EK Supreme HF 360 EN Water Cooling Kit
600GB Velociraptor

Thanks

[draken]

AMD HD 7970 with 2x 1920x1080 monitors should be fine.

Comparing the number of dots on 2x 1920 x 1080 = 4147200
With a 30inch 2560x1600 = 4096000

So I would assume the performce would be close to that on 2560x1600 monitor, and you can look at performce on number of review that are out there with that Resolution.

Im sure someone here has that sort of setup that can give better answer.

[chrisjs]

According to AMD the 7970 supports 4k resolution so 2 1080 monitors won't be an issue

Source:
amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/7000/7970/Pages/radeon-7970.aspx

[Pob255]

Are any of these being reused from an old build?
600GB Velociraptor
Coolermaster cosmos s
Corsair HX1050

If new then
replace then velociraptor (£160ish) with a good 1tb 7200rpm drive, a caviar Black 1tb is only £105 and still very fast for a hard drive http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-w...64mb-cache-8ms
Corsair HX1050, way OTT for your specs, nothing over 650w is needed.
Coolermaster cosmos s, good in it's day, I know a few people who've taken serious dislike to their cosmos and I don't think it will take a 360rad without some modification, although there are very few cases that will take a 360 rad without modification.

Depending on how high you want to push the i5 2500k then a 240rad should be fine which opens up a lot more cases.
The new corsair 550D is looking very promising for a quite case which will take a 240 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...30-atx-w-o-psu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuDctjpENpI

[KeyboardDemon]

Are you planning to play games using both monitors in Eyefinity mode, if you are you might find it a bit annoying having the join between the two screens smack in the middle, three screens in eyefinity works better as the side screens are more for peripheral view. Cubase should run fine on two screens even with a 6870.

[ik9000]

Are you planning to play games using both monitors in Eyefinity mode, if you are you might find it a bit annoying having the join between the two screens smack in the middle, three screens in eyefinity works better as the side screens are more for peripheral view. Cubase should run fine on two screens even with a 6870.

That makes a lot of sense. wondered why they went for 3 screens over nvidia's two.

[wincmd]

Thanks for your help
I don't have anything that can be reused apart from a 1Tb hard drive for main storage. I was considering the velocirapor as an audio scratch drive as it has fast access times. How would a newer drive like the caviar black mentioned compair to the raptor for this purpose?

If the Cosmos S cant take a 360 rad in the roof is there another case for a similar price that can. I was considering buying a block for the 7970 as well and maybe getting another one down the line, that's also why i thought the 1000w psu was needed so how much power would i need for the 2 gpus?

[KeyboardDemon]

Even a standard 7200rpm drive would support the bandwidth required for audio, HD video only really needs at most 50Gb/s sustained transfer which is achievable even on a WD Green drive and high quality audio won't require much more.

Besides doesn't Cubase work with midi files? If it does than you'll be working with a collection of sounds/samples or midi voices, you won't be editing actual recorded sounds so your file sizes would be tiny, like small enough to email to people as an attachment.

[kicker56]

Nice specs, I assume you'll be overclocking the i5, z68 a good board for doing so. What are you hoping to overclock it to though? Just to note,even with modern PC games, you don't need a massive overclock to get the performance you want out of games since you have the 7970.

[wincmd]

I'm hoping to get to between 4.7-5 GHz