The return to desktop PC

[KaKTy3]

Hi, all

I've build my last rig some six years ago (scary thought!). For the last three years, I've been using a desktop replacement notebook (Acer Aspire 8930G), which has sadly come to the end of its useful life, if only due to lack of viable graphic card upgrade options.

I've finally decided to come back to the desktop PC solution, with an underlying objective being 1080p gaming (D3, LoL, RPGs) and the usual assortment of multimedia. The PC will be located in the corner of the living room (damn you, London property prices), so the form factor and overall impact is very important (hence, mATX build).

Without further ado, here is the proposed build (everything is being replaced):

CPU:
Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache OEM Processor £165.93
(to be OCed)

Cooling:
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2 £14.57

Motherboard:
ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M Desktop Motherboard - Intel Z77 Express Chipset £87.38

Video:
Sapphire Technology ATI Radeon 7850 860MHz 2GB PCI-Express 3.0 HDMI £179.98
(to be OCed)

RAM:
8GB Kingston Hyper X Red Limited Edition DDR3 1600Mhz Kit £33.02

HDD:
Seagate Barracuda© Green SATA 6Gb/s 2TB Hard Drive ST2000DL003 £82.00
(I'll be reusing my 2.5" Seagate Momentus XT as a speedier system drive)

ODD:
Samsung SH-B123L - DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM / BD-ROM drive Retail £44.98

Card reader:
Akasa AK-ICR-07U3 £10.99

Wireless:
TP-Link Wireless-N150 PCIe card £9.48

PSU:
OCZ ZT series ATX12V & EPS12V Power Supply - 85% Efficiency - 650 W £64.08

Case:
Fractal Design Arc Mini £54.99

Monitor:
Dell UltraSharp U2312HM 23" Widescreen IPS LED Monitor - Black £159.95

Keyboard & mouse:
Logitech Wireless Combo MK520 £37.50

Speakers:
Hercules XPS 2.1 40 Slim £34.86
(or similarly priced Logitech Z323 2.1)

Surge protector:
Belkin 8-Outlet Concealed Surge Protector £20.98
(to hide those cables from the missus and the toddler)

A total of £1,000.69 (it's amazing what a grand can buy these days in terms of hardware, if you shop around).

Ironically, the case and the speakers are giving me the biggest trouble (the release of IvyBridge and new Radeons seem to have made things easy in the performance hardware department). I have no doubts Arc Mini is a wonderful case, but it's still a mini tower. I was hoping to get one of the cube cases, but the only one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg is Silverstone Sugo SG02B. Thoughts?

Speakers present a problem due to additional cable clutter. What I really need is wireless, USB-powered satellites and a subwoofer I can put on / next to the case. Is there such thing in existence. Failing that, has anyone tried one of these laptop soundbar speakers, e.g. Logitech Laptop Speaker Z305? I have a pair of very nice and expensive Bose headphones (a present), which I'll be using most of the time, but I still want some decent sound output for those other occasions.

Obviously, any criticism on other parts and things I might have missed are very welcome.

Thanks.

[Phage]

My 0.02

Not sure that OCing an IB in a small cose with air is a good idea. I'm sure that Cat 5th will be along shortly to say either way.
No SSD ?

[JamieH]

I was going to mention the lack of SSD in the post. For an extra 60 odd quid you could add one about 120gb of storage which is more than enough to run Windows and few programs and games.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The main issue with IB is not so much heat but temperature when you start pushing towards 4.5GHZ,so unless you are going for a milder overclock,I would go for a better cooler.

[KaKTy3]

Thanks for the input, guys.

I might get a 128 Gb SSD (Crucial seems to be the preferred choice?), as I have a 2 Tb drive I can pull out of my media player (and put a 750 Gb one I never really use there instead). That'll actually be a saving I just wanted to re-use the Momentus (the hybrid SSD/HDD), as I doubt I will get much for it and there doesn't seem to be a use for it otherwise in the system.

CAT, I am only ever going for a milder overclock at stock voltages for both CPU and GPU. Seems a waste not to! But any alternative suggestions for a cost-efficient cooler (with noise being considered) are appreciated.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Hyper 212 seems a good choice but the main issue is whether your case has enough clearance. However,remember this - a Core i5 2500K or Core i5 3570K even at stock clockspeeds is plenty fast enough and don't get caught up in all that you "have to overclock" mantra. After all it is a CPU costing over £150.

[Pob255]

Been a while since I checked in with the state of the Momentus, but it was massively flawed, namely at first it would be really good, but they wouldn't flush cached data properly, so the SSD would quickly fill up with unneeded junk and the whole thing would slow back down to a normal fast HDD speed.

Personally I'd question the need to overclock in the first place.
Diablo3 and League of Legends are hardly taxing on cpu or gpu power.
other RPG's depends on what it is, skyrim with the correct lighting mod's installed can cripple the highest end system, but at the same time those lighting mods are not really designed for game play, just screen shots, using normal lighting mods and higher res texture mods to pretty-fie it is probably the most demanding rpg's get.
Strictly speaking Deus EX and Mass Effect 3 are RPG's and probably the highest gpu loads you'll see.
A 7850 will cope with them maxed out with ease, on D3 it's hardly going to be ticking over, a 6850 would probably be more than enough.

Personally I'd not get a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro I'd get something better and quieter, The Freezer 13 PRO or coolermaster hyper212 EVO can both be got for around £25

EDIT: CAT

Fractal Design Arc Mini

That can take any air cooler on the market.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Has the OP considered going for a mini-ITX or Shuttle SFF PC??

[KaKTy3]

Been a while since I checked in with the state of the Momentus, but it was massively flawed, namely at first it would be really good, but they wouldn't flush cached data properly, so the SSD would quickly fill up with unneeded junk and the whole thing would slow back down to a normal fast HDD speed.

Yeah, it didn't crack up what it was meant to be...

A 7850 will cope with them maxed out with ease, on D3 it's hardly going to be ticking over, a 6850 would probably be more than enough.

This one is not driven by 'bang for the buck' alone. I haven't had a shiny new toy in a while, so I just want the best shiny new one GPU I can get

Personally I'd not get a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro I'd get something better and quieter, The Freezer 13 PRO or coolermaster hyper212 EVO can both be got for around £25

Thanks, both seem a worthwhile suggestion.

Has the OP considered going for a mini-ITX or Shuttle SFF PC??

I haven't, so will need to look into it tonight. Shuttle SZ77R5 seems interesting, but at £300 is on the high side. Various Silverstone Sugos (SG05, SG06) seem interesting as well, but will I be able to fit a similar config as listed above into them?

[vicar]

Is that the new Momentus you are talking about? I have nothing but good reviews about it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I haven't, so will need to look into it tonight. Shuttle SZ77R5 seems interesting, but at £300 is on the high side. Various Silverstone Sugos (SG05, SG06) seem interesting as well, but will I be able to fit a similar config as listed above into them?

The SZ68R5 might have some good deals on it over the next few weeks. Dabs had it for around £268,but it seems they sold all of them. Remember that the Shuttle comes with the case,PSU,motherboard and cooler. You can fit a full sized optical drive,3.5" hard drive and a pair of 2.5" SSDs into the R5 chassis IIRC.

The Lian Li Q08 is also worth considering IMHO,and can take 6 3.5" hard drives and a full sized optical drive.

[Pob255]

Is that the new Momentus you are talking about? I have nothing but good reviews about it.

That was the older one, I've not kept up with them as to if the problem was fixed, they where flatly refusing that a problem existed under a large body of evidence for it, they eventually admitted a problem and said they would look into a fix for it, but nothing happened.
And the original momentus also had great initial reviews, it is very good at first, but 6months down the line speeds dropped off as they filled up with pointless cache data.
Does also depend on use, how often you change and update software.
It works by mirroring regularly used data and files into it's SSD half for faster access, however it wasn't being very dynamic, so data was being stored with first use and data that stopped being used wasn't being flushed correctly.
I think there was a way to flush it but it involved a total reformat, who wants to have to reformat and totally reinstall every 6 months?

Granted they could have fixed these issues on the newer versions, I've not kept up with it.

[KaKTy3]

Thanks for your thoughts on the cases. Having done some further reading, I am not going to go the mini ITX route, mostly because it works out to be more expensive and compromises the temperature management and future upgradability. Through the research, I have finally settled on the case, though: SilverStone TJ08 Evolution is a perfect fit at 30 litres and just 5 cm longer than Lian Li PC-Q08 and Silverstone Sugo SST-SG07 (two of the mITX options).

I am going to change the cooler to Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro and get a 120 Gb OCZ Agility 3 2.5" SSD.

Any views on the speakers' situation (I know it's not as much fun to discuss as the rest of the components )?

[KaKTy3]

Just a quick update, in case anyone else is following a similar upgrade/build path:

After much deliberation, just ordered Inno3D GTX 560 Ti 448 Core Edition 1280MB card from Ebuyer, which works out to be an amazing £154.46 (after 5% Quidco cash back). Given this card is approx. 5% slower than GTX 570 (as its based on the the same, lightly handicapped GPU), which retails for £200+, a very good deal. A similar alternative was Palit's offering, but I liked the fact Inno3D is single fan (i.e. less noise) and seems to have a better OC (based on independent reviews of both).

I think I nailed the rest of the config, with only other changes being Xigmatek's Gaia, which is both cheaper and and quieter than Cooler Master's 212 Evo, and a better quality PSU (ADATA HM Series 650W).

The speaker dilemma was solved by thinking somewhat outside the box and getting Creative ZiiSound D3x 2.0 Speaker System to start with. It's a bluetooth-based modular speaker, so it doesn't have to be on the desk at all (a nearby bookshelf is where it's going) to which I can easilly add a subwoofer and further speakers, as needed, down the line.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Did you order the SSD yet?? The Crucial M4 128GB is around £80 and is a synchronous NAND drive meaning it actually has more consistent performance, and generally has had far less issues than the Agility 3.

[KaKTy3]

Did you order the SSD yet?? The Crucial M4 128GB is around £80 and is a synchronous NAND drive meaning it actually has more consistent performance, and generally has had far less issues than the Agility 3.

Thanks, I haven't yet, as I won't get around to building it for about a month (work/family/travel getting in the way). Just secured the video card, because it was a very good value, IMO. Will monitor the rest of the components and pick them up if I a spot a deal over the next few weeks. Luckily, a scour of Ebuyer/CCL/Froogle covers 99% of the stuff out there, so doesn't take very long now that I know what I am looking for