New Stylish Gaming System

[Willzzz]

On the 7950 front, you'd need to beware of some of the larger designs as they may not fit.

[Pob255]

Not an issue in the Prodigy, you'd have to remove the upper hard drive cage for any of these cards as with it in you've only got 7" of space, with the cage removed you've got 13" which is long enough to fit any graphics card on the market atm

The one thing to watch out for is that the card cannot be wider than 2 slots

[obev0098]

I'd say stick with 8gb of ram I know the 2x4gb is out of stock atm so you'd have to wait or go else where, but 16gb really isn't worth it unless you plan to do lots of HD video editing, one of the few times it is useful.

I would say stick with the hd6950 if you already have it, granted the gtx660ti is a good chunk faster (about the same as the 7950, but the 6950 isn't a sluggish card.
The hd7950 would be the AMD alternative, similar cost and performance.
Personally I think the gtx660 or 7870 at around the £170mark are a better value, yes they are slower but they slightly outpace the 6970 and gtx570 of the last series while being a good chunk cheaper.
The problem is they are really not that big a leap forward from the 6950, so it comes down to stick with what you have or spend the extra for a more noticeable jump with the 7950 or gtx660ti

On the PSU if you already have the 750AX then stick with it, it would be nice to buy something like the fully modular silverstone strider 600w and get the short cable kit for it which would give you even less cable mess, but you might as well stick with the 750ax as it's a very good psu.

You've not mentioned cooling yet . . . the problem with intel based ITX boards is the cpu socket is next to both ram and pci-e slot which is going to be the major limiter for cpu cooler.
I'd say definitely look at water cooling, if you don't feel brave enough to do it yourself then on of the all-in-one coolers would be your best bet.
Scan currently has an offer on the H70 with 2 pwm fans http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...-00154%29-scan this should be very good, because if you want energy efficiency then you don't want to be overclocking
The H100 would be nice if you can stretch the budget to it, however a 120rad also means losing the 5.25" bay in the Prodigy so that will come down to how much you want to keep an optical drive.

Thank you for your advice, yes although I haven't mentioned cooling I've been thinking of going with water cooling, I've seen some amazing setups with the Prodigy and I'm not really bothered about an optical drive. I'm going to have a think about what to use over the weekend and post on here to see what you think.

Thanks again

[obev0098]

Well I certainly wouldn't get that exact card, if you did want a 660 Ti the Asus model seems a better fit:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-a...2x-dl-dvi-dp-h

Asus DC2 models are really quiet and while it doesn't have the same clocks as the EVGA card, you could easily overclock it to that level if you needed to.
At those prices you could also afford a 7950 which is generally faster although potentially less efficient/noisier depending on model.

I wouldn't get rid of your 6950 unless you know you can get a good price for it, it's still a good card.
Try it with the new processor and case and see how you feel.

Thanks Willzzz, my brother has offered me £150 for the card which I'm happy to sell to him so definately looking for a new card now. The 7950 models look good, so many options to choose from.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Prodigy is made for large cards. It is huge for a mini-ITX case so card length is the least of your worries,compared to many mini-ITX cases. However,as Pob says a triple slot cooler is not viable, but generally with most mini-ITX gaming cases this tends to be the case.

There is a huge thread over on overclock.net about the Prodigy:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1279693/b...gy-owners-club

[obev0098]

I'd say stick with 8gb of ram I know the 2x4gb is out of stock atm so you'd have to wait or go else where, but 16gb really isn't worth it unless you plan to do lots of HD video editing, one of the few times it is useful.

I would say stick with the hd6950 if you already have it, granted the gtx660ti is a good chunk faster (about the same as the 7950, but the 6950 isn't a sluggish card.
The hd7950 would be the AMD alternative, similar cost and performance.
Personally I think the gtx660 or 7870 at around the £170mark are a better value, yes they are slower but they slightly outpace the 6970 and gtx570 of the last series while being a good chunk cheaper.
The problem is they are really not that big a leap forward from the 6950, so it comes down to stick with what you have or spend the extra for a more noticeable jump with the 7950 or gtx660ti

On the PSU if you already have the 750AX then stick with it, it would be nice to buy something like the fully modular silverstone strider 600w and get the short cable kit for it which would give you even less cable mess, but you might as well stick with the 750ax as it's a very good psu.

You've not mentioned cooling yet . . . the problem with intel based ITX boards is the cpu socket is next to both ram and pci-e slot which is going to be the major limiter for cpu cooler.
I'd say definitely look at water cooling, if you don't feel brave enough to do it yourself then on of the all-in-one coolers would be your best bet.
Scan currently has an offer on the H70 with 2 pwm fans http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...-00154%29-scan this should be very good, because if you want energy efficiency then you don't want to be overclocking
The H100 would be nice if you can stretch the budget to it, however a 120rad also means losing the 5.25" bay in the Prodigy so that will come down to how much you want to keep an optical drive.

Regarding Memory, I currently have available 8gb of corsair as with the link before.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-(...-9-27-xmp-150v

Is this worth using in the new build or am I better ordering this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A2T3HY9SQOQMWW

Regards

[Pob255]

The problem with the ram you have is the high heat spreaders.

If you go water cooling the height shouldn't be a problem, the problem will be air cooling as the ram slots are very close to the cpu slot and the graphics card forces you to mount a tower air cooler facing the graphics card there by overhanging the ram.

If you go air cooling I'd suggest swapping to the evga z77 stinger http://www.scan.co.uk/products/evga-...i-displayport- (if you've not already bought the asrock board)
They used the old socket 1156 mini itx layout with the cpu away from ram and pci-e slot.

[obev0098]

I have actually got the board now, arrived a few days ago. I will however be looking at water cooling.

So besides the high heat sinks I shouldn't have an issue using my existing ram with the z77e and an i5 or i7 CPU?

Thank you

[Willzzz]

What CPU have you got/are getting? If you aren't overclocking then you don't need to worry about fancy coolers or high heatspreaders.

I'm still not quite sure where you are aiming at on the efficient/quiet vs high performance scale?

http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyt...m_content=Q200
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-m...cores-hdmi-mdp

Would be good choices for a 7950.

[obev0098]

What CPU have you got/are getting? If you aren't overclocking then you don't need to worry about fancy coolers or high heatspreaders.

I'm still not quite sure where you are aiming at on the efficient/quiet vs high performance scale?

http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyt...m_content=Q200
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-m...cores-hdmi-mdp

Would be good choices for a 7950.

Thanks for the GPU links. I'm looking for a system that will run high spec games for at least the next three years and as quiet as possible. I seem to have it in my head that more is better, such as the i7 and maxing the memory.

[Willzzz]

I'd reckon an i5 will still be a pretty capable processor in 3 years time, but it's impossible to really know.
It's also hard to know if simply having extra cores (hyperthreading) is what will matter in 3 years.

I bet there are plenty of people here that are using a three year old processor and still playing the latest games.

Also spending less now means you can afford to upgrade slightly sooner if you need to, and if you don't it's money saved full stop

[obev0098]

Willzzz.

Ordered the i5 from amazon.

I'd reckon an i5 will still be a pretty capable processor in 3 years time, but it's impossible to really know.
It's also hard to know if simply having extra cores (hyperthreading) is what will matter in 3 years.

I bet there are plenty of people here that are using a three year old processor and still playing the latest games.

Also spending less now means you can afford to upgrade slightly sooner if you need to, and if you don't it's money saved full stop

[obev0098]

Guys.

Ended up with the i7 3770k which arrived today. What would you recommend for cooling. On a previous reply the below cooler was recommended.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...-00154%29-scan

[Willzzz]

What sort of overclock are you aiming for?
What is more important performance or noise?

[obev0098]

What sort of overclock are you aiming for?
What is more important performance or noise?

I would like to take it to 4.5 keeping it as quiet as possible. I understand it may be asking alto but the noise of fans drive me mad