Starting gaming rig

[LiamSheppy]

I'm a real newbie to PC gaming so this is what I'm thinking about, could you please to tell me the kind of performance I would get out of games such as battlefield 3,ARMA 3 etc

Case:InWIN MANA-136 BLACK GAMING CASE
CPU:Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570K (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard:ASUS® P8Z77-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
RAM:8GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics:2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660 - 2 x DVI, HDMI, - 3D Vision Ready
PowerS:650W FSP RAIDER SERIES RA-650 80 PLUS® BRONZE

any help is greatly appreciated!

[Ferral]

Moved to Review my build as you will get better help here

Looking at what you have there will run what you are wanting it to nicely

[LiamSheppy]

Thank you very much!

[AETAaAS]

Agree with Ferral that, it should run quite well at 1080p.

A few things which are just my personal preferences, I'd go up to a i5 4670k, Z87 motherboard and two sticks of 4GB instead of one 8GB (just to get dual channel and screw a couple extra FPS, which may be cheaper in the end).

Reason I'd go for the 4670k over the 3570k is; it's not much more expensive, in the order or £10-20 IIRC, and going up to Socket 1150 (4670k) over Socket 1155 (3570k) leaves room for future upgrades since we know 1155 is basically finished from here on out. You get about 10-15% more performance which is good value considering the cost.

660 will run BF3 at 1080 at ultra quite well but dyed in the wool PC gamers who need 60FPS would probably have to go up to a 660Ti.

[Phage]

Also will you be overclocking ? Given that you've opted for the unlocked chip I assume so.
You'll need a better than OEM cooler as well. Perhaps a sealed water unit like the H60
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...dition-fan-oem
or a good air-cooler.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coole...55-1156-1366-a

[NecronomicoN]

Buying a 660 is a waste of money, when the 760 is only £30 more.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The GTX660TI is around £164 from CCL Computers and the HD7870XT is around £159 from Novatech.

[Nipun]

if you going for unlock processor . please use a extreme board so it gives you the best performance.Try to match the system clock for same for almost every hardware because one less clock hardware can make other device speed and performance down . wish you all the best

[kalniel]

if you going for unlock processor . please use a extreme board so it gives you the best performance.

The one he has is a good board for his CPU isn't it? What's wrong with it?

Try to match the system clock for same for almost every hardware because one less clock hardware can make other device speed and performance down .

This doesn't make sense to me, can you explain? Different parts of the computer are designed to run at different speeds - you wouldn't want your processor only running at 100mhz!

[Nipun]

This doesn't make sense to me, can you explain? Different parts of the computer are designed to run at different speeds - you wouldn't want your processor only running at 100mhz!

no actually what i know is all hardware work for one clock.clock is a circuit that let the pc work in same time . most probably the clock that take as a computer clock is the lowest clock of the hardware in the system unit. so there are no crashes among hardware.

[Phage]

Not actually true I'm afraid. There is no 'one' clock.

[Nipun]

Not actually true I'm afraid. There is no 'one' clock.

oh i am sorry if i tell wrong thing. its just what we learnt in flip -flops and processor architecture in collage

[kalniel]

Are you talking about the front side bus? That hasn't been used since pentium 4 days. Technology has moved on since then

[DanceswithUnix]

oh i am sorry if i tell wrong thing. its just what we learnt in flip -flops and processor architecture in collage

It was true 30 years ago

Everything has lots of local clocks these days, with buffering between the bits that work at different speeds.

[Nipun]

It was true 30 years ago

Everything has lots of local clocks these days, with buffering between the bits that work at different speeds.

i think our professor owe a good explanation for me then haha

[Chadders87]

That rig will run pretty much anything you throw at it nicely. My setup is similiar except I have the comparable AMD 7870 gpu and a mini-itx P8Z77-I Deluxe mobo.
It runs everything on max settings smoothly.

I'd second the comment about goung for dual 4gb ram isntead of an 8gb as the performance is better when the load is shared across to sticks.

Also, others have suggested going for Haswell over IvyBridge but it depends on how long you want to go before upgrading.

I chose to go IvyBridge as I intend to keep the setup for 4/5 years before upgrading, and by then there will be a new socket anyway.