Hi Everyone,

I'm planning on building a new PC as I haven't had a new desktop since my uni days and while the laptop serves me well it doesn't do all the new games I want to play justice (I also fucking hate my ATI Mobility card). I have listed some specs which I have compiled myself derived from the 'bang for buck' scenario. Any input you guys have would be greatly appreciated in trying to get the best system for the money, I will be doing things later on such as adding a SSD and a second GFX card hence why I have chosen the mobo I have. The prices I have listed are all from the following site ( http://www.umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=2 ) feel free to see what they have to offer, it is pretty much the only source of parts I can use for numerous reasons so if you are going to suggest any components would be helpful if they are on this site.

I can't imagine I would get any other CPU and my reasoning behind the GFX card is due to overclocking capabilities, if anyone could suggest a decent CPU fan too that would be great. Things like the PSU I honestly have very little clue what makes one better then the other so once again price has influenced my decision on this.

Anyway here are the specs, look forward to hearing your thoughts.

6


CPU = Intel i5 2500k ($233)
Mobo = Asus P8Z68-V PRO ($222)
GPU = Gainward GTX570 Phantom ($395)
RAM = Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 ($109)
PSU = OCZ Fatalt1ty 750W PSU ($130)
HDD = Western Digital 1TB SATA3 64M IntelliPowe CaviarGreen ($65)
Case = Antec Three Hundred ($65)

Total = $1155

https://www.evga.com/products/cart.asp

https://www.evga.com/products/cart.asp

https://www.evga.com/products/cart.asp

FidoFail.

You've got a good spec there, although I'd SEEEEEEEEEERIOUSLY suggest getting an SSD straight away as you'll find that 1tb hdd will be slow as shit.

PSU wise your best to stick with a known brand, and if your going to go SLI that 750w is a good choice.

Yeah I would like to grab an SSD but would ideally like to have enough space on it for my OS and all my games, and to get a drive that is big enough to hold all of that will cost quite a bit of money. That's really why I was prepared to wait until after the rainy season to buy that and stick with something to make do for the moment.

Anyone know much about ASRock? found the Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 board which looks quite good for the money but haven't heard much about the manufacturer.

Yeh Asrock are cool, think they're an offcut of Asus. That looks like a good board.

Yeah I had a look at their background and looks as though they are. Was quite impressed with the board's features for the money so think I'll switch to that one. Was also thinking of switching the PSU to a cheaper 600W one to save a bit, think this will still be good enough to go SLI with or would the 750W one be a better option?

You'd already be pushing it I think with the 750W for SLI. As 5 says as well, stick with a decent brand as well. It may not be the shiniest of components, but it is worth it.

Otherwise it looks good, not too dissimilar to my own spec which has done me pretty well so far.

The only think I will say is the 570 seems fairly sensitive to voltage when OCing, especially under DX11. Bizarrely even with manufacturer pre-applied OCs. That said, Gainward do tend to be very good with things like that though so I doubt you'll get any trouble.

I'd stick with the 750w, the nvidia cards love the juice

Awesome, will go back to the 750 then unless I come across something better.

Kadey, what specs are you running? Any known issues I should look out for? Part of the reason I went with that card is because of the heatsink that comes on it, saw some reviews that had the card at 10 degrees under the stock cards temp when running under load so thought it would be a good choice to have overclocked. I've noticed they also do a phantom 560Ti with 2gb of ram but I'm not sure how that compares with the performance of the 570n and if it's worth considering.

Motherboard wise, I'm running on of the Asus P67s, which has been really rock solid for me, and the two Z68s you're looking at should be ever better. I've got the same CPU - which is fantastic tbh.

Graphics card I have MSI's out of the box OC'd 570, I have had to slightly bump the voltage for it to be completely stable in DX11 games. Not really sure what the issue is, from the sound of other people having similar issues (and oddly, Blizzard's response to people having the issue in WoW) its something to do with the Dx11 side of Nvidia's drivers being very sensitive to Ocing and voltages in the 500 series. It is an excellent card though, and does seem to perform something like 20% better than the 560Ti, which makes sense, as it is basically the same design, just 20% more of everything. (Well, more like 30% more power, hence the 750 really being the minimum needed for SLI, especially as the 560Ti isn't exactly the most power efficient card in the first place - at least they're a hell of a lot better than the 400 series in that regard.)

If you're wanting to play at 1920x1080/1200 or higher especially, the 570 is clearly the superior card, and if I was buying one now, I'd get the particular model you've chosen for the same reasoning you have.



Oddly I also have the Antec 300 case

Sounds good, will stick with the components I have chosen then. Any idea on sound cards? I would need one with 5.1, 3.5mm outputs for my headphones but unsure if the creative or asus ones are best.

agree with most of the comments so far. While an SSD might be a future upgrade, I'd be a little wary of the WD Caviar green. The green bit is for eco friendly type guff (I think the colours are now black for performance, blue for consumer, someo ther colour for enterprise) either way this drive will be chugging along at 5200K and imo is meant as a low cost, low-power eco friendly storage drive. Performance won't be great if using as a system disk.

Ok will upgrade the hdd, I'll have a look for a substitute once I arrive at the office. Got nothing else to do for 10 hours

Re: The ASRock board, not sure if they have improved lately, maybe they have, but previous experience is they are a cheap and cheerless brand to be honest. Reliability may not be on a par with your Asus/MSI/Gigabyte boards.

Oh, and I agree with Monkey the Caviar Green will be slow (green is the giveaway, like a Eco badge on a car = slow). If you are going 1TB, then I got the Samsung F3, had loads of good reviews and has been good for me so far. Fast and cheap and so far reliable.