New Midrange 2500K Build

[pacent]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for? 80% Gaming, 15% web surfing, 5% photo editing via lightroom/photoshop

2. What YOUR budget is? Around 1000 (excluding stuff I already have/purchased), but I do have some wiggle room here as well.

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from. USA

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. None really

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are. Already purchased:
Intel 2500K
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68
Seasonic X750 Gold
Already have an:
Asus VW246H 24" Monitor, 1920 x 1080
I may upgrade to an IPS monitor if budget allows

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds. Shooting for 4.5ghz

8. What resolution will you be using? 1920 x 1080

9. WHEN do you plan to build it? Within the week

Do you need to purchase any software to go with the system, such as Windows or Blu Ray playback software? Nope

I'm planning to buy these components within a day or two, let me know your thoughts:

Cooler Master RC-692 - 55AR
Crucial M4 128 - 165
WD Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB HD - 140
Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600 ram (x2 for 16GB total) - 100
Sony Optiarc Burner - 18
EVGA GTX 680 - 499
Cooler Master Hyper 212+ - 20AR

I'm a little undecided on the GTX 680. I know its the latest and greatest, and I'm paying a premium if I purchase one now. The fact that I can't even buy one now is annoying as well, as it is sold out everywhere.

A part of me wants to just pick up a used 580 from the folks looking to upgrade to the GTX 680 or even a new 7870. If I'm looking to play ME3 and BF3 at the highest settings at 1920 x 1080 on my current 24" monitor with the 580 or 7870, what kind of framerates should I expect?

Lastly, any problems with this particular cooler fitting in this case?

I welcome any and all suggestions.

TIA

 

[lehtv]

Looks good to me. The only thing I would change is the amount of RAM. 8GB will most likely be enough.

If I'm looking to play ME3 and BF3 at the highest settings at 1920 x 1080 on my current 24" monitor with the 580 or 7870, what kind of framerates should I expect?

In BF3 you should expect very smooth framerates with 7870 and better (MSAA off).

ME3 is not a demanding game.

Lastly, any problems with this particular cooler fitting in this case?

Nope.

 

[philipma1957]

push for a bigger ssd. and use two sticks of ram not 4.

crucials are good choice but the 256 is better then the 128. faster and bigger

load 5 games and the 128 will be full.


specs page;

http://www.crucial.com/pdf/Tech_specs-letter_Crucial_m4_ssd_v3-11-11_online.pdf

the 256 is faster there have been sales for it.

 

[pacent]

push for a bigger ssd. and use two sticks of ram not 4.

crucials are good choice but the 256 is better then the 128. faster and bigger

load 5 games and the 128 will be full.


specs page;

http://www.crucial.com/pdf/Tech_spec...-11_online.pdf

the 256 is faster there have been sales for it.

I thought about this, and have read that the Samsung SSDs are the ones to look for if going for 256. I'll keep an eye out and see if there are any deals out there.

As Lehtv mentioned, I'm not 100% convinced I even need the 16gb of ram. I may just go with 2 sticks of 4, as 2 sticks of 8 is a pretty significant price difference for very little real world increase in speed. I probaby should have looked harder at the 2600K's instead for the extra hyperthreading when running CS4, but knowing that Ivy is around the corner, I couldn't justify paying the extra few bucks.

 

[lehtv]

push for a bigger ssd. and use two sticks of ram not 4.

crucials are good choice but the 256 is better then the 128. faster and bigger

It isn't that much faster, doesn't really factor into the decision. But bigger? Yes... and a lot more expensive. IMO putting more than 5 games on an SSD isn't worth over a hundred dollars. Loading times just aren't anywhere near that bad on a modern 7200RPM hard drive that can push 180mb/s.

have read that the Samsung SSDs are the ones to look for if going for 256

Samsung is clearly faster in heavy workloads and sequential write speeds, if you compare them in anandtech bench. But Crucial M4 256 can be had for $305 AP while Samsung 830 256 costs $380.

 

[pacent]

Bit the bullet, ordered everything above. Newegg had the EVGA GTX 680 in stock.

Scaled the ram down to 8gb, and kept everything else the same.

Thanks guys...hopefully looking forward to building this thing this weekend if it ships out in time.

 

[lehtv]

Awesome :thumbsup: Post here if you run into problems