Gaming spec, a couple of questions

J

JMC

Member
Hi,

I'm hoping to order a new PC from PCS in the next week or so. I intend to use it solely for gaming, I won't be using any other demanding applications such as video editing. I don't intend to do any upgrading in the near future and I certainly won't be doing any overclocking. My absolute budget is £1250, but ideally I'd like to be a bit below that.

I'm fairly happy with my choice of CPU, RAM, graphics card, HDD and PSU (although feel free to give me your opinion on those) but I still have a couple of questions. Firstly, is the case I have selected sufficient? I'm not bothered about anything fancy I just want something that will do the job and not fry my components. Secondly, what do you think of the mobo? I'm not too knowledgeable in that area.

Thanks for your help.

Case
COOLERMASTER CM STORM ENFORCER - GAMING ENTHUSIAST CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2500 Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics (possibly Ivy bridge)
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z77-V: PCI-E 3.0 READY, WIFI, SLI, CROSSFIREX
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
PCS EXTRA-CARE DIAMOND DELIVERY - MON-FRI, PRE-10AM (£16) A necessity unfortunately
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days

£1209.00
 
mantadog

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
Obviously a well researched build with bothing jumping out as needing an upgrade.

The case will be 100% fine, it will have plenty of cooling and plenty of room inside the case for anything you might want to add in the future.

The motherboard is capable of supporting just about anything you could ever need, really not much point in anything higher spec than that. You could even drop it back to a basic one, however i wouldn't advise that just so you can keep your options open for the future with upgrades.

I would probably leave that setup as it stands to be honest, can't see any reasons to change it, uless you swap out the i5 for whatever ivy bridge processor comes out in the next few days.
 
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J

JMC

Member
Thanks guys. I think I'll wait to see what the Ivy situation is then order it next week.

This forum has been a great help for deciding my spec.
 
baron75mk2

baron75mk2

Banned
Hi if your after maximum cooling , there is a space on the top of the enforcer case for a large fan , you could get one fitted for maximum airflow , or if you really want maximum airflow you could change it to the coolermaster half - X case , it has a 230mm front intake fan , a 200mm side intake fan ( great for getting air across the GPUs) & one 200mm top exaust fan. you can also add another 200mm in the top if you like ( i changed out all of them apart from the front & added another 200mm in the top in blue led style fans for only £50 , coolermaster actually sell the exact fan models in different colours).

Being that this is solely for gaming , i would change to a bigger psu ( the one you have is more than adiquate for your system) , but it wont give you much headroom for SLI/crossfire setups in the future , it maybe something you are not planning to do as i wasnt myself , but when the GTX 580s came down in price & i saw that 2x GTX 580s SLI was beating the GTX 680 i went down the SLI route & didnt regret it for a minute , but i was ok for it as i had ordered the Half X case & the corsair 1,200 w 80+ gold PSU ( very good PSU i highly recomend it , although it is admittedly a bit overkill , but its better to have more power than you need in terms of PSU in my opinion , gives smoother power supply at high usage than a PSU going flat out just to power the system , with nothing left in reserve)

Hope this is of some use to you & being its for gaming these two points are worth considering ( unless you dont plan on multi GPU configs in the future then keep the PSU you have , but the case choice is definately worth thinking about or at least add the extra fan to the storm enforcer)

But reguardless of your choice , its a real nice build from what i can see :yes:
 
Last edited:
J

JMC

Member
Ordered the above spec with an Ivy i5 instead of a sandy (only a couple extra quid too).

Thanks for the advice, just can't wait for it to arrive now!
 
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