Computer specs

[Rykket]

Hello,

I am planning to build a computer with the following specs:

*Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz
*GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 LGA 1155
*GIGABYTE GV-N670OC-2GD GeForce GTX 670 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
*CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
*Samsung SSD 830 Series 128GB 2.5"
*Fractal Design Arc Midi Tower Sort
*Sony Blu-Ray Writer BD-5750H
*Corsair HX 750 watt Power supply

My main concerns are with CPU and MoBo. I have read that the combination is good, but that the Motherboard has a "boot-loop" problem. Considering replacing with this:
ASUS P8Z77-V PRO, Socket-1155

Is it a problem using parts from different manufacturares (MoBo/GPU)?

Is the CPU good enough for gaming? I want to have a system that can play most games on ultra and hopefully last for a while. I was concidering buying an X79 MoBo with a i7-3930K CPU, but that might be overkill as I will use my computer for mainly gaming?

Is liquid Cooling necessary, and what kind is recomended?

What do you think, is it a good setup?

 

[hang-the-9]

No issues with mixing brands, and liquid cooling should only be needed if you want a silent system or want to overclock it. CPU is fine for games.

 

[sam_p_lay]

That looks like an excellent setup. I've had really good experiences with Gigabyte reliability, but Asus is of course a solid bet too. X79 is cool, but it is overkill. I did a similar thing with the previous generation (chose X58 and i7 920 over the i5 750) and there's really no performance benefit.

Just two things I noticed - firstly (speaking of overkill), that's a pretty colossal amount of RAM. This being said, RAM is incredibly cheap now so why not I suppose! Worth making sure the CAS latency (abbreviated as CL, CAS, or just latency) is not higher than 8. There's lots of CAS9 DDR3 around, but better to spend a little extra for quality.

Secondly, the Samsung 830 is an absolutely awesome SSD, but the 840 Pro is just about to launch. It will probably be ~£25 more but you'd then have the best consumer SSD in existence. Alternatively, OCZ Vertex 4 is slightly better than the 830 and only £10 more for 120GB. Overall a really strong choice of components though and quality manufacturers (Gigabyte boards and Corsair memory/PSU).

 

[Rykket]

Thanks for feedback!

Changed memory to CL 7 and went for the i5-3570K CPU with the ASUS P8Z77-V PRO MoBo. Also changed to the OCZ Vertex 4 SSD (256). Is it necessary with an additional disk - hard drive type?

 

[sam_p_lay]

Nice! Good choices Interms of size, it really depends what you want to store. I'd say 90/120GB is ample for Windows, applications and a few games (course it won't be forever if all games are going to be Max Payne 3 sized) and then I use a 1.5TB for storing films, TV episodes and music. 1.5TB is (currently) overkill and a 1TB or even 500GB would be fine for my storage.

250GB would be a bit small for me to store all my files, but purely for Windows, applications and games, 250GB would be ample - over double what I'd need really! This is all for me though - you just need to look at your own usage of your computer really and decide what you want storage-wise. If you download lots of films and TV currently, you'll certainly want a hard disk.

And remember that SSDs are used primarily for the performance benefit (though obviously reliability, silence, energy efficiency etc are nice too!) and since obviously your media doesn't suffer from load times, it's really just OS/software that benefits from SSD performance. Only other thing I'd store on the SSD is your important documents so they're on a drive that won't die (or less likely to anyway) and documents are only small files.

With regards to buying a hard disk, I'd recommend avoiding Western Digital. That's due to first hand bad experiences, but there will be people in these forums that will have had bad experiences with all manufacturers - they all run off a less reliable product line from time to time. Mine is a Seagate Barracuda 11 series - chose it because Seagate have always been rock solid reliable for me and discovered after purchase that the Barracuda 11 series is notorious for dying. I've been using mine extremely heavily though and it's still happy. Samsung I've also found very reliable.

Final thing to consider is that a 1TB drive currently goes for £55 or more. Before the Thailand flooding, that figure was £35. I'd personally not be happy paying more now than it would have cost over a year ago, and if you feel the same then maybe build your system without the hard disk for the time being. You can obviously game, browse, etc without it and prices are gradually coming back down.