2 Questions about case and psu

[cameron1791]

I am new at building computers and wanting to know how do you choose a case? is all cases universal or are they specific to certain components i.e making sure it has all the slots ect..

2nd question is how to choose a psu, the system I am building is for gaming and will contain I5 2500k, Asus p8p67 3.0, and proberly a 1gb graphics card and a dvd RW drive and not sure about hard drive yet as you can see I am still in the set phase and just trying to figure everything out...

the case I plan to go for is cheap but looks alright in pictures - GALAXY 3 GAMING case.

Any other things to look out for or general advice would be kindly listened to.

 

[Toxxyc]

For a power supply I'd recommend the Antec HCG 520W or the HCG 620W if you plan to keep it for a loooong time (and allow for XFirce/SLI with most cards). Other good choices include Cooler Master GX550, Corsair CX600 or GS500 and Silverstone ES 600.

In terms of cases, they are chosen primarily for security and cooling. You don't want a flimsy piece of plastic heating up your expensive components, and as such a larger sized case (Medium Tower) with sufficient cooling from a reputable manufacturer is highly recommended. "Budget" gaming cases falling in the "Excellent value for money" section will include the Cooler Master CM690 II Basic, Gigabyte SUMO-ALPHA, Cooler Master CM Storm Scout, Cooler Master HAF 912 and so forth. You'll notice Cooler Master has been named a few times, as their cases are of seriously good quality for a great price. If you have a little more cash to spend though, great cases to look at would include Antec, Thermaltake, Gigabyte and (according to me) the best cases on the market - Lian Li.

 

[cameron1791]

For a power supply I'd recommend the Antec HCG 520W or the HCG 620W if you plan to keep it for a loooong time (and allow for XFirce/SLI with most cards). Other good choices include Cooler Master GX550, Corsair CX600 or GS500 and Silverstone ES 600.

In terms of cases, they are chosen primarily for security and cooling. You don't want a flimsy piece of plastic heating up your expensive components, and as such a larger sized case (Medium Tower) with sufficient cooling from a reputable manufacturer is highly recommended. "Budget" gaming cases falling in the "Excellent value for money" section will include the Cooler Master CM690 II Basic, Gigabyte SUMO-ALPHA, Cooler Master CM Storm Scout, Cooler Master HAF 912 and so forth. You'll notice Cooler Master has been named a few times, as their cases are of seriously good quality for a great price. If you have a little more cash to spend though, great cases to look at would include Antec, Thermaltake, Gigabyte and (according to me) the best cases on the market - Lian Li.

quick response, thank you.. Yeah as this is my 1st I plan to keep this one along time as a reminder of an acomplishment but I plan to make others just to see how good or rubbish I can be.. do you have any prefrences of harddrives, dvd drives and graphics cards becuase they are the last few components I am still trying to reaserch but most forums seem to name up differnt manufacturers or models and its hard to choose... the main porpose of this comp set up is for fsx which is more cpu bound rather than gpu from past experiance and forums.

 

[Toxxyc]

With hard drives I have always and will always swear by Seagate. They have made most of the hard drives I've ever owned and they never disappointed me. Other good manufacturers are Samsung and Western Digital.

DVD drives are a wide market. Branded drives like Sony, LG or Samsung are always preferable (although with the recent purchase of an LG drive I was extremely disappointed) with names like BenQ and Lite-On being the cheapies.

Graphics cards are a controversial matter. I prefer branded cards, from names like Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Sapphire, EVGA or XFX, but I've heard of many, many happy customers buying Sparkle, Club 3D and the likes. The reason I prefer the branded cards is usually directly connected to the warranty (better brands usually offer better warranties), but the used components also play a role. A resistor isn't just a resistor if one comes from a military standard and the other is manufactured by a company who doesn't know what he's doing.

If you're looking at a heavy CPU-intensive rig, then I'd recommend you drop the i5 2500K and get the i7 2600K instead. You won't be sorry. That being said, games with PhysX (if you plan on Nvidia graphics card(s)) remove the FSX processing from the CPU and adds it to the GPU, but that's so little I won't really worry about it. Also invest in a decent RAM set with a low CAS Latency for this heavy use, as you will notice a difference when doing heavy work. CL9 is standard for modern DDR3 sets, but kits going down to CL7 or even CL5 is a more welcome choice (albeit it more expensive, obviously).