Mother board compatibility and recommendation

[cr1zb3y]

Im currently looking at building my own gaming pc. After alot of thinking and consideration I have come up with a list of components as shown below. (sorry for the links etc, this was just copied and pasted from a txt file)

MOTHERBOARD
ASUS P7H55D-M PRO = £70
http://www.crescentelectronics.co.uk/asus-p7h55dm-pro-motherboard-micro-atx-ih55-1.html?source=aw&awc=2661_1287432269_559973d58b17ce0bfba8c1eca58a9d1c

RAM
Corsair Memory Dominator 6GB DDR3 = £120
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/6GB-%283x2GB%29-Corsair-Dominator-DDR3-PC3-12800-%281600%29-CAS-8-8-8-24-DHX-XMP-New-connector-165V

CPU (PROCESSOR)
Intel Core i7-860 Socket 1156 Processor 2.80GHz 8MB Cache Quad Core = £220
http://www.saverstore.com/product/20035284/7725665/Intel-Core-i7-860-Socket-1156-Processor-280GHz-8MB-Cache-Quad-Core

HARD-DRIVE
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATAII 16MB Cache 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drive OEM = £33
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003SLE8J2/ref=asc_df_B003SLE8J21109689?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B003SLE8J2

POWER SUPPLY (PSU)
OCZ StealthXStream2 600w Silent ATX2 Power Supply 80PLUS = £52
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/components/powersupplies/OCZ/OCZ600SXS2-UK.html

OPTICAL DRIVE
LG GH22NS50 22x DVD±RW DL & RAM SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black = £14
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169683?utm_source=google&utm_medium=products


GRAPHICS CARD
PowerColor HD4890 PCI-E/1GB GDD5/2DVI/TVO/FAN = £135
http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase18.5&prodID=1777935

CASE
X-Case Saturn Midi Tower Case with 2 x Blue LED Fans = £33
http://www.xcase.co.uk/X-Case-Saturn-Midi-Tower-Case-with-2-x-Blue-LED-Fa-p/case-cit-saturn.htm

SPEAKERS
Logitech R-10 Speakers
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B0009E66X2/ref=asc_df_B0009E66X21055008?ie=UTF8&condition=new&creative=22278&creativeASIN=B0009E66X2&linkCode=asm&tag=twenga039165-21

ARTIC COOLING FREEZER 7 PRO (EXTRA COOLING FAN)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler = £15
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/14259593/Arctic-Cooling-Freezer-7-Pro-Rev-2-CPU-Cooler/Product.html?_%24ja=tsid:11518|cc:|prd:14259593|cat:Components

TOTAL = £712

Now as you can see, alot of these componenents may at first seem a little uneeded, however this is where my problem lies. I am planning to build a gaming/high end PC that can be used for modern games, and to run my GPU intensive applications. I do not know which mother board to use however. The asus motherboard above seems sufficent however i am unsure if it has enough slots within it and whether it is good enough to overclock. I also heard that it is important to have a good front side bus so that the cpu, ram etc can communicate correctly and quickly however i am unsure of this Mobo. I would need at least three DDR3 ram slots, and 1-2 GPU slots. Just for you to be aware I have my heart set on "good" gaming pc however not looking at the enthusiasts type (Crysis ultra high 100 fps, need i say more). Would this setup be able to play call of duty or even fallout on high with a good FPS rate? Is this setup good for a gamer, and what recommendations for a motherboard and ram would you make.

BTW this is my first build, and this plan is a draft only so changes will be made based on the comments and advice i recieve.

 

[cr1zb3y]

Suggestions are welcome

 

[rolli59]

Being a LGA 1156 the 3x 2GB ram kit is wrong it is designed for triple channel on LGA1366 platform just get a 2x 2Gb kit. I would suggest a P55 based motherboard over a H55.

 

[andrern2000]

Yes, LGA 1156 only supports dual-channel. Triple channel is for LGA1366.
Your VGA, perhaps going for GTX 460. Low price, greater performance. Dunno, your choice.

 

[jprahman]

You may want to consider going with a Core i5-760 rather than the Core i7-860. I've got a mildly overclocked i5-760 in my first build and it runs everything with no problem, even crysis. You could save about 50 Pounds (that's the price difference I've seen from US retailed converted to Pounds, I'm not sure what the prices would be for you though, different retailers and all) and then put that extra money into better graphics. There's not a huge difference between the i5 and the i7 other than hyper threading and the ability to adjust some specific settings on the CPU that are mainly used for more extreme overclocking. I don't know what kind of work you would need to run on the CPU, but the from analysis I've seen unless it is highly multi-threaded it isn't likely to benefit greatly from the hyper-threading that the i7-860 has.

The extra money could be used to get a better video card, which is going to be the biggest bottleneck on a system running a higher end CPU like the i5-760 or i7-860. Like andrern said a GTX 460 is a good choice and the one I recommend, I'm actually running two of them in SLI and I really like them. A GTX 470 is an possibility if you want a little more power. Another option would be the upcoming Radeon 6770 "Bart" GPU that AMD is rumored to be close to releasing soon, if you want to wait.

As far as a motherboard is concerned something like this seems like it would be a good fit ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard. This particular board has good overclocking features and seems to be pretty solid, although it only has a single PCI-Express x16 slot so SLI or CrossFireX are not an option, but that doesn't sound like a problem for you.

For RAM like previously stated a dual-channel set is what the P55/H55 platform supports so a pair of 2GB modules for a total of 4GB is a good choice, unless you have a good reason to buy 8GB or more (high end photo/video editing, 3D modeling programs or other very memory intensive tasks). The modules you have selected are a little overboard unless you intend to overclock your RAM above 1600MHz, and I'm not sure doing that would give you much benefit. Once you get to 1600MHz there's not much if any benefit from higher speeds, heck, even 1333MHz is good enough for quite a few applications. There was an article here on Tom's a little while back that explored memory scaling so you could take a look at that if you want. I would go ahead and get a 1600MHz set if you need high RAM performance, but try and go with a more inexpensive set that's not high-priced model meant for overclocking.