HIGH-END gaming rig advice

[uruquiora]

OK i posted a couple of weeks ago what i was planning to buy for a new gaming rig, but since then have updated a couple of components...
Here is the final config :

- Intel Core i7 960 3.2GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366) - £475.99
- Asus Rampage III Extreme Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard £329.99
- Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11161-05-40R) £349.99
- OCZ Vertex Limited Edition 100GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £309.99
- Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA-II 64MB Cache - OEM (WD20EARS) £109.99
- Samsung SH-B083L/RSBP 8x BluRay ROM / 16x DVD±RW Drive - Black (Retail)£81.99
- Corsair H50-1 High-Performance CPU Watercooler (Socket LGA775/1156/1366/AM2/AM3) £66.99
- Corsair Obsidian 800D Full Tower Case - Black £209.98
- BeQuiet Dark Power Pro P8 750W Modular Power Supply £126.99
- Mushkin Enhanced Redline 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000)
- Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor £446.99

What do you think of it ? any advice in particular ?
One of my main concerns is noise reduction, but i didn't want to go for a complete watercooled config as it seems a bit difficult to install and maintain..
Thanks

 

[Silmarunya]

It will be fairly noisy, but not extremely.

As for advice: well, it's not balanced at all. Gaming is completely GPU bound. As such, spending more on the GPU (get a 5970) and less on the CPU (a 930 will do nicely) will hugely improve gaming performance.

There are air coolers that outperform the Corsair H50 by quite a margin, but they'll be noisier of course.

Other than that, it's one of these builds that blows so much money diminishing returns start to kick in. Crazy and pointless, but cool.

 

[galta]

+1 for Silmarunya on CPU x GPU for gaming.
Asus Rampage iii extreme is the best of the best. Are you sure you need that much of sofistication?
If your intention is gaming, and not breaking OC records, you could get a less expensive model, like P6X58D, still full of treats (USB3.0 and Sata 6Gb/s) and save money.
If you are really concerned about noise, you should seriously consider WC. It's not that difficult to install and maintain, specially if you have a monster case like Obsidian 800D.
Should you decide to go liquid, and if you get the money, you should get a liquid cooled gpu, Powercolor 5970. Going Xfire on them would insane, but if you are one of those people who need to play Crisis maxed out...
Perfomance would be great, and noise would be under control.