Check My New Gaming System

Awesome spec you got there...
But why 23" not 24" or 27" monitor?

Why not use 128gb SSD as OS drive? It has enough space to install WoW too, the loading time will be wicked fast...

Please tell me you will be doing other gaming too, aside from WoW...

Also, if all you are doing is gaming, you should have gone with the 2500K processor, if you had that option. Save a little bit of money. Otherwise, not bad. Nice choice in monitor too!

Hi Guys

The system will be mainly used for gaming other titles I intend to play are:

Dawn of War 2 series
Monkey Island
Star Craft 2
Diablo III - when released
Star Wars The Old Republic - When Released

Probably worth mentioning the above are the sort of titles ill use this system for as I have a Xbox which I prefer to use for titles like CoD First Person Shooters & Action.

Im hoping im going to get ultra settings on all these titles?

The system will be used for other tasks as listed below:
Downloading Movies / Music
iTunes
Microsoft Office 2010
Emails
Web Browsing
Burning DVD's & CD's
Watching Downloaded Movies on my 50" HD Plasma TV Via HDMI connection

Yeah, that 2600K is a bit much for your use, but that could still be a good thing. Means it'll keep up as your needs increase.

You'll get ultra settings on most, if not all of those games with that GPU. Observe: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292 <--- at resolutions way higher than what the 1920 x 1080 you'll be playing at, the GPU gets 30+ FPS on max settings with nearly every single game tested.

By the way, thank you for playing other games on it.   I shouldn't be, but I've gotten rather hostile towards people that buy expensive rigs just to play WoW and only WoW, a game that a $700 computer can play at near max settings. I have met other people that do not play other games... just WoW, and they do that. Its their money, yes, but it irks me.

Hi Phyco

Thanks for your reply

I certainly do intend to play plenty of games on this system but most will be MMO or RTS style games the type you wouldn't play on a Xbox.

I cant wait until it arrives I have to wait until next Friday for the delivery and I ordered it last Monday  

But im sure it will be worth the wait  

Absolutely worth the wait. She's a fine build, and you'll love that monitor I think. Only thing I would change is the anti-virus, lol. Can't stand Norton. But that is just me, haha.

I can certainly change the antivirus as this is something ill put on the system myself.

The system comes configured with the free version of AVG but from all the reviews I have read Norton seems to be coming out top.

What would you suggest to use instead baring in mind the system will mainly be running games so I want something that wont slow me down in any way (I know Norton probably will)

lol @Norton Internet Security 2012
save some bux and get a free solution like Avira/Avast/Microsoft Security Essential + Comodo Firewall and you're good

I honestly don't know of any anti-virus that won't slow you down while it is active. I shut mine down unless I perform a scan, then I start it up. Or if I know I'm heading into unknown territory online.

Keep in mind that the king of anti-viruses change every year. This year Norton will be on top, next year it will be on the bottom.

I use PCTool's Spyware Doctor with Anti-virus. It highly rated by cnet's professional reviews and gets average ratings by users (though I personal have used PC doctor since 2006 and it is highly effective). Besides, most of the poor reviews I read about Spyware Doctor with Anti-virus are from idiots who are trying to run anti-virus protection on their 10 year old computer. Just isn't going to happen, I don't care who you go with.

I also enjoy McAfee, though in my experience its more of a hog than Spyware Doctor. I've used McAfee on other computers, and it works well.

My computer is almost 4 years old, running on 8 Gigs of DDR2 and a Intel E8400 Dual core at 3.0 Ghz (clocked to 3.6 Ghz). Only slow downs I see are during active scans, and booting into windows has a noticeable delay of a minute or so. Otherwise, running it in the background causes me no performance hit (though you'll see RAM is being used more than if it was shut-down). I just shut it down because I like quick boot times and I hate dealing with the occasional good site that it blocks (and its a pain to make it unblock it, lol).

Just a question?

If the SSD in this case is used in SSD caching configuration so the system see's only one drive to boost speed performance will I be able to add say a 128gb SSD at a later date and still leave the 40gb SSD as is in a caching mode so the system will now see 2 drives 1 as before and now a second 128gb SSD ???

I don't see why not. Of course, I'm not very familiar with the whole caching thing.

Anyway, if the cache thing works by purposefully selecting the drive and ordering it to do that, then when you install the 128 GB SSD, the PC will just see it as another drive. If the cache thing works by telling the system to automatically use any ssd as a cache drive (which I cannot see that being the case), then... who knows.

I should read up on this whole cache thing...