My first build in 20 odd years, thoughts please!

well its a little broken.
Sorry i am on my mobile phone so i wont give too many alternative hoices since i cant multibrowse.

The cpu is good. But cooler is bad, you can get way beter performance from an aircooler which is about 30dollars. To get worth it performance from the liquid cooler you need to go to h80 or higher. Buying better thermal paste like arctic silver will be a good investment too

For the ram, you can go with 1600mhz ram gskill/corsair. And 8gb is more than enough for today's needs. Unless you do video editing or picture edit.

My personal choice would be a radeon video card. Because I had a lot more pleasent use with them as well as they seemed to be able to live up to the load years later.


For hdd the 128 ssd is very little memory. You could maybe just skip both hdd and get a WD velociraptor which 10,000rpm which has very good performance and you can get 1tb space.

I would feel better with 600w psu

Maybe an asrock/gigabyte mobo could provide better value for your Budget

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.98 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LE ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($38.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB 3.5" 10000RPM Internal Hard Drive ($219.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card ($279.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair Carbide Series 300R Windowed ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($78.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: Lite-On ihes112-04 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($54.98 @ Outlet PC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1217.86
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-31 23:09 EST-0500)

ugh, windows 8, clunky, slow, inefficient. Buy win7 while you still can.

Won't try to hijack this thread or anything from those three ^ but your build looks pretty good, I disagree with the notion that AMD card last longer, a large amount of Steam user still use 8800 GT's/GTX's. I have a 670 and I love it. I will agree with getting Windows 7 though, personally I hate Windows 8 in comparison to 7, they tried to overcomplicate things.

My recamend is fill all slots dont see capacity. see mhz in board and ram.Reason mhz is the key to achive speed. if board support 1600mhz u insert 1333mhz its waste because not get full speed of ram slot. if board support 1333mhz u insert 1600mhz its also waste of money (1333mhz ram is cheaper than 1600mhz)also u not utilise full speed of ram. (2x4Gb=8Gb 1600mhz=3200mhz =3.2ghz) vs (2x8Gb=16Gb 1333mhz=2666mhz=2.6ghz).
Buy transcend axe ram 2133mhz oc enabled rams x2 or x4.

lol. The performance difference between 1600 and 2133 RAM as measured by TH is about 2FPS.

Go with the GTX 660 Ti 3GB. Same price, way better performance. Made a few other changes too. No need for a Velociraptor when SSD is much faster.

Here are a few benchmarks for you.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review/13

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.98 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LE ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($38.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Samsung 830 Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($109.00 @ B&H)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB Video Card ($279.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($78.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: Lite-On ihes112-04 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($54.98 @ Outlet PC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1146.87
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-31 23:57 EST-0500)

The 7870 has on-par performance as the 660Ti and is cheaper at $200

The 660 Ti has a good 10-15 FPS improvement over both the 7870 and 7950 all the way around for the same price as the 7950.

Just wanted to say thank you all for your opinions, they have given me somethings to think over, cheers!