Budget: Upper limit around £1500 Main uses of intended build: Primary use of the PC is for Gaming at 2560*1400 single screen. I use 4 screens total when not gaming. Parts required: Case (Favourite at the moment is the Corsair Air 540 but not sure if it will be big enough) CPU & Motherboard (something that won't hold back high res gaming, I will be overclocking) Watercooling (I've never built a custom loop before, really need help on what I'll need here) Soundcard I can change if there's no PCI-E slot for it RAM I'd like to keep if possible, but will I need DDR4? Is is much better? Everything else will be reused if possible. Previous build information (list details of parts): i5 2500k overclocked to 4.4Ghz cooled with Antec Kuhler H20 650 MSI P67A-GD53(B3) 2x4GB 1866MHz Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR3 2x GTX 780 SLI 3x SSDs and 1x HDD Creative X-fi Xtreme audio (PCI-E) Seasonic x-850 Antec 902 Monitor resolution: 2560*1440 Storage requirements: Keeping current 4 drives. will you be overclocking: yes Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): At least 2xSLI, 6xSATA Extra information: I'm looking to upgrade a few components as I've had these a while now and the CPU is holding me back. The cooler is too loud and runs too hot so I'll be going for custom water cooling this time. Plus it looks better. Thanks in advance
If you're going for a custom loop, you can probably push the 2500K to 4.8-5GHz, depending on your chip. I suppose the question is, will a new CPU/Mobo/RAM offer enough of a boost to justify the cost? You could blow your budget on SLI 980Ti and the loop components, although that case might struggle to accommodate your kit.
Would wait for next gen gpus to launch. If your 2500k is at decent overclocks the performance gains are negligible. 100mhz increase is a boost to minimum frames.
Okay, thanks, seems the gains aren't worth it to upgrade the CPU yet then. I could keep the CPU/MB/RAM for now and just invest in a case and CPU water loop. How much of a pain is it to change the waterblock in future when I upgrade?
If you're only cooling the CPU, a 120/240 AIO will be plenty. If your case can hack it, how about a pair of these puppies?
I have a 120 AIO. I don't have room in the case for a 240 but that would help I should think. What's the best 240 AIO and some good cases I could mount one in? I'm happy with my GPUs for now.
