After doing abit of looking around i've come up with this Asus P8Z68-V PRO, Intel Z68, S 1155, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2200(OC), SATA 6Gb/s, RAID, ATX, HDMI - £149.62 Intel CPU Core i5 Unlocked 2500K Sandy Bridge Quad Core Processor - £163.40 Gainward GeForce GTX 570 Phantom 1280MB NVIDIA Graphics Card - £287.48 x2 = £574.96 LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, DVD-RAM x12, SATA, Black, OEM - £15.11 Corsair Enthusiast TX V2 CMPSU-850TXV2UK 850W Power Supply (PSU) - £96.94 Creative SB X-Fi Titanium PCI-E 7.1 Soundcard - £64.43 1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9ms, NCQ - £39.25 x 2 = 78.5 Corsair Vengeance 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit (CMZ6GX3M3A1600C8) [CMZ6GX3M3A1600C8] - £68.56 Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler - £47.99 Cooler Master CM-690 II Advanced Dominator Case - Black [RC-692-KKN2] - £71.87 Worthwhile or am i going wrong?
Personally I'd get the vanilla GTX 570, MSI are pretty cheap and a decent brand. Advantage is it's a good cooler anyway and rear exhaust which is easier when managing case temperatures. With the saving upgrade to a Corsair AX850 also consider a Fractal case. Although the 690 is nice it lacks the refinement of a Fractal and I know because I've worked with both! The Fractal Arc Midi Tower would probably suit your needs. Also go for some of the Low Profile Corsair ram and consider the Dark Rock Advanced cooler.
Right, couple of things. Do you need SSD caching? or the ability to use the dedicated GPU on Z68? If not then go for something like a Asus P8P67 or Msi Gd 53 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-...-ddr3-2133-sata-6gb-s-sata-raid-atx-sli-xfire only £104.99 on scan! agree with blogins go for a standard cooler GTX 570, as he said they have excellent coolers, also I've heard of people not being able to overclock those cards to much because the voltage options are locked or something, at least they where when they where first launched, somebody else might be able to tell you different Also the TX series of power supply's is getting on abit, so have a look at the AX 850w, superb power supply, gold certified, fully modular and when your computer is idle then fan doesn't even spin! http://www.scan.co.uk/products/850w...s-gold-90-eff-sli-crossfire-eps-12v-120mm-fan also you need a dual channel memory for sandy bridge either a 4gb kit or 8gb kit, something like this http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-...pc3-12800-(1600)-non-ecc-cas-9-9-9-24-xmp-15v and I would pick 8gb over 4gb for a bit of 'future proofing' and seeing as ram is so cheap atm, you might as well for a new build. The silver arrow cooler is pretty good, but I believe it doesn't come with any fans. making it quite expensive, once you've purchased some decent fan's, so as blogins mentioned have a look at the dark rock advanced or dark rock pro. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/be-q...lga775-1155-1156-1366-am2-am2plus-am3-754-940 or http://www.scan.co.uk/products/be-q...lga775-1155-1156-1366-am2-am2plus-am3-754-940 oh and I'd go for this dvd drive http://www.scan.co.uk/products/sams...dr-12x-dvdr-dvdplusrw-x8-rw-x6-sata-black-oem hope that helps and best of luck with the build when you get round to doing it
Personally I'd throw together this: http://www.scan.co.uk/savedbasket/aec88973d8e843c88a1b47a649eb4808 I know a friend who just bought a 570 Phantom, from Scan, actually, and it apparently OC'd for Miiiiiles, (Sadly I don't have the exact clocks). I kept the Lite-On drive, because I've never had any problems with their products, so I can safely reccomend this. Thermaltake Frio. It's virtually silent at minimum fan-speed, and it should far outpace anything you need on a Sandy Bridge processor, as is I can't even tax it with my Phenom II overclocked to pointless levels, so I can safely reccomend it. Ooops. Just realized: I forgot to throw a HDD in there. I also opted for the Asus Xonar over the Creative X-Fi, after I had to help out a few people in driver issues with the X-Fi. The Xonar, on the other hand, is happy to work on the standard drivers, although there are alternate ones available if you dislike them.
Do you really need a soundcard? If not then use your savings to get a corsair all in one unit such as the h50/60/70 an swap the fan on it for a scythe gentle typhoon
The Corsair units aren't really that good. The H50 has, at stock, 160 watt thermal Dissipation, whereas a Thermaltake Frio does 220 watts happily, and costs less.
^This^ The frios were what we used on the P8P67 board for the Asus overclocking Summit. The board has made me re-evaluate the whole ROG range as the performance of these "standard" models were so fantastic. As for the Frio, it aircooled us to 5.28Ghz on 1.55v which is as good a recommendation as anything I've seen. I'm underwater now, and only a bit better (5C)
I would stay away from the MSI gtx570 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-112-MS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010 I just returned one using distance selling regs as the cards cooler was at least an inch shorter than the nvidia reference card (and what's quoted on MSI's website) although they look very similar on the picture it was VERY noisey and temps high (80 cent) when playing games. Even when compared to my gtx 280. I'm going to pay the extra and get the Gainward Phantom gtx570.
