CoolerMaster 850watt Silent Pro M2 Modular Gaming Power Supply, SLI / Crossfire ready
120GB Corsair Force Series GT SATA III Gaming MLC Solid State Disk
2TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64M Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive
This is aimed to be a good gaming PC and I could probably go as far as spending an extra $100, but as i've never tested these parts and performance etc. is there are improvements that could be made for a similar price? All input is appreciated.
Good lord what a monster of a system, are you trying to reverse the rotation of the moon? On a serious note, it is a properly badass system, you can shave $100 off by switching to a 3570K and not lose any gaming power at all. Here is a bench of the 3570k vs 3770k : http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/701?vs=551
Very small difference between the two in gaming, possibly even within the margin of error, but the $100 you save is definitely no error ;)
Here is a bench of how the GTX680 does in gaming at various resolutions in various games : http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/555
Thanks John for the advice and links :) I've been fighting between the 3570k and 3770k my laptop is starting to overheat too easily and don't want to risk losing my work but want to game on PC after being a console gamer since I was 3 and need something more.
If all console gamers had a system like yours as their first gaming pc, i fear consoles would be obselete. Do you clean your laptop heatsink with some compressed air? You can invest some money on a external hard drive and back up your work on your laptop before something aweful happens to it. You sir are definitely in the place for getting more gaming performance, the difference between your system and any console that exist will be massive!
Most of the time my ex used to use it more than me and wasn't always cooled properly, i've been using a Seagate 1TB external hard drive for a while to back up so at this point if the laptop goes I won't be too bothered everything is backed up; i'll only be using it from next month when i'm at the library and there's nothing spare.
I'm going with the 3570k and using the saving to get a better quality monitor however i'm no closer to deciding which would be best for me as yet. 24" would probably be best size and of course 1080p. The 1440p monitors are far too expensive to get for a while after this build.
i've put a seperate forum for the monitor hoping to get recommendations for gaming; would the 16mhz 16gb ram be more beneficial then a faster ram at 8gb (1866 mhz etc)?
This system is indeed a monster and if it's your first time building, you're gonna have a lot of fun with al these parts.
Are you planning on running multiple monitors of High-res monitors ( Like > 1080p)?
I'm running a MSI 660ti 2gb and an i5 3570k on an 24" 1080p monitor. Problem is the monitor is 60hz and the framerates i get tend to be significantly higher than 60fps, so I get a lot of tearing. Easily solved by turning on VSync. What I'm trying to say is buy a decent monitor, like a 120hz one, or a really hi-res one, or use multiple screens simultaniously, otherwise I don't think you're going to see the benefits of that 4gb 680.
So either get a proper monitor, or you might be able to scale down the GPU a bit and save some $
I can only afford 1 monitor at the moment and if I really like it i'm going multi in the future but if i don't then i can just upgrade it, that's the plan anyway. Yeah shinobi i've decided to go 3570k and invest in a better monitor with the savings.
I want to get a 1440p monitor but can't afford one at the same time as this build so it'll have to be 1080p for now, the 680 adaptive v-synch should prevent tearing.