TaZeR

I just built this today a big upgrade from my hp mini 110 netbook what do you guys think I built it with gaming in mind for Battlefield 3 and Diablo 3 and others. Did I make any bad hardware choices? See my specs.

__________________
--TaZeR

Jac

Looks like a good system. We'll just have to see how demanding Battlefield 3 is. I did read on a forum somewhere that no current GFX card can max it but I take that with a pinch of salt.

You should try running Crysis 2 with the HR & DX11 packs and see what kind of performance you get.

IvanV

Congrats on the new rig! Strictly with gaming in mind, maybe you could have diverted a bit of money from some of the other components to the GPU, but the 560Ti is a very capable solution itself and as a whole that's a very, very nice system you've got.

__________________
If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever).

TaZeR

Cool yea it is with gaming in mind but also a budget I could of gotten a GTX 570 for $60 more but a PNY with bad reviews, I figure I can OC this Asus 560ti and get some good gains.

Still need to invest in some water cooling later and the 2tb hd and 32" dynex screen I alredy had.

__________________
--TaZeR

RobertBruce

I'm curious whether that psu is powerful enough for all that?

Jac

^^Yes, more than enough.

TaZeR why didn't you put in an SSD boot drive? That would give you a significant improvement in all aspects of use.

Tipstaff

Price probably. That's an additional $100 for a 60GB drive (the minimum I would use for an install drive as Windows 7 would use up 1/2 that), and you'd still need an HD for storage/app install. In this case he can always add the SSD later.

As for the PSU, spot on. At most, with those specs, the system will probably draw 400watts even with the 4Ghz overclock.

@Jac: Great system, bud. I was looking to buy those same main components (CPU and MB) to replace my own rig. In my case though I would have stuck with my current RAM, and as for the GPU, the GTX560 is pretty much just a GTX470, only that it draws less power, generates less heat, it's quieter, and slightly faster, but otherwise I'd be upgrading sideways in effect since I have the EVGA SC version, and a 3rd party cooler with full copper sinks on it.

In fact, I've built systems for clients based on those exact components, with the odd variation in parts (WD Black drive, i5-2500, 520watt PSU). The system should last you a good long time (2-3 "gaming" years at least). Nicely done.

__________________

jwrealing

Nice! I would have gone for a bigger Power supply. I say that knowing that I went for a lesser power supply and had wished I would have looked a little harder as Fry's had a sale on the Corsair 850 for 20$ more then what I paid for my Antec 750. Not too mention much better specs..

Judas

Pretty much the same case for me in the case of those fairly similare specs wattage to system power ratio

Would have gone with the WD black as well, the 500 watt coolermaster A3 models still do well, but i would have definitely moved to a 600-650 corsair model like him just for good measure just to keep the load at or under 70% at the worst possible case (400-450 watt draw on 650watt psu)

I'm not recommending any Solid State Drives yet for any of my builds unless they want them, i'm still awaiting my Vertex 3 120gb for my own machine for thorough testing essentially.

__________________

Dyre Straits

A little off topic but since you've mentioned the possibility of SSDs as a system-only drive, I have a question:

Since program/game installations would, due to size limitations, be installed on a "regular" HDD, just how would a system only SSD actually benefit gaming performance? I can certainly understand that the system would boot up much faster, and maybe certain things would load faster, but, how would it improve performance when most applications would wind up on a regular HDD?

And, how are the life-span limitations coming along on these now?

__________________

S3MILOBON

looks like a nice rig

blibbax

Purely for gaming, the 2600k is a bit of a waste, but other than that seems good to me

Of course you might want a faster boot drive for general use, but that won't effect FPS in games.

__________________

caqde

Even if the game was installed on the drive it would only effect the game when it is loading data. Otherwise it will have little to no effect unless it is also being used as a swap drive in which case it will have an effect when you are running low on system memory.

__________________
AMD Phenom II X4 925 AM3/ Giga-byte MA790XT-UD4P
XFX HD5770 1GB / 2x8GB of Geil DDR3 12800 10-10-10-28
Samsung SH-S182D DVD-RW drive / Sony Optiarc BD-5300S BD-RW drive
Western Digital WD1501FASS(Primary)/Western Digital 15EADS(Secondary)/Western Digital 7500AACS(Secondary)/Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320gb(Secondary)
Antec TP-550 / CoolerMaster CMStacker
Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium Fatal1ty Professional / Creative Inspire 6600 6.1 speakers
Samsugn T200HD 20" LCD Monitor / Logitech Internet 350 Black Keyboard
Logitech MX510 Mouse

Dyre Straits

This pretty much sums up my own understanding of it. I really don't see where the hard drive...whether SSD or HDD...would actually improve the overall performance of a system to the point that it would be cost effective. I've always kept my pagefile/swapfile off the system drive anyway. And, as long as one has plenty of System RAM, it's really not used/needed as much anyway.

__________________

Hanzi

looks pretty good to me!

Simmie

sir that is not a nice rig, it is an awesome rig and it's more than worthy!

TaZeR

Thanks for the compliments

I had to switch out some parts the asus motherboard was giving me trouble so I replaced it with the Gigabyte and some different ram and everything is running perfect now.

For the 650 watt psu seems to be running fine I've heard its more than enough power and I still plan to OC past 4ghz once I replace the stock cooling.

For the SSD yes price I was going for budget and to be able to upgrade later when I can and I will get a SSD in the future.

__________________
--TaZeR

Judas

Dynamically loading games such as almost ANY of the unreal engine based games today that have HUGE loading zones without actually cutting to a loading screen will have the largest benefit from being played on solid state drives.

Many MMO's LOVE SSD..

For example... Lineage II sees probably by far the largest improvement from running directly off a SSD...

it's a 11gb game, with a crap load of loading to do quite frequently... It also purges and reloads data quite frequently to keep the speed of the game up.

Games that basically load everything before starting to map/zone/whatever would benefit less from it other then there would be very short time for a loading screen.

__________________

synthesis204

On my SSD I have Windows, Internet browsers, word processing stuff, and Starcraft II. And man, does SCII love that ssd...maps load obscenely fast (I play it way too much).

__________________
Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure alzheimers, ALS, huntington's, parkinson's disease and cancer:
Fold for HH!