Thoughts on this build?

[Nobilis]

So glad I found this website. There's a lot of good stuff here.

Anyway, first time building a computer (well technically, I'm picking the parts through NCIX and getting them to assemble it for me; I don't trust myself with sensitive electronic parts ). It's going to primarily be a gaming rig, but I want a nice balance between performance and noise-reduction. I don't plan to be overclocking much, if at all; I figure if I put together a decent-enough computer, I won't need to overclock. Here's what I've come up with:

CPU: Intel Core i7 2600
Motherboard: ASRock P67 Extreme4 B3
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3-1600
Graphics card: eVGA GeForce GTX 560Ti
Case: Antec Solo silver/black
Power supply: Seasonic X650 Gold
CPU cooling: Thermalright MUX-120
Hard drive: Western Digital Cavier Blue 1TB 6GB/s
Optical drive: Samsung SH-S223L 22X w/ Lightscribe


There's two main issues I'm unsure about:

1) Will everything fit inside the chassis (esp fans & graphics card)? I want to keep the chassis at a reasonable size, without having to go for a mATX case.

2) Will the Solo's stock rear fan be enough for my system, or should I be looking at adding a front case fan as well? I'm only running a single graphics card, and from what I've read, the Sandy Bridge processors are fairly power/temp efficient, so do I need a front case fan or would that be overkill/unnecessary?

3) Any other glaring oversights I'm missing?

Thanks for any advice!

[CA_Steve]

Hi and welcome to SPCR!

1) Will everything fit inside the chassis (esp fans & graphics card)? I want to keep the chassis at a reasonable size, without having to go for a mATX case.

-If the video card is the stock EVGA card (part number 01G-P3-1560), or even the dual fan superclocked version, it's only 9" long. So, it'll fit.
-The Mux-120 will fit in a Solo.
- The RAM selected has fairly tall heatspreader. You might want to confirm you have clearance with your mobo and cooler - or select RAM w/o the crazy heat spreaders.

2) Will the Solo's stock rear fan be enough for my system, or should I be looking at adding a front case fan as well? I'm only running a single graphics card, and from what I've read, the Sandy Bridge processors are fairly power/temp efficient, so do I need a front case fan or would that be overkill/unnecessary?

You can probably get away without the front fan and it's easy to add later. It'll mostly impact your HDD temp. I run a 500rpm inaudible fan in front of my Solo.

3) Any other glaring oversights I'm

I do have a couple of comments:
- What apps are driving the need for the i7-2600? Do you do a lot of photoshop/video editing/other apps that will make use of the multithreading? If not, save $100 and get an i5-2500K. You won't notice the difference.
- Have you thought about getting an SSD for boot disk/apps?
- The antec tri-cool rear fan may or may not be quiet enough for you. Again, it's easy to replace after you've built the system.

[Nobilis]

Thanks for the welcome and the feedback!

- The RAM selected has fairly tall heatspreader. You might want to confirm you have clearance with your mobo and cooler - or select RAM w/o the crazy heat spreaders.

Yeah, I wasn't sure about that too. The good news is that there's a Corsair XM3 model selling for the same price (similar specs except the XM3 doesn't have the heat spreaders), so maybe I'll just play it on the safe side and get that instead.

- What apps are driving the need for the i7-2600? Do you do a lot of photoshop/video editing/other apps that will make use of the multithreading? If not, save $100 and get an i5-2500K. You won't notice the difference.

Hmm, good point. I do a little photo editing, but like I said, this system will mostly be a gaming rig. To be completely honest, I originally picked the i7-2600 mainly for the higher clock speed and to future-proof this build a bit. When you put it that way though, $100 does seem kind of steep to pay for multi-threading feature I'll probably never really take advantage of. I'm not much of an overclocker, but I suppose I can always just OC the i5-2500k if its speed is too low for me.

- Have you thought about getting an SSD for boot disk/apps?

SSDs are still fairly pricey compared to their storage capacity, so I wrote them off as a luxury expense I can skip. I settled on the WD Caviar Blue as a nice compromise that gives me a 7200rpm drive for fast boot/game-loading times, while not being as noisy as the Caviar Black.

If SSDs continue to come down in price, I might upgrade to one in the future.

[CA_Steve]

Not to belabour the point, but consider taking that $100 CPU savings and applying it toward a 128GB boot/apps SSD. Heck, unless you do a LOT of photo editing, drop the RAM to 4GB and use that savings toward an SSD as well. You will love the snappy response/quick game boot times. (I push 128GB instead of 64GB as most SSDs use less read/write channels for the lower capacity drive and this can hobble performance....however, new gen SSDs may buck this.)

Then you can go with a WD Green for data drive and have a lower noise profile than the Blue.

[Nobilis]

Again, great advice. After giving everything a bit of thought, I've decided to revise my build as follows:

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500k
CPU cooling: Thermalright MUX-120
Motherboard: ASRock P67 Extreme4 B3
RAM: Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3-1600
Graphics card: eVGA GeForce GTX 560Ti
Computer case: Antec Solo silver/black
Power supply: Seasonic X560 Gold (as of yesterday, the X650 is out of stock at NCIX apparently. Ah well, the 560 is cheaper and newer!)
Hard drive: Western Digital Cavier Blue 1TB 6GB/s
Solid state drive (boot drive): Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB
Optical drive: Samsung SH-S223L 22X w/ Lightscribe


My budget for the new computer is around $1500, and this build manages to come in just $28 over that limit, so all in all I'm pretty satisfied with it. Probably going to place the order tomorrow or Thurs.