Gaming PC first attempt

circadian

I plan on building my own gaming PC and I'm willing to overclock at some point so I'm keeping that in mind. I'd like to be able to play the latest games at a solid frame rate with little loss in graphics quality. I'll also be doing audio editing on this PC.
I'd appreciate it if someone had a look and made suggestions if you feel there are changes that could be made.

Thanks!

Intel Core i5 3570K|€189.85
ASRock Z77 Z77 So.1155 Extreme6|€134.84
16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport VLP DDR3-1600 +|€ 84.97
Noctua NH-L12 LowProfile AMD and Intel|€ 48.35
2048MB TGT GeForce GTX 660 Performance |€ 174.86
Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB 2.5 "(6.4cm) |€ 74.92
Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2000GB |€ 82.01
550 Watt Xilence RedWing R3 Non-Modular | € 34.59
Cooler Master HAF 912 Advanced Window Midi|€ 75.84
TOTAL AFTER TAX|€1044

Eboggles

Tahiti LE for just €20 more = much better value. It also comes with Bioshock: Infinite and Tomb Raider so that's an added bonus.

That CPU cooler isn't great compared to the Thermalright Macho, which is €10 cheaper.

Also, that PSU looks really dodgy so I'd steer clear.

The rest is personal preference so I won't comment on it .

BloodBath

That mainboard is overkill. I'd downgrade to the Asrock pro4 which is about €40 cheaper and will achieve the same overclock on air.

Your ram is a 4x4gb kit. I'd get a 2x8gb kit which leaves you room to go to 32gb down the line if you need/want to and put's less strain on the memory controller.

The cpu cooler is overkill. I wouldn't bother getting anything bigger than a cooleermaster hyper 212 evo for 3570k's. You will achieve the exact same overclock with similar temps for €20 less.

I'd use the money saved to get an amd 7950. It's a far better graphics card with good overclocking potential. At least 50% better than that 660. It also has some great deals at the moment including 6 brand new games.

Dublin_Gunner

You can never go overkill on a CPU cooler. The 3570K is great as far as temps are concerned, but dissapating more heat more quickly is always more preferential. I'd personally recommend going for a self contained water cooling kit like the corsair h100 or maybe a lower model, if not for the excellent cooling ability but for the silence.

Personally I wouldn't go for the asrock board, though I've personally no experience with them- I usually go for Asus / Gigabyte / MSI because they're BIOS' are usually the most mature and fully featured.

A 2x8 kit for ram would probably be better, but then again for a bit of gaming and audio recording you'll never need that much, never mind the 32GB suggested above. Unless you're doing a lot of video editing or high resolution image editing 8GB is still more than enough these days.

Until AMD sort out they're diabolical drivers I just can't recommend any AMD card. The 660 is excellent for the price with performance not far off the Ti version which is 100 more expensive.

circadian

Thanks for the replies folks. I'll have look and adjust as it suits.
Much appreciated.

BloodBath

Dublin_Gunner wrote: »

You can never go overkill on a CPU cooler. The 3570K is great as far as temps are concerned, but dissapating more heat more quickly is always more preferential. I'd personally recommend going for a self contained water cooling kit like the corsair h100 or maybe a lower model, if not for the excellent cooling ability but for the silence.

Personally I wouldn't go for the asrock board, though I've personally no experience with them- I usually go for Asus / Gigabyte / MSI because they're BIOS' are usually the most mature and fully featured.

A 2x8 kit for ram would probably be better, but then again for a bit of gaming and audio recording you'll never need that much, never mind the 32GB suggested above. Unless you're doing a lot of video editing or high resolution image editing 8GB is still more than enough these days.

Until AMD sort out they're diabolical drivers I just can't recommend any AMD card. The 660 is excellent for the price with performance not far off the Ti version which is 100 more expensive.

Large coolers make very little difference to 3570k temps. I've seen a million and 1 benchmarks for it. The hyper 212 evo was one of the best performing coolers and will achieve the exact same overclocks as the larger coolers.

A h100 is total overkill and a complete waste of money. The system is not going to be silent just from getting that. You still have a psu, gpu and case fans making noise. A 212 evo running relatively quiet isn't going to add much noise to the system. The H100 still makes noise from the fan blowing through the rad.

Asrock is owned by Asus and their quality and features are just as good. They are one of the most popular brands at the moment as they offer more features for the price than most of the competition.

I didn't suggest 32gb of ram. I said he should leave himself with 2 slots free in case he ever wants to add more. 2x8gb would be a far better option than 4x4gb. Larger dimms retain their value more than smaller ones as well. Depending on the audio he's editing the file size can get very large if you are editing multiple lossless audio files.

What would you know about AMD drivers. Do you even own an AMD card? You do know amd have the better cards at every single price point at the moment don't you? Have you seen any benchmarks lately?