Half-Life Fallout: new build, need advice. - Half-Life Fallout

Im building a rig for a friend that wants to became a pc gamer. Ive surfed many of the major forums and homed in on this build.

• ASRovk z77 pro4
  
• Intel i5 2500k
  
• 8gb corsair ddr3
  
• sapphire 7850
  
• Seagate Barracuda 500GB
  
• Corsair CX500
  
• Rosewill Blackhawk

Does anyone have experience with any or these components? also do you guys think the PSU can handle the draw?

I always use this site to get a bit of an idea on what the rig is going to need in terms of power.
If the calculation falls a fair bit under the PSU's Wattage your probably going to be good. If what's calculated is close to the PSU maximum power you might want go a bit higher.

I have a 650W for my i5 2500k + 560GTX. Power draw for that combo is fine, so you should be close with yours. I don't know what the 7850 requires. If it's high end you should probably go higher than 500W.

The i5 2500k is the best CPU I've owned. Overclocks like a dream, even with a stock fan. Stick an aftermarket cooler on it and you can start pushing 5GHz.

7850 is not at all demanding power wise- only requires 1 external PCI-E power connector. 500W will suffice as long as it's a decent brand.

That's a great choice of components BillOwnz- the only change I would make is to throw in a 128GB SSD for the primary/boot OS and applications/games. Will make a good difference in terms of responsiveness and load times. Let the Barracuda be the 2nd drive.

I'll be buying a new PC in the coming month or two and don't pay much attention to hardware. Can those familiar with current hardware let me know what they think of the below build?

CAS:Xion Predator 970 Gaming Series Mid Tower Case w/ 2 External Removable HDD Bays
CD:LG 14X Internal Blu-ray Burner, BD-RE, DVD+RW, 3D Playback Combo Drive
CPU:Intel® Core™ i7-3820 Quad-Core 3.60 GHz 10MB Intel Smart Cache LGA2011 (All Venom OC Certified)
FAN:Asetek 510LC Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Enhanced Cooling Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) (Dual Standard 120MM Fans (Push-Pull))
HDD:2TB (2TBx1) SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
HDD2:240GB Corsair Neutron GTX SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 555MB/s Read & 511MB/s Write
MEMORY:16GB (4GBx4) DDR3/2133MHz Quad Channel Memory
MOTHERBOARD:(3-Way SLI/CrossFireX Support) ASUS P9X79 LE Intel X79 Chipset Quad Channel DDR3 ATX w/ Remote GO!, 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, 3 Gen3 PCIe X16, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI
POWERSUPPLY:750 Watts - Corsair CMPSU-750TXV2 80 Plus Power Supply - Quad SLI Ready
VIDEO:NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 3GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card
WNC:802.11b/g/n 300Mbps PCI Wireless Adapter Network Card

Considering that you're willing to spend money on a Sandy bridge-E i7, extremely fast RAM, ultra fast SSD and liquid cooling... then you might as well buy a high end video card as well. Radeon 7970Ghz or Geforce 670...

Humbug, on 24 January 2013 - 08:39 AM, said:

Is there going to be much of a difference between the 660 and the 670 performance-wise?

DyingTickles, on 24 January 2013 - 09:21 PM, said:

Yes
http://www.anandtech...duct/660?vs=598
IF you look at that comparison you can see that 670 is clearly faster, although 660 also seems fast enough in most situations.

Take the most graphically demanding game that's out at the moment- Far Cry 3, see below; may be an indication of how well it will hold up in the future especially as the new consoles come out..
http://www.techspot....ance/page3.html

If you don't want to spend on the 670, then at least get a 660ti or Radeon 7950. Both of which are faster than a 660. I say this seeing as the rest of your components are pretty high end...

What's your monitor resolution?

Get a mac

Humbug, on 24 January 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

Yeah, checked a few things out and the 670 is definitely worth the price increase. Thanks for pointing that out.

Right now my monitor is only 1680 x 1050, but I want a PC that'll survive a few years and I'll be upgrading monitors in the next year or so.

City 17, on 24 January 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

Sorry, I have too much self respect to do that.