[J0my]

Hey guys, planning a build for a mate for a small gaming rig, just would like some of the more expert opinions from the awesome OCN community ^0^

Specs are as follows for the Prodigy build:

CPU: i7 3770 (won't be overclocking)+Corsair H60 SE CPU Cooler (Rear Intake)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance CML8GX3M2A1600C9 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3
SSD: Corsair Force Series GS 128GB SSD (+ 2TB something)
MB : ASRock Z77E-ITX Mini ITX
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD7950 3GB OC Edition V2 (Fan design wouldn't really be an issue with the case being small and the fan config?)
PSU: Corsair GS-600 V2
FAN: Front 23cm Bitfenix Spector Pro, Top (undecided on brand but most likely x2 Pulling air out)

The main part that has me undecided is the CPU cooler (I am aware of the ASRock cooler limitations for the board) and going by the majority of users its fairly split between H100(i)/H80(i)/H60/Custom (with this board, I am aware of the many air cooler options for the ASUS but find it hard justifying that for the extra $45~). He will be playing games at 1080, not overclocking so no K version really needed (perhaps a step down to an i5 3570k?). The PSU should also be fairly sufficient for the needs of the system. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance ^_^

 

[Ramzinho]

i would say drop the 3770 and get a 3570K.. for the price of that and the saving. he can over clock in the future.
You have already made your opinion on every other component and justified that. so no reason we should debate with you. only thing you seem to need help with is the cpu so i threw my 2 cents

 

[J0my]

thanks for the reply, was just seeing if there were any real faults to the build

and your right about the cpu, had been on the fence with that one its a +$70 saving going for the i5

 

[svenge]

I have a middle-ground solution for the CPU: The Xeon e3-1230v2. It's an Ivy Bridge quad-core chip with hyper-threading, but is 100MHz slower than the 3770 and lacks an integrated CPU. The retail price for it is $240, which is about $50 less than the i7-3770 and $20 more than the i5-3570K.

It certainly takes the price/performance crown, especially since you're not doing any O/C-ing on this rig. Of course, Xeons don't have unlocked multipliers anyhow...

 

[Mopar63]

if not overclocking you can drop even further, down to an i5 3450 and the game experience would be unaffected. As for the cooler, drop that bit as well and go with an H60 or Water 2.0 Performer. If you need that little extra boost you can always take the 3450 to 3.9 GHz and that is plenty for any game out there.

Also I would drop the motherboard to the Gigabyte Z77N-WiFi, it costs less money and supports a mild overclock really well. Plus has a great Wifi and support for Intel's WiDi.

Could also cut a little bit more and get the Sapphire 7870 XT which for 1080 is a beast and probably the current best buy.

Take the money saved from the above cuts and up the SSD to 240 gig and drop the spindle drive, you will have a smoking gamer rig.

 

[J0my]

the Xeon is a nice reccomendation, I will look into that some more. Yeah my bias's are coming throught sometimes with having the option to overclock, but i know he will most likely never need it and the voice in the back of my head to perhaps include for the hell of it, but again some really good ideas ^_^

 

[Mopar63]

Quote:

Originally Posted by J0my

the Xeon is a nice reccomendation, I will look into that some more. Yeah my bias's are coming throught sometimes with having the option to overclock, but i know he will most likely never need it and the voice in the back of my head to perhaps include for the hell of it, but again some really good ideas ^_^

It is exactly that reason I suggest the 3450. At stock speeds in gaming experience you cannot tell the difference between it and any other i5 chip, or heck even an i7. The performance delta at stocks speeds is just to close for the experience to really be altered. On a single video card overclocking works okay but at around 4 GHz the gains from overclocking begin to diminish in return for the effort put out. Now on a dual video card that the higher overclock can feed that is a different story but the build you are talking about would only gain in benchmarks, not in gaming experience.

The 3450 can got to 3.9 on stock cooling, as I have shown in my Q25 build. With the Prodigy's ability to get air flow it should run even cooler and that works with stock coolers and no tweaking other than raising the boost multiplier.