[Velathawen]

Looking to build a new system for my dad who's aging Core 2 Duo system is on its last stretch. He wants to have the potential to play some games in his free time and needs it to be as quiet as possible. He sees how snappy my system is with the OC and wants to emulate it to an extent. We will be buying the parts in Hong Kong, but at this point I'm just looking for pointers on hardware selection.

These parts we have picked up through deals:
G.Skill DDR3-1866 CL9 2x4GB
Crucial M4 128GB SSD
LG Blu-Ray some model
Lancool PC K-62
CoolerMaster Silencio(SP?) 550W - Recycling this from his core 2 duo system, hopefully we can save some money and not have to buy a new PSU just yet.

This is my proposed build:
CPU - 2500K ($217 USD)
Motherboard - Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H WB Wifi Dad really likes that it has the wifi dongle since his room has poor wifi reception ($282 - yeap it's a rip off, definitely not buying this in HK!)
GPU - Taking over my SLI 460 1GB so I can swap to 670

Cooler - Cogage Arrow ($50 USD)
PSU - If my dad indeed takes my GPUs, we will be buying a Antec HCG 750, TPN 750, or even Seasonic X-750 ($120 USD!)
TIM - I have some IC7 lying around

My main points of uncertainty are the motherboard and cooler.

Motherboard - The wifi is nice, but this is definitely not the only model that offers it, and it isn't a must have. Not looking for world record OC here, but do want something of quality with the potential support for a multi-GPU set up. Having a quick browse of both the Asus and Gigabyte Z77 threads, it looks like there are a few people still experiencing various bios problems so I'm wondering if we should just hold off the purchase until the bios is a bit more mature.

Cooling - I am looking for alternatives that can perform similarly to the Cogage Arrow for the same cost. I thought about the H80 and H100 for space reasons, but they are almost double in cost here.

Thanks as always!

 

[UltraVolta425]

Go for the i5 3570K instead of the i5 2500K. Only 30$ more expensive.
The ASUS Z77 Sabertooth looks way cooler + also has wifi, but more importantly, it's about 50$ cheaper than your Gigabyte one.

Any cooler will do at stock speeds. However, if you wanna OC, and you wanna do it decently, I say go for the H80 or preferrably for the H100.
It's almost 100$, but really, I have the H100 and if I go all out with it (meaning if I put my fans on max speed), I sometimes get a difference of 10° in real life gaming situations.

Hope this helps.

 

[mchart]

Have you thought about getting a wi-fi adapter separately from the motherboard, either through a PCI card or a USB device? Perhaps along the lines of these devices: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100010074%20600014297&IsNodeId=1&ShowDeactivatedMark=False

That might be a more flexible option that would make your motherboard choice less restricted.

 

[Velathawen]

Like I said in the OP, the motherboard having bundled WiFi is definitely not a must have. I think it probably averages out if we pick up another board that is just as capable of overclocking with a separate adapter as you suggested.

Here's a slightly revised list:
CPU - 2500K, the 3570K offers no real world performance gain for my dad and as a result is not worth the extra $50
Motherboard - AsRock Z77 Extreme 4 or Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H, though we will be holding off on purchasing this until bios gets more mature in general
Cooler - I did a bit more looking around and I really can't seem to find anything that performs close to the Cogage Arrow for 50 bucks :/