Thinking of Pulling the Trigger on this PC Build. Some Questions

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killacam

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#1  Edited By killacam

I guess it's my turn to start the daily "Check my PC build" thread. I'll be using this to enter the wonderful world of PC gaming but also as a general work PC (I'm in my first year of comp sci and will eventually be doing things like development, 3D modelling, etc.). I'm not the most knowledgeable on the inner-workings of a PC but from reading through similar threads I've figured out enough to come up with a build. I'm not sure if there are things I could cut down on; I think if anything it would be the CPU but then again I can't really envision how these numbers translate into performance at this point.

Corsair Carbide Series 500R White Steel structure with molded ABS plastic accent pieces ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power ...

EVGA 02G-P4-3660-KR GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

G.SKILL Sniper Gaming Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-1866C10D-16GSR

Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

I'm 97% sure it will all fit together and whatnot. Do I need to buy a cooling system? I've read that the Intel k-series runs pretty hot, but that case has four fans. That's an alright number of fans, right?!. Is upgrading to an i7 worth the price at this point? Would using a 22" 1080p TV suffice as a monitor? I've seen a number of variations on that graphics card: Superclocked, more RAM, etc. How will those upgrades translate to performance? How long would such a build last a guy?

Thanks a lot for the help. It's a scary thing to just dive in to something like this, so any tips/advice/info is greatly appreciated.

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Robinson

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#2  Edited By Robinson

For your build, drop that 16gb of ram down to 8 and save yourself some money. You won't really see the need for more than 8 at the moment, and the RAM only gets cheaper as time oes on.

For Cards:

SUperclocking is best, it gives the GPU a better processor speed, so it is just like overclocking on your regular CPU.

Extra Ram is usually a gimmick. Only so much of the GPU ram can be accessed at once due to the bottlenecking between the RAM and GPU. USually just there to up the price.

Personally, I would go for an i7 from the sandy bridge. It will be cheaper, darn near the same performance, and it is able to disparate heat much better than the Ivy Bridge version.

You could save yourself even more money by ditching the 128ssd for a 64gbssd and use it as a paging file in windows. Windows will autmatically move your most used files onto the ssd (the hdd is still the main drive) so you get the best performance of ssd with the cheap storage of hdd. 64gb is the max that windows can manage for this task. Later on you can add an additional larger ssd as tell Steam to use it as your gaming drive.