PC Upgrade

[Exos]

Just spec'd up some new kit for an upgrade.

Current system is a Lian Li Case, 4GB OCZ RAM, Q9550 Quad Core 2.83Ghz and Asus P5Q Deluxe /w wireless and I already have an LG Blu-Ray writer , NEC DVD-RW, 120GB Vertex II, Dell 2407 24" Monitor, Razer Mamba and Roccat Valo Keyboard. Also have a Koolance EXOS but the circuit board is busted so beeps constantly

But does anyone have anything to add in terms of the kit listed, bad/good reviews, alternatives?

1 x LiteOn IHAS124-19 Rev B 24x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, DVD-RAM x12, SATA, Black, OEM

1 x Corsair 600T Graphite Series Black Mid Tower Gaming Case, w/o PSU
1 x 750W PSU, Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750M, Modular, 85% Eff', 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX

1 x Asus P8Z68-V PRO, Intel Z68, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, RAID SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), VGA On Board, ATX
1 x Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, S1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad, 3.3GHz, HD2000 IGP 850Mhz, 6MB Cache, 95W OEM
1 x Corsair H80 Hydro Series High Performance CPU cooler, S775/1155/1156/1366/2011/AM2/AM3
1 x 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.50V
1 x 60GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD, 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s, SandForce 2281, Read 525MB/s, Write 475MB/s, 80K IOPS
1 x 1GB Asus GTX 560Ti Direct CU II TOP, 40nm, 4200MHz GDDR5, GPU 900MHz, Shader 1800MHz, 384 Cores, mHDMI Free Batman

1 x Qnap TS-412 4x Bay 3.5"/2.5" NAS 1.2GHz 256MB DDRII inc 2x Gigabit Lan, 4x USB, 2x eSATA
4 x 2TB Seagate ST2000VX002 SV35.5, SATA 6Gb/s, 5900rpm, 64MB Cache, 8.5ms, NCQ

 

[Tamarc]

Just wondering why you never went for an i7 cpu...looks awesome all the same.

 

[Exos]

Just wondering why you never went for an i7 cpu...looks awesome all the same.

Cost more than anything, adds in about another £100

 

[Tamarc]

Drop a few of the hdd's would that not make the diff,easily add a few more at a later time

 

[daveleebond]

I would deffo try and wait a bit longer for the 4 2tb sata's since hdd's are rocketing in prices now due to the WD plant being under water at the moment.

 

[Exos]

I noticed that, they went up by £20ea just recently.

They are primarily for the QNAP.

 

[little_pob]

I moved to that Corsair case from a Lian Li V1000. The top half of the drive cage can impede air flow to the graphics card, even when the hard drives fitted in the lower half. Some go as far as removing the top half of the cage and fitting a fan with parcel ties to help direct air at the graphics card (although I see Corsair have now released a mesh side panel for this case). Also I go to a LAN session once a week, so I wasn't impressed with the steel chassis and plastic trim so moved to a Lian Li V1020 (nice case, but not really suited to water cooling without modification due to the odd roof fan arrangement). Still, if it's not going to move often, I'm lead to believe the Corsair cases get some of the best performance out of the those Corsair closed loop water coolers.

If this is a gaming rig, I'd suggest going for a 120 or 128GB capacity drive. My main rig has 2x128GB drives installed in RAID0, and has just over 160GB of used space. And the laptop with a 60GB SSD that has only approx 4GB of free space left.

Not just WD struggling with the floods in Thailand: Thailand floods disrupt hard disk production | bit-tech.net

 

[Exos]

Thanks Pob, I was/am getting the side panel but at present it's out of stock so that's why it isn't listed. I generally only play some key games, Starcraft, WoW (EU Aggramar if anyone asks) and some spurious others (Crysis etc etc) that are on and off my HD.

The only reason i went for the 60Gb was that my current 120GB Vertex still has 80GB free ( i generally just use it as a boot partition).

Other one is I'm in rather dire need for disk space having already filled 2TB with movies, TV shows etc, but I'm rather gutted at the added in £80 in just a week of updating my list of kit. The overall intention was to move my two 1TB F1 Spinpoint drives into the QNAP, install 2 of the 2TB in my rig and 2 in the QNAP (as raid), thus giving me 3TB usable. Plus at some point i intend to build a VSphere or XenServer, so wanted the iSCSI presentation in the SAN/NAS.

I also thought about not using closed loop, but that was/is just laziness on my part

P.S the V1000 is exactly the same case I have, only it really does my nut in as the access panel is on the right hand side (next to the sodding wall)

 

[little_pob]

What bothered me on the V1000 was the restricted access to the 4/8pin CPU power connector and that with Intel socketed motherboards the RAM locks would foul on that plate between the top area and HDD+PSU area.

The V1020 has the access panel on the normal side. Also it has the added advantage of having a removable motherboard tray. However, it's almost double the price of the Corsair 600T and has that wierd roof fan setup I mentioned. Still, if you're interested it's worth reading the review of it on bit-tech: Lian Li PC-V1020 Review | bit-tech.net

I know what you mean about HDD prices. I could currently do with a >500GB mechanical SATA 600 for my Steam folder...

 

[Exos]

Finally went through with it, here are the results (sorry for grainy pictures, what i get for using the "inferior" camera on the iPhone )

Love the case, the cable management and access at the panel behind the motherboard is fantastic. Case was a little bigger than i expected also.