Is it going to work?

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

So I think this would be more suited to go into a tech support forum but I've grown attached to this one and I trust the members of the Escapist, but I digress. I need a PC to play games on, a PC that I can toy around with because no one else depends on it and only I have to pay the consequences. So this is the setup I'm going with. I expect it will work but I need some confirmation about it. These are the parts with their links.

Spoiler: Hard Drive: Seagate ST31000528AS 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158798

Spoiler: Cooler: Hardware Labs Black ICE GT Extreme 360 radiator In Black

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220207

Spoiler: Processor: Intel Core i5 660 3.33GHz Socket 1156 4MB L3 Cache Retail Box Processor

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/185940

Spoiler: Motherboard: Asus P7P55 LX P55 Socket 1156 8 Channel Audio Out ATX Motherboard

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176820

Spoiler: RAM: Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz Memory Kit Unbuffered CL9

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/178943

Spoiler: Sound Card: Asonic 8 Channel Soundcard C-media 8768 Chipset 3D - PCI

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/98073

Spoiler: Power Supply Unit: CIT 700W Black Edition PSU 12cm Fan Dual 12v Rail 20+4pin 2x SATA

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169063

Spoiler: Casing: Casecom KB-5510 Black/Silver Blue LED Mid Tower Case - No PSU

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125959

Spoiler: Graphics Card: ASUS GT240 1GB DDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/182092

 

[SomeLameStuff]

I noticed you don't have a graphic card listed. Did you forget to put it in, or really forget to give your GAMING computer a graphic card?

 

[itf cho]

Hmmm - not going to work too well without a graphics card.

 

[Gorden Springel]

hes gonna use on-board gfx guys!

 

[megalomania]

As the obvious has already been pointed out I would add this:

Unless you are a serious audiophile and have some extremely good speakers and do your own track editing I wouldn't bother buying the sound card. Onboard sound cards are perfectly good, I don't know why everyone gets down on them all the time. If all you are doing is plugging some crappy 2.1 speakers in and listening to MP3s and playing games then there is no point wasting money on the soundcard!

Edit you ought to post the rest of the specs for your water cooling system, the reservoir/radiator is a fiarly minor part of it!

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Hmmm - not going to work too well without a graphics card.

Okay, so I forgot to add in the graphics card. I honestly forgot about it. I was too busy thinking if all the components would fit together and I must have closed the tab by mistake. Anyway, fixed.

As the obvious has already been pointed out I would add this:

Unless you are a serious audiophile and have some extremely good speakers and do your own track editing I wouldn't bother buying the sound card. Onboard sound cards are perfectly good, I don't know why everyone gets down on them all the time. If all you are doing is plugging some crappy 2.1 speakers in and listening to MP3s and playing games then there is no point wasting money on the soundcard!

Edit you ought to post the rest of the specs for your water cooling system, the reservoir/radiator is a fiarly minor part of it!

Hmm, well I figured I'm already spending quite a bit of money on it, I might as well go all out and buy it for £6. And about the cooling system, I'm fairly new at building a custom PC (by that I mean this is my first time) and aren't too sure as to what kind of cooling system I'm gonna need. Tips? Advice?

 

[megalomania]

As the obvious has already been pointed out I would add this:

Unless you are a serious audiophile and have some extremely good speakers and do your own track editing I wouldn't bother buying the sound card. Onboard sound cards are perfectly good, I don't know why everyone gets down on them all the time. If all you are doing is plugging some crappy 2.1 speakers in and listening to MP3s and playing games then there is no point wasting money on the soundcard!

Edit you ought to post the rest of the specs for your water cooling system, the reservoir/radiator is a fiarly minor part of it!

Hmm, well I figured I'm already spending quite a bit of money on it, I might as well go all out and buy it for £6. And about the cooling system, I'm fairly new at building a custom PC (by that I mean this is my first time) and aren't too sure as to what kind of cooling system I'm gonna need. Tips? Advice?

OK so for £6 you might aswell get it! I didn't bother to check the price lol!

As for water cooling, I have never done it personally but a couple of my friends have. My impression is this: if you have a beefy processor and are serious about over clocking it then water cooling can be worth it. You should look up the power consumption of your processor (idle and load), I would imagine it is around 85W (a pretty roguh guess, haven't looked at that stuff in a while! Try anandtech for articles about it, also google has the answer!) so unless you want to over clock it fan cooling should do the trick - the i7 CPUs can have a bigger power consumption so they are more likely to need watercooling.

Having said that you ought to think about where your stack is going to live - if you are sticking it in a small space under a desk in a tiny hotbox room then water cooling might be the way to go. I have a big case (coolermaster centurion590 or something) with reasonably air flow but my room gets very warm so I do worry when I game for a long time. On the upside I need a new MOBO & Processor so I don't care if I cook it a bit!

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

OK so for £6 you might aswell get it! I didn't bother to check the price lol!

As for water cooling, I have never done it personally but a couple of my friends have. My impression is this: if you have a beefy processor and are serious about over clocking it then water cooling can be worth it. You should look up the power consumption of your processor (idle and load), I would imagine it is around 85W (a pretty roguh guess, haven't looked at that stuff in a while! Try anandtech for articles about it, also google has the answer!) so unless you want to over clock it fan cooling should do the trick - the i7 CPUs can have a bigger power consumption so they are more likely to need watercooling.

Having said that you ought to think about where your stack is going to live - if you are sticking it in a small space under a desk in a tiny hotbox room then water cooling might be the way to go. I have a big case (coolermaster centurion590 or something) with reasonably air flow but my room gets very warm so I do worry when I game for a long time. On the upside I need a new MOBO & Processor so I don't care if I cook it a bit!

Well, it's going in my room and I don't think I'll be putting it in any closed desk spaces but I might need to depending on the desk I use. So I think the water cooler and a fan would be worth looking into but in my wanting to get through it all I didn't properly look at the cooler I put down. This seems like the sort of thing I want to be getting http://www.ebuyer.com/product/223584. Apparently the power consumption of the processor is 73W:

the dual-core Core i5 660 / 661 will be the most interesting product from a price-performance point of view. It has a clock frequency of 3.33 GHz, a TDP of 73/87W

The fan I linked will work the i5 1156 and if the fan will do enough to keep it cool great, if not then I guess having a window open while I play can't hurt. Other than that I think it's all compatible. If you can look it over just to make sure then you'd be doing a world of good.

And everyone likes a crispy skin on their chicken, I guess the rule could apply to your motherboard.

 

[RathWolf]

I wouldn't recommend trying water cooling, especially if this is your first time building a computer. It's complicated, high maintenance, and if you don't install it correctly it can completely ruin your system. It's also MUCH more expensive. Additionally, unless you feel the need to overclock to the brink of melting your CPU, it's really not going to make that much of a difference.

I personally don't find it necessary to overclock my CPU at all, but hey, to each their own.

 

[Haunted Serenity]

I like air cooling with fans. Especially when you have a set up that creates a pressure system pulling cool air through. You'll never have dust or over heat however the one i built for my cousin has a very exposed heat sink to take away the core heat which the fans can't and it becomes a bit of a fire hazard. Water cooling seem pretty nifty though.

 

[megalomania]

Well, it's going in my room and I don't think I'll be putting it in any closed desk spaces but I might need to depending on the desk I use. So I think the water cooler and a fan would be worth looking into but in my wanting to get through it all I didn't properly look at the cooler I put down. This seems like the sort of thing I want to be getting http://www.ebuyer.com/product/223584. Apparently the power consumption of the processor is 73W:

the dual-core Core i5 660 / 661 will be the most interesting product from a price-performance point of view. It has a clock frequency of 3.33 GHz, a TDP of 73/87W

The fan I linked will work the i5 1156 and if the fan will do enough to keep it cool great, if not then I guess having a window open while I play can't hurt. Other than that I think it's all compatible. If you can look it over just to make sure then you'd be doing a world of good.

And everyone likes a crispy skin on their chicken, I guess the rule could apply to your motherboard.

That fan looks like it will do the business for your mobo with no trouble. I would make sure the fan is pointing towards the back plane of the case - that way it will be directing the hot air towards the vent on the back instead of back into the case. You could stick an 80mm fan on the back vent as an exhaust fan too if you have the inclination.

The rest of your system looks fine, the only thing I wasn't sure about was the case itself; there is a mounting point for a fan at the bottom of the front, but it looked to me like the front plate is solid so there seems to be no way for air to get in! Thought that was a little strange. Maybe its a mesh front, I can't tell because the images are too low res.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

That fan looks like it will do the business for your mobo with no trouble. I would make sure the fan is pointing towards the back plane of the case - that way it will be directing the hot air towards the vent on the back instead of back into the case. You could stick an 80mm fan on the back vent as an exhaust fan too if you have the inclination.

The rest of your system looks fine, the only thing I wasn't sure about was the case itself; there is a mounting point for a fan at the bottom of the front, but it looked to me like the front plate is solid so there seems to be no way for air to get in! Thought that was a little strange. Maybe its a mesh front, I can't tell because the images are too low res.

I think the Fan points to the side or something. It wasn't something I spent too much time on looking for. I just wanted a case that would fit it all in and allow air to get in. If it looks to be a problem when I come to buying it then I'll look around for another one that'll be much better. Thanks for the assistance, much appreciated.

 

[megalomania]

That fan looks like it will do the business for your mobo with no trouble. I would make sure the fan is pointing towards the back plane of the case - that way it will be directing the hot air towards the vent on the back instead of back into the case. You could stick an 80mm fan on the back vent as an exhaust fan too if you have the inclination.

The rest of your system looks fine, the only thing I wasn't sure about was the case itself; there is a mounting point for a fan at the bottom of the front, but it looked to me like the front plate is solid so there seems to be no way for air to get in! Thought that was a little strange. Maybe its a mesh front, I can't tell because the images are too low res.

I think the Fan points to the side or something. It wasn't something I spent too much time on looking for. I just wanted a case that would fit it all in and allow air to get in. If it looks to be a problem when I come to buying it then I'll look around for another one that'll be much better. Thanks for the assistance, much appreciated.

Have fun building it!

You have got me thinking about my next upgrade now, damn you! I don't have the money for it just now - I shall have to savour the planning phase for a month or two. Probably going to end up with core i5 like you, the 1156 socket has plenty of potential for upgrades in a few years without breaking the bank, the damn 1336 socket processors will kill my bank balance!