• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

New Build Questions

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Saltcreek

Registered
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Hello,

I am tired of my old computer and I am building a new one. I have put together what I think will be a good gaming computer. I was wondering if there are any suggestions or improvements to make? I will be reusing my old PSU which is a Corsair 750w modular.

rY3A6R5.jpg

Thanks,

Salt
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I will overclock later on but not at the start. Nothing serious though, would those boards still work?
 
The only real advantage the ROG boards have over the Extreme 4/6 and Z97-A is true 8-phase power delivery. Do you need that with Haswell? Not for any kind of overclock you're going to get with an off-the-shelf cooler. Don't spend money where it's not needed. The ASUS Z97-A or the ASRock Extreme 4 or 6 would be solid choices and allow you to save a bit of cash.

I suggest you pick up an aftermarket CPU cooler with the rest of your system and incorporate it from the get-go. Adding a new cooler to an already-built PC can be a pain in the butt. Don't put yourself through it.

Also, your RAM, you want 2X4GB. Not 1X8GB. You always want to maximize the memory bandwidth available to you through the platform you are using. 2 channel for 1150, 1 channel for AM1, 4 channels for 2011, and so on. Also, get at very least 1600Mhz CAS 9. CAS 10 1600Mhz is firmly in the territory of "Garbage memory" in my opinion.

Also, I don't know what the situation is like on your side of the lake but in the US you can get Team Xtreem 2400Mhz Cas 10 @ 2X8GB for a very reasonable $130. You might want to see if this is available to you. They have 8GB kits as well I'm just quoting the 16 because that's the only price I remember. Team makes decent memory at very good prices. Of all the builds we've suggested to people with Team RAM over the years nobody's ever come back and said they got faulty RAM that I can think of.

CPU coolers to look at include the Corsair H series, the NZXT Kraken series, Swiftech's H series, Noctua's NHD14 and NHD15, etc. If you only want a modest overclock and want to save some money you can go as low as a Cooler Master Hyper 212 ($30ish US). Remember that your motherboard and RAM choices determine whether you can use certain coolers. Very tall RAM is a no-no with big air coolers, and the NHD15 will only fit motherboards where the top expansion slot is not the primary PCIE X 16 slot. So do a bit of reasearch/asking around before you make your RAM/mobo/cooler choices.
 
Back