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My system specs

Cpu;

Intel i7 2700k Quad core
standard frequency 3.6 Ghz with boost of 3.8 Ghz
Over clocked Frequency 4.6 Ghz
over clock Voltage 3.340
Arctic x4 cpu paste
Temps no load, 38c average
temps under full load, low to mid 70's
Akasa x4 CPU Cooler

Motherboard;
Gigabyte z77-D3H

Ram;
corsair Vengeance 8 gb's

Graphics card,

ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II 2048MB GDDR5
Standard clock 915MHz Core, 980MHz Boost
Memory 6000
Over clocked clock 1095 core, 1254MHz Boost
Over clocked memory 7500

Sound card;
Sound blaster Audigy 4

Power supply unit;

XFX ProSeries 850W PSU - XXX Edition Semi-Modular 80 Plus Silver rated

soon to come, SLI then triple SLI, water cooling and so on.

Ill add more in terms of Benchmarks and things if this post gets some interest.

Help over clocking can be given, and help overclocking graphics cards.

I personally cant give you all the answers but hopefully others will be able to help you!

cheers

Dear god man, four cores running at 3.6ghz+ and a 2gb GTX 670? You're tearing it up! My computer is pretty much a pre-fabbed Best Buy product...quad core 3.0 boosted to 3.2ghz, generic motherboard, 8gb's of generic ram 1TB harddrive. I installed the 750watt Corsair gold certified PSU and 1gb Radeon 6870. It's an absolute joke compared to your rig but easily runs Skyrim at max, Battlefield 3, Arkham City, Dishonored, Crysis 2 at high to very high at 1920x1200 resolution with some minimal Trixx overclocking. Hopefully it can handle Far Cry 3 in a few weeks here because I bet within half a year, I'll only be running new games at medium.

Unvoicedmercy: that's got to have cost you quite a bit! Nonetheless looks like a nice build. What sort of case are all these parts in?
Windtreeman: You sure you need 750W with those specs? From what you're saying about your build it looks like you'd do okay with 500 watts. Or are you planning to do a massive upgrade (multiple GPU in crossfire, etc...)?

Right now my desktop's just a huge heavy brick because I think my PSU got surged. I'm probably going to buy a new PSU within the next few weeks (possibly Black Friday/Cyber Monday), hopefully something very similar to what got fried.

I just upgraded the RAM, case, OS, and SSD not long before it fried also. Everything was blazing fast and super reliable. I am using a 3-year-old laptop now (one of the early Win 7 machines) and making the switch back was definitely tough.

anyway:

Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout. $60 on sale. Supposedly this is a "budget" case but I have been nothing but amazed at how solidly-built and spacious this thing is. I upgraded from a very cramped, generic mid-tower case, though: the kind that initially comes with a crappy PSU.

Mobo: ASROCK 970 Extreme4

CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 960. Stock cooling but plans to upgrade to a Hyper 212 cooler in the future. I nave neither overclocked this nor tried to unlock the fifth or sixth cores. It's good performance per dollar at stock speeds so no intents to do so yet either.

RAM: 8gb Crucial Ballistix 1600 mhz. Upgraded recently from 4GB of Corsair 1333 mhz memory, not sure what the model was.

SSD: OCZ Solid3 120GB. Supposedly this is a fairly low-end drive but I am upgrading from a 5400RPM drive, so huge difference.
HDD: 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green. The old WD Elements external drives basically were internal HDD plus enclosure, so I simply took this out of the enclosure. Alas, they don't do this anymore, and if you get a new WD elements external drive, the drive/enclosure are fully integrated. This is for music and video games, so the 5400 RPM speed has not been an issue. Am considering an upgrade to a 2TB drive when they are cheap.

Graphics: Sapphire AMD Radeon 6870
Not certain what the tech specs are on this card. It ran all the games I had at max settings, which is what matters in the end.

PSU: Before it broke, I had an Antec 550W modular supply. I would get the same PSU again.

BlueMax:

Don't get the 3930k six-core, although awesome its in fact an 8 core, but with 2 cores disabled. Intel didn't need to unlock all cores because they're already miles a head of competition. People have been raging about that for some time now.

I didn't go for the 3770k ivy-bridge for one reason, its more expensive and it runs hotter than the sandy-bridge, due to the paste they used for the heat sink/cap on the cpu. To many issues with it when it first came out, so I built a 2700k instead. Have you over-clocked the cpu at all?

GTA IV is a good example of a game you really could use a SLI or Crossfire, since its a console port so really doesn't run well on pc's. I've mod the game for better graphics and things, and it max's out my 670 constantly, so my fps on average are in the low to mid 40's. Even max's all for cores uses around 70 to 90% of my cpu.

Also Skyrim's good for most graphics cards standard with high settings, but mod'd it really pushes even my gpu to its limits. I run a dual monitor set up, better for productivity

windtreeman:

I don't own all those games, so I cant tell you my fps. You should try and sell you're card and buy a Radeon 7850, its only £164 and apparently the card you have now is worth £129 pounds. Wow you have a monitor with a resolution of 1920x1200, mines only 1920x1080. It's inevitable eventually I also wont be able to play games with high settings. I will SLI eventually but even that wont last forever! That's the problem with being a pc gamer XD, but its worth it for the awesome graphics!

aleclair:

I have a standard mid tower case, a little cramped in there! I will be upgrading the case to a full sized one (Thermaltake Overseer Full ATX Case - Black with Blue LED) when I have the funds to do an SLI at the same time . I need to spend a lot more money yet, possibly another grand. Its not a short term build I can tell you that! I've spent £1200 so far, I built it myself to save money.

It's a fun hobby, It'll be a shame when its complete though.

Oy... I'm never "finished". This is my aspie obsession... once I've researched something to death, did comparison shopping to price-match every item for the best possible price, then build the machine... I usually sell it off for a small profit then start all over again!

Really, the machine I have is perfectly fine... it's a Q6600 Core2Quad 2.4, 6GB DDR2 and a Radeon 7750. This Dell Dimension 9200 may not be fancy, but its rare BTX design is fantastic for video cooling... this design is almost 100% silent and the passive no-fan video card still stays frosty.

It's not a screamer but it's not lacking in any way... it doesn't stop me from wanting a monster though.

It plays Skyrim at max... who needs more?

Heh, you and me both. I've usually had very little play-money so I've had to get the absolute most for the least money possible!

The A6/A8/A10 processors sure fit that bill... sometimes. The highest A10 processor + mobo is $250-ish... that same $250 would easily get an i3/mobo/good gaming video card, thus better performance than the A10 would.

true, there are better performance pr dollar than the A series(at least the ones i know)
but i still havent found a lower overall price while maintaing full functionality, the power requirements are low enough to use the cheap case + generic power supply combos that every shop seems to have.
RAM is so cheap today that throwign anything less than 8 gb in wont actually save money, the only place where i like to shell out a little extra is for the hard drive, fitting a green line western digital will ensure low power use and a long lifespan.

as i see it we have hit upon the point where even the cheapest of new generation parts will do more than what many use their pc's for,
an a6 with its fully integrated gpu will even allow for a proper media center experience for less than some hard drive recorders and bluray devices would cost, let alone a brand media center.

as said before all of this is either in the case of people that dont have extra needs or as a secondary pc, my own needs mean the latter

"Oodain"

Yes I agree, people don't use good computers to they're potential. Waste of money when you could go with a cheaper computer, and still do the same tasks you want to.

I for one need all the power I can get, Especially since I love over-clocking and the games I play are mod'd so need good hardware for games to run smoothly. To me there's no point converting from a 'console gamer' to a 'pc gamer', if I'm to play games with the same graphics.

Most graphic cards/cpu's can handle standard games at max settings, but if you're well into modding games you need to spend more to handle the more advanced graphics. A lot of games mod'd max out my 670, and push my cpu to the limit.
Poorly coded games are always going to be around, I really could use an SLI to play some games with max setting and mods.

If I only wanted to play games and settings didn't matter, I'd stick with my Acer laptop. With anything in life only buy as much as you need, nothing more; For Example don't buy a Ferrari for driving around London at 15 mph! Yet we all buy things we could do with out, but I like you're style. I actually kept a very old pc, a AMD Athlon 3000 just to over-clock, and buy a cheap graphics card for then see how it fairs in the world of gaming today! It's an old gaming machine, but when I'm finished it'll be my little server.

none of the described pc's are meant as main pc's (most arent in use by me to begin with)

without my i5 and ati hd6950, unlocked to 6970, i would be in big trouble,

i havent been able to justify spending more than that, yet, i did just buy a new mechanical keyboard though.

I remember that sometimes happening in games due to the whole system stopping to load something off the hard drive.

You're shooting yourself in the foot by not having Win7 though - you can't do DX10-11 enhanced graphics under XP. Your recent games could be running much prettier, some also faster.