Category Archives: Video Games

Gaming Rig

I’ve wanted to build my own gaming rig for quite some time, and finally this year I had enough money and time to do so! Whilst working over the summer I did tons of research on sites such as newegg, scan and amazon and this was the build I came up with:
  • Case – Corsair Special Edition Graphite Series 600T Mid Tower Gaming Computer Case
  • Motherboard – ASUS P8Z68-V PRO
  • Processor – Intel Sandybridge i5-2500K OC 4.6GHz
  • Graphics Card – Asus 1GB GeForce GTX 560TI DirectCUII PCI-E Graphics Card OC 900MHz
  • Memory – Corsair 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Two Module Kit
  • Hard Drive – Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive
  • SSD – OCZ Agility 3 60GB
  • PSU – Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 High Performance 750W Power Supply
  • Cooling – Corsair H80 Water Cooler
  • Monitor – Asus 24-inch VH242H Wide Gaming LCD TFT Monitor
The Parts

Ready for assembly!

Case

Mid-way Through Assembly

About to install the Corsair H80 Water Cooling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SSD Set-up:

I opted to use my SSD as an accelerated cache for the WD Caviar using Intel Smart Response Technology, one of the features of the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO. I haven’t performed any hardcore benchmarks purely because the system is so fast and reliable that I haven’t seen the need to. It generally boots up in around 40-50 seconds, which I know is slightly slower than if the SSD was a pure boot-drive but this is fast enough for me and I get the added advantage of all of my frequently used applications running faster. If you are going for a 60GB or smaller SSD I’d highly recommend this configuration.

The Result:

This rig exceeds all of my expectations and the research, learning and building process was extremely gratifying! Here is my Geekbench score and below is a screenshot showing the overclocking I achieved using tools like MSI Afterburner, CPU-ZCore Temp and of course the motherboard BIOS, which was actually really easy to use.

Overclocking

Results of overclocking my CPU and GPU plus Windows Experience scores

Side without panelSide with panelInsideFront