Building a new computer

As I’ve previously blogged, I have a little bit of spare money coming up so I have decided to buy a computer (mainly for gaming) and will build this into a Cooler Master case I have had sitting around.

For the technically-minded, here is what the new machine will look like – the motherboard and CPU will be an Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 coupled with an Intel Core i5 3570K, mainly for overclocking capabilities. This will be paired with 8GB of DDR3 RAM.

I have settled on the Sapphire AMD Radeon 7850 2GB as a graphics card, again an overclocking-capable model. This should allow me to run most games in high resolution, while not being overly expensive. The rest of the PC should provide a solid base for future refreshing by a more powerful GPU one day. (I’ll also pick up another 19″ LCD for dual-screens while I’m at it, too.)

A friend twisted my arm into getting an Intel SSD hard drive for Windows and programs as well as a Western Digital 2TB SATA disk – apparently the load times are way better and worth the extra spend. The CPU will be cooled by a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo and the whole thing will be powered by a new Antec Neo Eco 520. I should be able to reuse my old DVD-RW and DVD drives, too.

I’m putting through my orders to MSY and Orange next week, so please let me know if you have any thoughts/suggestions.