Some general advice wanted for a noob :P

[AJ (LOUDA1)]

I've never really been into computer gaming as i have usually played console but was quite interested in it and thought i may as well get myself a half decent computer as i have always had laptops and with my best/last laptop being a daul core 2.2ghz with 2 gig ram and no graphics card what i bought was a bit of a step up.

Asus p7p55d-e pro Motherboard
intel core i7 860 @ 2.8ghz
Corsair H70 Watercooling unit
16GB 2000MHz Patriot extreme edition ram
Vertex3 120GB SSD
WD 1TB Green Drive
Corsair HX750W Power Supply
ATI/AMD 5970 2GB DUEL GPU
Thermaltake armor+ Full size tower
DVDr rom
Razer lycoas Gaming keyboard
microsoft Sidewinder X5 gaming mouse

i bought this second hand and then purchased

2x WD 2TB Green Drives
Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard

let me know if i left anything out..

and have this hooked up to my Samsung 50" Plasma and Sony Muteki 7.2 surround sound.

Basically i was just wondering what people thought of this setup, is it decent enough? is there a weak link? am i a tool for wanting to overclock it?

whatever your reply is, feedback is always good, and i hope i posted this thread in the right section

 

[Sean W.]

damn good computer! especially if the price was right. my only gripe is the green hard drive that is inside of the computer, those are for storage ( pictures, music, video, files, etc.. ) because the disk only spins at 5400 RPM, the faster the disk spins the faster the computer can access the files its looking for and the faster things happen, for instance your computer booting up, levels loading in a game, applications opening up and so on. with a green drive like yours all that is going to happen slower than whats basically the industry standard, Western digitals black drives that spin and 7200rpm, and things happen at a decent speed. As of late, people get SSD's ( Solid State Drives ) that have no moving parts so the way the computer reads from those drives is crazy fast, they also last damn near forever due to the fact there is no moving parts. with an SSD your boot up time will be a matter of seconds. thats great and all, but there is an achilles heel to SSD's, they are SIGNIFICANTLY more expenesive than your traditional HDDs ( Hard Disk Drive ).

in the end, having a green drive isnt a BAD thing, youre just going to have to be patient sometimes.

 

[AJ (LOUDA1)]

Thanks for the good words Sean.

I am only using the green drives (1x 1TB + 2x 2TB) for storage and have a Vertex3 120GB SSD for OS i was thinking about raiding the 2 2TB's for faster up/down speeds, would this be worth it?

 

[Sean W.]

oh erggg, i didnt see the SSD listed in the specs. in that case its a great computer. raiding storage drives wouldnt really do any good.

 

[AJ (LOUDA1)]

Thanks for that.
is there a benchmark OC for my sort of setup? I don't even really know if my CPU needs it as I never notice it get above 70% while playing games, I think it's more my graphics card, it get a little bit jumpy in the middle of busy fighting scenes, but I do have all the graphics settings on the game maxxed out

 

[Slaymate]

3DMark11 is a good gaming benchmark.

3DMark11 for Windows 7

 

[AJ (LOUDA1)]

Thanks heaps for that, I have turbovevo that I downloaded from the asus site while downloading drivers.. I that program any good or should I just download 3dmark11?

 

[Slaymate]

TurboVevo is a Overclocking Utility, it's best to manually overclock the system through the bios. If you want a benchmark to test your cpu overclock then I suggest using a program like LinX, there's a link to the download in this thread.

http://www.techist.com/forums/f10/linpack-thread-221361/

3DMark 11 is a gaming benchmark (mainly tests the video card but the cpu does make a difference). It will give you a score that you can compare your system to others.

 

[AJ (LOUDA1)]

Alright so turbovevo is for CPU, and the graphics card driver/program I have will be overruled by 3dmark11? Because when I was checking out the program I noticed the program I have now has an over locking feature.. Sorry for being a noob