How's this look?

[TwistedKestrel]

After waking up this morning and starting up my favourite equine cartoon program, my desktop gave me a BSOD I've never seen before. After panicking and some fiddling, it turns out one of the DIMM slots burned out. This could be my fault, maybe, as I was running a bunch of things in a Shuttle SG31G2 that it wasn't really meant to. Not really keen on being down to 2GB of RAM, and since I was kinda thinking of an upgrade anyway, this seems like a good time for a new system.

What I've got on my list:
-Intel i5-2500K
-Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
-ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3
-G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 2133
-Lian Li PC-A05FNB mid tower
-Cooler Master Silent Pro M600 PSU

I'm sourcing all this from Newegg.ca, with shipping this all comes in at a hair under a grand. I'll be cannibalizing my desktop for everything else, though at this point that's not much. Appreciate all advice and opinions!

[vargis14]

It will work and you will be happy sandys are bad azz:)

[JustAnEngineer]

-Intel i5-2500K
-Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
-ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3
-G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 2133
-Lian Li PC-A05FNB mid tower
-Cooler Master Silent Pro M600 PSU

That case is much larger than your Shuttle. Have you considered micro-ATX options like the Antec NSK-3480 and the Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 or Asus P8Z68-M Pro?

PC3-17000 (DDR3-2133) isn't going to give you much better real-world performance than PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600) that costs half as much.

Which graphics card will you be installing in this system? You may not need a 600-watt power supply.

[TwistedKestrel]

Thanks for the input!

I hadn't considered mATX ... I started a paper build but got stuck on the case. The one you suggested is almost there (I could live without USB 3.0 front ports) but it only has a single internal 3.5" bay. If I search for cases that have at least one 3.5" external bay and two 3.5" internal bays ... most or all them seem kinda cheap. Any suggestions there? Despite what follows below, I'm still interested in mATX as an alternative. It would eliminate SLI/Crossfire as a possibility, but as long as a smaller enclosure doesn't compromise cooling then I'm not too bothered about it. Throw out SLI, and then a bunch of other stuff doesn't make sense either - I see an mATX build being about $250-$300 cheaper, nothing to sneeze at.

I need the external 3.5", as well as an ASRock board for my floppy drive. Yes, I'm one of those people - I still find having a bootable 3.5" very handy for computer repair (probably not so much for this computer anymore, but for fixing other people's equipment).

As for everything else - The PSU is overkill I agree, but it seems getting a modular PSU starts at around that price anyway. It will certainly laugh at the leftover HD 5750 I throw in there for starters. Plus the 200 watts or so of headroom will be nice for the overclock, aging of the PSU over time, possible SLI or other graphics card upgrade. The 2133 RAM has an instant rebate on right now, it's a bit shy of twice the price, plus with the overclock of the CPU I will get something out it. For basically a $30 premium, I'm okay with it. (As an infrequent upgrader 8GB of ram for $90 still seems crazy cheap to me ) It does seem that at stock speeds there is little point to anything more than DDR 1600.

The build is partly a $50 gamble - the mobo and the memory could possibly accommodate an Ivy Bridge CPU. Whether they'll still be in style when I'm ready for a refresh is debatable, but at least I'll have the option. I know this kind of "futureproofing" has a pretty low chance of actually paying off, but as it only represents a 5% premium, the penalty if it doesn't work out is pretty low.

[JustAnEngineer]

Antec NSK3480 only has a single internal 3.5" bay. If I search for cases that have at least one 3.5" external bay and two 3.5" internal bays...

The NSK3480 has one external 3½" bay and two external 5¼" bays. One of the 5¼" bays includes a mounting bracket for an internal 3½" drive. There is another 3½" drive mounting point inside the case on the bottom. I've got a 5¼" BD-ROM/DVD-RW, a 3½" card reader and two 3½" hard-drives installed in mine. Beyond that, you're going to need some Velcro, Ty-Raps or other modifications. There's lots of room available, but there are no more hard-drive mounting brackets.

I will give this Micro-ATX case high marks for accepting 120mm cooling fans, long graphics cards, full-size ATX power supplies and full-height 120mm tower CPU coolers. The included EarthWatts EA-380D Green power supply is quiet and efficient. It's more than adequate for a Sandy Bridge system with your Radeon HD5750. With 336 watts (28 amperes) available on the +12 V rails, it could handle a more powerful graphics card.

I'm still interested in mATX as an alternative. It would eliminate SLI/Crossfire as a possibility.

You can certainly run dual graphics cards on a Micro-ATX motherboard (assuming that you select the right motherboard to start with). Of the two that I linked above, the GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 is better for SLI or Crossfire. If you prefer Asus, you might step up to the Maximus IV Gene-Z. With a pair of dual-slot PCIe graphics cards, you've probably used or blocked all four of the PCIe slots on the motherboard, so there's no room left for a sound card or television tuner unless you go to single-slot cooling for your GPUs. Water cooling blocks might do the trick if you're that focused on building a monster gaming rig in a small case.

I need the external 3.5", as well as an ASRock board for my floppy drive. Yes, I'm one of those people - I still find having a bootable 3.5" very handy for computer repair (probably not so much for this computer anymore, but for fixing other people's equipment).

Let it go. These motherboards will boot just fine from a USB device (including a thumb drive or a memory card stuck into the card reader). If you're so stuck in the 1980s that you must have a floppy drive, they're available in USB, too.

[TwistedKestrel]

Again, thanks for the feedback. Considering the alternatives ended up bolstering my original build (more or less - the RAM deal ended so I ended up with something more conservative), there's only one question left.

I've been ignoring a lot of the stuff out there about SSD for some time now and I am beginning to regret it. My future Z68 board will support Intel SRT, and after reading up on it, sounds like something I want to take advantage of. Is the Intel 311 SSD still a good choice for use as a cache drive? They're not available from everybody, but they can still be had. However since they were released half a year ago, alternatives could be available - low capacity drives with high write performance would be ideal.

[JustAnEngineer]

Bigger SSD drives (240 GB and up) are faster because they have more flash memory chips operating in parallel.

A 120 GB drive is large enough for my operating system plus most-used applications.

For the small difference in price, I'd probably try to squeeze stuff onto a 90 GB drive rather than buying a 20 GB drive and using the Z68's SRT feature.