Enthusiast Overclocker August 2013
It's near top-to-bottom changes for our ever-popular Enthusiast Overclocker this time too. The system is somewhat dearer than it was 12 months ago, but is altogether much more potent as a result. We've opted for Intel's new Core i5-4670K, which sits at the heart of our new Haswell-based Enthusiast Overclocker system.
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| Product | UK Price (inc VAT) | US Price (ex tax) | |
| CPU | 3.4GHz Intel Core i5-4670K | £185 | $230 |
| Motherboard | MSI Z87-G45 Gaming | £116 | $150 |
| Memory | 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 | £50 | $58 |
| Graphics Card | Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 2GB | £195 | $250 |
| PSU | ThermalTake SP-530PCWEU | £52 | $65 |
| CPU Cooler (UK) | SilverStone Argon AR01 | £24 | $35 |
| Case | Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 | £65 | $99 |
| Optical drive | SATA DVD-RW | £15 | $20 |
| Storage (HDD) | 1TB SATA 3Gbps | £50 | $70 |
| Storage (SSD) | 128GB Sandisk Ultra Plus | £72 | $100 |
| Overall Price: | £824 | $1077 |
New This Month
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We've opted for MSI's Z87-G45 Gaming motherboard as the mainstay of the system. It looks great, is easy to overclock and costs less than £120 too. It's a bit more expensive than some of the cheaper Z87 motherboards available now but we can vouch for its overclocking potential.
Our graphics card choice reflects the best option for a £200 pixel-pusher, which is just as at home at higher resolutions as it is on a 20in or 22in monitor. Nvidia's GTX 760 2GB is a brilliant all-rounder and beats AMD's Radeon HD 7950 3GB in most of our tests.
We've also changed the CPU cooler for our overclocking-orientated system. SilverStone's Argon AR01 is awesomely cheap but offers fantastic cooling, is easy to install and is fairly quiet too. What more could you want from a CPU cooler?
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Our choice of case remains faithful to Fractal, thanks to a superb performance from its Arc Midi R2. As we put it in our review it's a 'fine example of a case revision done right'. You've got fan control, USB 3.0 support, dust filters a great layout and cable-routeing plus support for all-in-one liquid coolers or custom water-cooling kits.
For our PSU, we've gone for Thermaltake's SP-530PCWEU, which is much cheaper than modular examples but still offers up over 500W of stable power - more than enough for our Enthusiast Overclocker system. If you must have a modular PSU then we can highly recommend Corsair's HX650, which retails for around £90.
If you haven't got a copy already, you might also want to factor in a copy of Windows 7 - if you're confident that you won't be upgrading much, then an OEM copy should be fine, but serial upgraders need the pricier retail version.
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