New Quiet Gaming PC

[quweee]

I've been thinking about buying a new system for a few months and now that I have cash I''m about ready to do it. What I'm trying to get out of my PC is the best gaming I can get on as quiet of a PC that I can without going overboard on my budget.

I'm interested in starting to get my feet wet with a little bit of overclocking but I'm not trying to push the envelope when it comes to overclocking. This is why I've chosen the 2600k below since it has the added turbo boost.

For gaming, I don't mind if the GPU runs a little louder while I'm gaming but while I'm doing other work or watching movies I want it to be as quiet as possible. I am planning on playing games at 1920x1080 on one monitor with the settings very high. I may add a second monitor in the future but no more than two monitors total.

I have thought of liquid cooling for my PC but I don't know a lot about it. Are the systems the Puget uses closed looped systems and how reliable are they? I'm not planning on moving my PC around a lot but I don't want the system to fail after two or three years if I'm going to spend this much money on it.

If I'm having this system built for me by Puget, the sweet spot for my budget would be about $3,000 but I could go as high as $3,500 if it would give me significantly more performance, cooling or reduction in noise. I've left room in the price of the base build knowing that there will probably be upgrades to it. Any ideas to make the system better for gaming or quieter would be great!

My base design right now is:

System Specs:

Additional Cooling: Case Fans Upgrade Kit (quiet)
Case: Antec P183 V3 (Gunmetal Finish)
CD / DVD Rom: ASUS 12x Blu-ray Burner Lightscribe SATA (black) w/ Software
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K QUAD CORE 3.4GHz 95W
CPU Cooling: Puget Hydro CL2 Liquid Cooling System 1155/6
Hard Drive: Intel 320 40GB SATA II 2.5inch SSD
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Pro REV 3.0
Operating System: No Operating System [NO SUPPORT]
Power Supply: Antec CP-1000 1000W Power Supply
Ram: 4 x Kingston DDR3-1333 4096MB
Second Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Green 2.0TB
Services: Warranty: Lifetime Labor, 1 Year Parts
Software: Security: Microsoft Security Essentials [NO SUPPORT]
Sound Card: Asus Xonar DX PCI-E
Video Card: 2 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB
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Total: $2697.63

Click here to view these specs on the Puget Custom Computer configuration page.

[kevanesh]

Very nice! In many ways similar to my older model Puget Deluge, but better!

I don't know what Puget's take will be on this, so I'm sticking my neck out a little, but I'd suggest getting the OS pre-installed so that all the drivers and devices are tested and operating when it's delivered to you. I'm risk-averse, while maybe you're a whiz at that OS thang, but it seems an inexpensive way to help ensure peace of mind and instant operability out of the box.

[quweee]

I have considered that. Right now I am mainly just worried about pricing the hardware for the PC and then worry about the OS after I knew what I was dealing with. I have installed OSs several times before but since Puget would already be building the rest of it, I would let them take care of that.

[galadiman]

Might I suggest that a 40gb HD is kinda small these days? Even just 2 games might make space kinda tight...

[quweee]

Might I suggest that a 40gb HD is kinda small these days? Even just 2 games might make space kinda tight...

I'm only planning on storing the OS and important applications on the SSD. May upgrade to the 80gb SSD but that isn't as high on my list as other components.