ideal/dream gaming build

[Codj]

Hi guys, My friend introduced me to overclockers and i am finding the forum invaluable. I have been poring over the massive amount of useful info in the forums in anticipation of my new computer. i plan to order and build a sandybridge computer in about a week and have a few questions i was wanting help with.

The Rig:
CPU - Intel i7 2600k
Mobo - Asus maximus extreme-z z68 -overkill?
RAM - Corsair Vengence 8gb
Case - Corsair 650d
SSD - Kingston HyperX 240gb the benchmarks i have seen for this have been fantastic, has anyone got experience of this drive, also is 240 too much at the moment? it is that or the intel 510
HDD - WD caviar black 2tb
PSU - Corsair 850 gold - Not sure on power consumption, is 850 only useful for if i go SLI/raid?
CPU cooler - Corsair H100 - i intend to do basic overclocking
OS - Windows 7 Home 64bit
Sound - thinking X-Fi card paired with the astro A40 gaming headset, want the best quality sound i can get without going surround speakers
Mouse/keyboard - best for fps/rpg gaming?
blu-ray drive
Monitor - I am torn between a 3x 24" eyefinity & xfx stand (in portrait?) or single dell u3011.
GPU - with the serious lack of 6990, will a single 6970 be enough for either of these monitor setups? (i think no)
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I am trying to build my dream rig, while i have the chance, to replace my 8 year old pc and would appreciate your advice

 

[R088ieS86]

Hi and welcome,

Whilst I admire you for going for broke with a dream rig, what will you be using it for and, the big part, whats your overall budget?

 

[Entropy]

I think you will be struggling to game on high settings with those cards. Any particular reason for a 3x24" setup? What games are you going to be playing?

 

[Codj]

Hi
at the moment I am looking at a budget of £2-3,000 but I do not know if more money will make a significant difference compared to a decent overclocked i5 setup and a beefy gpu

I will mostly be gaming on BF3, shogun 2, deus ex. I had thought about getting a single larger monitor for a multimedia rig but i will get a decent tv for movies.

 

[Entropy]

For gaming there is little difference between the i5 and i7 so it could well be worth an i5 setup investing the savings in better cooling to get higher clocks.

I would probably recommend a single monitor over the triple as the bezels will often end up redundant or in an arkward position of the screen.

 

[R088ieS86]

a lot of people will have some fun with this one, but before I hit the hay, if you spent the whole budget:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Dell Ultrasharp U3011 30" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey £1079.99
2 x MSI GeForce GTX 580 OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £379.99 (£759.98)
1 x Corsair Professional Series AX1200 High Performance 1200W Modular '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply (CMPSU-1200AXUK) £234.98
1 x Silverstone Fortress 2 FT02B-W Windowed Gaming Case - Black £219.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £173.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £159.98
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £79.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £59.99
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3) £50.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £44.99
Total : £3,061.50 (includes shipping : £22.20).



The 580's have got close to 1.9x scaling @ 2560x1600 which is very good: review

 

[Reaper 392]

if you will only be gaming there is no need to spend more than ~£1600 on the tower itself. not sure whats the best around monitors and peripherals wise, but this will be fantastic for a main tower:

YOUR BASKET
2 x MSI GeForce GTX 570 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £254.99 (£509.98)
1 x Silverstone Fortress 2 FT02B-W Windowed Gaming Case - Black £219.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £173.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £159.98
1 x OCZ Z-Series 850W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £99.98
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £59.99
1 x LG CH10LS20 10x BluRay-ROM / 16x DVD±RW Drive - Black (Retail) £52.99
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3) £50.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £44.99
Total : £1,563.08 (includes shipping : £16.85).

there is no difference between the i5 2500k and i7 2600k because games cant use the one feature that is different on the i7 2600k - hyperthreading.

i5 2500k vs i7 2600k: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/287?vs=288
look at the FPS scores, they are virtually identical. if you were doing lots of video work, major photoshop, CAD/CAM work, etc then the i7 2600k is worth it, but if your gaming the i7 2600k is a waste of money

do you have your heart set on the corsair 650D? its a great case, but its more suited to watercooling than air cooling, whereas the case ive specced is probably the best air cooler on the market. it also has some nice sound insulation in the case walls so it will be really quiet

as for the SSD i have literally no idea how the kingston performs in real world conditions compared to everything else, but so far the crucial M4 seems to be the OcUK favourite so i have specced that.
my second SSD question is do you really need 256GB for an SSD. the SSD is really only meant for the operating system and your common programs and games. generally 128GB is plenty for that, but if your happy to pay more for the extra space then far be it from me to stop you
my last SSD question is, if you really want stupidly high SSD performance and your pockets are incredibly deep, you may be interested in one of OCZ's Revodrives. the 120GB version is on offer for £300 this week. again, not something i would personally go for given your money to spend, but its an option thats out there.

my very last point is the soundcard. onboard sound is very good these days. its got to the point where you only need one of you are producing music, are a real audiophile, or if the soundcard does a special function that onboard sound cant. its probably best to ask in the sound section if it would be worth you getting a sound card or not because im sure they will know better than me

 

[Codj]

I see you both suggest the ASrock motherboard, do they have a good reputation? i have not really looked at any of their products or seen customer reviews.

You also recommend the Geforce graphics, is there any benefit from going nvidea over ATI at the moment other than if you get one cheaper? I have gone ATI in the past

I am kind of set on the look of the 650d case for the look more than the cooling requirement. that should not cause problems should it?

will games never be programmed to take advantage of the i7 hyperthreading or does it have nothing to do with games?

I have looked into SSD's and do not see a big enough performance to price with the revo, its a bit too soon to adopt that just yet. after installing the OS, quite a few apps and maybe a few online games (for a slightly better load time) will a 120 gb not run out of space quickly?

 

[Maxi011]

I think ASrock are owned by asus or something now if that helps reassure you, and yes they do have a pretty solid reputation, also the board suggested is fantastic.

Its possible games will use hyperthreading in the future but I don't see it happening any time soon. Buy the i5 2500k and then buy a better HT cpu when it actually matters.

Also if its a dream/ideal gaming system why would you not get an SSD. It will generally make windows snappier and you can put the odd slow loading game in there.

 

[R088ieS86]

ASRock's P67/Z68 boards have been fantastic. The one specced by the both of us has the new PCI-E 3.0 slots which can handle the nigher bandwidth we are hoping the next set of cards will utilise.

If you have more than 2 high end cards in a case heat is always a worry, with conventional cases one card will run hotter than the other.
With the case... we both specced again the cards actually face upward, rather than the traditional horizontal. It also has 3 x 180mm fans blowing air upward as well to help the airflow. Hot air rises, and all that stuff.

The GTX 580 is the most powerful single chip graphics card and depending on where you look you could argue the 570 is in second place.
Depending on what monitor you get and what resolution it runs will govern what graphics card(s) you need. 2560x1600 definitly requires 2 cards.

Its hard to say with hyperthreading, it is an intel invention so it may not be used in games because they wouldn't want to single out the market. Its more likely that they will adopt to use more cores instead.

 

[Reaper 392]

I see you both suggest the ASrock motherboard, do they have a good reputation? i have not really looked at any of their products or seen customer reviews.

yes, they have a very good reputation. they are a branch of Asus. the particular motherboard is the Gen 3 version of the one stulid has got in his own PC (he is the god of speccing computers on these forums)

You also recommend the Geforce graphics, is there any benefit from going nvidea over ATI at the moment other than if you get one cheaper? I have gone ATI in the past

the 570 is pretty much equal with the 6970, but since it is £30 cheaper than the only 6970 available on overclockers, and has the best cooler your going to find as standard on any graphics card it really is the one to get.
the 580 is really overpriced for what it delivers, hence the recommendation of two 570's in SLI

also, Nvidia cards have cuda cores, which can speed up things like physx in games, and a bunch of other things. (i'm sure someone more knowledgeable than me can tell you exactly what)

I am kind of set on the look of the 650d case for the look more than the cooling requirement. that should not cause problems should it?

not at all. its still a very good case. it wont be quite as good as the silerstone raven or fortress temperature wise, but if your spending ~£1500 on a computer going for the case you love the looks of is more important than a few degrees.

will games never be programmed to take advantage of the i7 hyperthreading or does it have nothing to do with games?

there may be a couple of games to take advantage of hyperthreading, but there really wont be enough to warrant getting an i7 2600k. it also wont make a major difference to those games that do support it.
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to give you an idea of how may games support it, Battlefield 3 will be the first one when its released iirc

I have looked into SSD's and do not see a big enough performance to price with the revo, its a bit too soon to adopt that just yet. after installing the OS, quite a few apps and maybe a few online games (for a slightly better load time) will a 120 gb not run out of space quickly?

i know what you mean with the revo - way too expensive. i literally just put ithe idea out to you in case you were interested. i would have been very surprised if you wanted to get one to be honest.

as for the space i'm really not sure, it depends on how many apps and games you are planning on storing on it really. if you want a bigger one then the only reason not to get one if you think you will use the space is the price. they are just so expensive that everyone generally no one can justify getting a bigger one than 128GB simply because they are so expensive

 

[Codj]

just been checking out the ASRock website and the features on their z68 boards are amazing for the price

Just noticed what you were talking about with the case, with it being flipped so the gpu's face a better way! wondering why more companies do not adopt this. does this make cable management a bigger challenge?

 

[Greavesy]

The Asrock does have pcie 3.0 but remember it won't run at 3.0 speeds unless you have a ivy bridge chip
I thought cf 6970 > sli 570 ?

 

[Sycho]

The Dell U3011 is a nice monitor but for pure gaming i wouldn't get it due to the input lag but also IPS 120hz monitors may be available end of the year so you may aswell go for something like this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-091-LG&tool=3 until they do.(the 120hz would be great with SLI and the input lag is near none)

Reaper's build is very very good and you should strongly consider it including the FT02 which is one of the best pc cases around.

 

[Reaper 392]

The Asrock does have pcie 3.0 but remember it won't run at 3.0 speeds unless you have a ivy bridge chip
I thought cf 6970 > sli 570 ?

it also wont run at PCIe 3.0 speeds because the graphics card is a PCIe 2.0 card. the motherboard just leaves plenty of upgrade paths with PCIe 3.0 available.

as for the 6970 vs 570, there may be a small difference, but it certainly wouldnt be worth the £60 difference. also, the better cooler on the 570's will make up any difference with overclocking
(overclocking graphics cards is the simplest job in the world, you literally move a couple of sliders and your done)

i'll see if i can dig out a benchmark of the cards

 

[Codj]

thanks for the info guys, another distracted day at work trying to figure out what the best gaming rig will be

stunned by the silverstone fortress 2, I like the unusual and very functional look more than the 650d, which is still a great case.

My one real question that is left is, eyefinity, is it even worth it? I have played on my friends 3x 24" setup but did not feel that you could even see the outer screens in your peripheral vision. its a good idea on paper but in practice, with the bezels and sheer width it is money going to waste.

 

[Reaper 392]

heres a review of the cards: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/01/11/amd_69706950_cfx_nvidia_580570_sli_review/1

they are being tested at eyefinity resolutions which would favour the 6970's with their greater RAM, but they seem to be very even overall. because of that, the better cooler on the 570's and because the 570's are cheaper i'd really go for the 570's

the fortress is a great case. it has the 90 degree motherboard mounting, and also some sound insulation in the case panels so it should be really quiet. so if you prefer the looks to the 650D then go for it
(however, if you plan on watercooling your graphics cards + processor, the 650D will be the better case)

i honestly couldnt tell you if eyefinity was worth it, but with the Nvidia cards you can still use their equivalent of eyefinity as you have two graphics cards. you could also try 3D, or 3D eyefinity (nvidia 3D surround vision) if you had 3 TVs that were compatable with Nvidia 3D, however, a lot of people find 3D really isnt worth it

 

[Codj]

is the samsung 950 27" the biggest low input lag monitor around then, forgot to mention I intend to hook up a xbox360 to it too. What is the point at which input lag starts to become noticable, 6ms?

 

[Reaper 392]

is the samsung 950 27" the biggest low input lag monitor around then, forgot to mention I intend to hook up a xbox360 to it too. What is the point at which input lag starts to become noticable, 6ms?

not sure if it will bother you, but that monitor does not support Nvidia 3D.

attaching an xbox 360 to it will not be a problem

for this i really would suggest making a 'spec me a monitor for my rig' thread in the monitors section as theres a whole bunch of people who hang around there who know a lot more than me about monitors

 

[R088ieS86]

input lag and response time are not the same thing!