Advice on a new rig - gaming AND video-rendering

Carbonite · 11 Jul 2012 at 12:27

So I have not been on the forums here since 2005 but I came back for some advice on building a new, all-conquering rig for the purpose of high-end gaming and video-rendering. I have become a bit bogged down though with all the latest standards in terms of RAM, CPU, GFX cards and mobos etc so need a bit of guidance on what components to be looking for!

I am looking at staying with Intel CPU and using nVidia GFX but everything has lept forwards since I last built a rig and I have no idea where to start! Any help appreciated, I will be limited to a budget of £2000 - £2500 but let me know your opinions =D

anjs · 11 Jul 2012 at 12:36

Do you need everything inculding monitor / keyboard / mouse etc? What res do you plan on using

olivier renault · 11 Jul 2012 at 12:38

i7-3770K.
Z77-D3H, Z77X-D3H, Z77X-UD3H, Z77-GD65, P8Z77-V.
16GB / 32GB 1600MHz RAM (8GB sticks).
GTX670 2GB.
128GB SSD (M4 / Sammy 830).
Decent cooler (CM 612S, Matterhorn Pure, or anything higher).
Decent case (Carbide 300R, 400R, 500R, Fractal R3, Obsidian 550D, HAF 932).
600W-750W PSU (CM Slient Pro 600, XFX XXX, Corsair TX750M, Corsair AX750, ...).

Or a 3930K rig, but that's much more expensive.

gadget^ · 11 Jul 2012 at 12:47

i have just done the same and ended up with the following; pre-built system (tbh nor much more than the component price)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18398487

System Specification
- Case: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Visionary Full Tower Case
- Power Supply: OCZ ZX 850 Gold Rated PSU
- CPU: Intel Core i7 3770K 3.50GHz Ivybridge overclocked to (running @ 4.2GHz daily) 4.8GHz benching
- Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V DELUXE Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
- Cooler: Corsair Hydro H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
- 1st Hard Drive: 2 x OCZ Vertex 4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (RAID 0)
- 2nd Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive
- Graphics Card: 2 x Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SLI)
- Sound: Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI-E Sound Card
- Optical Drive: Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP 12x BD-ROM / 16x DVD Writer Drive - Black

£2600.00 Delivery was 2 working days - plug and play

Carbonite · 11 Jul 2012 at 12:49

Monitor-wise I have a 27" Philips HD Full 1080p monitor already which will easily do me - resolution wise I am uncertain what I will run at as when I used to play games seriously back in the day I was running 1024 x 768 and obviously things moved up a lot since then!

I have a seriously old MS Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 which I was going to use until / unless it dies as that was always my preferred mouse and "old-faithful" when it came to those reaction shots! In terms of the keyboard I will likely look at replacing what I have so will need to factor in something akin to the old MS ergonomic keyboard without the key-split in the middle.

Carbonite · 11 Jul 2012 at 13:13

gadget^ said:
i have just done the same and ended up with the following; pre-built system (tbh nor much more than the component price)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18398487

System Specification
- Case: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Visionary Full Tower Case
- Power Supply: OCZ ZX 850 Gold Rated PSU
- CPU: Intel Core i7 3770K 3.50GHz Ivybridge overclocked to (running @ 4.2GHz daily) 4.8GHz benching
- Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V DELUXE Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
- Cooler: Corsair Hydro H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
- 1st Hard Drive: 2 x OCZ Vertex 4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (RAID 0)
- 2nd Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive
- Graphics Card: 2 x Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SLI)
- Sound: Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI-E Sound Card
- Optical Drive: Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP 12x BD-ROM / 16x DVD Writer Drive - Black

£2600.00 Delivery was 2 working days - plug and play

This seems like a very nice spec rig - I'm wondering if it'd be worth me holding off getting two GFX cards in SLI straight away though and to wait and see how the performance is when rendering video whilst playing games as well. Would the GFX card be hit so hard that I would not get good recorded gameplay if I am rendering and recording at the same time?

For those of you wondering I may well be starting up a small gaming channel on Youtube and obviously that takes time to really lift off so I am not certain I need the outlay initially on two GFX cards unless performance is really going to suffer noticeably (e.g. the footage recorded whilst rendering is jerky to the point that a slideshow would be more entertaining!)

Thanks everyone for the input so far though!