head hurts so many options

jimbob339

jimbob339

jimbob339

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16 Apr 2009
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mansfield woodhouse
still planning my new build to start next month after my holiday got so many options I don't know what's best. im want to make the a htpc for gaming and still unsure what route to go.

start off itx or midi atx. itx will be single card or midi I can have sli or xfire

now will a single high end card be better than 2 cheaper cards bear in mind ill only be playing 1080p .

next i5 or i7 Haswell or not ?

help me choose im doing my own head in lol
 
You will only need to use i7 if you are wanting to take advantage of hyper-threading [ being able to run 2 x thread per core ] which is not fully utilised by most games and probably a 45xxK series processor if you are looking at overclocking. There are some really good looking single card itx builds, you will probably benefit from having better airflow with a single card in a small case.

I think the following video may help you decide wether to go for SLI or single card configuration. Price per performance depends on the game you are playing as not all games perform aswell with SLI. However similar performance is really going to work out at roughly the same price.

 
good vid stil unsure lol but what im looking at 1st is the case cool master elite 120 or haf xb midi and that looks more promising you think
 
I think the HAF XB is great, it also supports ATX so you would never need to replace it if you wanted to change form factor. It will also have fantastic airflow and space for watercooling if you want to go that way. If this is something your having in your living room you'd probably want it to be running nice and quite. mATX + ATX allow you also to have more motherboard features, if you wanted a top board aswell you could grab one of the ASUS ROG mATX Gene's one card at 1080p is enough and also if you have a board that supports VirtuMVP you could spend some money on that program and utilise your graphics card a long with your integrated gpu in the cpu.
 
lol more options another one is the old chestnut ati or nvidia ? I was ati back in the day of agp but did get let down by them so im thinking going green this time but on the other hand the new consoles will all run ati, will that mean a lot of the pc ports will play better on ati cards due to them being optimised for consol or am I just thinking about it to much
 
i5 Haswell, 8GB, m-atx, Akasa Nero3 or such-like.
GTX770.
Corsair 350D / TJ08-E, 550W PSU.
128GB SSD, 2TB drive, BLuray.
around £1,000-£1200. Low idle power usage, small form factor, high performance.
 
If it is just for gaming mostly then getting an i7 would be minimal difference in gaming and worth saving the extra £100 to spend on a solid state drive or better graphics card for balance.
 
it will be gaming but I will know once I get back into the like of rfactor 2 I will want to start moding again and that will mean using 3d max and photoshop so will a i7 be better for that than a i5
 
It will help you compile models faster but again a more powerful graphics card with lots of VRAM for those workloads is going to be much more benefit to the system itself.
 
Man, head hurts because you didn't determine few basic things.

First of all, HTPC means "home theater" PC, not gaming PC. Otherwise it would hava a "home entertainment" PC name or some. So it's why leave mini-ITX size.

You may consider micro-ATX (not "midi" which is simply middle size of FULL ATX), but this doesn't work, or it's highly not recommended for multiGPU. Many reasons, like too much heat, PSU size, room in a case etc. I'd go for uATX with strong, single card, or mini-ITX with same strong card, but equipped with OTES (blows hot air outside, not spreading aroud to whole case) - and that will be a bit more expensive.

Pick a case size, so rest will be easier.
 
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