Please help spec me a £4k gaming rig

[Papablu]

Hi guys, please could someone help me spec a new pc.

I've been having major issues with my Infinity Tesseract system as it totally failed on me today and one of my 290X's was on fire.

So ocuk have offered me a full refund and I would like to purchase from them again.

I have just under £4,000 to spend and would like a Red, Black and White theme as I don't wanna just get something the same as the IT. But this is open to other suggestions.

Ideally I'd like triple crossfire 290x or triple SLi 780Ti . After experiencing how good three cards were I could not go back to two.

I'm open to full watercooling or Air/water and if the cards are 290X then they must be watercooled as I need it as quiet as possible.

A 1TB SSD for games and 1TB secondary HDD for storage would be good.

Case wise I need a cube style as it's going somewhere very specific. At the moment I have the Corsair Air 540 so something similar.

Basically the best gaming rig I can get for the money but I will be getting ocuk to build it as I need the warranty, so take that into account please.

Many thanks for looking.

 

[Papablu]

I know, it was a pretty hairy moment, I shut the power off right away and had to just wait till it stopped smoking. I'm none the wiser as to how this happened but I sure ain't taking the risk of the same setup again. The card was unplugged and the system was tried again and it's totally dead.

 

[Papablu]

Thanks so much Curlyriff, I like that setup, it seems a good price for what you get too although the 295x is not a great looking card, it stands out a little to much although I like the idea of the power.

I'm just waiting for a call from ocuk now and I'll see what they can do.

 

[Papablu]

I never heard about the x99 guys, that does sound like a good option. I'll look into that a little more before deciding. The way I see it, we are very close to that changeover point and diving in too hastily may be a bad choice.

 

[Papablu]

I have the EVO now Shivy and I was very happy with it so I agree, that would do for me again. I am thinking that ocuk may be able to re-use some of my components too which would bring the price down somewhat.

 

[Papablu]

Thanks a lot Curlyriff, I do like these setups, particularly that full custom loop setup.

I am thinking I may hang tight for a month and get myself something like that. Any other suggestions would be very much appreciated, especially with different schemes as I'm open to anything cool, excuse the pun

 

[Papablu]

That's cool buddy, I would expect a few hiccups with fittings etc and the fan controller would be a must.

I would love the 900D case but sadly that doesn't quite fit. I'll get some pics uploaded of the area it needs to go in and you'll see why. The 750D would fit perfectly though, I just don't know if there'd be enough room for that loop.

 

[Papablu]

Hey Curlyriff, thanks mate, that looks great to me. I'm currently discussing things with ocuk and it seems I may get more for my money if I go down the replacement route with new parts in the Infinity Tesseract system so the Corsair 540 spec system is ideal. I'll go with the Asus Mobo too with the red, white and black scheme but stick to the 3 x 290X cards.

I'll get an email out to the guy dealing with this. Thanks a lot for your help Curlyriff and for all the feedback guys.

Ethermaster I think we're ok now mate but thanks anyway

 

[Papablu]

Lee, yeah I believe that will be the better option to keep costs down. When I defaulted my oc on the 4770k I barely noticed any frame rate differences in a lot of my games so I think as long as I go with the 4790 I'll be ok.

Curlyriff, that's very nice mate. I do like the Asus Maximus VII Formula Z97 board. I do have a question regarding these though as I was speaking to the ocuk guy earlier and I'm still a little confused.
Is there such a board as the Asus Z97 Maximus VI Formula (Socket 1150) ATX Motherboard ?

I thought that Asus went from the Z87 Maximus VI straight to the Z97 Maximus VII so the Z97 boards are all the 'VII' range ?

I can't seem to find a Z97 with the VI moniker at all. The reason I ask is the Infinity Quasar has the Z97 VI as the mobo and when I spoke to the ocuk guy he thought that was correct. But that board is not listed on ocuk at all other than in that build.

 

[Papablu]

Thanks so much Curlyriff, I thought that was the case with the motherboard but I've been going through so much stuff lately that I just couldn't be sure. My head's overloaded I'll make sure they know which one I want.

I'll likely be using the pc for 4k at some point down the line but chances are I'll opt for another new pc when I buy the tv so my son can have this one. He's planning on going into game design so it'll be ideal for him at that time. This pc probably has to last me a year but hopefully he'll have it longer than that.

I won't be doing any video/recording voice over/stream at all as I just don't have time for that stuff, sadly. It's all about the games

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Papablu]

lol, I have 4 kids and one on the way in a few weeks times already That's not including my two grown up daughters

I reckon it'll be about this time next year that I'll buy a new pc, depending on what new cards become available and if there's a large enough leap in performance to warrant the change.

Lee, thanks for the input mate. I've spoke to ocuk and we both feel that it would be best to go with 3 way R9 290X again. I was blown away with the power of the cards and playing Tomb Raider the other day (before my pc blew) was just like More than enough power to run everything I've asked of those cards. This pc gaming lark never fails to amaze me.

 

[Papablu]

lol, Curlyriff I do need a babysitter for when the wife goes in to have the baby, my pc will be at the mercy of the kids and the two younger ones are totally nuts That's my main worry to be honest. The wife will get over the pain but what happens if the kids get hold of my pc

As for pics, yes I'll get pics when I get the new rig and I'll also get more as I add things over the next months. Here you can see why the pc has to be a specific size. This is what it looked like yesterday.

Eventually I'll be building the pc into those units. The upper cupboard will meet the lower TV bench and the pc will 'be' that cupboard if you get my drift. Glass fronted and all water cooled inside. But that will be the pc that follows this one. The system at the moment is more like my 'learner' system. Getting the hang of how it all works before diving in to a big project like that. I need the security of a warranty for this pc as my son, who will get this one, tends to break stuff too often. I gave him a set of Sharkoon Extatic headphones the other week and told him to be careful with them. A week later they were ruined because he chewed through the lead. He's got some odd habits I reckon he was a dog in a past life.

 

[Papablu]

Curlyriff, I'd be very grateful for your assistance in building the next pc, in fact I know I'll be needing you as it's going to be too much to get my head around. Just thinking about it is confusing enough. Thanks mate

tbyeah, that is some system there, a monster.

I've been talking to ocuk again and my new system is sorted guys, thanks for your help, I really appreciate it. The only thing I need to sort out now is a fan controller for the Corsair 540 case. I already have a blu ray drive in there so I'm limited to just a single bay unit. Is there anything I should steer clear of ?

 

[Papablu]

lol, I'm still finalising the specs right now, pretty much all sorted but I'm just getting the last items figured out, like the fan controller and replacement fans etc.
I'll defo get the specs up as soon as I get the pro former or whatever they call it

 

[Papablu]

Yep, it is technically order confirmation if you pay for it now. Pro-forma if its pre-pay spec list to be signed off first for instance.

Although, false pre-tenses

Haha.

Hehe, yeah but it's my fault, I keep changing things. I'm pretty certain it's all done now.

• - Case: Corsair Carbide 540 Cube Case - Black this time
• - CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K Devil's Canyon Haswell (Socket 1150) Quad Core, Eight Thread Processor, Watercooled and Overclocked to at least 4.7GHz
• - Motherboard: Asus Maximus VII Formula Z97
• - RAM: Avexis Blitz 2400mhz 16GB
• - Graphics: 3 x AMD Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Tri-X 4096MB Graphics Cards in triple Crossfire & Watercooled
• - Cooling: Full Custom Watercooling Loop, Mayhems White Pastel Fluid and white tubing
• - Primary Drive: Samsung 840 Evo Series 1TB Solid State Drive
• - Secondary Drive: Seagate Barracuda 2TB SATA-III Hard Drive
• - Optical Drive: LG Blu Ray BDRW Retail
• - Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit
• - Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Platinum Rated 1200W Silent Power Supply
• - Fan Controller: Bitfenix Recon
• - Replacement Fan for rear outlet: Alpenföhn Plus Wing Boost PWM Fan Red Clover Edition - 140mm

Obviously all the watercooling parts which come to a considerable amount with the same setup as the Tesseract had including the same reservoir and pump and rads.

My only real issue now is whether I get them to watercool that motherboard as the Asus has that built in. Opinions guys ?

Plus, the power supply, do you think that 1200w is enough for this setup, bearing in mind that I doubt I'll overclock those cards as it's simply not needed ?

@ William-Mathew, yes buddy, that's the system that tbyeah linked to but thanks anyway

 

[Papablu]

Thanks Curlyriff, that's a relief because I was worried that it may have contributed towards the last pc giving up the ghost.

Sorry I missed all your replies earlier guys, I was typing after post number 48.

That is an incredible deal on the Titan Z but ocuk are doing me a good deal on this particular setup with the better motherboard. Basically they are able to do all this as a direct replacement for the Tesseract and the extra card and water cooling parts I purchased last week. Other than a few extras that I'm chucking onto the order like the fans and controller.

 

[Papablu]

With the GPU's at stock speeds under water and the OC of the CPU you should be pulling around the 900-1000 watt mark so will have some overhead as well.

That's excellent news, thanks buddy.

 

[Papablu]

No problem guys, hijack away, it's good reading and still relevant to the thread like you say.

I did consider a Titan Z or Black build but after looking through benchmark scores and some youtube vids I was shocked to see how much better value for power the other cards are in comparison.

 

[Papablu]

That's a cool build for the money Ethermaster, I do like that, particularly the 2 Asus cards. They are without a doubt the prettiest cards you can get out of the box, in my opinion of course and I've always wanted a build with a couple of those in it. If I was going for an air cooled system then that would be the one.

 

[Papablu]

Cheers Curlyriff, the white looked good where it was but having a chance to do something new is always a chance I take and changing to black seemed like the first step of that.
I reckon the black case should look good too because the watercooling is all going to be white and with a white case there wouldn't be any real contrast there, I wanted the white tubing to really pop out at you. With my receiver and sky and tv being black I think it should be ok. Fingers crossed

The receiver is the Onkyo TX-NR609

The sound, as I'm sure you know, is incredible and I use it as my main HiFi too. The speakers are the Wharfdale DX-1's with sub etc. Cables, to be honest I can't remember the cable name, I know I paid way too much for it but it did make the system even better as I tried it with normal speaker cables just to see the difference.

I know I'm probably tempting fate now but the whole setup has performed flawlessly since I got it about 3 years or so ago. I know there are better systems out there but for my size house and my needs I couldn't have bought a better setup.

What setup you got Curlyriff ?