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General help on picking parts ( Bottleneck, and making good decisions.)

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  • Gaming
  • PC gaming
  • Laptops
  • Systems
  • Bottleneck
  • Help Desk
  • New Build
Last response: in Systems
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April 16, 2013 5:14:18 AM

Hello!

I currently have a fairly big Gaming rig whit these specs:

Intel i5-3550 (3.6 Ghz)
Zotac GTX 560 ti amp
Asus P8H61-V ( Bios : 4302)
Corsair SSD 120gb
Kingston Hyper X 8Gb
WD 1tb HDD
Corsair 600w psu

And the problem is that i attend alot of lan parties. And taking a big case that is "hard" to carry kinda bothers me. oh yes and upgrading on the otherhand.

I'm down to 2 options.

1. Gaming laptop. Well it has mobility written all over it, its just that i don't really feel like that all my parts are so outdated (for example i think i can stick whit my Intel i5 pretty far since what i've understood that CPU is good for gaming pretty far.
Well i have planned on switching my GPU out eventually.
A candidate for this category : http://bit.ly/XORGoO
(You may suggest another one if you find a better one)
Oh yes i know that nvidia has released the 700m series, worth to wait for it or buy a 600 series at discount?

2. Small formfactor M-ATX build. ( a case whit a handle like NZXT vulcan).
This is the kinda option that i'm leaning to.
Mobility issue is somewhat cleared if i do this but then there are the part picking.
Sofar my thought is that i keep my current CPU.
Buy a Mobo ( for example Gigabyte sniper m5 m-Atx)
And eventually if not immediately buy a new GPU too ( 670 or 7950, maby even crossfire/Sli?) Should i wait for the 700 series here and the 8000 series?
And well how badly will an intel i5-3550 bottleneck the crossfire/sli 7950 or 660ti/670?
I've allso notised that if i build in a m-ATX case airflow is key, its just that i cant really find a blower fan type 7950 ( which i could buy 2 of in crossfire).

And ideas/toughs/suggestions around this topic are greatly accepted! :) 
Any other m-atx lan cases and gaming laptops are good suggestions too.

Ps. im kinda new into these kinda things so i apologize if some o this sounds just stupid. (:

More about : general picking parts bottleneck making good decisions

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a b 4 Gaming
April 16, 2013 6:00:41 AM

I'd definitely go with option 2.

A gaming laptop should be looked at as a disposable option. You can upgrade disk and RAM and that's it in a gaming laptop. After 2 years when the m-edition graphics processor is out-dated, you throw it away and get one that can run the latest games. Most video solutions are also customized by the laptop manufacturers so downloading drivers from Nvidia or AMD can be problematic when the universal drivers don't conform to the laptop's tweaked spec. As a result, you're at the mercy of the laptop producer to keep a tweaked version of the drivers up to date and available on their web site. They usually will keep the tweaked video drivers up to date for a year for a given laptop model if you're lucky.

An M-ATX form factor allow you to upgrade your parts as necessary. That CPU you have is fine. A new M-ATX motherboard such as an Asus Maximus V Gene would be a great option. I'm suggesting a motherboard both SLI/crossfire capable just to keep options open for future upgrades.

I'd also consider the 670 as a future video card update and then as second as necessary. While the single 670 offers great performance, SLI offers great multi-card performance. I've been running with an SLI setup for a little over two years. I'm completely satisfied with it. I can't say the same for when I had a crossfire setup. 670s stock cooling will be good in a small case as they'll blow the heat out of the back of the case rather than down into it.
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a c 206 4 Gaming
a b D Laptop
April 16, 2013 8:06:51 AM

I might suggest a ITX based motherboard.
It can fit in a small, light aluminum case like the lian li Q08.
Such a case can hold any size graphics card, leaving you clear to use a GTX680/Titan/ or whatever next year's graphics cards brings.
You can reuse the cpu/ram/psu/drives
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a b 4 Gaming
April 16, 2013 11:46:19 PM

For a balance of compactness, cooling and gaming capability i would say Option 2 in mATX form? However i strongly suggest ignoring multi GPUs in a small confined space and currently i would just hit one HD 7970 GHZ which is also Toms only best card in the high end cat GPUs
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-car...
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