Gamer (Enthusiast?) $2,000 USD Build.

[scuba356]

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=24670548


Edit : Will have 16 gb of ram on my build.
Edit 2 : I have purchased twin GTx 560 ti's. So that's cemented in :]

Approximate Purchase Date: I plan to have everything in 3 weeks. Piece by Piece
Budget Range: N/A
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Everything. Games, Blu Ray (HDMI to my HDTV @ 1080p), Photoshop, 3DS, CAD, Messenger, ETC.
Parts Not Required: Getting 2 moniters and new keyboard later
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg. I live in North Carolina so Tiger Direct makes me pay Sales Tax ;_;. Any site is good with me though.
Country of Origin: North Carolina, USA
Parts Preferences: Good Brands. ASUS, Seagate, ETC.
Overclocking: Yes (I'm a novice)
SLI or Crossfire: Yes (Twin GTX 560 TI)
Monitor Resolution: Not a clue. I kinda like not having widescreen, but I'll probably be forced to get it.
Additional Comments: Scuba's build :]

Here's the build I came up with. Any thoughts? I'm not sure on the fan controller, and I was thinking about getting a Corsair CWCH50-1 Hydro H50 CPU Liquid Cooler, but I'm really gun shy about liquid cooling.

This will be a SLI build (Twin GTX 560 ti)

To compliment the 900 GB (Which i plan on setting to RAID 0, possibly 10), I have a USB 3.0 2TB External, and 1.25 TB on USB 2.0. I plan on sinking my most played games onto the HDD, and setting up a 100 GB Partition for my basic programs (3DS, Messenger, Spyware, ETC)

The reason I'm getting this computer is because I enjoy gaming, and really want to play on high settings. I know that the 2500k would be better in this case, but I chose the 2600k since I plan to enter college soon, and plan on becoming a mechanical engineer (I can only assume I'll be using something like ACAD or 3DS) and I enjoy playing on Photoshop

I plan on keeping this build for about 6 to 10 years, until I have to get a new computer (And yea, it seems like a stretch, but my single core from 2001 is still purring QUITE nicely as I talk to you on it ;D) I want to play all of my games now, and in the future on at LEAST medium quality smoothly.

I plan on Overclocking, seeing as the mobo i chose is pretty much made for oc idiots like me

Moniters : I will be purchasing some nice 2ms flatscreens later. Along with a new Logitech gamer keyboard.

A concern of mine would be the 850W. I plugged it into a nice little simulator for it, and with 20% degradation, it was showing slightly over 850. Should I upgrade to 1000w for that extra 100 usd??


If y'all know any improvements please tell :] (please forgive me if I'm coming across as an idget, but I only started researching this about 2 weeks ago and it's all quite enlightening xd!)


Edit : Looking into a different HDD.

 

[abekl]

Forget liquid cooling, it's a pain and doesn't yield much better results than air cooling. Go with whatever air cooler you prefer.

Also, with regard to ram, you might as well invest in 16gb of memory, as cad and photoshop apps will use it.

Also, 850W will be just fine. Don't worry about it.

 

[leandrodafontoura]

Its gonna last 2 years bro...computers are advancing extremely fast

 

[Geeksire]

If you are not going to go through SLI, this is a pretty solid build to me.

And since you are entering college, I bet you can get a discount on the OS Windows 7 for a much cheaper price. Check your college or other stores for discounts for students. My college gave me about 50% off the price. Go college that nobody knows wooo!

Also for the HD, would you want that much memory for "6-10 years" (450 GB)?

And no the computer you are going to build is not going to last you 2 years. I have acrappy macbook and I can still play games on low settings! (I have had this baby since college for 4 years.)

Are you planning on doing SLI?

The Heatsink Cooler that I would recommend are COSAIR H100. Really good cooler for the case you want.

And I also somewhat agree on LC, it is beneficial if you are the type to go the extra step and spend a lot of money in keeping an arctic computer, but at times if you are going to go through LC make sure everything is connected correctly because if a leakage occurs you are screwed.

 

[hunuok]

Forget liquid cooling, it's a pain and doesn't yield much better results than air cooling.

I totally disagree on this point. It can be expensive to set up (for a FULL loop), and maintenance is once a year if set up correctly. As for temps, they are MUCH better than air cooling. My OCed rig (i72600K @ 4.6 and GTX 480 Tri-SLI @ 900/1800/2000/1.125V) will never exceed 55C on CPU and 45C on GPU @ MAX load) on a single loop.

Points to consider:

1. You don't need the fan controller.
2. Get an SSD (~80Gb) for programs + 1Tb HDD for storage. A Raptor is getting long in the tooth and they are noisy and hot. A standard HDD can match/outperform a Raptor at a fraction of the price. An SSD is a no brainer IMO. Will beat a Raptor any day of the week.
3. 16Gb RAM. DDR3 is dirt cheap and the programs you want to run will benefit.
4. An Asus P8Z68-V will save you money and still OC the same.
5. If going multimonitor in the future, ie NV Surround, you will need SLI to run-ie 2 VGA cards. Also, 1Gb VRAM will bottleneck your rig. You will need 1.5Gb VRAM.

Good luck with the build.

 

[scuba356]

Yea, i am doing SLI, since im doing twin GTX 560's. And I don't expect to play EVERY thing on ultra in 2 or 3 years, but I do expect to play everything somewhat in 6 to 8 years.

The reason I'm shy against SSD atm is because they cost so much, and won't benefit me near as much. I do plan on going SSD in the future, which is why i chose the Asus p8z68 Deluxe, so i can raid 0 or 10 my stuff (The p8z68 pro doesn't support RAID, according to the video on the newegg site)

Hunuok, are you saying i should go with a 7200 instead of a 10000? also, i do plan on getting dual moniter in the future (im hoping to get HIGH quality stuff. like 2ms ).

I wasn't sure about getting 16gb of ram, simply because I'm aware that anything over 8 will be detrimental to FPS during gameplay. I think i'll do a little more reasearch, and consider 16 (windows 7 only 'technically' supports 4 though, right?)


Great replies so far, anyone else? :]

 

[scuba356]

small bump

 

[hunuok]

And I don't expect to play EVERY thing on ultra in 2 or 3 years

In 2-3 years, your cards will probably struggle.

The reason I'm shy against SSD atm is because they cost so much, and won't benefit me near as much.

You can get some good deals on 60-80Gb SSDs with greater performance than Raptors.

are you saying i should go with a 7200 instead of a 10000?

Yes. WD 1Tb or 2Tb Caviar Blacks or Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb have better performance than Raptors. They are cheaper too. You can RAID these drives. Note that in RAID0, you will lose all data if the array gets broken. Make sure to back up files religiously.

(windows 7 only 'technically' supports 4 though, right?)

64bit Windows supports >4Gb.

I'm aware that anything over 8 will be detrimental to FPS during gameplay.

More RAM probably won't increase frame rates but it certainly won't be detrimental. More RAM will benefit other programs such as Photoshop/CAD etc. You can start with 8Gb and increase in the future.

You seem to want to future proof your rig. In 6-8 years, I'm guessing this rig will struggle a bit anyways. In the PC world, it's difficult to future proof.

Rule of thumb: Build your rig based on what you need for NOW. The money you save will help for future upgrades.

Good luck with your build.

 

[scuba356]

thanks for the answer hunuok.

I'm not trying to future proof my rig. I just want a really good base that I won't have to tweak for 2 to 3 years that I expect to last several years

Was it raid 10 that acted as a full backup while improving performance, btw?

And right now, I think that this rig is exactly what I want. I wanna play all my games on highest while holding epic performance

Ill def. check out those other HDD's, and probably change them to the Samsung's.

 

[hunuok]

Was it raid 10 that acted as a full backup while improving performance, btw?

I think RAID 10 is actually RAID1+0. It has redundancy but I think you need a 4 disk minimum. What you want is RAID 1. This has the same redundancy but a 2 disk minimum.

Make sure you use the latest raid controllers (Intel RST 10.6.0.1002).

Have fun with the build and hope your studies go well.

 

[008Rohit]

Processor : Intel Core i7 2600K - $315
HSF : CORSAIR CWCH60 Hydro Series H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler - $70
Motherboard : ASRock Extreme3 Gen3 Z68 - $125
RAM : 2 x (G.SKILL Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600) - $100
Graphics : MSI N580GTX Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 - $500
Hard Disk : Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB - $60
SSD : Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F120GB3A-BK 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - $180
Optical Drive : LITE-ON Black 12X Blu-ray Burner with Blu-ray 3D feature SATA - $100

PSU : CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX850 (CMPSU-850AX) 850W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - $190

Case : Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - $280

Total : $1920 before rebates

This should do the job. No hassles of SLI. A single GTX 580 is enough to maxx out any game you throw at it at 1080p. Liquid Cooler for overclocking the CPU beyond 4.5Ghz. Even if you don't overclock it, liquid cooler will keep the CPU cool and thus make it last longer. 16GB RAM = Future Proof. i7 2600K with hyperthreading. Thats 8 logical cores. ASRock Gen3 motherboard with two PCIe 3.0 slots. Support for Ivy Bridge CPUs and also new gen. PCIe graphic cards. Stable and Fast Corsair Force series 120GB SATAIII SSD to be used as a boot drive and apps storage. A liteon blu ray burner, a cheap and fast Samsung Spinpoint HDD. A wonderful looking case, and a 850W Corsair Modular PSU with 80+ Gold Certification which is capable of GTX 580 SLI.
Feel free to ask me if you have any questions.

 

[hellfire24]

16GB RAM = Future Proof.

AND

A wonderful looking case

i never saw any application using my dominator gt 16 gb ram(8 gb kit x2).and now i think that that was a wastage.i also ran prime 95,hd video editing,extracting winrar files of more than 2 gb in size etc. but still no usage above 3 or 4 gb.as much as for future proofing is the case, nothing is futureproof.a friend of mine(enthusiast noob)sold his r6 for $8k and build the system with 980x,12 gb dominator gt,rampage mobo,asus 480 sli and all.but today only one and half year later i beat him in every thing with sandybridge 2600k@4.4ghz.i am using nuctua dh-14 with NXZT 14mm fan in pull/push.he used something from coolit.the time when he build his rig he used to show it off to me but i didnt reacted. now he got his butt kicked with 2600k.but what the hell who cares we are still very good buddies.

SO NOTHING IS FUTURE PROOF.DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON SO CALLED FUTURE PROOFING.SAVE MONEY AND UPGRADE EVERY TOW YEARS UNTIL COMPATIBILITY
DOES NOT BECOMES AN ISSUE

 

[008Rohit]

16GB RAM can be utilised by Complex 3D Graphical Rendering. Maya for example. Newer games are demanding more RAM anyway.

 

[hellfire24]

i know there are some softwares that even demand more than 48 GB ram but he said "may be"working learn with CAD or 3DS not sure at present only gaming i guess.so no need of 16 GB.
the money saved from case and RAM can be sued to get something more powerful GFX which is more important for 3d softwares for example msi lightning extreme gtx 580 3 GB card and better mobo that supports 2~3 way sli.

 

[scuba356]

swanky, but I do want SLI because it takes some of the wear and tear off of the card by splitting it. I guess i will get 16gb ram.

 

[008Rohit]

You gonna 3way SLI the GTX 580? freak or what?

 

[scuba356]

no, just the 2 560 ti's bro the 580 is a little out of my price range