Hardware bottleneck these days?

[justinreeves16]

Hello,Looking into a new system havent built one in several years,
what is the bottle neck component these days if there is one that sticks out thats is.
Plus what suggestion on hardware, whats the latest and greatest to look for.
Also is overclocking worth the risk of damaging components? I want to build the Ultimate gaming machine.

 

[rolli59]

For gaming suggested build would be around I5 2500K on Z68 motherboard with either GTX560Ti, HD6950 or more powerful GPU solution. Without a budget it is hard to recommend specific hard ware and predicting bottleneck without selected hardware is difficult.
You can use this http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261222-31-build-advice to post your needs in the system section and get help from members.

 

[justinreeves16]

With no budget limit, Why not i7?, is Xenon worth the $, Why that motherboard?
Is quad channel RAM and Mobo worth$?,Overclock it?, liquid cool it? etc. etc.
Trying to get a feel for what top of the line is, and work backwards.

 

[esrever]

top of the line has very little performance gains compared to a midrange computer for gaming.

these days its all on the gpu if you are looking for gaming performance.

An i5=i7 in terms of gaming with the same gpu.

and xeons simply would not run games well since they are not designed to do so.

An extreme gaming machine would just be one with a i5-2500k or i7-2600k/2700k with a very good motherboard so you can OC as high as you can go paired with the most powerful GPUs you can afford, which would probably be dual Radeon 7970s. Just make sure you have a sufficient amount of ram and a good enough PSU to run it.

 

[geekapproved]

Xenons? lol

 

[iam2thecrowe]

ultimate gaming machine: i5 2500k will play anything you can throw at it at high fps, a gtx580 is the best card you can get without going for dual gpu setups and it will play any game at max settings. But you need to set yourself a budget, you can spend a LOT of money building an "ultimate" gaming machine. When using the word ultimate, things like 3 monitor setups or stereoscopic 3D monitors come to mind or even large screen projectors. For those you will want dual gpu setups like 2 or 3 x 6970's with 2gb vram each or 2 or 3 x gtx 580's......basically the only limitation to how far you want to go with this is $$$$$$$

 

[fb39ca4]

The i5 2500k is still a bottleneck for Skyrim, but that's about it.

 

[esrever]

The i5 2500k is still a bottleneck for Skyrim, but that's about it.

thing is skyrim only uses 2 threads so thats the best you can do.

 

[deadjon]

Sandy Bridge - E platform - 3930k - Overclock to ~4.5ghz

X79 Chipset - 16gb Quad Channel DDR3 2200 Ram (Plenty of choice here)

Radeon 7970 in Xfire - (wait till the 9th of Janurary)

There you go - a 'Money is no object' gaming machine - Enjoy

(Note - i5 2500k OC'd to 4.8ghz will eat everything you can throw at it and save you a good $500 - But if money was no object Id go 3930k for epeenz)

 

[87ninefiveone]

For gaming suggested build would be around I5 2500K on Z68 motherboard with either GTX560Ti, HD6950 or more powerful GPU solution. Without a budget it is hard to recommend specific hard ware and predicting bottleneck without selected hardware is difficult.
You can use this http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261222-31-build-advice to post your needs in the system section and get help from members.

Slightly off-topic, but why does everyone always automatically recomend the Z68 chipset? P67 is cheaper and unless you need/want SSD caching and switchable graphics (which most enthusiasts don't) it's completly pointless to go with Z68 over a P67 board.

 

[rolli59]

Slightly off-topic, but why does everyone always automatically recomend the Z68 chipset? P67 is cheaper and unless you need/want SSD caching and switchable graphics (which most enthusiasts don't) it's completly pointless to go with Z68 over a P67 board.

I fail to see the price statement being true!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%2050001315%20600093976%20600008069&IsNodeId=1&name=ASUS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%2050001315%20600093976%20600158412&IsNodeId=1&name=ASUS

 

[deadjon]

Future Proofing with PCI-E 3.0 Support - Drop an Ivy Bridge CPU into the Z68 Chipset Rev 3 and it lights up and suddenly becomes next gen

 

[87ninefiveone]

I fail to see the price statement being true!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%2050001315%20600093976%20600008069&IsNodeId=1&name=ASUS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%2050001315%20600093976%20600158412&IsNodeId=1&name=ASUS

Granted Asus is A1 super great, but you can pick up a flagship MSI P67A-GD80 board for $200, while the Z68 board is still $240 (bothe before reabates). Most manufacturer's other than Asus are similarly priced.

 

[justinreeves16]

Those are the responses I was looking for thanks guys, I have a guy at work who thinks hard Drives are the bottle neck now a days, what do you think? Do you guys stripe drives for speed, or what do you recommend, and Why?

 

[87ninefiveone]

From a straight up performance/benchmarking point of view yes, HDD's are definitely a bottle neck. But at noted by RECON-UK this doesn't much matter in the real world. An SSD isn't too likely to give any sort of game play advantage.