Building $3000 Gaming Rig

[nicjr92]

I'm doing a new build and need advice. I will be making this purchse on the 2nd or 3rd of Feb. I'm presently running Win 7

Ultimate, AMD Phenom II X4 965 black with Corsair H50 Liquid cooling system, 1Tb Western digital hd, 8 gigs Corsair dominator

ram @ 1600mhz, Radeon HD 4890 x2 on a King Win 1050 ps. I have one monitor setup an HP 2511x with max res. of 1920 x

1080 @ 60hz. New build will be used for 90% gaming and 10% misc. I plan to do some overclocking. I have $3000.00 to spend

and will be making my purchases from Newegg. Looking at i7 2700k (1155) or i7 3930k (2011) cpu. Would like motherboard to

support pci-e 16 dual slots both running @ 16 x2 mim. will add 2nd card in 2-3 months. Not sure which way to go on video cards.

Should I go with radeon 6990, Gtx 590, radeon 7970 or wait to see what the 2 quarter brings. Presently playing Lotro, Mass

effect 2 and Old Republic. Have not played Skyrim yet but will definitely purchase in the next week or so. Thank you in advance

for your feedback. nicjr92

 

[g-unit1111]

First off, what's the existing build for? Are you considering replacing it or are you going to create a LAN or something else?

Second, here's what I would suggest:

I have $3000.00 to spend

and will be making my purchases from Newegg. Looking at i7 2700k (1155) or i7 3930k (2011) cpu.

Well neither of those are really geared toward gamers. The i7-2700K is meant for high end video and editing applications (CS5, etc). The 3930K is designed for high end workstations and server environments.

Not sure which way to go on video cards.

Should I go with radeon 6990, Gtx 590, radeon 7970 or wait to see what the 2 quarter brings.

If you're going to spend the cash on the 6990 or the 590, it'd be better to go with dual 580's in SLI in that price range. Otherwise a single 7970 will do just fine it's been owning 3-D Mark records left and right. It's definitely a safe bet and you're better to go with that now as I don't know how NVIDIA will be able to top this.

If you have the money here is what I would suggest:

Case: Cooler Master Cosmos II - $349.99
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer MKII 950W - $149.99
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4 - $194.99
CPU: 3.30GHz Intel Core i5-2500K - $229.99
Cooler: Corsair H100 - $119.99
RAM: PNY XLR8 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 - $44.99
SSD: 128GB Crucial M4 - $179.99
HD: Seagate Barracuda ST3 1TB - $159.99
Optical: LG Super Multi BD-R - $79.99
Video Card: 2 x Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB - $559.99 each
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium - $99.99
Keyboard / Mouse: Logitech MK550 - $64.99
Monitor: ASUS VS Series VS247H-P Black 23.6" 2ms - $189.99

Total: $2,954.18

 

[angaddev]

here's my $3000 build :
Obsidian 650D
3GB XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black with Ghost & Hydrocell, 5700MHz GDDR5, 28nm, GPU 1000MHz, 2048 Cores, DVI-I/HDMI/Mini DP
Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked
Gigabyte G1.SNIPER2
1TB Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black, SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms
120GB Force GT
Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO, 4 Heat Pipes Direct Contact, with 120mm Quiet Fan LGA775/1155/1156/1366/AM2/AM2+/AM3/FM1
22" ASUS VH228H Widescreen LED Monitor (X2)
Arctic Silver 5 12g High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound
G-Skill 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz RipjawsX Memory Kit CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.5V

 

[geekapproved]

Just to clarify you don't need a monitor right??

Wait 2 months for Ivy Bridge, then come back.

You won't need anywhere near $3000 for an awesome gaming machine. Unless of course you want to do stupid stuff like pay $350 for a case and $120 for water cooling.

With Ivy Bridge you won't need watercooling cause they are only 77w.

Oh and forget Arctic Silver 5, get Tuniq TX3, it rates as good or better than AS5 and doesn't need 100-200 hours to cure.

 

[angaddev]

My $3000 build is an awesome gaming machine. SB is better value than IB

 

[nicjr92]

Thank you for your response. Yes, the existing build is for gaming, which I plan to replace. Thank you for the links. The build suggestion is awesome. Is there that big of a performance difference between 8Gb and 16GB of ram or will I get better performance if I leave some ram slots open? nicr92

 

[angaddev]

No difference between 8 and 16, unless u are doing some serious video editing/ multitasking. IF you really want to 16gb will not decrease ur performance.

 

[nicjr92]

Just to clarify you don't need a monitor right??

Wait 2 months for Ivy Bridge, then come back.

You won't need anywhere near $3000 for an awesome gaming machine. Unless of course you want to do stupid stuff like pay $350 for a case and $120 for water cooling.

With Ivy Bridge you won't need watercooling cause they are only 77w.

Oh and forget Arctic Silver 5, get Tuniq TX3, it rates as good or better than AS5 and doesn't need 100-200 hours to cure.

No I don't need a monitor. Did not know about the Ivy Bridge release. Thank you.

 

[nicjr92]

No difference between 8 and 16, unless u are doing some serious video editing/ multitasking. IF you really want to 16gb will not decrease ur performance.

Thank you.

 

[g-unit1111]

No I don't need a monitor. Did not know about the Ivy Bridge release. Thank you.

But Ivy Bridge isn't going to bring a lot of new stuff to the table. It will run off of existing Z68 and P67 motherboards and the only thing extra it will offer is PCI-E 3.0. For the most part it's just going to be a few new CPUs with higher clock speeds and maybe a couple of extra cores.

here's my $3000 build :
Obsidian 650D
3GB XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black with Ghost & Hydrocell, 5700MHz GDDR5, 28nm, GPU 1000MHz, 2048 Cores, DVI-I/HDMI/Mini DP
Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked
Gigabyte G1.SNIPER2

The G1.SNIPER is an LGA 1366 board, it won't work with an SB CPU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128471

This is a board that would be more comparable: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188099

You won't need anywhere near $3000 for an awesome gaming machine. Unless of course you want to do stupid stuff like pay $350 for a case and $120 for water cooling.

I realize that case is quite a bit overkill, but it is quite awesome. :lol:

 

[angaddev]

The G1.SNIPER2 is a 1155 board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128525

 

[angaddev]

it's got loads of features, and i;m using it right now

 

[g-unit1111]

The G1.SNIPER2 is a 1155 board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128525

Huh - I didn't see that one listed when I searched for it.

it's got loads of features, and i;m using it right now

I have two Gigabyte boards and I think they're both awesome.

 

[angaddev]

it's out o stock but you could get it at another website.

 

[therogerwilco]

Don't go with a 2011 socket board, that's just good for the SB, get a 1155 that supports Ivy Bridge, has PCIEx 3.0, Sata III, and usb 3.0. Then you can upgrade everything and you'll have everything...

So all you really need is an i7 2600k (best performance vs price, it'll OC just as well as the 2700k, don't be a sucker)
memory, just get 8GB+ (doesn't matter anymore too much, perhaps go for fastest timings, be sure to get 4)
Don't bother with the ATI 7xxx series, it's been beat in certain tests by Nvidia 460's in SLI (that's really sad)
Perhaps get a couple OC'd 570's, I would suggest the Gigabyte Windforce ones, real nice, 3 fans > 2 fans
As far as a board, you can get the Extreme3 Gen3 for 110... (has all the above I mentioned)
Scrap a mechanical HD, get a couple SSD's and raid them. keep them 30-50% empty after being raided, and the lack of trim support until intel updates the RST drivers won't matter... The mushkin chronos deluxe 120GB is by far one of the top 3-5 ssd's available right now (toggle nand memory, look it up)
Get the 1200w uhhhhh Antec(?) psu..

And by far, if you want an awesome gaming experience, get the HP ZR30w monitor. I'm a hardcore gamer and a 2560x1600 resolution on one big monitor is by far the best experience I've ever had.
I play bf, cs:s, skyrim, swtor, metro, etc etc etc, I have too many games to name.... but all in all, I wish I would have bought the monitor years ago. best 1200$ I've ever spent on any computer equipment.
Yes, it's 60hz (doesn't matter eyes only see degradation <30fps/hz) and the input lag is the lowest on this one because it has no on screen display to adjust monitor crap, you do that thru the catalyst/nvidia control panel)

And there ya go. I've pretty much got the above setup and I'm set for the next few years at least. And if I really want to, I can upgrade to ivy bridge without changing any other hardware, also I can buy the newer video cards in a year or so that will utilize pciex 3.0 and operate faster than anything available right now...
I thought about the 2011 socket for the newer SB's, but it's not worth it when you look at this setup...
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html use this for deciding on video card, but i would suggest 570's because they're the best price vs performance
and use toms hardware charts for other crap... GL

 

[g-unit1111]

Don't go with a 2011 socket board, that's just good for the SB, get a 1155 that supports Ivy Bridge, has PCIEx 3.0, Sata III, and usb 3.0. Then you can upgrade everything and you'll have everything...

I agree - 2011 is pretty useless when there's no viable upgrade option available.

So all you really need is an i7 2600k (best performance vs price, it'll OC just as well as the 2700k, don't be a sucker)

Well the 2700K is overkill, I'll agree with that. But you don't even really need the 2600K for a gaming system when the 2500K is literally the same CPU sans hyperthreading, which is useless on a gaming computer?

Don't bother with the ATI 7xxx series, it's been beat in certain tests by Nvidia 460's in SLI (that's really sad)

I'm going to call BS on this until I see the actual benchmarks. What was the source, what other hardware did they test and how did they achieve those results?

As far as a board, you can get the Extreme3 Gen3 for 110... (has all the above I mentioned)

I wouldn't recommend that board for a high end rig. It'd be stupid to cut corners on the motherboard while spending three times that on a video setup it can't handle. The UD4 that I linked to earlier is a much more balanced board and will accommodate for 2 and 3 way SLI and Crossfire and up to 32GB memory. And you can power your phone/ipod/etc while your PC is turned off.

Scrap a mechanical HD, get a couple SSD's and raid them. keep them 30-50% empty after being raided, and the lack of trim support until intel updates the RST drivers won't matter... The mushkin chronos deluxe 120GB is by far one of the top 3-5 ssd's available right now (toggle nand memory, look it up)
Get the 1200w uhhhhh Antec(?) psu..

It's pretty pointless to RAID SSDs when SSDs have a much higher fail rate than regular mechanical drives do, and overloading them or doing anything that will drastically distort read/write times will cause serious problems down the road.

 

[robustus64]

Get the i7 2700 k or better the 3930 because it affects general usage of the comp too.. trust me i 7 2700 k or 3930 runs rings around the i5 in general computing and really smokes um in gaming...

 

[g-unit1111]

Get the i7 2700 k or better the 3930 because it affects general usage of the comp too.. trust me i 7 2700 k or 3930 runs rings around the i5 in general computing and really smokes um in gaming...

What's your source on this? Every benchmark time and time again shows that the i5 is literally the exact same CPU as the 2600K/2700K. Actually in some cases when overclocked the 2500K can perform BETTER than the aforementioned CPUs.

The 3930K is really pointless when even Intel says there's no real viable upgrade path. The only CPU that is somewhat affordable is the upcoming 3820T and that's not even a CPU that can be overclocked.

 

[dish_moose]

^^ The OP wants a gaming machine - try to focus and give him what he wants - not what you have or like. i5 is clearly the way to go for a great gaming pc. If you buy better GPU with all of the $$ you would save...
-Bruce

 

[geekapproved]

SB is better value than IB

Ok first of all, IB is supposed to debut at the same price as SB, use a lot less power, be a much better overclocker, and be 6-10% faster clock for clock.

Second of all, nobody is talking about value on a $3000 gaming machine.

 

[angaddev]

You can save by getting an i5. Once again check my build.

 

[geekapproved]

You can save by getting an i5. Once again check my build.

What part of $3000 gaming build did you not understand??

The fastest Ivy Bridge will be 77w, so wait for that if you want to do some killer overclocking.

 

[nicjr92]

Thank you to all that responded to this thread. I have purchased the Cosmos ii case. Granted it is crazy expensive, but seeing as I have to look at it everyday it was the only case I could not live without. I have decided to wait on everything else and see what Nvidia comes out with. Will continue to save. Great suggestions from all. Thanks again. nicjr92