3000+ € Gaming PC

[Ghalex]

Approximate Purchase Date: The closer the better?

Budget Range: 3000-3500

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Skype?,surfing the internet, watching movies

Parts Not Required: keyboard and mouse (i'm gonna buy these seperately so i would appreciate some advices) monitor(already buying the Benq XL240T) speakers

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: I'm italian LOL but the guys on the tom's hardware.it forums aren't that...expert so i'm asking you guys too!

Country: Italy

Parts Preferences: Don't really have them because i'm going from a crappy pc to a new high end one but i guess i like Intel more than AMD and Nvidia more than ATI (i prefer gigabyte for mobos,dunno why)

Overclocking: Maybe,if i learn how to do it

SLI or Crossfire: Yes ,two 680 GTX 4GB (can you guys help me find where to buy them? Can't find any in italy...and what's the best "model" for those,if you get what i mean)

Monitor Resolution: Well the Benq will be 1920x1080 so i guess that

Additional Comments: I would like a really quiet PC and i would like to try out Water cooling,since i read something about it and i found out i don't have to change water every week/month LOL

 

[Ghalex]

WHOOPS didn't see the rest of the post


So right now i got this

Case Tower Cooler Master HAF X XL-ATX Nero con Finestra € 157,50 € 157,50 0,00%
Alimentatore PC Modulare Corsair Professional Series Gold AX1200 1200W 80plus Gold High Performance € 232,50
RAM DDR3 Corsair Vengeance CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9 1600MHz 16GB (4x4GB) CL9 € 84,20 € 84,20 0,00%
Masterizzatore Interno Blu-ray Liteon IHBS212-32 12x BD/DVD/CD SATA Nero Retail € 92,50 € 92,50 0,00%
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64bit Service Pack 1 IT OEM DVD € 121,00 € 121,00 0,00%
Scheda di rete LAN Bigfoot Killer 2100 Gigabit PCI-Express 1x € 68,10 € 68,10 0,00%
SSD Corsair Force Series 3 240GB 2.5" Lettura 550MB/s Scrittura 520MB/s SATA3 Retail € 205,40 € 205,40 0,00%
Scheda Audio Asus Xonar Essence STX € 148,90 € 148,90 0,00%
Hard Disk Interno Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 HUA723030ALA640 3TB 3.5'' 64MB SATA3 € 317,20 € 634,40 0,00%

TOTALE IVA COMPRESA : 1.744,50 €

If you don't understand something let me know

 

[FinneousPJ]

First, you don't need two GTX 680 4 GBs for a single 1080p screen, that's ridiculous. Secondly, you can find one in Germany http://www.hoh.de/hardware/grafikkarten/nvidia/geforce-gtx-serie/gainward/565351/gainward-geforce-gtx680-phantom-4gb-gddr5?c=46171 But buy only one, even that's overkill for you though.

 

[Ghalex]

Uh,you think so? Will i get 120+ FPS in every game with one GTX 680? I want this build to last for a long time and i wanna play everything at 120 FPS (that's why i got the 120hz monitor),don't you think 1 GPU won't handle it? I was also gonna use my old monitor (ACER AL1916W) for browsing the internet and such.

 

[Soda-88]

If you're getting 2 GTX680s then make sure you have appropriate platform to support it. Get some mid range X79 board with the features you'd like to have (you don't really need Rampage IV Extreme) and an i7 3930K with a proper cooler such as Noctua NH-D14 if you like air or Corsair H100 if you prefer closed water cooler. That should have no problem running anything at 120fps.

Edit:
Forgot to mention, you might wanna get GTX690 if at all possible when it comes out in few days. It's 2x2GB VRAM card but you really don't need more than that for a 1080p gaming.

 

[Ghalex]

Yeah i saw the news about the 690 but the truth is i rather have a SLI so that if one breaks i can still play and i'm not stuck not playing for weeks...so i guess i'd have to take a H100...is that for GPU and RAM too? I'm not really an expert in watercooling LOL

About the X79,what would you recommend? Isn't the LGA 1155 better and less expensive than the 2011?

 

[Soda-88]

Nah H100 is CPU only, it's slightly more expensive than Noctua and has similar performance. The one advantage it has is that the water block doesn't strain the motherboard since the Noctua is a massive cooler at roughly 1,2kg.

About the platform, 1155 CPUs are indeed a very good value for a gaming PC but the thing is dual GTX680 will be severely bottlenecked by them. i7 3930K is basically the same CPU as 3960X. The only difference is 3MB of L3 cache on 3960X and a slightly higher stock clock. They both overclock the same pretty much which makes the 3960X a silly buy since it's twice as expensive. Still, if you plan on buying €3,000 rig it would be a shame limiting yourself to mainstream platform.

Since you like Gigabyte I'd say go for GA-X79-UD3 or GA-X79-UD5, whichever you think will fit your needs more feature wise. Main difference between those 2 is amount of DIMM slots, 4 vs 8.
http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/list.aspx?s=42&jid=0&p=2&v=28

 

[Ghalex]

Alright so i guess i'll go with i7 3930K and the GA-X79-UD5!

Just one question. I was watching a video about water cooling and at the end of this video,the reviewer started playing Battlefield 3 at high settings with a QUAD sli of 590 HC classified from EVGA and his FPS were reaching a max of 150 fps and an average of 120-130 fps...you think a sli of 680s would do the same thing? Or i would have to overclock like crazy to reach that fps at those settings? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krgK2dcxJ5g&feature=relmfu this is the video btw at 20:30

 

[Soda-88]

There's a GTX680 sli video of BF3 footage, single player though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpzYYf21jwg

I'd say you would probably have to go a bit easier on AA (4xAA or so) in multiplayer on 64 player maps. But yeah, you can do some mild overclocking as long as you don't go too far with overvolting which would quickly cause too high temps for an every day gaming rig. Just make sure you have plenty of big fans on your case. 1 on top front to blow air inside the case, 1 at top back to increase the airflow for corsair H100 radiator which should be mounted in the roof of the case with 2 fans pulling air out of the case and 1 or 2 at the bottom front of the case for graphics cards.

 

[Ghalex]

Exactly what i was looking for,thanks a lot for the responses! If only my compatriots were this nice...

 

[FinneousPJ]

Why do you think you need such crazy high fps?

 

[Ghalex]

Because the higher the hertz,the higher fps you need to use those hertz. The higher the hertz,the less images will get skipped.The less images will get skipped,the smoother the video will be,etcetera. I would get 500hz if i could,but it would take maybe 50 GPUs or something