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£2500 gaming system

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January 2, 2012 1:44:24 PM

Hello,
I'm speccing out a new gaming system, and rather than build it myself I'm going for a pre-built one.

I'd really appreciate any comments on the following (better/different combos etc, power supply size, capability of running all modern games at ultra, etc).

I'm looking at a Scan 3XS system (always been happy with Scan for components in the [distant] past, and have been one of the many people stung by Mesh over the last few years!) with some minor config changes: (cost is about £2500 inc vat)

Base system: 3XS Velocity SLI - Custom Series - Updated Dec 2011

Basic config:
Case: Corsair Carbide Series 500R White Mid Tower Gaming Case
Motherboard - Intel X79 Chipset: MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) Intel X79 Chipset
CPU - Intel 2nd Generation "Sandy Bridge Enthusiast": Intel Core i7 3930K 3.2GHz Hex Core + Hyperthreading 12MB Cache
CPU Coolers: Corsair H100 Hydro Series Extreme Performance CPU Cooler
Overclocking - CPU: 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ Sandy Bridge Enthusiast CPU professionally overclocked by our 3XS engineers to 4.5Ghz
Memory: 16GB Total (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 1600MHz
NVIDIA Graphics: 3GB EVGA GTX 590 Classified 630MHz GPU 1024 Cores 3456MHz GDDR5
Power Supply Unit: 850W Corsair Enthusiast Series TX Modular (Dual GTX 580 & ATI 6970)
Solid State Drives: 128GB Corsair Performance Pro Marvell SSD Read 500MB s Write 340MB s
Hard Drives: 2x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6Gb s 7200rpm 64MB Cache
Optical Drive 1 - DVD Blu Ray: LiteOn IHOS104-6 BluRay Reader - DVD-RW
Sound Card: Asus Xonar DX XD 7.1
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - OEM

More about : 2500 gaming system

January 2, 2012 2:12:21 PM

You could run all modern games at ultra for less than that. And have enough left over to upgrade to play the next generation of games on ultra, or near enough.
January 2, 2012 2:20:04 PM

Thanks 13thmonkey,

I tend to buy machines to last about 3 years with little upgrading, so I'm thinking of anything game-wise coming out over the next couple of years or so. Skyrim and Crysis2 were the first games I had trouble with on my current setup.

Where do you think I've gone too crazy?
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January 2, 2012 3:04:26 PM

SB-E is too much from a gaming point of view, there's no need for hex, and probably won't be for the 3 years you are considering. The generation of games after that might be able to hex core. Also from the intel camp Hyperthreading is somewhat dubious when it comes to gaming.

I'd say you are 3 months too early, go for the i7 or i5 ivy-bridges?'d also suggest that your timing is out on the gpu, and that you pay a premium for the performance level of the 590, you could go for 2x 580's in SLI and get better peformance. You are already taking the SLI risk (drivers etc.) with the 590, but the clocks are about 25% below the standard 580. And should SLI prove to be a problem you can more easily switch to a single card mode with two 580's.

There is no need for water cooling, its often not that much quieter and not always cooler than air cooling. Cheap air is often better than all in one water, and good air is on a par with all but the best water.

90% of games are GPU limited so get as much gpu power for your budget as you can, if you went for 2x570's you could do everything at ultra at good resolutions, 1920x1080 and maybe higher, and then when the new nvidia gpus are out swap them for the 670's with the money you haven't spent, or a single 680, and then another 680 later. The only thing you are upgrading is the GPU, which isn't difficult.

Thats my play on how to spend 2500 for 3 years of gaming.

January 2, 2012 3:36:20 PM

Thats an interesting point about SLI on the 590 - I was actively avoiding SLI after having nothing but trouble in the past, and didn't realise it was the same tech being used in the single 590. I also agree that I could do with waiting for a few months, but my current machine really is on its last legs so need something in the next couple of weeks (and have accepted a bit a premium because of that). I might look at getting a 580 (which I can probably sell on) and wait for the next gen to arrive (thanks).

Also fair point re the CPU/MoBo. However, second to gaming :-) I do some actual work in Analytics so a high spec processor/MoBo and a big chunk of RAM is always on the list.

Thanks for the comment on water cooling as well - I'll do some more research on the cases and fans available.

Cheers,
Andy.
January 2, 2012 3:48:26 PM

you can still get 16GB on SB and IV, and a mild overclock to 4.0GHz would make it equal to sb-e, other than memory bandwidth, but seriously you'll be shaving 10% of your work uses? is it worth it? What kind of analytics, looking to get into big data myself.
January 2, 2012 4:16:45 PM

Thanks for the comments - I've re-specced as per below and it knocks 500 notes off the cost :-) Looks like Scan are still saying they can get it to 4.7Ghz. Does this look a bit more sensible?

Case: Corsair 600T Graphite Series Black Mid Tower Gaming Case
Motherboard - Intel Z68 Chipset: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3P - Intel Z68
CPU - Intel 2nd Generation "Sandy Bridge": Intel Core i7 2700K 3.5GHz Quad Core + Hyperthreading 8MB Cache
CPU Coolers: Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro BK016 Performance CPU Cooler
Overclocking - CPU: 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ Sandy Bridge CPU professionally overclocked by our 3XS engineers to 4.7Ghz
Memory - DDR3: 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 1600MHz
NVIDIA Graphics: 1536MB EVGA GTX 580 SC 797MHz GPU 512 Cores 2050MHz GDDR5
Power Supply Unit: 850W Corsair HX Series V2 Modular (Dual GTX 580 & ATI 6970)
Solid State Drives: 128GB Corsair Performance Pro Marvell SSD Read 500MB s Write 340MB s
Hard Drives: 2x1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6Gb s 7200rpm 64MB Cache
Optical Drive 1 - DVD Blu Ray: LiteOn IHOS104-6 BluRay Reader - DVD-RW
Sound Card: Asus Xonar DX XD 7.1
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - OEM

As far as analytics is concerned - I mainly to Customer Insight, so modelling expected customer behaviour. The only real big-data side to this is analysing online activity data (_not_ "web analytics"!) to predict future behaviour. Got a bunch of guys working for me doing the properly clever stuff, but Data Scientist is definately becoming the way forward - know what your customers want and when they want it and the rest is easy :-)
January 2, 2012 4:46:05 PM

I'd love to do some of that, currently into process analysis so more cause and effect to determine the reason that processes don't always do what you want, and analysis of call volumes etc. But its always been a sideline that I do when required as opposed to a service that I do explicitly.

Build looks good, you might find that the 3GB version of the card offers more performance, I know that BF3 streams textures in until it is full, and that streaming process and swapping in and out of textures must have a performance hit attached until it become static. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-palit-gtx-580-40nm-4... for instance.
January 2, 2012 5:04:06 PM

That looks a very nice system indeed, but as the above said already, see if you can get the 3gb gtx580 card, what monitor are you using?
!