New gaming rig!

[Biggles]

Howdy one and all!

Captain Biggles is in dire need of a new gaming computer, since the upcoming fall presents some most interesting prospects (Read: BF3) :haha:

The ol' timer I'm sitting next to atm I've had for roughly 5 years (you can actually see me boasting about it here) :

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=100702

Oh how things change :haha:

Anyways, money is basically not a real problem here, I'm willing to pay between 20-25000ish SEK for this one, since I want it to be mighty powerful! :arrgh!:

I'm looking at a Swedish web-based company (totally reliable!) called Komplett.se

They have some decent gaming rigs ready but you can exchange parts to more expensive/cheaper stuff at will, and they'll build it for me, and checking it all works.

Here's a link where you can get a good idea of what I mean:

http://www.komplett.se/k/config.aspx?ConfigSystemId=10463

(NOTE! In Sweden, we always includes taxes on the price tag, so what you see, is what you pay!):O:

I haven't bought anything yet, and I still got about a month before finally doing so, but I've played around for a bit looking for something decent. Here's one example which I think looks pretty good:

Corsair HX 1050W PSU ATX 12V
MSI P67A-GD80 B3, Socket-1155 ATX, P67, DDR3, 3xPCIe(2.0)x16, SLI/CFX, SATA 6Gb/s, USB3.0, eSATA, FW, EFI
Intel® Core***8482; i7-2600 Processor Socket-LGA1155, Quad Core, 3.4Ghz, 8MB
Corsair Vengeance***8482; DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9 Kit w/2x 4GB XMS3 modules, CL9-9-9-24
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 1536MB PhysX PCI-Express 2.0, GDDR5, 2xDVI, HDMI, Windforce 3X, 795MHz
Western Digital Caviar® Black 2TB SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3.0), 64MB Cache, 7200RPM, 3,5", Dual processor
Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro PCI Express x1 (Soundcard)
Logitech G35 Gaming headset 7.1 surround sound powered by dolby
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Any thoughts? Things that might be good to know is that this computer is intent for gaming mostly! Also, if it can max out BF3 it'd be great, even though, noone knows for sure what it takes, since DICE hasn't released any specs yet...

So any feedback? :DL

[FIREWALL]

Looks GREAT Biggles will last into the next 5 yrs unless the Gameing Industry gets off their behinds and comes out with new games that are mind blowing. Don't count on it.

Since you state money isn't any problem. You want some thing to last into the next 5yrs or longer that Rig or simular is the way to go. You probably won't be worrying about Upgrades either.

Please don't let members try to dumb down what your looking at.

Err on the side of Overkill and you'll have years of flexibilty on what you may want to do and hardware is available in 5yrs.

My only suggestion is look Hard at Warrenty. If you need to RMA it are you responseible for Shipping... ect...ect.

Enjoy your new purchase Biggles. :woot:

[kiwi_2005]

Since money aint a problem why not go for the Windows 7 Ultimate edition 64bit and buy a BIG case the bigger the better, the normal size cases are no good go large you need room for all that airflow. IMHO.

[FIREWALL]

Why Ultimate 64 bit with all that stuff as he posted the rig was mostly for Gameing and in his words Mighty Powerfull.

Why not pro Home Edition 64bit that loads faster and has good extras

Ultimate has alot of stuff for business that he's never going to use for Gameing.

Case got past me and is a Great suggestion kiwi :up:

And I don't think he brought up Cooling either.

If this is on a contract deal with so much down and so much a month he might as well get it exactly how he wants it. So get it right. :yep:

Once he signs and hands over the down payment he's an OWNER. :D

[kiwi_2005]

Ultimate has alot of stuff for business that he's never going to use for Gameing.



I agree, didn't think of it that way. I was thinking of it more "So what 7 version you have? Oh I have the home edition of 7. Pfft mate! I have Ultimate edition, my OS owns your OS :rotfl2:

But yea home edition is good enough for gaming:yep:

[AVGWarhawk]

I don't know Biggles. It might be strong enough to balance the checkbook. :hmmm:

J/K..should be a kick butt system! :yeah:

[Castout]

Pretty high end rig. Should be able to run two instances of Battlefield 3 concurrently pretty well :O:

[Arclight]

I'd go for an i5 2500K or i7 2600K. They have an unlocked multiplier, allowing you to tinker.

That memory could be cheaper. 2nd generation Sandy Bridge doesn't care what memory you use, it's all the same. Save a few bucks there and put it towards that K CPU.

Go with Z68 chipset instead of P67. Got some extra features, such as letting you use the onboard GPU on these new i5/i7 chips. Handy if your card ever fries itself or you need to do some troubleshooting.

2TB drives are relatively slow. Maybe grab another 640GB black edition. Also allows you to separate the OS from game installs, maybe move the pagefile over. Should be a bit smoother.

Home edition 64b is limited to 8GB RAM. You might want more in the future, who knows?


* also, imho, forget about i7 2600. It costs a bundle more for 0.1GHz speed gain, which in practice is negligable. Heck, depending on the game the I5 is actually faster. i7 just offers some extra features that can speed up stuff like video encoding but does absolutely nothing for gaming.

I know you said money isn't an issue, but if gaming is the main concern that setup is wasting an awfull lot of it.

[Biggles]

Thanks for the response guys!

Power supply is right there at the top of the list :O:

Cooling for CPU, something like this:

http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=638849&CKS=PCW

And the case, I thought something like this:

http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=494334&CKS=PCW

[CaptainCruise]

If you wanna add something that will add some speed to your OS and your important applications/games, and if money really isn't that much of an issue, go for a two hard drive setup with a solid state drive as your primary Windows OS drive, and a 7200rpm hard drive like that 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black for storage and games. The WD drives are not all that slow and won't really hurt your games that much at all. This one is a solid choice:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136792

64mb cache, 2TB storage, SATA 6.0 ready and a 5 year warranty. Thats pretty awesome for $149 US.

I just bought this SSD drive for my game rig I'm building:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706

120GB, and it's been reviewed as one of the better, or best, SSD drive on the market now. There have been some "growing pains" with some people having issues with SSD drives. Firmware updates have made the drives a lot better and less of a problem, but some people still have problems. Whether it's compatability with certain parts not playing nice together, or just a new technology going thru the process of maturing that takes time, who knows. Research the SSD drives before you decide and read all you can about them and get as familiar with them as you can. Then make the best choices for your particular computer build.

Another option you can think about instead of a SSD primary Windows drive is a 10,000rpm WD Raptor drive. They come in sizes from 74GB to 600GB. This is the largest capacity they have:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136803

A 150GB or so would be a good size for a Windows drive with space left over for a few of your really important or favorite programs. A fair amount cheaper too, than the SSD drive.

I hope some of this helps without getting too confusing. Good luck with your rig.

Tom "CC"

[Biggles]

Well guys, a little update!

Computer bought, assembled, plugged in and been running for a week now. Works like a charm! Here is what it ended at:

Corsair HX 1050W PSU ATX 12V
MSI P67A-GD80 B3, Socket-1155 ATX, P67, DDR3, 3xPCIe(2.0)x16, SLI/CFX, SATA 6Gb/s, USB3.0, eSATA, FW, EFI
Intel® Core***8482; i7-2600 Processor Socket-LGA1155, Quad Core, 3.4Ghz, 8MB
Corsair Vengeance***8482; DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9 Kit w/2x 4GB XMS3 modules, CL9-9-9-24
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 3072MB AMP2! ®
Western Digital Caviar® Black 2TB SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3.0), 64MB Cache, 7200RPM, 3,5", Dual processor
Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro PCI Express x1 (Soundcard)
Sennheiser PC 360 Gaming headset
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Thanks for your feedback gents! :salute:

[Sailor Steve]

I hope you won't be too offended if I hate you for awhile.

Passively, of course. :D

[Biggles]

I hope you won't be too offended if I hate you for awhile.

Passively, of course. :D

Nah, it's cool, I know I would if I see anyone having this rig while I'm still sitting on my old one :haha:

[magicstix]

One big thing I see missing is a solid state drive... Adding one for your OS and most played games would really speed things up.

[Arclight]

Question is, do you want to spend that much money just to boost load times a bit? Not going to improve performance.

[magicstix]

Question is, do you want to spend that much money just to boost load times a bit? Not going to improve performance.

It'll improve performance and boot times. Memory paging will kill you if you're using a hard drive. Most games these days stream map files from the disk rather than load the whole thing.


Also, the sound card is probably a waste of money. It's not going to do anything that the onboard sound on the motherboard won't do.

[Task Force]

Myself i wouldn't get to complex with it.

Id go for the I5 2500K
what ever motherboard floats your boat.
A GTX 580, or its ATI equivalent.
6-8 GB of ram, you will probably never use it, but still.
myself i have a 700GB WD black. and it does perfectly fine
for cooling the stock ones are usually good enough. unless you are planning on superclocking it.

Because the more complex you get, the more of a chance it will mess up.

[Arclight]

It'll improve performance and boot times. Memory paging will kill you if you're using a hard drive. Most games these days stream map files from the disk rather than load the whole thing.
If your HD is fragmented or just slow, yes. It's up to devs to decide when they need something though; a game in which streaming is used properly will see no benefit from a SSD since streaming has no impact on it in the first place.

Also, we're talking about minor hick-ups at worst, not general performance. If you want to spend $200,- to smooth out minor stutters that only occur occasionally, then by all means. For me it's just not worth it.