Gaming new build list, what do you think? suggessions?

[dilav]

I've havn't been looking up new pc components so not sure whats good anymore. so i asked a friend for info and he came up with this...
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWi...Number=15733306

Trying to keep it around $1,500. Faster would be better obvioulsy... im kinda questioning the disc burner and power supply (want it modular).

What do you think of it? What do you recommend?
I already have a wd raptor as my OS drive. I also don't think I will need more than 6GB of ram.

 

[Rydian]

Your link's broken because you copy-pasted it from a forum post.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWi...Number=15733306


1 - You don't need DDR3-1600
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2792/10
That shows actual gaming benchmarks across various memory speeds.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231223
Just as fine for $35 less.

2 - A GTX 465 rates about the same on benchmarks as the HD 5850, but is about $25 less including the instant savings ($50 without it).

3 - AFAIK you're not going to need a 750W PSU for this (double-check with an online PSU calculator), do you plan on using crossfire later? But yes, that PSU is modular.

4 - That optical drive, you can get one without lightscribe for $5-$7 cheaper.

 

[dilav]

thanks, glad to see some opinion.

As with the power supply thats what I was thinking too. And I mentioned I want a modular one in case someone wants to recommend another one.

With the optical drive, idk y he picked this expensive one... and I hadn't even took a look at it. A lightscribe isn't necessary at all. Im thinking of getting a Sony Optiarc.

 

[Madridi]

Hey man,
where to start? There are lots of good option that would save you money:

- Case: keep the one you have. I have it, and its really good for the price

- CPU: The one you have is good as well, although if you have a microcenter or frys close to you can save around $40 or so

- Motherboard: Get this instead, $20 more, but its very recommended
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131641

- Memory: The one you picked is good, but I personally tend to stay away from those tall memory as it causes some incompatability with some coolers. You can still go with what you picked or check this out instead
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820226030
Also, I would save money and NOT get 12GB. Whatever you do, you will NOT use more than the 6GB already bought. Trust me on this one. You can always get another set if you somehow do realize that you need that

- PSU: The one you picked is a good one afaik, but you can save $30 by going with the Corsair HX series if you want modular PSU for 149.99, or with Corsair TX series if you want to save another $40 and get a non modular PSU for 109.99
http://204.14.213.185/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817139010
http://204.14.213.185/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817139006
Maybe even go for 850w just in case for $159.99 (with $10 promo code available in the link)
http://204.14.213.185/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817139011

- HDD: Again, the one you picked is good, I personally have two myself. However people are recommending the Samsung F3. According to reviews, its faster and cheaper than the caviar black. You will save areound $20
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822152185

- DVD Drive: I'm not really sure why you went with that really expensive ones. This LG one looks good, and even has lightscribe. It's an OEM though so you might need to get some sata cables and screws (although your motherboard should have extra sata cables, and screws are not necessary with a case like the HAF 922)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16827136168

- GPU: I would choose the NVIDIA approach instead. For $35 more, you can get a gigabyte GTX 470
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814125320
or you can go with a 465 as Rydian said, but I still suggest the 470 for that price

- Cooler: Since you opted to go with water cooling, I'll leave that for others to comment on since I know nothing about water cooling (yet)



Some notes:
- Prices are at the time of writing this post. If you arent planning to get them right away, chances are that prices will change
- Whatever parts you finally decide on, check their combo options to save even some more money!
- Some of these items have additional savings promo codes .. be sure to check them out
- Total without combo bundles and additional promo codes, with 12GB RAM and 850w will be $1509 .. minus the $10 promo code for the 850w PSU it will be $1499 .. Check for other savings
Good luck! let us know how it goes

 

[Originality]

I wonder... why not save a bit of money and get the Core i7 920 or 930 instead of the 950? The lower numbers are better at overclocking and you can easily match the speeds of the 950 without generating much more heat. A good cooling system (either HSF or liquid cooling solution) will let you push the speed up much higher too.

For comparison, here's the selection I gave in another thread which also had a budget of $1500. It's very similar to a system I helped pick for another user who insisted on a HD5970, pushing the price up to $1550, with some parts copied out of CustomPC Magazine's "Performance PC" selection (they value cost/performance more than just raw performance). EDIT: I didn't include a ODD because they're the last part I ever think of - you can get them for $18 on newegg (or just £10 in the UK, if you know where to look).

Spoiler

A system that's more than enough for FF14...

CPU: Core i7-930
RAM: 6GB Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800
Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E (pretty much any motherboard would work, but this one's been rated the best budget X58 motherboard)
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5870
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 (although you can prolly just reuse what you have)
Cooling: Thermaltake Frio (not necessary but it will keep the CPU cooler thus prolonging it's life)
Power: Corsair HX850 (anything over 650W from Corsair, Antec, OCZ and a couple others will be fine... just beware of non-branded PSUs - they may explode, seriously).
Case: SilverStone FT02R-W (although I like the Antec 902 or 1200)

Approximate price: $1300 from newegg.

The above system will handle just about any game released in the next 3-4 years with no trouble.

 

[Madridi]

@Originality: i7-930 costs almost the same as the 950 (not counting microcenter). So an extra multiplier is never a bad thing to have. But yeah your idea is not a bad one either.

@op: if you decide to go with 750w HX, check out amazon's today's deals, its on sale today for $135.63!

 

[dilav]

DVD drive: as i said i didnt pick these parts out. the dvd drive, i said in the second post that i have no clue why it was picked too. I thought maybe it isn't picky reading media or its a good brand or something. NEC generally tend to do good in burning any type of media for me. On another forum, I was told that those dvd drive company dont make them anymore just rebrand. So i will look for a new one for sure or go with the LG one. I do have extra SATA, screws and what not so oem will be fine. Actually I didnt even know the one I had was not a oem, maybe thats why for the price difference

HDD: As with the HDD, I like WD recent quality on their drive. Its been good to me. But I also heard good about those Samsung F3 too. But will the Samsung be faster because this WD is 64MB cache and is 6.0 Gb/s on a 6.0Gb/s mobo?

Processor: I've have a 920 Bloomfield build atm and I've been overclocking this also. I'm just gonna try out the 950 though so that will probably stay.

Power Supply: Will also go with the one you picked. I like Cosiar and never heard of Seasonic before. I may get a lower wattage though

GPU: was told the GTX 470 are comparable to this.

Case will keep

cooler (I actually have another on my mind) will reconsider.

Ram will change, heard quality of them aren't good recently. Also I doubt I will need 12GB of it either. I barely go pass 4 or 5.

motherboard: whats different between the one you picked? It has more reviews so obviously more popular. I may reconsider.

Thanks for replying.

 

[Madridi]

DVD Drive: I doubt there will be any difference between these LG, Samsung, Sony, or whatever company you go with. So You can go with any of them really..

HDD: I heard people saying that (currently) there is little benefit to having 64MB cache and a 6.0 Gb/s on a 6.0Gb/s mobo .. I guess it will be adopted mainstream with the release of Sandy bridge next year, and thats when you'll see a difference.
Sure, you can go such an HDD, I dont really see a downside to that, but ask yourself, is it worth the extra $$?

PSU: Apparently people seem to think of seasonic as one of the best (if not the best) companies to make PSUs. Corsair is there on top as well, but apparently some Corsair models are rebranded seasonics. So yeah I suggest going with any of the corsair options

GPU: I'm not sure, but I think the one you picked is comparable to GTX 460 or 465 .. I think GTX 470 is somewhere between the ATI 5850 and 5870. Also, for a gigabyte $289.99, you really cant go wrong! If I wasnt going for a GTX 480 I would've got that in a heart beat.

Cooler: If you are going with an air coolers, I could suggest a few coolers for you whether its high end coolers or budget coolers, but in any case, the best air cooler so far is worth $80

RAM: I dont know about that specific type of RAM that you chose, but supposedly both Mushkin and G.Skill are very good companies, although Mushkin is more recommended. I personally have OCZ Platinums. They are good, but I think they have high RMA rate. (including a set that I returned). Wise choice going with 6GB instead of 12

Motherboard: Well, asides from tri-sli and more USB ports, it basically overclocks better. Besides, whats better than going with a motherboard that many people choose, which means it gets tested more

I personally am going to replace my evga e758 with Asus Rampage III extreme. It's supposedly the second best motherboard out there.


Good luck

 

[Originality]

Why do you say the Rampage III Extreme is "second best"? The last I heard (a few months ago), it was rated best single-CPU motherboard ever (if you've got the money to spend on RoG motherboards - otherwise I think it was a Gigabyte motherboard).

Also, for RAM, it's still worth considering Corsair. The XMS3 series provides great value RAM, whilst the Dominator TR3GX is supposed to be the best high performance RAM you can get (whilst only being £20 more) but it comes with the tall heatsinks. I've tried both in a few systems and they've always been great.

 

[Madridi]

Apparently Rampage III Extreme is beaten by (you guessed it) gigabyte UD9 ..
Also, there are reports that the (northbridge?) temp gets very high with this motherboard, bad TIM used or something, but its nothing that cant be fixed (I never tried that though)
But for Rampage III Extreme's price (around $360), its definelty worth going for that rather than the UD9 ($650)

For the RAM, yeah Corsair is supposed to be one of the best companies when it comes to quality and low failure rates. However, I dont like the TR3GX for its tall heatsinks. The XMS3 is good, but it used to have lower latency (7-7-7-20). But in any case, Mushkin's should beat them both in that area. I admit I havent tried them personally, but I have heard very good things about them

 

[Originality]

I found the reference I was looking for: CustomPC magazine issue 084. Seems I got a couple points mixed up from memory.

Spoiler

They got the 4 best motherboards (Asus Rampage III Extreme, EVGA X58 Classified 4-Way SLI, MSI Big Bang-XPower and Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9) and equiped them with the best setup (i7-980X, special Corsair RAM, liquid cooling, HD5870, 1.25kWt Enermax PSU and a Crucial RealSSD C300) and tested them to see how well they performed and overclocked.

Skipping a lot of detail...

"The least overclockable and therefore the slowest motherboard was the Gigabyte [...], which refused to run the CPU any faster than 4.39Ghz. This is a very disappointing overclock and was due to our test CPU running 20C hotter than it did in the other three motherboards, despite using very similar voltages. [...]but Gigabyte is confident that it will be able to fix the issue with a BIOS update soon."

It goes on to say the MSI motherboard came third with 4.715Ghz. It didn't do well in the 3DMark Vantage test due to only being able to use three dual-slot graphics cards, the third only getting 4 lanes, but costs considerably less than the others. The EVGA motherboard came second with 4.761Ghz, and the Rampage III Extreme got 4.784Ghz. They also say the R3E has the most user-friendly BIOS making overclocking fairly easy (and it survived an accidental immersion in chilled water). In the tests (Gimp, Handbrake H.264 video encoding, Multi-tasking, WPrime, Superpi 1.5 and 3DMark Vantage) it came up top across the board.

I don't know what half of that means, but I've seen how well the Rampage Extreme did with several LGA 775 processors (during the testing/design phase) and a HD4870X2 strapped to it (at the time, it was the best setup possible without using liquid cooling to boost things higher - just what my brother needed for his course in Computer Game Programming and Design), so I can only imagine what the R3E can do with a Core i7-980X and a HD5970.

I put it all in spoiler tags because it's a lil bit off topic. None of it really applies under a $1500 budget.

 

[dilav]

Thanks for all your inputs

 

[Madridi]

I found the reference I was looking for: CustomPC magazine issue 084. Seems I got a couple points mixed up from memory.

Spoiler

They got the 4 best motherboards (Asus Rampage III Extreme, EVGA X58 Classified 4-Way SLI, MSI Big Bang-XPower and Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9) and equiped them with the best setup (i7-980X, special Corsair RAM, liquid cooling, HD5870, 1.25kWt Enermax PSU and a Crucial RealSSD C300) and tested them to see how well they performed and overclocked.

Skipping a lot of detail...

"The least overclockable and therefore the slowest motherboard was the Gigabyte [...], which refused to run the CPU any faster than 4.39Ghz. This is a very disappointing overclock and was due to our test CPU running 20C hotter than it did in the other three motherboards, despite using very similar voltages. [...]but Gigabyte is confident that it will be able to fix the issue with a BIOS update soon."

It goes on to say the MSI motherboard came third with 4.715Ghz. It didn't do well in the 3DMark Vantage test due to only being able to use three dual-slot graphics cards, the third only getting 4 lanes, but costs considerably less than the others. The EVGA motherboard came second with 4.761Ghz, and the Rampage III Extreme got 4.784Ghz. They also say the R3E has the most user-friendly BIOS making overclocking fairly easy (and it survived an accidental immersion in chilled water). In the tests (Gimp, Handbrake H.264 video encoding, Multi-tasking, WPrime, Superpi 1.5 and 3DMark Vantage) it came up top across the board.

I don't know what half of that means, but I've seen how well the Rampage Extreme did with several LGA 775 processors (during the testing/design phase) and a HD4870X2 strapped to it (at the time, it was the best setup possible without using liquid cooling to boost things higher - just what my brother needed for his course in Computer Game Programming and Design), so I can only imagine what the R3E can do with a Core i7-980X and a HD5970.

I put it all in spoiler tags because it's a lil bit off topic. None of it really applies under a $1500 budget.

Well, my info is not really well searched, and certainly not from an unbiased source as well
http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/193/imag...d-power-max.htm