5g Gaming Rig

Budget:
5000 max, seeing as the CDN dollar is doing well, we can keep the price at 5000 it'll just be a few hundred extra. That will be just for the computer.

Expectations:
I'm going to use it mainly for gaming. I want to have at least a dual graphics card set up, if not a 3 way. I will also be purchasing 3 monitors to go with it. No need for 3D.

Usage:
Eve online being the big one, BFBCII, COD...You know FPS, MMO and CoH stuff. All running at max settings. Essentially I would like some max settings for the next few years.

Special Needs:
The environment I am in is dusty. I would like some sort of blue accents on the computer, be it blue fans or lights to compliment my peripherals as well as keeping it quiet.

Saved Ticket #:
469845

Specifications:

Sounds great, thanks for the quick reply. I have some more questions haha.

I. So the i7...Why not go all out and get the i7 980x or can I save a ton of money and get the other one to preform just as well>

II.3 monitor set up. Im looking at the Asus VH222H-P, 21.5" Widescreen Full HD 1080P LCD Monitor, 1920x1080, 5ms, 20000:1(ASCR), 300 cd/m for the set up. If you have better suggestions just throw them out there.

III. RAM.6 or 12? I was thinking 12 for more long term.

IV. Sound card. Is it worth getting the Fatality XFi? How good is the integrated audio on that mother board?




I appreciate the help in advance and I believe that DS is where I'm going to drop 5g's. After the questions are answered and I see some builds I'll do some tweaking and update the post. Thanks again guys!

Edited by Zap - 17 Dec 2010 at 11:58am

I'd actually recommend the Corsair 1200w unless 4 NVIDIA GPUs will be used, ATI should be fine as they generally draw less power.

Motherboard watercooling while cool looking, is not really necessary even in overclocked systems. 
GPUs and CPUs, well I'll leave that to you.  Personally I believe the GPU isn't as much of benefit as the CPU is on water, though you mentioned you wanted quiet, so it may be of benefit to you to watercool them as well as getting the Stage 1 or 2 noise suppression.


Edited by venom - 17 Dec 2010 at 2:57am

Hey I just updated my original post. Thanks guys!

@Zap, the guys here have given you some great info, please look at their info and the build I made and make comment on the build and what you think and what you like to add/change in a new post on this thread, thank you.

1. Once I we know the directions we like to go (lc or air, nvidia or ati, do we need one card, dual or sli) then I can show you builds with 6 core and 4 core i7, and you can see which is best for you, justin gave you some great info on that.

2. before we get into monitors,

a. are you looking to get 3 of that asus?

b. what is teh budget for the monitors?

c. are you looking to run extended setup? (the picture is spread thru all there monitors at once, like this picture here

answer those and we can recommend monitors based on those answers.

3. 6GB is more then enough, by the time we need 12GB of ram, this pc is gonna be 8 years or older, for gaming you won't even use 6GB, people that need 12GB of ram and will see any difference what so ever from it, are people that do heavy duty 3d editing, virtual servers, power users, gamers don't even need 6 GB.

4. IF you want sound quality and etc, sound card is what you want, the mobo sound is good but from what I understand sound card = sound quality, I'm not a big expert on sound tho.

So as you can see we are trying to customize a build for your exact needs, so that your money goes directly to things you use.

Give us/me the info I asked for and we can be on our way, So right now please look at my build and tell me what you think about it, I like to know your thoughts on these first:

Case, cooling (air or LC), and gpu (ati or nvidia)

this info along with the monitor info I asked will help us give you exactly what you need, and then after that we can talk about the bells and whistles if you like, but first lets figure out the meat and bones, and please respond in a new post in this thread, thank you, this is gonna be great build.


Edited by DST4ME - 17 Dec 2010 at 5:32pm

Also, with a 3 monitor setup wouldn't 2x 6970's serve him better with the 2g of ram to help with higher res.  Especially if each monitor he's gonna get is going to be 2560x1600 then wouldn't 3x 6970's be better for him to max settings.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but in certain games haven't the 6970's proved better at much higher resolutions, also since he's going with a multiple monitor setup wouldn't eyefinity be a better choice?

5760x1080

Yes, and I just don't see 2 580's doing the trick at high end games at that resolution, but if it's all he can afford with the 3 monitor setup then of course that's all he can get.  But, some games at 2650x1600 res challenge a dual gpu setup, so I would think in this situation trifire would offer the best scenario in price/performance. Yet if he is partial to Nvidia, then I'm not sure what the prices are on the 570's right now, maybe going tripple sli would help.  Yet nobody answered my question, do the 6970's in fact pull ahead at higher resolutions such as 2560x1600 and above, I remember reading that somewhere but I'm not certain. 

Looking at hardwarecanucks 3 of the benchmarks done at 2560x1600 favored the 6970, and in 2 of the others it barely matched a 570, and even trailed a 480 in one I think it was the Battlefield Bad Company 2 benchmark.  But in other benchmarks such as this one done at 5760x1080 " http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1084/pg17/xfx-radeon-6970-and-radeon-6950-graphics-card-review-crossfire-eyefinity-vs-sli.html " which idk how unbiased hardware heaven is towards ati it shows the 6970 pulling ahead of the 580.  There haven't been enough legit reviews done at extreme resolutions, but I think that where this card might shine is in eyefinity.  However I'm not so sure how unbiased their information is.  What we need is justin to get him a tri sli 580 setup and a trifire 6970 setup then see what we get lol. 

Dont go by one place, but even with them, the 570 does better with bbc2 with 4x aa, dirt2, lost planet 2, with metro they are very close, that leaves 2 other games I think, in short it depends on the game.

I wonder if he is better off with 22-24" monitor or 2 x 30" monitor, or even better yet, if the budget allows, 3 x 30", lets see what he has to say.

well break it down logically

Huh? A 6970 costs $60 more than a 570, each.

And why in the world would you try to do 5760x1080 with a single card?

Originally posted by Dragoonseal Huh? A 6970 costs $60 more than a 570, each. And why in the world would you try to do 5760x1080 with a single card?

This whole time I have been saying 580 not 570.  I have been making the comparison of 6970 vs. 580.  Not 570.  Also, when I said the 6970 looks to be the better choice I didn't mean just buy one 6970 if you read everything in context you would see I am pointing to a trifire 6970 build..

ram change is something you will not notice teh difference from.

your case needs to be big, you don't want the sniper with tri sli setup, thats a mid tower, you want a full tower, you never said if you wanted ati or nvidia.

your cpu upgrade is pointelss for games also, but if you want it, cause you want a highend pc, then ok.

well after looking at the build, looks like 5000 does not cover everything you wanted, so lets move things around, test build number 2, tell me what you think:

Here you go Ticket# 470309 --- Price: $4959 (To see this build click here)

Copy of Specifications:
Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Cooler Master 942 HAF X
Exterior Finish: - Standard Factory Finish
Trim Accents: - Standard Factory Finish
Processor: Intel Core i7 970 3.2GHz (Six-Core Gulftown)
Motherboard: ASUS Rampage III Extreme (Intel X58 Chipset) (Features USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s)
System Memory: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series (Highly Recommended) (Hand Tested)
Power Supply: 1500W Silverstone (Dual/Triple/Quad SLI Compatible) (Recommended)
Expansion Bay: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (80GB Solid State (By: Intel) (Model: X25-M MLC Edition) (Extreme Performance)
Set 1 Raid Options: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 2: Multimedia\Data: 1x (1TB Hitachi/Seagate (7200 RPM) (32MB Cache)
Hard Drive Set 3: Backup\Misc.: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: Blu-Ray Player/DVD Player (Play Blu-Ray and Play DVDs)
Optical Drive 2: DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 24x / CD-Writer 48x)
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: 3x SLI Triple (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB (Includes PhysX Technology)
Add-on Card: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: AIR: Stage 2: Noctua NH-D14 Extreme Performance (Does NOT fit on the regular EVGA X58 3X SLI)
H20 Tube Color:- Not Applicable, I do not have a FrostChill or Sub-Zero LCS Cooling System Selected
Chassis Airflow: Standard Factory Chassis Fans
Internal Lighting: Internal Chassis Lighting System (Red)
Enhancements: - No Thanks
Chassis Mods: - No Thanks
Noise Reduction: - No Thanks
Boost Processor: FREE: Stage 1: Overclock the processor between 3.3GHz to 3.9GHz (Cooling Upgrade Recommended)
Boost Video Card: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s)
Boost Memory: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my memory
Boost OS: - No Thanks, Please do not tweak the services on the operating system
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-Bit Edition)
Recovery Tools: Windows Recovery Toolkit (Bundled with Windows 7 CD)
Virus Protection: - No Thanks
Office: - No Thanks
Benchmarking: - No Thanks
Install/Test Game: - No Thanks
Display: - No Thanks
Surge Shield: - No Thanks
Speakers: - No Thanks
Keyboard: - No Thanks
Mouse: - No Thanks
External Storage: - No Thanks
Exclusive T-Shirt: - No Thanks
Priority Build: - No Thanks, Ship Within 5-15 Business Days After Order Is Successfully Processed
Warranty: Life-time Expert Customer Care with 3 Year Limited Warranty

I'm not sure about your choice mobo and cpu ugrade, do want to cut back on those or do you wan to raise the budget or do you like something like this? I mean for example you can always add a bluray drive later.

Well I went to config this build but an ati version so you can look at both and I see that tri 6970 is not an uption

Edited by DST4ME - 18 Dec 2010 at 6:50pm

1200w Corsair would be more than enough for this system.

My pleasure

Ok then we might be narrowing it down let me show some different builds.

Ticket Number: 470408$4894, this one has is the above build with no bluray and the psu is the 1200 corsair based on what venom said, so you still got the 6 core 970 and everything else.

Ticket Number: 470410$5306, this one has teh 980x, 2000MHz ram, and the bluray drive.

now as mentioned you don't need a 6 core but I put the 980x in this one so you get an idea, faster ram, which again you won't notice, and teh dvd and bluray drives.

Ticket Number: 470411$4250,, this one has the 950, 1600MHz ram, bluray/dvd drive.

so there you go, tri ati is not an option here at DS in teh config page so I can't show you the ati build so you can compare.

so from those 3 above, and that last buildl from my last post, you got 4 different builds to look at, and know what is better and what is not.

I have contacted them, they are either gonna add them to the config or let me know why its not an option, on monday hopefully.

Ya as more and more people get into higher res/mulit monitor, the need for these kinds of benchmarks should rise hopefully, and we need more then one to compare, cause god knows what some of these sites do when they bench, lol.

Yup, that is why I always tell try and find quality sites and even then compare a bunch of them.