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$2500 Gaming Rig

PCJake

PCJake

Senior member
I'm going to build a gaming/3d editing rig in the next few weeks, and my price limit is $2500. I'm in America and I'll be buying everything new from Newegg. I have a few specific questions and I'm open to ideas I may not have thought of.

CPU - Q6700 or Q9300? If I do any overclocking, it won't be much (maybe to 3GHz).
Mobo - EVGA 790i. I'll be using this PC for a while and the 790i seems the most future-proof. I won't be going SLI right away, but I like having the option.
GPU - EVGA 9800 GTX. I plan on stepping up to the 9900 series, and I don't think the 9800 GTX will go much below $300 in the next 3 months.
RAM - (4x1GB) OCZ DDR3 1333. At $250 with rebates, I think this is reasonable. I'll be using DDR3 someday anyway, I might as well make the jump now so I don't have to replace the motherboard and RAM as soon.
Hard Drive - WD Raptor 150GB. I'm going for performance here; 150GB is more than enough for me.
Sound Card - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 - I don't know much about sound cards. Creative seems to be the biggest name in sound cards and it's the only company I've bought from in the past.
Case - Cooler Master Cosmos. It's a solid, elegant case that I could use for another 10 or 15 years. I'll take functionality over a flashy side window, thank you.
PSU - OCZ GameXStream 700W. Is 700 watts enough? Like I said, I won't be doing much overclocking.
DVD Drive - LITE-ON 20x DVD Burner with LightScribe. Not much to say here, I think it should work fine.
O.S. - Vista Home Premium (x84 or x64?). The benefits of the 64-bit version are obvious, especially because I'll have 4GB of RAM and will be using this computer for 3d editing. What incompatibilities will I be dealing with, specifically in the area of games and drivers for the hardware I've listed?
Monitor - Samsung 2253BW 22" 2ms. Shopping for a monitor online is chancy, but it's where I've found the best deals. I'm completely open to suggestions here.
Speakers - Logitech Z-2300 2.1. Tons of positive reviews. Hooray for matching colors (even my thermal paste tube is two-toned)!
Keyboard - Logitech G11. Extra function keys and a blue backlight.
Mouse - Logitech MX518. Looks cool and has on-the-fly sensitivity switching.

I'll be using Arctic Silver 5 for thermal paste and a Rosewill anti-static wrist strap. Am I missing anything at all? Thanks!
 
15 years for a case! Wow!

I'd go with a regular P45/35 board and DDR2 memory with it being so cheap now. SLI seems like a great option, but unless you're buying two cards at once, it usually isn't a good "upgrade" path later on. For example, by the time I needed a second 7800GT for my setup, they were already out of production.

For PSU, a lot will recommend the Corsair PSUs.

Also, you say that 150GB will be plenty. I'd think twice about that. I made the same mistake when I built my rig, thinking that my 74GB Raptor would be enough. Well, I was wrong. With the growing size of today's games, you might want to think about going 300GB+. The performance of some regular drives (such as the SE16 WDs) is virtually the same as the Raptor (hardly noticeable).

Bottom line: you could cut back over $500 and get virtually the same performance by making smarter choices. You could even put that saved money towards another graphics card so that you could do SLI immediately. You could also purchase another hard drive too.
 
SLI isn't going to do a whole lot for a 22" monitor. The resolution isn't quite high enough to really need to bring the power of two cards into the equation. Even in you do go SLI, there's no reason to buy a 9800GTX as your short-term solution. It's a waste of money when the 8800GTS offers 90-95% of the performance for 50-70% of the price.

As far as DDR3, don't waste your money. By the time you upgrade it won't be solely for DDR3, just like people didn't ditch DDR just for the sake of moving to DDR2. The performance difference just isn't there, and it certainly doesn't justify a price tag in the hundreds of dollars. When you upgrade it will be because you need a new CPU and motherboard anyway. Why spend extra now?

For overclocking a quad core you'll probably want an aftermarket heatsink. Since your goal is only 3GHz, I would strongly consider the Q6600 which has become very affordable.

As far as PSU wattage, 700W is more than enough for one graphics card, and should probably be plenty for two. More important than raw wattage rating though, is the quality of the particular PSU you buy, and how much current it can deliver on the +12V rail(s). Building multiple graphics card systems isn't something I do very often, so a post in the PSU forum might not hurt.
 
Get 2 drives, put the OS on one and all game installs on the Raptor. For the OS, a second Raptor or a cheap 250-320 GB single platter would be good, but a 500-750 is an idea too if you have a big music collection or other media.

With 2 drives you have 2 caches, and the OS drive seeking for some OS task or for virtual memory won't impact the Raptor's loading of levels / maps / textures.

With 2 drives you can also copy game saves from one to the other, so you don't lose 50+ hour RPG game saves to a disk crash. With Drive Image you can also image your OS. I'd actually partition disk 1 as C: for OS (50-100 GB) and D: for data backups (rest of the space)

DON'T think about setting up RAID-0, it doubles the chance of losing all of your files and makes the backup tasks I just listed useless (if either drive dies you lose 100% of your files)
 
u dont need any powerful graphics card for 1680x1050 resolution 22in monitor... a 3870 or 8800gt will get u 90% performance of that 9800.
790i is stupid, u dont need DDR3 or tri-sli. esp with those CPU's (nor any in the market today)
dont get 4 x 1gb of ram. 2 x 2gb of DDR2 = $80. how much is your DDR3? you will not notice any difference in real world uses.
the OCZ GamerxStream is based on the 3 year old FSP Epsilon series PSU, there are newer more efficient PSU's out, such as the PCPC Silencer and the Corsairs.

p.s. don't blow $2500 on a pc
 
Thanks for all of the replies. The idea of having the newest stuff is fun, but I agree with you guys. What if I changed the motherboard to a EVGA 780i, got 4GB of DDR2 (what speed should I choose?), went for two 8800 gts's with a 24" monitor, and got a Corsair 750w psu? Are these smarter choices? I'm still not sure about the O.S. (x86 or x64) or the processor. Is the Q6600 enough for gaming?
 
If you want the best bang for your buck, I'd consider looking into the Q9450. It's basically just an underclocked QX9650, and although it can't be pushed as far as its extreme counterpart, it's 650 dollars less. The Q9300 is a weak choice considering its cache is a little low as compared to other processors out there.
 
Originally posted by: PCJake
Thanks for all of the replies. The idea of having the newest stuff is fun, but I agree with you guys. What if I changed the motherboard to a EVGA 780i, got 4GB of DDR2 (what speed should I choose?), went for two 8800 gts's with a 24" monitor, and got a Corsair 750w psu? Are these smarter choices? I'm still not sure about the O.S. (x86 or x64) or the processor. Is the Q6600 enough for gaming?
Click to expand...

A faster dual-core is better for gaming, but the Q6600 is good if you play a lot of Supreme Commander 😛.
 
I'll second the vote for a dual core chip, doesn't seem like there is a lot out there for a quad core to run, check this thread.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2068484&enterthread=y

I'm sure there is a couple over overlooked programs, but since I'm building a gaming rig I couldn't see buying a quad core right now. A year or two from now might be a different story.

also, you might want to make sure there is room for a sound card if you are going to run a SLI machine.


last thing, I would take a look at this drive http://www.anandtech.com/stora...howdoc.aspx?i=3269&p=2

it's plenty fast and supports teh 3.0gb sata where as the raptor is 1.5gb sata
 
Do your 3D editing apps utilize more than two cores? If not, I'd have to agree that dual core may be the way to go.
 
Man, ditch those hard drives.
The only three drives you should consider are the velociraptor, the WD640 and the Samsung F1 Spinpoint. I personally think the velociraptor is overrated. Look at the benchmarks, and game loading is pretty much the same. Nothing else really stand out either when it comes to real performance, but some people may differ.

Also, with $2500 seriously consider a good display. The DS 26" seems to be the best bargain out now. I would prefer a Dell 3007-HC.

Like others said, DDR2 is the way too go.
 
Originally posted by: PCJake
Thanks for all of the replies. The idea of having the newest stuff is fun, but I agree with you guys. What if I changed the motherboard to a EVGA 780i, got 4GB of DDR2 (what speed should I choose?), went for two 8800 gts's with a 24" monitor, and got a Corsair 750w psu? Are these smarter choices? I'm still not sure about the O.S. (x86 or x64) or the processor. Is the Q6600 enough for gaming?
Click to expand...

you should still ditch sli all-together. get a more stable p35/p45 chipset that will OC much better and have less stability problems (like prior nvidia chipsets)
get a single video card, such as the 3870x2 (very good card) or a single 9800
 
Originally posted by: PCJake
I'll be using this PC for a while and the 790i seems the most future-proof.
Click to expand...


"Future proof" is a loaded term. Unless it outright fails, any board you buy right now can still work years from now. However, with Nehalem coming up, your CPU upgrade options aren't the best a couple years from now. Also, how about USB 3.0 in the future? How "future proof" is a $300 motherboard when you can't use the latest CPU anymore and you have to use PCI/PCI-E cards for new features?

Originally posted by: PolymerTim
You also may want to consider the latest edition to the raptor line if performance is your primary goal and noise doesn't matter so much.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3303
Click to expand...

Actually those drives are reasonably quiet.

Originally posted by: Waylay00
Bottom line: you could cut back over $500 and get virtually the same performance by making smarter choices.
Click to expand...

I'd go a bit more extreme than that. :evil:

I would cut the $2500 budget to $1500, and put the extra $1000 in a 24 month CD. When the CD matures, use the money for an upgrade, sell the upgraded parts for money. At the end of 2 years the OP will have spent LESS than $2500 (after selling off old parts) and have a better system than a $2500 system now.

Here's the specs I'd go with:
Q6600 $220
P35 chipset board $100
4GB DDR2-800 $80
8800GTS 512MB $230
WD 320GB single platter drive $70
integrated sound card $free
good quality 500-650W PSU $80 (wattage is more than enough, just make sure it is a quality unit)
whatever other parts/accessories you listed

You would seriously get 95% of the performance of the $2500 setup for less than 2/3 the price.

As for your other concerns:
I won't be going SLI right away, but I like having the option
Either do SLI now (but not worth it for your monitor choice as others have pointed out) or don't do SLI. Sure, you can bump performance in the future, but you can also bump performance in the future with a newer GPU rather than adding a second old GPU. Geforce 6xxx series were the first to have SLI. How much faster was a 7800GTX over two 6800 Ultras in SLI? How much faster was an 8800GTX over two 7800GTX in SLI?

I plan on stepping up to the 9900 series
May want to keep an eye on them. If you aren't buying RIGHT NOW, then who knows? Maybe the cards will come out and you can skip an 8800/9800 series card? Oh, BTW, BFG also has a step up program like EVGA (but 10 days more 😉 ).

I don't know much about sound cards
Some people like the latest onboard sound.

Is 700 watts enough?
Way overkill for a single card. Should be fine for SLI with existing cards. Should be fine for a single 9900 series card (I'm not too sure on power requirements for those, refer to thread I linked above).

RE: Vista What incompatibilities will I be dealing with, specifically in the area of games and drivers for the hardware I've listed?
Drivers should be fine these days, unless you're trying to use some old USB scanner or printer. Games, well, you may have to fiddle with them, but I'd say most should work, and of course any NEW game should work fine.

Mouse - Logitech MX518
Have you considered a Logitech G5 laser mouse? It's like the MX518, but with a supposedly better optical sensor plus you can customize the weight. I see them on sale often for around $35-$45.
 
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