$2500 Gaming/Workstation Build

[Athansor]

Hello!

I've been building systems for quite some time, but always with a single discreet graphics card and never an SLI system so I wanted to get some input on my current build idea.

List of Components:

Antec Lanboy air ATX Mid Tower Case
SeaSonic X Series X-850 - Gold Certified Power Supply
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z Motherboard
Intel Core I7-2600K Sandy Bridge
Asus Xonar STX Sound Card
2x GIGABYTE GV-R697UD-2GD REV2.0 Radeon HD 6970 2GB Video Cards
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (1.5V) Ram
Intel 510 Series 250GB SSD
Western Digital Velociraptor WD4500, 450GB 10000RPM HD
Samsung Black Blu-Ray Combo Drive
Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound
Antec Kuhler H20 920 Liquid Cooling System
4x COOLER MASTER SickleFlow 120 R4-L2R-20AR-R1 120mm Silent operation Red LED case fans

I'm purchasing these products in the US and do not have any particular brand preference except for the SSD. I'd prefer an Intel or Samsung SSD for reliability reasons and bad experiences with previous SSDs.

I plan on modestly overclocking the machine to about 4.4ghz. I'm aware that with the Maximus and the 2600k people have gotten to 5.0+ on just air cooling however I like to keep my equipment cool without using incredibly noisy fans and want to get as much life out of the parts as possible.

I do have 2 volcanos for video cards because I plan on using Nvidia Surround and want good performance at super-high resolutions. Which is the only reason I am using 2 video cards, Otherwise I would prefer to use a single card. EDIT - Updated to cooler/quieter 6970's via Lehtv

The only downfall to this setup is that I can't install an independent PCI sound card when using the two massive GTX 580s, however the onboard audio is at least above the average, even if just a realtek chip running emulation software. EDIT - Changed board and added sound card

I really just want people to double check this and make sure that it's all sensible decisions for a fast gaming machine. I'm aware that I could do the I5 for similar gaming performance but I also use the machine for a few highly multi-threaded apps so the minimal investment to upgrade to i7 is worthwhile for me.

 

[lehtv]

Welcome to AT forums

OK there are a lot of things I'd change:

Instead of the expensive Seasonic X-850, get Corsair HX1050, $220 - $10 rebate -10% off - ends up being $30 cheaper than the Seasonic X850. OR HX850 for $144AR -10%.

Maybe you should consider 6970 2GB crossfire, such as Gigabyte triple-fan: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125395 Cost: $200 less overall, when at your resolution they perform within an inch of 580 SLI. The Gigabytes are much better cooled and would hence be quieter (while not outputting as much waste heat in the first place). Put the $200 saved towards an upgrade to 7000 series or GTX600 series next year.

Are you sure you want to go the microATX route? Asus P8Z68-V and a discrete PCIe sound card (e.g. Asus Xonar DX) for a bit more $.

Noctua NT-H1 > AC MX-4 (someone correct me if I'm wrong)

Rather than get a single expensive 250GB SSD and an expensive HDD, get a 64GB SSD for the OS and main programs, and a standard 1TB 7200RPM HDD combined with a cache SSD (also 64GB). If you weren't aware of this possibility, the Intel SRT technology (also called SSD caching), only available on Z68 chipset motherboards, caches the most frequently used files on an "accelerated" HDD onto the SSD, such that potentially every file on the HDD can benefit from SSD read and write speeds. This is a vastly superior setup to a 250GB SSD and a 450GB raptor, both in cost and in speed.

Finally, the Lanboy Air. What can I say, it just doesn't fulfill the requirements I have for a case - protecting the components from damage and dust, isolating some of the noise, and cooling them with a (positive pressure) air current.

 

[Athansor]

Fantastic reply, thank you!

For $30 I can upgrade from Silver - Gold certified if it makes any difference in power draw/performance/ripple suppression. Especially if I'd recoup that money over the course of 2 years from better power efficiency. I was basing this decision off of the X-760 review on Johnnyguru

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=235

vs the HX-1050 review

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=245

The triple fan works, my only concern was running games at max settings at 5760x1200 resolution, will the 2 6970's have the performance? I'd definitely prefer a cooler and quieter card setup. Ideally a 7000 series would be nice but I never trust release dates any more. For now I will change out to your suggestion and use the saved money to upgrade the mother board and add a soundcard. I'm going to add the Xonar STX as it's what I wanted in the first place for the built in headphone amp.

No, definitely not sure I want to go the micro-ATX Route! I think I'll modify the original post to be the Extreme-Z. I thought about the P8Z68-V but was reading some performance comparisons between the two boards and I might as well make the investment now.

Thanks for the advice, will update the thermal paste in my original post to the NT-H1!

Smart Response Technology - This is a fantastic idea and I'd definitely originally considered it. However I should have mentioned in the original post that I have regular LAN parties and swap what game I have running constantly. Sometimes I could be running Rift or some MMO for a week solid then other times I can go through 20+ different games in a 2 day period with friends. According to Anand's article my particular situation would end up getting HDD like performance most of the time since I'd constantly be knocking things out of the cache to play something different.

Sorry to hear that about the Lanboy air. Honestly I'm just a fan of the handle bars. I wonder if I should look into something else and weld some handle bars on.

I should note that if I go a little over budget that's fine, I'm going to shop around a bit so I'm sure I'd save $100-$200 on standard newegg prices.

 

[Zap]

Hello Athansor, and welcome to AnandTech Forums.

Antec Lanboy air ATX Mid Tower Case
SeaSonic X Series X-850 - Gold Certified Power Supply
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z Motherboard
Intel Core I7-2600K Sandy Bridge
Asus Xonar STX Sound Card
2x GIGABYTE GV-R697UD-2GD REV2.0 Radeon HD 6970 2GB Video Cards
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (1.5V) Ram
Intel 510 Series 250GB SSD
Western Digital Velociraptor WD4500, 450GB 10000RPM HD
Samsung Black Blu-Ray Combo Drive
Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound
Antec Kuhler H20 920 Liquid Cooling System
4x COOLER MASTER SickleFlow 120 R4-L2R-20AR-R1 120mm Silent operation Red LED case fans

I'm left wondering if the whole purpose of your rig was to show off how much money you can throw at it.

For gaming go with the Core i5-2500K as it gives the same performance in games and overclocks the same, but costs almost $100 less.

It takes a LONG time to recoup costs in electricity by using a more efficient PSU. Efficiency also has nothing to do with performance/ripple.

You don't need 16GB RAM. Games by themselves do not need more than 2GB so you only "need" 4GB, but just for the overhead and because it is cheap you can get an 8GB dual channel kit and still be overkill until you build your next rig.

For HDD, get a Hitachi 7K1000.D and short stroke it to 450GB, and end up with a faster drive than the VelociRaptor for half (or less) the price. Even if you don't do it to save money, do it for the performance!

Motherboard... where do I begin. What part of a $350 motherboard do you know off-hand that you need, which a $180-$250 motherboard can't give you? I'd recommend an Asus P8Z68-V, P8Z68-V Pro or P8Z68-V Deluxe. The Deluxe has a second network card, front panel USB 3.0 and higher end audio chip over the Pro. Nothing you need for gaming (and you are using a discrete audio card). The Pro has Firewire and two more SATA 6G ports over the normal one, neither of which you need. Thus, you should get the normal Asus P8Z68-V for $180.

Liquid cooling on a 4.4GHz Sandy Bridge? Srsly? You could probably cool it with a lump of Silly Putty. Okay, I jest, but think of this. The stock cooler that comes with the retail box CPU is capable of overclocking the CPU to 4.4GHz. What does that tell you? What it tells me is that a $100 liquid cooler is overkill. Find something for 1/3 the price. If you want impressive, replace the fan with one of those red LED fans.

Oh yeah, handles... is this supposed to be portable? Hope you work out.

 

[lehtv]

For $30 I can upgrade from Silver - Gold certified if it makes any difference in power draw/performance/ripple suppression. Especially if I'd recoup that money over the course of 2 years from better power efficiency.

Efficiency rating doesn't really have anything to do with voltage regulation, ripple etc. performance in that regard. It's only the % AC watts converted to DC watts. The Silver certificated HX are capable of nearly 90% efficiency, not much less than Gold. The HX1050 will be also operating at closer to the optimum of its efficiency curve (that is, 50% load), bridging the gap between Gold 850W and Silver 1050W a bit more. With dual 6970's you should save the $100 or so with HX850, so much better deal than the Seasonic.

The triple fan works, my only concern was running games at max settings at 5760x1200 resolution, will the 2 6970's have the performance?

Yes they will, the higher the resolution the closer they are to 580 SLI, thanks to 2GB VRAM vs 1.5GB. (Unless you get 580 3GB SLI, but that'd be $1100-1200 on video cards alone).

According to Anand's article my particular situation would end up getting HDD like performance most of the time since I'd constantly be knocking things out of the cache to play something different.

Hmm... I think you'd still benefit from the caching a lot, and it would be a much more cost effective setup compared to a 256GB SSD and a Raptor.

Sorry to hear that about the Lanboy air. Honestly I'm just a fan of the handle bars. I wonder if I should look into something else and weld some handle bars on.

Try this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119235

No, definitely not sure I want to go the micro-ATX Route! I think I'll modify the original post to be the Extreme-Z. I thought about the P8Z68-V but was reading some performance comparisons between the two boards and I might as well make the investment now.

Wait, I'm a bit confused here. I thought you originally had the Asus microATX Gene-Z Z68 board listed. Nevermind what I said about micro-ATX . I agree with Zap, the Maximus board is complete overkill, you honestly won't be any worse off with a P8Z68-V.

You don't need 16GB RAM. Games by themselves do not need more than 2GB so you only "need" 4GB, but just for the overhead and because it is cheap you can get an 8GB dual channel kit and still be overkill until you build your next rig.

Agree with most points in your post but he didn't mention which multithreaded apps he will be using, they could be ones that actually use over 8GB. But it's true also that he could just get 8GB first and see if it's enough.

 

[Athansor]

No, there's nothing about showing off. To build a top end gaming PC when I started gaming you had to spend $6000, so being able to build a system that's both capable for work and gaming for half the price is great to me. I have a budget around $2500, which this is pretty close to, newegg has these parts for $2900 but shopping around it'd be more like $2700ish. Anywhere between $2500-$3000 works for me and I just want to get the most performance possible for my needs.

The chip upgrade and excessive ram is for tabbing out to work. At any given time I can have a 3d/cad drawings open, photoshop, web browsers and a game running. I understand these are not workstation graphics cards I'm using so I at least like to make sure my home computer can open and operate work files.

The hitachi thing sounds like fantastical advice, though I'll admit I have no idea what you mean by short stroke it. I'll do some googling but if you have some sort of reference for me that'd be great.

Don't really care about impressive looking and I tend to believe in overkill when cooling. I'd rather start off overclocked to 4.4ghz and then if I need more performance down the line have the ability to overclock more too.

Handles! I don't really care about the weight, I just hate awkwardly trying to fit a case under my arm or carrying it like a moving box.

 

[lehtv]

Check out these: http://www.frozencpu.com/cat/l3/g31/...ml?id=IXXIzQeN may be your thing

 

[Athansor]

I did originally have the Gene-Z I edited after your suggestions. I'll probably edit again when I get home from business trip tomorrow. Thanks again to both of you for the suggestions.

By the way - Those Harness things are awesome!

 

[Zap]

No, there's nothing about showing off. To build a top end gaming PC when I started gaming you had to spend $6000

I've been gaming on computers since forever ago, and nobody has ever needed $6000 for a "top end gaming PC."

The hitachi thing sounds like fantastical advice, though I'll admit I have no idea what you mean by short stroke it. I'll do some googling but if you have some sort of reference for me that'd be great.

The easy way is to just create a partition smaller than the capacity of the drive, and never use the rest of it. HDDs work from the outside-in, and the outside is the fastest part of the drive. Also, with a smaller partition, the heads don't ever have to move as far.

Don't really care about impressive looking and I tend to believe in overkill when cooling. I'd rather start off overclocked to 4.4ghz and then if I need more performance down the line have the ability to overclock more too.

Just as long as you understand that you are so far beyond overkill, it would be like buying a Greyhound bus when your wife asks for a minivan. You will never, EVER fill it to capacity.

 

[mfenn]

No, there's nothing about showing off. To build a top end gaming PC when I started gaming you had to spend $6000, so being able to build a system that's both capable for work and gaming for half the price is great to me. I have a budget around $2500, which this is pretty close to, newegg has these parts for $2900 but shopping around it'd be more like $2700ish. Anywhere between $2500-$3000 works for me and I just want to get the most performance possible for my needs.

Just because you have money to throw at something doesn't mean that it is a good idea. You can cut a lot of fat out of that build (like $1000 worth) without significantly impacting performance. Allow me to demonstrate:

- Case: Corsair 400R more connectivity, equivalent build quality -$65
- PSU: Corsair 850TX no, Gold efficiency won't get your $110 back -$110
- Mobo: ASRock Z68 Extreme3 -$225
- CPU: i5 2500K CAD doesn't really benefit that much from HT -$110
- Sound: use the onboard to S/PDIF out to your HiFi system -$200
- GPU: Twin Frozr II 6950 2GB x2 unlock to 6970 -$190
- RAM: G.Skill DDR3 1333 8GB x2 -$18
- SSD : Crucial M4 128GB should be enough for all your apps that will benefit from an SSD (no games do not count) -$372
- HDD : Hitachi 7K1000.D -$55
- HSF: Hyper 212 Evo will get you 4.4GHz no problem -$72

Total savings: $1417

The overall capabilities of that machine above will be within 10% of what you've specced out in the OP.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Alot of people are pointing out, not-"wasting" money on a Gold efficiency PSU. While the argument of not getting your money back in savings is variably true, you want to look at a couple of other things when investing in a PSU. I tend to also include the most efficient PSU when choosing one but to each their own. The last PSU review I read was about the Kingwin Lazer Platinum 550 at JonnyGuru. Aside from being a Platinum efficient PSU the rest of the measured performance areas are the type of things you want to understand when buying a PSU

 

[KGB]

I've yet to see what kind of 'work' the OP wants this for.

 

[SithSolo1]

- GPU: Twin Frozr II 6950 2GB unlock to 6970 -$190
- SSD : Crucial M4 128GB should be enough for all your apps that will benefit from an SSD (no games do not count) -$372

Total savings: $1417

The overall capabilities of that machine above will be within 10% of what you've specced out in the OP.

Although you miss-priced the SSD the over all system price should remain roughly the same as the OP wants to run 5700x1200 which will probably require 2x 6950s.

 

[mfenn]

Although you miss-priced the SSD the over all system price should remain roughly the same as the OP wants to run 5700x1200 which will probably require 2x 6950s.

Those numbers are the savings the OP would see, not how much each component costs. The $190 savings for the GPU does include two 6950 2GBs ($95 savings each).