Budget: £3000+, Wanted: High end gaming/development machine advice

[Providence]

My last machine blew up about a year back, and managed to survive the end of uni on my laptop. Going into a job, I would like to build one of the best machines that I can. I'm a graduate computing student, so am no stranger to computer components themselves, but I have not kept up with hardware for some years and am feeling out of the loop. I've read through a few of the forum faqs and hoping I'm not just doing the typical noob post here , so please, bear with me.

Considering my (hardware) knowledge is a couple of years out of date, it is best to say I know only the basics of building a machine. Instead of having someone just build me a custom rig, I'd rather have an idea of structure and good sites to research components themselves on. Some ideas of components that people personally recommend would be good as well!

I'd like to hear a few words on multiple core machines and RAID setups (pros, cons). The main intent of the machine is that I'd like to get a long-lasting gaming platform, but also have fun bringing the components together. I'm not big on overclocking, so unless I'm strongly persuaded, that's not a requirement .

In considering the budget for my machine, I went by the prices I'd expect in England. The prices I've seen in my first glance online however have been much lower, so I may be able to take advantage of the exchange rate somewhat. I've not noticed buying components from overseas causing problems before (PSU's are the only one, and even then, they usually have a voltage switch on), but if anyone knows anything to the contrary, it'll be good to hear.

I'd like to keep referring back to this thread with my ideas for setups (so people can tell me if I'm considering something stupid). In the meantine, I'll be doing research of my own and referring back to you here. Thanks in advance for your input!

 

[MarcVenice]

3000 pounds is like WAYYYYYY to much to spend on a serious gaming rig. If you spend half, you could have a rig that beats most rigs out there. Then spend another 500 to upgrade in a year or so, or just buy a complete new rig in another 1.5-2 years for 1500 pounds.

The first big question is, quad or dual core. Q6600 @ 2.4ghz versus e6850 @3hgz. Suggested mobo's are gigabytre ds3r, or asus p5k. The p5k is a better overclocker last I checked, the ds3r consumes less power. My suggestion is a qaudcore, with a good aftermarket HSF, like a thermalright 120, scythe ninja or whatever you prefer, and do a somewhat mild overclock to 2.8-3ghz. Another option is go with the e6750 or so now, wait 6-12 months, and throw in a faster clocked qaudcore when they come out.

4gb of memory, ddr800, cas 4 or cas 5, doesn't really matter exept for the price of course.

Videocards. You can't go sli/crossfire with a p35 mobo. Depending on budget/resolution I'd say go 8800gtx and go with the stepup program from EVGA, with some luck you can buy a 9x00 series in 3 months.

About raid 0, read up on it in several threads on this forum. Some people seem to be convinced that it's either useless, or great. So far, using simply logic I seem to be convinced it won't give you nearly the performance boost you could/should expect. Unless your dieing to waste cash, I wouldn't go raid 0, or buy any raptors. Just go with 2 500gb HD's.

PSU's can take voltages going from 90 to 240 I think, should check the specs of course, but that's what I see most of the time. So they can be plugged into any wall, anywhere on the world.

Go with Vista 64x too btw, unless you want a creative soundcard, I heard the drivers for those are f-ed up and won't work in Vista.

 

[dhaddox]

Go to newegg and start with whatever the most expensive motherboard is they have on the front page. Then just look at the specs and pick all the parts that will fit in the sockets, etc. Add it all to your cart as you go along and you'll end up not reaching 3000 pounds. That's what I do when I daydream about having money, anyway.

 

[Providence]

Perhaps I was just overestimating the cost of things in this country, but £1500 certainly sounds better, I don't just want to burn money ^^

Well, after doing some reading, I think I'll start with graphics. Marc, you start with the core and say that the board won't work with an SLI/Crossfire setup. Is there anything bad about these technologies that I should avoid? I think I'm keen on trying a Crossfire setup with some top end ATI cards (going to move onto reading about the cards themselves in a moment).

My other main question at present is which family of chip to use. Are quadcore setups currently not available on a Crossfire or SLI enabled board? I'm not fussed between Intel and AMD. My previous machines went AMD for the price break, but I'll get whichever provides the better spec at present.

If I were to opt for a Crossfire setup, what is a sleek, efficient combination of board and chip to go with it. I'd like the best (or second best if it's much less cash for only a little less performance). Feel free to point me towards other ideas or to sing the praises of nVidia if SLI is currently the best on the market.

 

[jkresh]

Providence, crossfire works with p35 and 975x (also 965 but that has been replaced by p35), i680 is for sli. X38 will do crossfire and may do sli as well.

 

[Piuc2020]

If you want performance you should go Intel, currently their Core 2 processors vastly outperform AMD's Athlon line.

I also suggest a Quad Core if you plan on doing any multitasking or having machine longevity. Personally I wouldn't recommend SLI/Crossfire, sure the performance is there but in my opinion its not worth the rendering problems, huge power load and heat output, the price and overall the whole hassle of going with dual GPUs.

What monitor do you plan to use? You might not even need the extra performance of dual GPUs right now.

The next generation of nvidia graphic cards is coming out later this year (around Christmas) so you could buy a great value card right now (like a 8800GTS 320MB which is still pretty high end for anything out there) and then buy a new G9x part come November.

Good value CPUs are the Q6600 and the E6850, both at around $300, you want the Q6600 though. Intel is coming out with new processors on the last quarter of this year and early next year so getting a extreme edition processor is not really worth it right now (or ever).

The sweetspot is 2GB of RAM, you could get more yeah, it never hurts. DDR2 is the standard but DDR3 is already available, for the price though, I would only recommend DDR3 to hardware enthusiasts who like to be on the forefront of technology and like to play with their hardware a lot, for games, DDR3 is just not worth it right now.

So what could I recommend? Well you can start with a P35 mobo, something like a DS3R. Add a Q6600 to that, a 8800GTS 320mb, 2GB of RAM, a very good powersupply, a very good case, a 500GB HD, and the rest of the stuff like optical drives and such and you are looking at around $1500, add a nice 20" monitor to that and you sit at around $2000 which is like 1000 pounds and of course prices will vary when you use actual UK prices instead of converted US ones.

That computer will play any game out there and to be out for the moment, then in November when the big guys like Crysis and UT2007 come you can sell off your 8800GTS and buy whatever nvidia comes up with. If you get SLId 8800 Ultras now for like $1300 you'll be sorry when 4 months from now nvidia releases a 9800GTS or something that beats your SLI setup in a single card setup that only costs 400-500. SLI is never worth it unless you REALLY need to have the absolute best or are a hardware geek. Otherwise it is never a good value.

 

[Providence]

Thanks for the correction, jkresh. Must have misunderstood marc's post somehow.

I'm thinking of building the machine in about two months time, so I'm also looking out for any pieces of tech coming up in the future that I may want.

Crossfire with a powerful dual/quad-core machine seems good. I've spent the last few hours looking into the Crossfire vs SLI debate. Just going to check the top ATI cards then try to find something relating to the motherboard's suggested here.

Another issue is hard drives. I'm after speed more than storage for my main drive, but I wouldn't mind a second drive for mass storage as well. Any gotchas or advice in that area?

 

[Providence]

(Apologies for the double post, Piuc2020 posted at the same time as me and I wanted to reply...) Crossfire/SLI sounded like an interesting build choice for a machine, but you're the first person to give me an actual downside to that setup, Piuc2020. Huge power load and heat output... would this require a strong cooling system? The thought of having a card obsoleted so quickly would be upsetting too, hmm... What are the rendering problems like though?

Monitor is not something I've put a great deal of thought into so far. I've always seen it as something that can be changed fairly readily at will (please, correct me if I am wrong). In past rigs it is a component that has suffered compared to the rest of my system. I do need to research this part heavily. It certainly needs to be something that can cope with the hardware setup, and I want something to compensate for years of having a CRT.

I've not had a chance to be a hardware enthusiast before (an expense I couldn't afford). Having a job now changes all that, so I think it would be nice to set up something powerful and play with it. That it will be a gaming machine is mostly for the benchmarking aspect (in a bit of spare time when I'm not developing or tinkering).

Your advice is good, though I may push the bank a little on some of the options. I'll see if I can import a few pieces to save on the costs.

How do you define a "very good power supply"? It will need to provide a lot of power (especially if I end up going with dual GPUs). I think I'll end up not minding that I got outdated in a few months, if I just update every year or two (selling on the old cards if they're still good).

Thanks for the advice though, I'm out for tonight as uni's about to close now. Connection at my current place is terrible, the reason why I'm upgrading in two months time - money right now is for moving to somewhere else, heh. I'll be back along soon to research more and see what more advice has come!