• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Building monster comp for friend, need lots of input

K

Kirby64

Golden Member
Ok gentlemen, hit me with what you've got. My friend (who has more money than sense, it seems...) wants a comp that can handle 'enough to run games for next 2-3 years at max settings.' Obviously this probably won't be possible (I tried to explain...) but he wants the best now.

I suggested getting a mid-range now (8800GT, C2D) and upgrading later, but he would have none of it. He wants the best of the best and doesn't want to wait.

So, gentlemen, I have no experience in building stuff on the bleeding-edge, so I need your input on what parts... here's the requirements:
Core 2 Quad, something decently overclockable but not going insane (shoot for 3ghz or so)
Tri-SLI 9800GTX's, it's stupid but he wants it (unless there's something faster? dual 9800GX2s? He wants the best...)
8GB of RAM, capable of handling the overclocking
A motherboard capable of Tri-SLI and this overclocking
A power supply to support this monitor setup
A decently priced heatsink to bring the C2Q to the 3ghz mark without getting too hot
A good sturdy case with good airflow and enough space to adequately cool the components
A 24" monitor that has decent color, fairly quick response time, and at a reasonable price
Vista X64 Home Premium edition
Also need optical drives and hard drives (Pretty sure he's interested in putting a 1TB in it)

The sky is the limit here pretty much, he's pretty hard set on 8GB of RAM, a C2Q, the Tri-SLI (or maybe quad-SLI 9800GX2s?) setup, and the 24" monitor, but everything else is up for debate.

I'm in desperate need of input, as I only know mid-range setups well enough to give my own input 🙁

Help me AT gurus!

EDIT:

Ok, so me and him have selected the parts and I've explained the differences, so here is the preliminary build so far:
C2Q Q6600 OR Q9450
ASUS Striker II Formula OR EVGA Nforce 750i
8GB (4 x 2GB) G.Skill DDR-1000
Geforce 9800GTXs x 2 OR x 3
Antec Nine Hundred case
Xigmatek HDT-S2163
Corsair 1000HX PSU
Logitech X-540 5.1 speakers
24" Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP OR BenQ G2400W
Western Digital 640GB HDD in single drive OR RAID 1 OR RAID 1+0
Vista Home Premium
Some Lite-On DVD drives (one burner, one rom)


Comments?
 
If that's what he wants... Look at benchmarks of SLi configurations. Throwing money at a system doesn't necessarily make it better. Drivers aren't as well supported and have trouble running games at high resolutions with Tri and Quad SLi setups and aren't always the best performers. He may end up encountering more problems because of going Tri/Quad-SLi.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
8GB DDR2-1000 of your choice of a good manufacturer
Corsair HX1000W maybe? Silverthorne, PC Power and Cooling, and Cooler Master makes some good high end PSUs, but I can't be 100% on this one
Antec 900 for the case is probably the best choice
Xigmatek HDT-S1283 is a great cooler for the price, and fairly lightweight IIRC
Western Digital 640GB or Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB are best/fastest drives out until the new VelociRaptor's hit the market in a few weeks
Any DVD Burner will do

Now, motherboard options will be limited to nVidia chipset motherboards, either the 780i or 790i for Tri-SLi, or 750i for SLi. IIRC, the 750i and 780i only supports DDR2 while the 790i only supports DDR3. I don't recommend DDR3 due to price and virtually no performance gain.

I would suggest either 8800 Ultras or 9800GX2 in SLi on a 750i or 780i motherboard with DDR2-1000. Dual 9800GX2s will run about $1100 alone.

As for a monitor, go to the store and find the one he likes. Then go shop around for the best price.

As for being unable to convince him, show him benchmarks and articles. No system right now can handle all settings max for Crysis at ultra high resolutions.
 
Originally posted by: Kirby64
Building monster comp for friend... around $2700 budget

My friend (who has more money than sense, it seems...) wants a comp that can handle 'enough to run games for next 2-3 years at max settings.' Obviously this probably won't be possible (I tried to explain...) but he wants the best now.

I have no experience in building stuff on the bleeding-edge, so I need your input on what parts...

Help me AT gurus!
Click to expand...
Here's one Guru's Opinion...
1. $2700 isn't enough to build a "Monster Comp"
2. Is your friend with "more money than sense" going to pony up a % for your input or building?
3. If you're not going to get at least a 10% slice of the pie, send him to Falcon Northwest, VoodooPC or Dell.
* There's nothing wrong with you being compensated for your time as well as ours, building him a so-called "Monster Comp". 😱

 
Originally posted by: Blain
Originally posted by: Kirby64
Building monster comp for friend... around $2700 budget

My friend (who has more money than sense, it seems...) wants a comp that can handle 'enough to run games for next 2-3 years at max settings.' Obviously this probably won't be possible (I tried to explain...) but he wants the best now.

I have no experience in building stuff on the bleeding-edge, so I need your input on what parts...

Help me AT gurus!
Click to expand...
Here's one Guru's Opinion...
1. $2700 isn't enough to build a "Monster Comp"
2. Is your friend with "more money than sense" going to pony up a % for your input or building?
3. If you're not going to get at least a 10% slice of the pie, send him to Falcon Northwest, VoodooPC or Dell.
* There's nothing wrong with you being compensated for your time as well as ours, building him a so-called "Monster Comp". 😱
Click to expand...

See, that's the thing, I gave the budget of $2700 because I quoted him about $3k total, so in essence I am getting a 10% cut, but is this an inference to perhaps your compensation? 😛

Basically, his whole idea is that he'd be saving thousands by not buying from places just like you listed. Pricing something similar on Falcon and Dell came to almost $5,000 and voodoo makes me cry at their pricing...

His mindset is that somehow, he 'saves' money by buying the best now. Despite my attempts to explain it wasn't true, he basically complained that his current computer is crap (Like a 5 yr old Dell..) and he wants to play the best right now.

Also, @ chinaman, thanks for the input. You make a good point... perhaps I can try to convince him to go dual 8800 Ultra's. It would be a LOT cheaper.
 
First I would seriously convince him against triple SLI, the headaches involved are not worth it and the performance increase from 2 to 3 GPU's is nill. Show him Anandtechs article on triple and quad SLI. Convince him that 2x 9800gtx gives so close to absolute top of the line performance that anything more really doesn't make any sense, and that he will want to upgrade to the new G200 gpu's that come out in July.

If I were building a "Monster" right now it would look like this

Antec 900 case $120

EVGA 780i $260

Q9300 $285 (Or any yorkfield quad based on availability)

4 x 2gb Gskill ddr2-1000 $180

2x EVGA 9800GTX $600

Corsair 1000w PS $300

4x WD 640 HDD $440

30in monitor of choice

Optial drives of choice

 
Stick to good old 9800GTX SLI or a single 9800GX2. Read some reviews and knock some sense into him - Tri-SLI and Quad SLI are big stinking jokes. You want to build a big bad machine? Throw in a $300 RAID5 card and hook up four Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB (or four 750GB drives to save ~$400) drives to it. I haven't checked performance graphs in a while but the ~250MB/s+ sequential read/write speeds ought to impress just about anybody.

If you are going to drop a load of cash on something, might as well do it right. For the RAID controller cards, I will let someone else offer their input because I'm not entirely familiar with the relative strengths and weaknesses of the solutions from Areca, Promise, Highpoint etc.

How would something like this be?
 
+1 for trying to improve I/O read write and transfer speeds. Slowest part of a computer. Save the coin from the 3rd 9800GTX and spend the coin on a good RAID card and a few drives.
 
Uh, tell him if he was the computer expert, he wouldn't be asking for your help.
Spending $1000 every year for 3 years will yield a better machine over time than spending $3000 in 1 year.
 
Watch out with the RAID cards. Some of them will need an extra PCIe x8 slot.

I guess it's not uncommon to have >3 slots with PCIe x8+ on high end motherboards these days...
 
any decent 780i/790i mobo will have 3 pci x 16 slots, anyway.

get 4xWD640 hd's and put them in raid 0+1, that would be much faster than raid 5.
 
Ok gents, pretty sure I talked him out of tri-sli 9800GTXs, he's going for regular SLI'd ones. His next interest: sound. He wants to know how integrated sound compares to X-Fi and what speakers... I was planning on getting an ASUS Striker II Formula for his mobo, how good is the integrated sound?

Also, how good would these speakers be? http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16836121006
Keep in mind, this guy isn't exactly an audiophile, so long as it isn't crappy, he'll be fine with it.
 
For a system in this range I would definately add a sound card, doesn't have to be an X-Fi. Onboard audio is better than it used to be but it's still not great and there is some CPU overhead associated with it that can be avoided with an addon card.

I have a set of These and I love em. I'm not a fan of multi speaker setups because I never have room for them, these take up 1/4 the space, have plenty of volume, and excellent sound quality
 
The CPU overhead aspect really isn't an issue nowadays. It isn't the way it used to be where a sound card could sometimes produce a noticeable improvement in FPS.

Since he doesn't seem to be concerned with price, I suppose you may as well buy a sound card. Personally, I just went with onboard and it's good enough for me. I just game casually in a pair of Plantronics headphones, so I don't need the best of the best.
 
Alright, I've got everything sorted out... he has 5 choices: Mobo, CPU, graphics cards, monitor, and hard drives...

Heres the build(s), tell me what you guys think:
C2Q Q6600 OR Q9450
ASUS Striker II Formula OR EVGA Nforce 750i
8GB (4 x 2GB) G.Skill DDR-1000
Geforce 9800GTXs x 2 OR x 3
Antec Nine Hundred case
Xigmatek HDT-S2163
Corsair 1000HX PSU
Logitech X-540 5.1 speakers
24" Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP OR BenQ G2400W
Western Digital 640GB HDD in single drive OR RAID 1 OR RAID 1+0
Vista Home Premium
Some Lite-On DVD drives (one burner, one rom)

Sooo... that's about it, kinda complex, basically giving him plenty of options, costing from 2500 up to 3500 (without my fee...)
I'm going over the differences and benefits, pretty sure he wont go tri-sli.

Any comments on what I picked?
 
For all you guys saying to go raid 0, it won't help you as a gamer / normal user. Raid 1 is good if your worried about drives going out on you tho. Link below is my evidence, there are more reports than i was willing to read when i decided to look it up. Raid 0 will give you higher scores on benchmarks, and large file transfers will be faster, but game loading will be no faster then single drive. And raid 1 tends to have faster read/access times than single drive, plus data security.

http://www.anandtech.com/stora...owdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=10

Also, I would go with Vista Ultimate, not Home anything. And get a 790i chipset board, not the 750i. And deffinetly not triple sli, quad if you must, but the triple has problems with some games from what i have read. And i would get some WD Raptors, 1 for OS, 1 for apps/games, and then a couple bigger drives for storage.

I have been designing my own super compy for a bit now, not sure if it will ever get built. New technology is always around the bend, and is always way better, LOL. Was looking at around $7000, for the system i was designing, self built, with liquid cooling.

For the system i was designing:

3.2 gig Quad core intel, overclocked to 4.0
8 gig ddr3 1600fsb ram (4x2gig)
EVGA's quad sli (2x 9800gx2)
EVGA's 790i ultra mobo
4x 74GB raptor hdd (2 pairs of raid 1, 1 for OS, and 1 for games/apps)
2x 1TB hdd (raid 1 for backup)
full integrated liquid cooling into case (koolance brand)
- water blocks on the cpu, and both video cards, along with psu
- ultra quite fans for airflow
Vista Ultimate - 64Bit

Was also debating going solid state for the OS and games drives, since they are faster for application and game usage. But those are like $350 each, for 16 gig.

Before you say it, yes i know, 100% overkill. But, if the guy wants to spend money, let him. We all have our toys.
 
No offense reptzo, but what basis do you have behind your claims? DDR3 is pointless and just a money sink compared to DDR2 (and, as such, so is the 790i board) and puts the price out of the range of even my friend. It provides no real world benefits.
Vista Ultimate is nothing different from Home besides features that my friend will never use. Once again, a pointless money sink.
In addition, raptors are a waste. The 640gb HDD offers far more storage space and plenty of speed for a fraction of the price of a raptor. Raptors are pretty much gunna be crap once the velicoraptor comes out, as well.

As to the link, you have to realize the dates on that. 2004 is a long time ago. Technologies have advanced, and while RAID 0 isn't going to give THAT much of a benefit, it is there.
 
IIRC, Raid 0 also runs the risk of losing your data... along with that, games are still more GPU limited than anything else, not hard drives, CPU, or RAM.

If he's gaming, E8400 is still a better choice than C2Qs if it hasn't been mentioned. And unless gaming in the next year vastly improves on quad cores, a dual core CPU will run just fine in two or three years. I bet by the time quad cores show a significant improvement for gaming, it'll be time to haul your PC.

DDR2-1000 is plenty, I doubt the extra 200-300MHz headroom is going to make that much of a difference.

Look at benchmarks for Tri-SLi vs SLi. I refer to TechReport's review myself usually, but the results only show the Tri-SLi leading at 2560x1600, usually 5-10 fps at a playable range where 5-10fps probably won't make a difference (20-30 is different than 60-70). I don't see much reason to invest in a third video card, a more expensive motherboard, more power consumption and heat generation.
 
Originally posted by: reptzo

I have been designing my own super compy for a bit now, not sure if it will ever get built. New technology is always around the bend, and is always way better, LOL. Was looking at around $7000, for the system i was designing, self built, with liquid cooling.

Was also debating going solid state for the OS and games drives, since they are faster for application and game usage. But those are like $350 each, for 16 gig.

Before you say it, yes i know, 100% overkill.
Click to expand...
I was going to say that for a so-called "Super Compy", it seemed a little pedestrian.
But it's your $7k... spend it as you wish. :roll:

 
Originally posted by: chinaman1472
IIRC, Raid 0 also runs the risk of losing your data... along with that, games are still more GPU limited than anything else, not hard drives, CPU, or RAM.

If he's gaming, E8400 is still a better choice than C2Qs if it hasn't been mentioned. And unless gaming in the next year vastly improves on quad cores, a dual core CPU will run just fine in two or three years. I bet by the time quad cores show a significant improvement for gaming, it'll be time to haul your PC.

DDR2-1000 is plenty, I doubt the extra 200-300MHz headroom is going to make that much of a difference.

Look at benchmarks for Tri-SLi vs SLi. I refer to TechReport's review myself usually, but the results only show the Tri-SLi leading at 2560x1600, usually 5-10 fps at a playable range where 5-10fps probably won't make a difference (20-30 is different than 60-70). I don't see much reason to invest in a third video card, a more expensive motherboard, more power consumption and heat generation.
Click to expand...

I've already pretty much talked him out of Tri-SLI. I was just offering the option to him to show him how much it'll really cost him.

As for the E8400, wouldn't the Q9450 offer similar performance if pushed to similar clock speeds? I don't really plan on pushing the overclock to the extreme, so a moderate OC to something like.. 3.2-3.4ghz is what I'll be expecting. He's dead set on the fact that 'more cores = better' so I kinda doubt that he would be dissuaded otherwise.
 
Originally posted by: Kirby64
As for the E8400, wouldn't the Q9450 offer similar performance if pushed to similar clock speeds? I don't really plan on pushing the overclock to the extreme, so a moderate OC to something like.. 3.2-3.4ghz is what I'll be expecting. He's dead set on the fact that 'more cores = better' so I kinda doubt that he would be dissuaded otherwise.
Click to expand...

Yea, it'd be similar performance. So what's the point in spending an extra $150 for it? As I've said, if he's dead set on what he thinks he knows, then he doesn't need to be asking you for help, or having you ask AT for it.

If you went to buy your "dream" car and found out you could have an alternative with the same shell/frame and within 5% the performance difference, and pay 30% less, which would you do?
 
Originally posted by: Kirby64
Alright, I've got everything sorted out... he has 5 choices: Mobo, CPU, graphics cards, monitor, and hard drives...

Heres the build(s), tell me what you guys think:
C2Q Q6600 OR Q9450
ASUS Striker II Formula OR EVGA Nforce 750i
8GB (4 x 2GB) G.Skill DDR-1000
Geforce 9800GTXs x 2 OR x 3
Antec Nine Hundred case
Xigmatek HDT-S2163
Corsair 1000HX PSU
Logitech X-540 5.1 speakers
24" Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP OR BenQ G2400W
Western Digital 640GB HDD in single drive OR RAID 1 OR RAID 1+0
Vista Home Premium
Some Lite-On DVD drives (one burner, one rom)

Sooo... that's about it, kinda complex, basically giving him plenty of options, costing from 2500 up to 3500 (without my fee...)
I'm going over the differences and benefits, pretty sure he wont go tri-sli.

Any comments on what I picked?
Click to expand...

Unless something has changed that I don't know about the 750i doesn't support 45nm quads, if you go with the Q9450 the 750i board isn't a choice
 
GuitarDaddy, according to what I looked at (10 mins of google..) the 750i does support 45nm quads.. you sure you don't mean 650i? I saw that the 650i didn't support quad cores.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top