Gaming Rig Suggestions

aticotech · Post by **aticotech** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:39 am

I am thinking of building a new gaming pc. I have budget of $3000.00. The games I play are FPS, usually Quake 4, Counter Strike Source, eventually Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. These games should be multi-thread for multi-core in the near future. I already have these components:

1. Antec 900 Case
2. Dell 20in flat panel 2ms latency
3. Thermaltake Toughpower 650W PS

I will continue use Windows XP sp2 until Vista sp1 is released. I am not sure if a single socket intel (x6800 or QX6700) mobo would be better then a dual socket workstation (Opteron or Xeon). Lastly, I've been trying to find a hot-swap SAS drives (15,000rpm) for workstation. Any suggestions?

Post by **Apoptosis** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 8:04 am

That's a good budget to have while working on a gaming rig. I highly suggest waiting a month as the ATI Radeon HX 2900 XT and nVidia GeForce 8800GTX Ultra will be coming out and when you are spending that kind of money I think it is worth waiting. The GeForce cards seem to do well with DX9 titles, but on DX10 at higher resolution it seems the leaked numbers are in ATI's favor.

You'll need to beef up the PSU to over 650W as that won't be enough for a pair of next generation GPU's and high end drives. Have you considered using an Adaptec RAID Controller card like the Adaptec RAID 3805 with a bunch of 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptor hard drives? You could do something like RAID 5 or RAID 10 with 4+ drives on that card and it would get you data redundancy and superior drive performance. This is also an SAS RAID card and something you could add to later.

If you are going just gaming i'd suggest a dual-core for now and then in the fall make the jump to quad after Intel cuts prices and brings out the lower frequency quad-cores...

My advice... wait on the new GPU's... Get the one that has the best DX10 performance numbers... Beef up the PSU and get a dual-core CPU to hold you over till quad-core comes down in price and the games come out... I'd also suggest getting a 64-bit OS and 4GB of memory...

Cheers and welcome to the forums.

Tim Burton · Post by **Tim Burton** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:57 am

Well said.

slugbug · Post by **slugbug** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:41 am

$3000 will get you some nice parts for sure. As mentioned above I'd wait for the Intel April 22nd price drop to save a chunk of change.
If you don't plan on doing SLI then that PSU is more than enough for a single 8800GT etc.

Skippman · Post by **Skippman** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:47 am

Nate, do you see the Ageia PhysX coming into its own anytime soon, or is it just gimicky? If he's building an ultimate PC I'm wondering if it's worth it to even consider one of those.

We all know the Killer NIC ain't worth it.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:57 am

Skippman wrote:Nate, do you see the Ageia PhysX coming into its own anytime soon, or is it just gimicky? If he's building an ultimate PC I'm wondering if it's worth it to even consider one of those.

We all know the Killer NIC ain't worth it.

I've used my PhysX card for a couple weeks and it's sat in my closet for the rest of the time... When there is a game that I play that can use it I will, but it does nothing for me. why buy a $200-$250 card for ONE game you play that you will play through in 8-10 hours?

Skippman · Post by **Skippman** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:26 pm

That's why I asked. I figured it was gimicky, kinda like my G15 keyboard. At least the G15 does something.

Bwall · Post by **Bwall** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:41 pm

Skippman wrote:That's why I asked. I figured it was gimicky, kinda like my G15 keyboard. At least the G15 does something.

Don't be bashing the G15!!!! I love mine still. Being able to create macros helps me out doing reviews and I've even started messing with them some in Supreme Commander!

Ok, back on topic...pretty good advice from Apop. $3k is overkill for a gaming machine with first person shooters in mind, and playing on a 20" screen.

I would look at the Asus P5B-E motherboard, 8800 GTS 320 MB video card, Corsair 800MHz DDR2, and Intel E6600 processor. These parts will give you excellent performance and if you decide to overclock down the road will put a smile on your face. The most important part is that they won't cost much money, so you can put that money into savings and pick up a new Quad core, motherboard, high performing DX10 video card, and DDR3 towards the end of this year!

smack323 · Post by **smack323** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 1:05 pm

i would say $3000 is a hefty price for a gaming rig. i have been looking around newegg at parts to build my own and a high end build can be had for under $1500. and thats including a 22' widescreen LCD. with that budget I say buy 2 computers and invite a freind over to frag!

Nandro · Post by **Nandro** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:01 pm

I would look for a good NV MB like the 680i or the 680LT since the udget is high. Hey a 8800GTX is great. I know the Ultra will be out, but something else will always be out so if you want one now go for it. Get a decent sound card like the X-Fi or possibly an M-Audio ( http://www.m-audio.com/index.php ) card if you listed to allot of music. You should also possibly look into good cooling from the get go, either top of the line air cooling to go with the antec 900 case as I am assuming you will go air with all the fans in the 900 case. If going water maybe a good prebuilt easy to use system, and if you get the NV MB and all, get some good SLI ram with the built in profiles for maximum performance.

aticotech · Post by **aticotech** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 6:25 am

Thanks for the info guys. I guess I'll wait for April 22 for the cpu prices. I've purchased a few server systems with SAS drives, they are fast and small. Anyone has real world experience with running multiplier games with drives in the 10,000-15,000 rpm range? Is it worth it or overkill?

Thanks

Skippman · Post by **Skippman** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 7:46 am

At this point I'd never run a machine without a 10K drive as my main drive. Load times are much improved over the 7.2K drives. Cache also helps.

For my money, the Raptor is still the best HD on the market short of SCSI.

<RANT>
What right does F'n SecuRom have to tell me I can't use SCSI in my rig! Just because some emulators use a SCSI ASPI doesn't mean there arn't those of use who HAVE SCSI equipment!
</RANT>

Post by **Apoptosis** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 7:49 am

aticotech wrote:Thanks for the info guys. I guess I'll wait for April 22 for the cpu prices. I've purchased a few server systems with SAS drives, they are fast and small. Anyone has real world experience with running multiplier games with drives in the 10,000-15,000 rpm range? Is it worth it or overkill?

Thanks

I have run 4 drives on an adaptec 3405 RAID card and noticed NO difference between RAID0 on the ICH7R chipset and RAID 0 on the 3405 when it came to load times... Games like F.E.A.R. and Company of Heroes loaded at the same exact second... The tests were done on 10,000RPM Raptor WD1500 drives...

This is my system:

Four Raptor's and the Adaptec 3405 with an Intel QX6800 quad-core processor.

Nandro · Post by **Nandro** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:51 am

Wow that is nice and neat inside! Mine looks like a small bomb went off inside it. I myself keep all my system a swap on raid 0 raptors, but I have noticed the larger drives even at 7,200 have equal or better seek times, and almost equivalent burst speed. Maybe due to the cache or possibly the platter density. I know the raptors don't make a big difference like they used to. 2 500G drives would probably be as fast. I would be willing to test if anyone has hardware to send my way

aticotech · Post by **aticotech** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 7:36 am

Thanks for all the info guys. I've purchased the following equipment, but I think I made a mistake on the RAM. My goal is to over-clock this system (maybe put in a quad core chip when the price drops).

Asus P5N32-E nforce 680i 1333Mhz
Intel E6600
WD Raptor 74GB@10,000RPM x2
Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5DF 2GB KIT
Zalman CNPS9700
BFG 8800 GTX OC
Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II Chipset Cooler CL-C0034 x2
Swiftech MC21 Aluminum Mosfet Heatsinks x2

I was thinking that I should have gotten the Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C3DF due to its better CAS. Any suggestions?

Gamble · Post by **Gamble** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:47 pm

The lower the CAS, the better the ram! Geil (or G.Skill I can't remember) has some DDR2 8000 at 3 CAS!! I would love to see some performance results from those beasts. Have you assembled your system yet? If you have any money left over (which judging by the parts list, you do) I would think about upgrading to a 24, 27, or 30" screen. Dell of course. (Stay away from the 22" I got one and it isn't an Ultrasharp. Lots of bleedthrough) Could have gone with the faster C2D as well, as it's only 30 bucks more than the price that the E6600 was at for months!!

aticotech · Post by **aticotech** » Thu May 17, 2007 10:11 am

Update

Rig is built and stable:

E6600 OC to 3.3Ghz FSB 1466
Mem 800@ 4-4-4-12 1T
3DMark06 Score=11222
Temp= 29C idle 52C load on Orthors for 8hrs CPU stress test

I followed alot info posted here and @Overclockers.net:

http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherbo ... guide.html

Thanks alot for all the great articles and reviews here