Building New PC

[levish]

Okay I'll put it like this, are you aware that by spending $1700+ you'll probably get at most a 10% performance increase over a $1k build?

You could EASILY spend $1k on a decent box with a Q6600 quad core CPU that OC's really nicely (to the extent it'd equal the CPU you're intending to buy and run at stock) and a single HD4870, a truly awesome GPU.

So yeah, unless you're rich or a serious, serious gamer, you could easily save $500+

no offense but a 4780x2 is much more than 10% better ... its in all honesty the first time I'm considering a multi gpu card, it completely eclipsed what i expected of the card when I bought the 4780 (dismissing the 4870x2).

[Shuemue]

Forgive the hyperbole, I was just trying to illustrate that a PC for under $1k would play any game available on decently high settings and most on very high.

[Katlan]

Forgive the hyperbole, I was just trying to illustrate that a PC for under $1k would play any game available on decently high settings and most on very high.

A PC that you make, not a pre-built one

[Shuemue]

A PC that you make, not a pre-built one

Only a fool or a rich man buys a pre-built desktop for personal use.

[Boyiee]

Price was no Issue, and I'm a pretty serious gamer so I really wanted to get much more out of this machine then I did my last one. The main area I can save money in, as I've discussed with a few other people, is the 4870X2, Sure I could gimp it and get something for 200-300$ cheaper, but that is one aspect of the build that I really do not want to change. I've spent over 500$ already being cheap on cards by either burning them out, or just needing to upgrade cause I didn't want to spend too much, might as well get something for that price off the bat that can handle the settings I try to run on.

not to mention, I've heard lots of problems with 4850's and 4870's. but not so much with the X2's. I do want to OC the system, I just haven't done so before since with my current build it failed and didn't work out. My main goal was to build something that was going to run cold as hell, that I could actually OC and possibly add a 2nd 4870X2 to in the future. The last time I had an OC'd setup, my friend did it for me, I'll just have to learn to do it myself.

Thanks for the recommendation on the E8400, i'll check it out.

Edit:: 8400 is really good, but it's only a 20$ difference, but I see a lot of happy people with the 8400, thanks for the suggestion I might change to that.

[Resin]

I agree, the 4870X2 is one hell of a card--if you're going to be playing games that will actually take advantage of it, then by all means.

If by "raptor" you mean velociraptor, that is what I'd recommend. You say you have no need for space, so the 150GB version would be big enough, but it is definitely worth the extra cost to have it as your OS drive if you have the money to burn.

As for the quad vs. duo core debate, it really depends on what you're going to be using it for. Most games these days aren't optimized for a quad-core, but they say that will be changing soon. If you decide on a core2duo, the E8500 is definitely the sweet spot with regards to bang-for-the-buck, as it's only $20 more than the E8400, but a full $80 cheaper than the next model up the line, the the E8600. And, from what I understand, the E8500 overclocks quite well.

Good luck, man.

[Shuemue]

If you really want it to be the nuts, toss in something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115034

[Boyiee]

heh, I was looking for pretty much the best system I could put together for about 2k, and I think I'm pretty close to accomplishing that for what I do.

I have trouble using up my 80gb of space sometimes res, so yeah 150 would be enough, but If I get the 300gb i will never have a worry again.

[Shuemue]

For the kind of luxury machine you're building, I'd buy the faster 150GB Velociraptor HD for your OS and game installs, you can add a cheap 1tb drive for secondary storage later, or use an external for storage.

[Boyiee]

I actually save 25-50$ by doing that with a 500gb or 640gb. I originally had a setup like that but I'm not too sure where down the line I had changed it and forgot about it.

Xanthe showed me that rampage board from Asus, rampage, but is it really much different than the Deluxe?. It seems that more people have problems with the deluxe being DoA, and having problems with 1066 ram, but apparently just flashing it with the rampage bios will make it work fine with 1066ram... so it's a few dollars off for about the same thing.