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this guy wants a $3000-4000 build

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M3i5

New Member
Joined
Apr 26, 2011
yeah i had the same reaction when i heard the 3000-4000 part
but this guy is 22 and he drives a c63 amg
anyways, he plays games...that's about it
that's why i decided to go all out on the gpu and ssd, and stay good enough for the cpu
this is what i got so far for him:

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i7 2600k cpu (will oc for sure)
asus maximus iv extreme
corsair vengeance 2x4gb ddr3-1866 CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9 (2sets for 16gb)
sapphire hd 6990 (unlocked)
asus xonar essence st 7.1
corsair ax1200
intel 510 series 240gb
2x wdc blue 1tb WD10EALX (pretty cheap, so chose this over green 2tb)
cm haf x case
asus 12x bluray burner BW-12B1LT/BLK/B/AS
tp link wireless TL-WN722N (just in case)

after 13% tax (canada) comes to just under $3400 if aspm with ncix

rest $600 will go to wc?
 
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Dont get the intel 510 get a vertex 3. 1200w is way to much grab a 850. I would lower the frequency of the ram and get a kit with cl6.
 
Nothing wrong with the 510. I'd trust Intel's silicon over anybody else's any day. Afaik Vertex 3 does write faster, though, which is a major + in it's favor.

The 6990 is loooud. If you won't definitely be water cooling it, get the 590 from Nvidia. Water cooling a sandybridge CPU = very limited gains if any. If the CPU will do 5+ Ghz it'll do it on a decent air cooler too. I'd get a WD black drive over the blue. Faster. The price difference isn't massive. You don't really need more than 850W of PSU anyways so the price difference of going to something like an AX850 will cover that. I'd get 8GB of something like a 2133 cas 7, which is very expensive, over 16GB of 1833 cas 9 if I had that budget. That's just me.

If this person is not going to be using mostly higher end headphones and plans to use speakers, get the Auzen Meridian 1 or 2. Better for speakers in my opinion. I've owned both the Meridian and the STX. Also have a Xonar D2/PM. All use the 8788 chip so sound similar but the Meridian is definitely best for speaker output.
 
If it were me building for a "client" I would never use a dual GPU card. Too many issues when they aren't maintained (driver updates/cleaning/etc) and the card is infathomably loud when it gets warm.

I second the notion for going with the Western Digital Black drive(s) over the Blue. They are pretty damn fast for loading games and the like :)
 
I'd use two gtx580s. Nothing beats that. Nothing.
Plus they're fairly quiet at stock clocks/volts too.

I'd be inclined to drop the bling level a bit and go with a 990x CPU personally.
Rampage III extreme and 990x feels way smoother then a 2600k. Donno why.
 
If it were me building for a "client" I would never use a dual GPU card. Too many issues when they aren't maintained (driver updates/cleaning/etc) and the card is infathomably loud when it gets warm.

I second the notion for going with the Western Digital Black drive(s) over the Blue. They are pretty damn fast for loading games and the like :)
This...

I'd use two gtx580s. Nothing beats that. Nothing.
Plus they're fairly quiet at stock clocks/volts too.

I'd be inclined to drop the bling level a bit and go with a 990x CPU personally.
Rampage III extreme and 990x feels way smoother then a 2600k. Donno why.
... + this minus the 990x thing. :)
 
get the 2600k + 2 or 3 palit 3gb gtx 580's, NV surround triple monitor setup. corsair ax1200, ripjaws x CL7. 1 $500 dollar-ish vertex 3 ssd, 2 WD Caviar black. That should probably be about 4k including monitors i think.
 
If it were me building for a "client" I would never use a dual GPU card. Too many issues when they aren't maintained (driver updates/cleaning/etc) and the card is infathomably loud when it gets warm.

I second the notion for going with the Western Digital Black drive(s) over the Blue. They are pretty damn fast for loading games and the like :)

Agree. I hear too many horror stories with dual GPU's.
 
If you really want the thing to fly, grab a Revodrive for it. Them suckers are fast.
 
Im not entirely sure if i'm correct in this but on the maximus 4 extreme aren't the 4 non gfx pci slots all split to handle the 2 extra sata controllers and the usb 3.0 controller? meaning a revo drive might not be able to reach it's potential depending on how the rest of the system is setup and possible bandwidth saturation.
 
Article? I've heard something like that before, but I don't think it was an Asus motherboard.

Even so, if you have two graphics cards, they both run at x8, taking up all 16 lanes provided by the chipset. You still have all 16? lanes left from the NF200 controller, and the Revodrive only takes up 4 lanes. There's still plenty horsepower left.

Btw, people on these forums discovered that, with the Revodrives, overclocking the PCIe bus speed results in a linear increase on the Revodrive's speed.
 
Go with 2 6990's water cool them and talk him out of an extra 5 bills. He wont need anything more for the next 10 years. Also need a 1200 watt psu. Definately get a Lian Li case. It will still be around when the Sun goes super nova. Mine is eight years old.
 
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Article? I've heard something like that before, but I don't think it was an Asus motherboard.

Even so, if you have two graphics cards, they both run at x8, taking up all 16 lanes provided by the chipset. You still have all 16? lanes left from the NF200 controller, and the Revodrive only takes up 4 lanes. There's still plenty horsepower left.

Btw, people on these forums discovered that, with the Revodrives, overclocking the PCIe bus speed results in a linear increase on the Revodrive's speed.
as far as i know there is 16 pcie lanes for graphics, and 4 for other stuff. those four are what the marvell sataIII and jmicron eSATA and also what the USB 3.0 chips use. As for installing a revodrive on the nf200 supplied lanes, not sure how well that would work but im going to try and find a bench for that. I'm going to buy the maximus IV tmrw actually and had planned on getting a revodrive but have since decided against based on the possibility of bandwidth saturation. Vertex 3 are plent fast enough anyway.

This explains it a little better

EDIT: also the nf200 doesn't add 16 lanes to the card. it takes 8 lanes and splits then into 16 (i think maybe it's its 32) so if you run 3 cards you get 8x 8x 8x. So i suppose you could run 2 gfx cards at 8x and a revodrive on the M4E and the only downside is the latency added by using the nf200 chip.

EDIT:Ok found some more info the bottom 4x pcie slot is in reality only electrically a 1x slot. meaning putting a revodrive in there will gimp it to about 400mb/s which is less than a OCZ vertex 3. What that means is triple card sli/crossfire + revodrive does not work on the M4E. I would hazard a guess that it will probably not work on any p67 system.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...2-240-only-400MB-reads-writes-in-4x-PCIe-slot
 
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In dual-SLI, the M4E defaults both the cards to x8. It COULD do x16, but x8 all on the CPU is faster then x16 off the NF200. Because of that, there's plenty of bandwidth left for the Revodrive.

All in all, the noticable difference between 500MB/s from the Vertex 3 and 700MB/s from the Revodrive is pretty much nothing, you'll be happy with either one.
 
In dual-SLI, the M4E defaults both the cards to x8. It COULD do x16, but x8 all on the CPU is faster then x16 off the NF200. Because of that, there's plenty of bandwidth left for the Revodrive.

All in all, the noticable difference between 500MB/s from the Vertex 3 and 700MB/s from the Revodrive is pretty much nothing, you'll be happy with either one.

There are 6 PCIE slots on the m4e
2 of them are 1x slots (electrically). (the second and 6th)
the rest are x16 slots physically.

When you insert 2 video cards for optimal performance you put them into slots 1 and 4. and both get 8x direct from the CPU.
when you put three video cards in you put them in slots 1, 3 and 5. slot 1 gets 8x from the cpu and slots 3 and 5 get 16x from the nf200. in this scenario PCIE slot 4 gets 0 PCIE lanes.
To sum up what this means to the consumer: IF you install a revodrive you will be engaging the nf200 chip and get nf200 latency on 2 of your installed PCIE cards.
Anyway this is pretty much inconsequential. Since the slot 2 and slot 6 are both electrically only 1x you would need to run run the revodrive off of slot 5, with one video card in slot 1 getting 8x native and one in slot 3 getting 16x nf200. This hit your second video card and your revodrive with nf200 latency for a slight performance hit.

Use a vertex 3! revodrive + maximus IV is not a good combo IMO because of the above. If you must have 3 graphics cards + revodrive wait for the x79 chipset.
 
I just wanted to chime in and say it's a pleasure reading this thread. I've doubled my knowledge of juggling devices with modern chipsets in less than a page! :)
 
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