New Gaming Rig

[Dawgdoc]

Hello everyone,

Im starting to put down some ideas on my new gaming machine that I will be putting together and am looking for some advice on which mobo to choose.

I plan on overclocking to the top speeds that I can personally obtain, and make a bleeding fast gaming rig.

Here is what I have so far, any advice in general appreciated, but specifically trying to nail down which mobo I will be using.

CPU: QX6850, primarilly for the 1333 FSB, but might scale down to QX6700 if total end price is an issue, or possibly even drop to dual core with an E6700 if I need to cut back further.

Is it even worthwhile to go with 1333 FSB at this time?

If I do go with the QX6850, I was looking at the Asus Striker Extreme since it accepts both quad core/dual core, as well as supports FSB of 1333. Im a bit scared though, as from what I have read this mobo can be quite tempermental with POSTing as well as accepting different types of ram.

Are there any other FSB1333 mobos out there that are good overclockers?

Vid Card: EVGA 8800 GTX - got it in my current computer, and am very happy with it and will be

Memory: Still open, but was going to go with 2mb DDR2 800 to be able to take full advantage of the FSB of 1333 when its OCd. Am I incorrect in my information that since DDR2 is "dual pumped" I basically 2ble the speed of the DDR2 memory type and without OCing that is the max FSB that the memory will support?
Is it even worth going more than 2mb? I am told that Vista can utilize more than 2mb, but in XP pro more is likely not necessary no matter the application. Suggestions on brands/etc for the fasting/best OCer?

Cooling: Im thinking of going watercooled this time as my first attempt. Any suggestions on watercooled kits vs getting all the individual parts seperately? If I go air, I was thinking bout the Zalman 9700 since I have used that on a socket 775 before and it works well.

Hard Drive(s): Thinking bout another first here and doing a RAID since I am once again told performance is better. Looking at a pair of Seagate 15,000RPMs for most applications, OS, etc......, and possibly another HD not in RAID for general storage which would be a 7200RPM 300gbish or so I guess.

Sound/Case: open.....havnt really thought about it yet.

Thanks for your help!!!

Dawgdoc

 

[coldmeat]

please tell us your budget and where you will be buying from

 

[Dawgdoc]

Most likely will be purchasing through Newegg.

Budget is a lil bit complicated.

I have a monitor and 8800 GTX that I will be bringing from my old system over to the new, and I dont have an exact budget, but would prefer to stay under $3,000 for CPU/Mobo/Ram/Case/Soundcard/Optical+Hard drives.

More preferably under $2,000 but Im kinda flexible.

From what I can see so far, IF I decide to go with another posters advice and get a Q6600 ($350ish) and a P35 mobo ($250ish), thats only $600 for mobo+proc, leaving quite a lot of elbow room for case/ram/sound/drives.

Unless I am underestimating the costs of the above, I think that the budget shouldnt be a factor but I could be wrong.

 

[ancalime]

Well you can certainly use the money if you wanted to (DDR3).

 

[coldmeat]

you definitely wont have a problem staying withing budget, because the most expensive purchases for a gaming pc are the graphics card and the monitor, and you already have both of those.

you can also get a very nice P35 based board for under $250, like the P5K Deluxe, which i bought for $239 CDN

and i agree with the other poster on the fact that you definitely dont need a QX6850, those are way too overpriced for the performance difference from an overclocked Q6600

for your budget you could easily afford 4 gbs of RAM, and very nice RAM at that

and do you really need a sound card? for gaming, the onboard sound is more than enough for most people

 

[White_Pawn]

Well you can certainly use the money if you wanted to (DDR3).

I wouldn't see the point in doing so.

Anyway for 3k you can get quite a nice chunk of hardware...

G0 Q6600 or G0 X3220 (if you can find a G0 x3220 i'd chose this over the Q6600)
EVGA 680i mobo.
2 x 2gigs of ddr800 crucial
2 x 8800GTX SLI
High wattage/good quality PSU ex. PCPC 750watt PSU, silverstone 850watt psu. etc.
do you want a raid 0 config?
If not i'd get a raptor for your OS and 2 x 500gigabyte seagate 7200.10 drives. (or more.)

 

[coldmeat]

2 x 8800GTX SLI

i dont think he needs SLI 8800gtx's, right now he's running one and is happy with it, and the money saved from that second gtx could go towards a next generation graphics card in a few months... and then he doesnt have to buy an EVGA 680i mobo

edit: Dawgdoc, what monitor do you have? and what resolution do you play games at?

 

[White_Pawn]

i dont think he needs SLI 8800gtx's, right now he's running one and is happy with it, and the money saved from that second gtx could go towards a next generation graphics card in a few months... and then he doesnt have to buy an EVGA 680i mobo

edit: Dawgdoc, what monitor do you have? and what resolution do you play games at?

Depends if he likes to upgrade or not. I know in my heart you don't need two 8800GTX. LOL (well unless you gamed on a 60inch tv like some people i know... )

 

[drotto25]

why pay 200 or so more for a qx6700 vs a q6700. All the extreme really seems to do is open up the multipliers, there are not enough spec differences to warrent the price as indicated by Intel stopping production the the qx6700 in about 2 months. For a quad either go q6600 to save money, q6700 for the little extra speed, or go all the way to the qx6850. The qx6700, and qx 6800 (imo) seem to fit poorly into the current intel quad lineup. I am currntly putting together the system in my sig and my total cost is around 2300 (I am not getting a new monitor, and just got a new keyboard so ajust accordingly).

To get to your 2000 mark go q6600, with 2 mb Ballistix, and maybe just one hd (unless you really want raid) and you are easily there.

 

[macklin01]

Almost everything I've seen right now says that DDR3 is not worth the money or expense over DDR2.

I just purchased the components for a new build that will be arriving tomorrow and Tuesday. I chose a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R, which came highly recommended by others on the forums. It supports DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500), as well as the 1333 MHz FSB. If you want to hedge your bets, you could get the GA-P35C-DS3R, which supports both DDR2 and DDR3.

I chose the Q6600, but I was mightily tempted by the 1333 MHz FSB of the E6750 (dual core, not quad core). I'd recommend very strongly against any of the extreme edition CPUs, unless you have a very compelling argument for it. Economically, you're very much into the point of decreasing returns for such a CPU, as you're paying a $800+ premium to have both quad-core and 1333 MHz FSB. Our 7,920-core supercomputer uses 1333 MHz FSB, but then again, it's a supercomputer.

The higher FSB could be good for increasing memory bandwidth (a chokepoint for recent Intel CPUs), but then again, if you have DDR2 800 memory, that could be quite a bottleneck. I'd love to hear other opinions on these types of issues, as I'm still a bit out of the game on this point.

If you're using 64-bit WinXP, then 2 GB of memory should probably be fine. In fact, I'm not sure if WinXP can properly address > 3 GB of memory, even in 64-bit mode. If you're running Vista or another OS, running more memory will be helpful, particularly if you plan on running VirtualPC or VMware. (I'll be running Vista with WinXP in a virtual PC, and perhaps Ubuntu in another virtual PC.)

For disk storage, 15k RPM drives are pretty hardcore. You may well do just fine with a few 7200 RPM or 10k RPM drives in a RAID configuration. You might consider the Samsung SpinPoint T series. They get reasonable performance (3.0 gb/s, 16 MB cache) and tend to be very quiet. You can get a 500 GB drive for around $110 these days in the series. Western Digital raptor drives have very good performance, but they are also quite a bit more expensive and have lower capacities.

Regardless of what you do, I'd highly recommend getting 3 less-expensive drives so that you can run RAID 5; this will give you a performance boost while also giving some fault tolerance. (If one drive fails, you can still rebuild the array.)

For some of the savings in not getting DDR3, an extreme CPU, etc., you could look into getting some very good software. In particular, you could easily afford VMware and experiment with virtualization. This is a very good skill to have, and it would be an excellent way to start learning alternative OSs, like Linux and BSD. -- Paul

 

[Gripp]

Depends if he likes to upgrade or not. I know in my heart you don't need two 8800GTX. LOL (well unless you gamed on a 60inch tv like some people i know... )

well aren't we too funny

 

[Dawgdoc]

Thanks to everyone for contributing thus far.

A few clarifications, which some ppl asked me...

This computer will be primarily and 99% for gaming.

I do not have intentions on running SLI at this point, mostly due to budget. To do so would mean spending yet another $600+ on an 8800GTX as well as another chunk on a monitor.

But....someone mentioned replacing the vid card in 2 months or so? Why would I want to do that? I bought the 8800 GTX with the expecation that it will last for quite awhile. After 7-8 months of use there still isnt a vid card out there that can compare IMHO.

My main goal with this machine is to make it fast.....blistering fast...for several reasons:
1. Im getting more and more into computers and just want to
2. I play alot of online games (MMOs and such) and it will improve my experience.

Of secondary importance, but still important is noise control. I want to avoid any specific hardware that is known to be very noisy. I have very sensitive hearing and even now the 'click' 'click' 'click' of my harddrive while idling bothers the heck outta me

So far, after researching all the info from the posts last night, I cannot find any good reason whatsoever not to go with the q6600. Quad core, great OCer...should last me a good while before needing a replacement.

I am leaning towards the P5K Deluxe (or premium) Asus, since once again it is supposedly a great OCer and has all of the options I want except for being compatable with DDR3, which will make me look more closely at Macklins Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R option.

Need a sound card? OMG hell yes.... Onboard sound is truly pitiful for games. Really really bad....but I dont think Ive decided on the core components of this computer yet so I will table the sound card issue for later.

I appreciate all of the input thus far, and look forward to any other advice anyone can give!

 

[jason4207]

CPU- Q6600 or x3210/x3220 (G0 only for all 3)
MoBo- P5K Premium or wait for X38
RAM- 2GB DDR2-800 D9's...whatever's on sale atm
Cooling- custom H2O or U-120-X
HDDs- (4 to 6) 250GB Seagates (410AS) in Matrix RAID0/5
Sound- Try the onboard 1st, and upgrade if you have the itch
Case- Antec900 or TT Armor depending on personal taste

You should have a smokin' fast gaming machine w/ this equipment, and plenty of cash left over to buy some games!

 

[Scott9027]

Spend some of that massive budget on a nice custom W/C setup, you can get a very quiet rig if you do it right.

 

[Dawgdoc]

Hmm... a few more questions....


What does the "GO" stand for when used to described procs? I have not heard this term before.....


Im interested in watercooling but scared to be honest. This would be my first attempt, and on a machine I am going to invest a good chunk of change into?

How dificult it water cooling? Obviously, before I put anything in the machine Id set the circuit up and run it outside of the computer to insure there is ZERO leakage, but stilll.....a novice putting WC in an expensive machine scares me LOL.

Thanks again,

 

[macklin01]

Good points. Just a quick post to help out:

The Audigy 4 is the last Creative card that will have good Linux drivers (See here.) In the interest of keeping your options open, I'd recommend searching for an Audigy 4 on ebay or elsewhere.

Good choice on CPU. If you do want quiet and performance (my goal as well), you should check out those SpinPoint T drives. Silent PC Review rated them highly. I recommend getting familiar with that site as well.

Will you need to upgrade your PSU? That's something worth considering, too. -- Paul

*PS: I'm in about the same position on watercooling. I'd like to give it a try, too, but am still a little wary of it, particularly since there are good quiet aircooling options. -- Paul */PS*

 

[Gripp]

its basically a release version, but compared to other releases the G0 has much better OC-ability and lower temps...
same proc only better

 

[jason4207]

Guaranteed G0 here.