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wulfman

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Jul 29, 2012
Looking at buying a new rig, primarily used for games, FPS like BF3, Action/Adventure i.e., AC2/3, and some RTS, SC2 & ANNO 2070. I want it to be able to easily handle these kinds of games and hopefully handle some future games for a little while.

Still using an old 2006 Alienware rig that seems to be able to run most things these days, but it's showing its age, even with SLI and being water cooled.

So, just need some recommendations. Is this good enough? Should I do something more specific with the SLI, like set one for PHYSX...etc..

Thanks for any info. Specs below are for a Cyberpower black pearl rig.

--------------------------------

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3820 Quad-Core 3.60 GHz 10MB Intel Smart Cache LGA2011 (All Venom OC Certified)

FAN: Asetek 550LC Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Advanced Cooling Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) [+18] (Dual Standard 120MM Fans

HDD: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Drive)

MEMORY: 8GB (2GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Quad Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)

MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GIGABYTE X79-UD3 Intel X79 Chipset Quad Channel DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ UEFI DualBIOS, Dolby Home Theater 7.1 Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, SATA-III RAID, 4 Gen3 PCIe X16, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI

OS: Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)
OVERCLOCK: No Overclocking

POWERSUPPLY: 800 Watts - Standard Power Supply - SLI/CrossFireX Ready

SOUND: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro External Sound Card w/ THX TruStudio & EAX 5.0 [+31]

VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 2GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card [-70] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)

VIDEO2: NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 2GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card [+122] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
 
Hey, welcome to OCF! :beer:

When trying to recommend a build to you, there's some information that's extremely helpful for us to know. If you could answer these few short questions, we'd be happy to help!

  • What are you planning to do with this compuer? Please be as specfic as possible.
  • What is your budget?
    1. Does this include a copy of Windows?
    2. Does this include peripheals (a keyboard, monitor, mouse, speakers, etc.)?
  • Are you from the United States or a different country? Are you ordering from your own country or from across borders?
    1. Wherever you may be from, does the store that you are planning to order from have a website? It's okay if it isn't in English, we can manage.
    2. If you are from the United States, do you live nearby a Microcenter?
  • Do you have any specific requests with the build?
    1. Do you plan on overclocking? If yes, do you have a specific goal in mind?
    2. Would you prefer the build to be particularly small?
    3. Would you prefer the build to be particularly quiet?
    4. In general, do you prefer this to be a computer that you can spend money on now and let it rest, or a box built for continuous upgrading?
    5. Do you ever plan on utilizing NVIDIA's SLI or AMD's CrossfireX technologies? These features, with a compatible motherboard, allow a user to link multiple identical graphic cards together for added performance. In real world terms, this lets you buy a second identical graphics card down the line as a relatively cheap and easy way to gain a fairly large boost in performance. However, this requires buying a SLI/CFX compatible motherboard and PSU now, which may result in slightly higher initial cost.

Once again, thank you in advance for taking the time to answer these, and I hope you enjoy your stay at OCF! :)
 
Pay lots of attention to a PSU. It's important. Check out the Power suply sub forum, read others suggestions. Read the stickies there.

No need for a sound card really.

Try to get a better GPU, get a 670, just one or a 680. Don't need SLI, SLIing two 640 is like two 50 HP engines in a sports car when you should get one 300 hp engine.
 
Get a z77 mobo (Asrock z77 Extreme4 $130) and a 3570k ($230)

800W is overkill, with a good 650W unit (Corsair, OCZ, Seasonic), you can go xFire/SLI with the highest end current GPUs (680/7970).

With the money you saved, get a GTX670/680 or a 7970.

Going SLI with 2 low end cards is a bad idea.
 
Roger, thanks! Here are the answers to the questions:


[*]What are you planning to do with this compuer? Please be as specfic as possible.

Mostly gaming, usually somewhat graphic intensive (Skyrim and better).

[*]What is your budget?

Flexible, but under 2k

[*]Does this include a copy of Windows?

Yes.

[*]Does this include peripheals (a keyboard, monitor, mouse, speakers, etc.)

I have all the peripherals I need.

[*]Are you from the United States or a different country? Are you ordering from your own country or from across borders?
In the US, ordering from US.

[*]Wherever you may be from, does the store that you are planning to order from have a website? It's okay if it isn't in English, we can manage.

It's CyberpowerPC.com

[*]If you are from the United States, do you live nearby a Microcenter?

Not that I am aware of.

[*]Do you have any specific requests with the build?

Probably SLI, primarily, for gaming performance.

[*]Do you plan on overclocking? If yes, do you have a specific goal in mind?

No plan to, not that technically savvy anymore.

[*]Would you prefer the build to be particularly small?

Small is good, but not a requirement.

[*]Would you prefer the build to be particularly quiet?

Not a concern, per se.

[*]In general, do you prefer this to be a computer that you can spend money on now and let it rest, or a box built for continuous upgrading?

Probably let it rest, I travel every 2 years or so (military) and don't have time to do alot of work on it.

[*]Do you ever plan on utilizing NVIDIA's SLI or AMD's CrossfireX technologies? These features, with a compatible motherboard, allow a user to link multiple identical graphic cards together for added performance. In real world terms, this lets you buy a second identical graphics card down the line as a relatively cheap and easy way to gain a fairly large boost in performance. However, this requires buying a SLI/CFX compatible motherboard and PSU now, which may result in slightly higher initial cost.

Yes, preferably SLI.
 
You're going to get a lot of this, but don't buy a premade. What Cyberpower sells you for $2K, you could build yourself for several hundred cheaper.

Check Microcenter.com for store locations.
 
I know. My only issue is that I've been out of the building game for a long time. I used to build computers, back when Pentium-75 was the ****e.

Unfortunately, I'm out of practice, information, and I'm low on time. But I am in a position now to pay for someone else building it for me.

I know you are probably thinking :bang head but I'm a little concerned about building my own again, having not done it for so long.
 
So if I were to buy the components, what would you recommend, and from where?

Assuming I don't put it together wrong lol :shock:
 
That's what we're here for! We can get you up to speed pretty fast. Even at that...I would buy the components yourself and pay a local computer shop to build it for you, you'll still pay less.

By the way, a $1200 rig can max out pretty much any game a 1080P, there's probably going to be some leftover cash for you to pocket.

I can give you a full recommendation in a sentence few hours when I'm not on mobile.
 
Cool, thanks!

Maybe it's time for me to move into the future.

What about the water cooling part? Is that possible for me to do at home?
 
There's two kinds. There's premade loops that are sealed and require no maintenence. These perform about the same and make about the same noise as air coolers. These are the ones that they probably include in the prebuilt.

"Real" watercooling takes a lot of time and research, and requires periodic maintenence (every 6 months or so). It costs more as well, but you can make it cool as well as you want to and be as quiet as you want.

Here you go. Doesn't include cooling because I wanted you to see the above first.
Capture.PNG
1.PNG
 
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Very nice Knufire. Forgot a promo code for the i5-3570k. Should be able to use "BTS504" and save $15 there. :)
 
Knufire, is it as easy to put those together as it was back in the day? Minus the cooling of course.

Sincerely appreciate that list. I'm building that in Newegg now!

On the solid state drive...do those have normal mechanical storage for Windows? Worried about the loss of power thing with those...

Nevermind, just saw the HDD below the SSD. I tend to read too fast sometimes.
 
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