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New high end gaming Rig - budget £700 - £1000 UK

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FIN23

Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2004
Location
UK - South west
hi all

I am after a little advice, i have a buddy who requires a high end gaming rig to be built with the budget mentioned above, its been about 18 months since i last looked at hardware components etc etc..

basically, whats the best buys at the mo??

Dual SLI worth it?
Water cooling - Best buys?

I assume 10,000 rpm sata drives and high end cpu all the way, better to get a seperate sound card too?

and what cases reign supreme now? i always used to go for thermaltake

I am looking at all the threads at the mo , any help would be great!
 
dual sli, you mean quad sli? quad sli = 2 cards that are already slied them selves, they just take up one slot. thats only worth it if you havea huge screen with really high res with aa/af cranked.

best buys right now?
well if you need the cpu power for av encoding go with the Q6600. other wise if its just for gaming look at a E8400 cpu. ram, cant go wrong here with any one but i have noticed for non MIR buying gskills has some killer deals. a high end cpu, you mean like a EE? no those are not worth it to buy unless your into it for just braggin rights or using LN2/DICE/PHASE for cooling on the cpu. right now though for gaming a fast cpu isnt needed unless going with a quad sli setup. sli is just fine with a cpu in the 3ghz range.. as high res/aa/af on puts all the load on the GPU(S), so no amount of cpu increase is going to help GPU's. the 10k hd's, only from western digital, i say go with those if you have to have the fastest loading time into windows and game leves. cases, well thats up in the air imo. there are many that are good for WCing but to each there own, cases is more a personal preference in looks. though i have to say the LL-A10B is one of the best cases i have every owned, well worth the cost.
 
I'm guessing you won't be using Newegg? What sites do you prefer?
 
Thanks Evil, good advice!

OC, any uk etailer really, overclockers, dabs, ebuyer, aria, scan

Looking into Quad sli now.. :s
 
Look into a Q6600 processor with Xigmatek 120mm Rifle cooler, zalman 9700, thermalright 120ultra or tuniq tower.

Antec 900 is a great/relatively inexpensive case for your needs. Thermaltake armor is nice for full towers.

4GB of DDR2800 memory should be fine. Corsair, OCZ, G.skill, Geil, Patriot...

2x8800GT is the best option for SLI right now, single 8800GTS will work great as well. Consider waiting for the 9800GTX as a single card solution in a P35 board (abit IP35? Gigabyte DS3L? etc).

Corsair 650Watt psu

10krpm HDDs are great for decreasing load times, but will not add to in-game performance.

Sound cards are nice if you are picky about sound, have good speakers, have a specific audio need (input/outputs) or want a little less load on the cpu (not a concern for the quads). Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer is great. Most onboard sound solutions are excellent on mid-high end mobos these days. wait until after you build your system to see if you'll need it if you have reservations.

64 bit os
 
only cards for quad sli are the old 7950GX2 and the new 9800GX2. the GX2 as per newegg is 589-599 US not sure what that translates to for you. also going with sli limits you to NV based boards. not a bad deal as the new 700's seem to ocing well with quads now vs the older 680i board. drivers for Q-sli, i think are still a bit buggy, dont quote me. is you go quad sli your going need a big psu bigger then 650watts. i think your going to need at least a 850watt to get enough PCIE connectors for Q-sli.
 
so would you guys defo consider an sli setup rather than a single high end card?

My buddy wants water cooling too, i dont like it to be honest but he wants a quiet fairly low temp cooling

thanks for your answers so far people
 
I wouldn't rather wait for the 9800GX2's to come out and go with single card.
 
9800GX2 is already out it is the 9800GTX that isnt out yet. you could classify the 9800GX2 a a single card since it take one slot. though the card has 2 gpus already sli'd, i would hook him up with that if he wants high end. water well there are a number of ways to go that route. you need to know just how much space he can live with being used for the rads. not to mention for good fans can add up to cost when going to low noise. you can still get low noise with a hs fan in the right setup, its about doing the research. my ninja hs with 2 sanyo denkies at 7v are what i consider quiet. it kept my oced dual core nice and cool at 3.2ghz, on 12v it was really loud, since each fan could psu 112cfm at 12v.
 
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