Hey guys, I'm looking at buying a new rig pretty soon and I need some suggestions. I primarily use it for gaming and not much else beyond that. I'm one of those people that have to have the graphics set pretty high to be happy and I'm starting to have to put some things on medium/low so it's about that time again.
One of the games I'm upgrading for is Mafia II. I know my current build could play it, but I'd like to be able to use my 3D glasses in addition to maxing it out. Having said that, I'm looking for an Nvidia card. My budget for this rig is going to be roughly $3000.
Case
The case I had in mind was the HAF X. My brother has the Antec 1200 and it's an awesome case, but I'd like something a little different.
COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Black Steel/ Plast...
CPU
With AMD's new X6's I don't know whether to go with those or an Intel i7 now. I know most games out there don't fully utilize the quad cores much less a hexa core processor, but I gotta plan for the future too. I don't want to have to upgrade my processor a year later.
Video Card
As mentioned earlier, I'll need a high end Nvidia card. I have the 120Hz monitor and the glasses, but I'm running XP right now and as soon as I upgrade and get Windows 7 then I can finally use them. I know the GTX 480's get pretty hot and require quite a bit of power, but I feel like that's probably the rout I'm going to go because it's the latest one out right now. I thought about doing SLI, but for starting out, one should be fine. And I've always had good luck with EVGA so I was thinking something along the lines of a GTX 480 SC.
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=015-P3-1482-AR&family=GeForce 400 Series Family
Motherboard
Again, always had good luck with EVGA so I was thinking about one of theirs, but I'm open to suggestions on this one.
Memory
I've been looking at Corsair's Dominator series and I know they're not cheap, but I'm willing to pay a little more for good RAM. My current system has some A-Data ram which worked great early on and then eventually both stick died on me so I'm not dealing with that again.
SSD
I've never had one before, but I've had a number of people tell me that they're pretty awesome. Load times on my current rig are decent and if it's 5 or 10 seconds faster, that's really not that big of a deal to me, but I'm more concerned with game loading screens. I was thinking something like this:
OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTX100G 2.5" 100GB SATA II M...
PSU
I recently bought a 1000W Corsair PSU so I'm just going to switch that one out for the new rig.
I've considered doing liquid cooling, but I'll be honest, I'm just not that great when it comes to that stuff. I know this HAF X has the holes in the back for just that sort of thing, but I haven't fully made up my mind on whether I'm going try it or not. I do plan on overclocking somewhat, but not anything extreme. Once again, I'm always open for any suggestions that you guys make so please feel free to say whatever is on your mind. Any criticism is accepted.
Thanks for taking the time to read all the way to the bottom.
One of the games I'm upgrading for is Mafia II. I know my current build could play it, but I'd like to be able to use my 3D glasses in addition to maxing it out. Having said that, I'm looking for an Nvidia card. My budget for this rig is going to be roughly $3000.
Case
The case I had in mind was the HAF X. My brother has the Antec 1200 and it's an awesome case, but I'd like something a little different.
COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Black Steel/ Plast...
CPU
With AMD's new X6's I don't know whether to go with those or an Intel i7 now. I know most games out there don't fully utilize the quad cores much less a hexa core processor, but I gotta plan for the future too. I don't want to have to upgrade my processor a year later.
Video Card
As mentioned earlier, I'll need a high end Nvidia card. I have the 120Hz monitor and the glasses, but I'm running XP right now and as soon as I upgrade and get Windows 7 then I can finally use them. I know the GTX 480's get pretty hot and require quite a bit of power, but I feel like that's probably the rout I'm going to go because it's the latest one out right now. I thought about doing SLI, but for starting out, one should be fine. And I've always had good luck with EVGA so I was thinking something along the lines of a GTX 480 SC.
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=015-P3-1482-AR&family=GeForce 400 Series Family
Motherboard
Again, always had good luck with EVGA so I was thinking about one of theirs, but I'm open to suggestions on this one.
Memory
I've been looking at Corsair's Dominator series and I know they're not cheap, but I'm willing to pay a little more for good RAM. My current system has some A-Data ram which worked great early on and then eventually both stick died on me so I'm not dealing with that again.
SSD
I've never had one before, but I've had a number of people tell me that they're pretty awesome. Load times on my current rig are decent and if it's 5 or 10 seconds faster, that's really not that big of a deal to me, but I'm more concerned with game loading screens. I was thinking something like this:
OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTX100G 2.5" 100GB SATA II M...
PSU
I recently bought a 1000W Corsair PSU so I'm just going to switch that one out for the new rig.
I've considered doing liquid cooling, but I'll be honest, I'm just not that great when it comes to that stuff. I know this HAF X has the holes in the back for just that sort of thing, but I haven't fully made up my mind on whether I'm going try it or not. I do plan on overclocking somewhat, but not anything extreme. Once again, I'm always open for any suggestions that you guys make so please feel free to say whatever is on your mind. Any criticism is accepted.
Thanks for taking the time to read all the way to the bottom.