The Best Gaming Rigs for around $1,500. Your advice

[Socratus]

If your going air on that i7, Noctua NH-D14 is all I have to say.

and you can cool an overclocked i7 passive.

btw, your choice about PS is not so bad
http://pcwizkidstechtalk.com/index.php/tuniq-ripper-review.html

 

[Binge]

OOops sorry, yea I am going to be picking up a Win 7 Pro for $70 or 80, but I am not tallying that into the $1500. That's an external cost in my mind along with such things as new peripherals such as mouse, keyboard, monitor should I decide to upgrade any of those.

My only thing is I have never had a CPU, PSU, stick of RAM, hell even hard drive die on me except for one computer that went through a power surge on a shitty surge protector. It was a Dell though so who cares. So selling this customer on reliability and life span in terms of a better PSU or supercooling is tough. I'm not saying it may not be valid but the reality stick hasn't slapped me upside the head yet and so I am not truly worried about these issues. I think a moderate 1-1.2 kW PSU priced in the 100 range should cover my consumption needs and if history continues to serve me won't crap out on me. I'm also not crazy on saving electricity at this point either.

I will be going with a heat sink on my CPU though, nothing fancy, but I know that it will be important later down the road when I start to OC it.

That's fair. Entirely valid. I would still get a more note-worthy PSU, but that is again just my own concern I put forth to my own. You've made more than enough to argue otherwise.

 

[strafter]

btw, your choice about PS is not so bad
http://pcwizkidstechtalk.com/index.php/tuniq-ripper-review.html

Thanks for the review, yea I thought it looked like a pretty decent PSU when I first was looking into it. Not that I REALLY knew what I was looking for...

Man I was up till like 1 am last night racking my brain over this whole SATAIII thing. I really just don't know what way to go on this. Seems like on all the standard mobo's SATAIII really is just stealing bandwidth from your PCI slots, which isn't really something I want happening....

So the question is do I even look for a board that has SATAIII..... Because as Binge said, right now Sata III isn't REAL Sata III it's a leached module on your PCI not an actual Southbridge set-up.

Seems like every time I got this figured out I stumble upon yet ANOTHER thing...

Semi-solved what processor I wanted, i7 930 --> what GPU then
Solved the GPU issue, either 5850 or 70 --> well what Ram do you want
Semi-Solved the Ram issue --> well what PSU are you going to use
Figured that out --> what about cooling?!
What about PSU, SATA III or no SATA III, SSD or standard HD.... ahhhhhhhhhh

Can anyone think of any other huge issues I am missing so I don't stumble upon them and end up feeling like this guy -->

 

[Socratus]

CPU Intel Core i7-930 $250
GPU Sapphire Non-ref HD 5870 390$
Motherboard ASRock X58 Extreme - $160
RAM which Binge offered - $150
PSU Tuniq Ripper PSU-RIP1000W-BK - $100
HDD Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB - $92
Cooling Noctua NH-D14 - $83
Case HAF 922 - $90
Optical Drives 2xSamsung - $50
Total: $1365

Edited.

 

[strafter]

@ Socratus

Yea that is pretty much the set-up... only thing is the SSD. I just don't think I am going to go down that road. The technology is still too new for me and the price just isn't in line yet. I don't have room in my budget for 3 HDs meaning I would have to have 1 SSD and 1 rotation drive. This means my OS would run blazingly fast and my games would suffer with no RAID 0 support... This rig is focused on gaming, so I just don't see the gain in that. I could put my choice games on the SSD, but I would think that would be more hassle than it is really worth trying to constantly transfer new games on and archive old games off of it and onto the rotational. If anyone knows of any programs out there that make this process simple where I could just drag entire games from one drive to the next let me know, but I don't think it exists

On the 5870 issue, I havent yet really decided which one I want to go with. I just think I am going to be building this rig still a month or two out, so by then I think the 5870 will be down to around $300 and the 5850 will be sliding into the Medium card spot whereas the 5870 will still be up in the Medium to high slot. Also since I am just buying one card now I want it to be good enough to rip through games until the prices drop enough that the 2nd 5870 is CHEAP. Here is an example I gave to explain also why I am leaning towards the 5870

For example say the 5850 gives me a score of 90 (making this up for example sake) and the 5870 gives me an 115. Not a huge difference maybe not worth paying the extra $75-100 for, but down the line I XF it, now the 5850XF is at roughly 155 and the 5870XF is at 200, and at this time the card price will be almost insignificant. XF again and now my scores are 195 and 285 respectively. So in the beginning they were close, but every XF down the road opens the gap more and more for a price difference that is really not that significant.

On the monitor resolution way way back in the thread I posted...

@ Jr I am probably going to be running 1650x1050 for now, I am running a 3 year old Samsung monitor and don't think it supports any higher, but my next step will be to go up to a 2560 and dual monitor with my current one

I probably will be on a 1650 for at least another year. I mean 1650x1050 is beautiful enough, I don't need to go any higher at this point. Also I probably would line my 2560 monitor purchase up with a XF 5870 purchase.

 

[Socratus]

Good, -$120 then

By the way, read this - http://www.shanebaxtor.com/2010/03/25/ati-hint-at-no-price-drop/

 

[willslick]

Here is a link for you. I am looking at the WD 6GB drive for my build also

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10012298

Here is another

http://www.directron.com/wd1002faex.html

One other note at the Egg you can get the drive and the tune up utility for $130.00 I don't know much about tune up but it sounds interesting

Will

 

[strafter]

@ willslick

Watch out for paying a premium on standard rotational drives for SATA III support. Paying a premium on that drive for 6Gb/s is like paying a premium to put premium gas in your Ford pinto... it just doesnt do anything. Here is my back up. Directly from WD web site

Transfer Rates
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 126 MB/s (Max)

Now my good friend google calculator tells me
126 (MB / s) = 0.984375 Gb / s

So even if you raid them in a PERFECT world and get double the Transfer rate (RAID 0 usually only offers between 1.5-1.75x boost) you're still pushing under 2 Gb/s. Easilty managed by the SATA II 3 Gb/s technology. I don't even understand why WD sells these things with SATA III support....

My word of warning.

 

[willslick]

Thanks for the heads up. The Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX is actually cheaper than the 3GB WD 1T and has upgrades found on the RE class drives that the black series does not normally have. I am well aware of the limitations of mechanical hdds but thanks for looking out.
Will