New high-end gaming PC

I saw the other rig posted here and today I put together a monster rig of my own that I'm considering. So I thought I'd post it, too:

• Graphics cards: 2 x Sapphire HD6870, 2x € 239,90 = € 479,80
• Motherboard: Socket 1366: Asus P6X58D-E, € 199,90
• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7 950, € 264,-
• PSU: be quiet! Straight Power E7 700W, € 124,90
• CPU cooler: Scythe Mugen 2 Rev.B SCMG-2100, € 34,99
• Solid State Drive 120GB: OCZ OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G, € 194,90
• Harddisks 1TB: Samsung HD103SJ, € 49,99
• Geheugen: 6GB DDR3-1600, € 99,90
• Case: Cooler Master Elite 330, € 36,99
• DVD-reWriter: Sony Optiarc AD-7260S-0B, € 16,99
• Total: € 1.502,36

Pretty good, I'd say. I'm considering only putting in one 6870 card, because I'm currently gaming on a 1378x760 (?) 36" LCD TV setup, anyway, but I'd like to upgrade to Full HD later (which doesn't have an extremely high resolution either, anyway).

I'm not so sure about the PSU either. I want the machine to be as quiet as can be with this kind of enthusiast gear, but of course it also needs to be cool. This machine was also probably meant to be overclocked, and I'm not a serious overclocker. Never really done it or feel safe with it.

I will finally be able to play the latest on PC again! (Cataclysm is mandatory for me, unfortunately.)

P.S. Haha, I just compared. Looks pretty similar to User Name's setup, really. Maybe I should have posted in that thread.

I don't think Crossfire is really worth going for. So few games support it to any degree (And it can cause lesser performance in some games, I believe) that having it is near pointless, and just one of those cards should blaze through nearly anything that's come out recently. Your resolution, as you said, is quite small and as such the second one would just be a waste of power. Even if you go for a bigger screen (1920x1080, for example) you'll still have a LOT of power with just one card.

Save the money from that second card and put it towards a new screen if you want.

Hmm, interesting. I've never done SLI or Crossfire, but I thought it mostly worked with every game. I mean, all the benchmarks use it! The technology has improved a lot. But I've always been wary of it nonetheless. Maybe I should put in a better single-GPU card then, just to be (more) ready for the future?

I agree that Crossfire is not worth the money. The games that do support it will run just great with a 6870 in any case. Performance gains are, at the very most, around 20-25% in practical terms - and paying full price for a second card just for that is a waste - because games just aren't that demanding these days - and they won't be for a few years to come.

I'd go with a single card - and if a game should come out that might benefit, even though I'm 99% sure that won't happen for at least 2 years, you could always upgrade later. I'd throw the money after a 256GB Crucial SSD instead which is insanely fast and will be able to have a lot of modern games installed, and possibly some faster RAM. Better spent that way, if you ask me.

Don't use Crossfire or SLI. There are too many reports about micro-stuttering and incompatibilities. Buy one bigger card if you think you need the power.

Thanks. I had absolutely no idea how those techs work in reality. Faster mem and 6870 x 1 it is probably.

Check how noisy the fan on the graphics card is.

Except for the fact that I wouldn't buy a socket 1366 system for home/gaming purposes (a socket 1156 system would be preferable IMHO) I wouldn't buy that kind of system now because LGA1156 + 1366 are yesterday's news already.

If you can wait then wait for Intel to release their new Sandy Bridge architecture in early January. Sandy Bridge will introduce the new socket LGA1155 and there will be many new CPUs (and boards, of course) on offer. Check here for an (unconfirmed) CPU list. Given your budget that i7-2600K or i5-2500K looks mighty tasty and should yield at least a +30% performance increase over the i7-950 because of the higher clocks and the architectural improvements.

Secondly, it should be worth waiting for nVidia and especially AMD to release their new high end cards next month. nVidia will be introducing the GTX 570 on December 8 and AMD will be releasing the much anticipated Cayman chips (6950/6970) on December 13.
Since you seem to prefer AMD I'd definitely wait and see how that 6950 turns out and then maybe wait some more for AMD partners to release custom designs with better cooling solutions (which is in fact a weak point of the 6870… the reference cooler is pretty noisy and I don't think there are any alternative designs yet).

Finally, you put "high end" in the topic header and then you're going to put all that nice stuff into a €36.99 case? Duuude?!? WTF?!?! Seriously, dude, get a real case for real men for real high end shit .

Aaagh, too bad I'm such an impulse buyer. Seriously, I'd keep all my money in my pocket otherwise. I just bought a system with some changes:

Impulse buyer buys on impulse! I just bought a new gaming PC with a few slight changes:

• Only one 6870
• Different case (there you go, Moriendor )
• Scythe Ninja cooler instead
• More silent, faster 1TB drive

It'll be done in about two weeks. I can make changes still, of course, but I'm not sure how long I can wait. Maybe until that December 8 release.

Oh well, I think I shouldn't wait for those new CPUs. There's always something new around the corner, right? Whether it's in 1,5 month or 4 months. But those new vid cards is a shame, might have gotten a reduced price on the 6870?

What bothers me is that the reference cooler is noise, according to you. I thought it was much more efficient than the 5870 and therefore much more silent. Silent, as far as that's possible, is slightly important, because it will be placed in my living room. Possibly to watch some videos with as well.

Well, we'll see...

Yes, noise as many other thing is a very subjective matter. However, while the 6870 has generally received praise in reviews, just about all reviews mentioned two/three main issues with the 6870: 1) The noisy reference cooler when the card is under load (idle it's silent like all modern gfx cards, of course) 2) The low overclocking potential. The card is already running near its limit. 3) The image quality. AMD's anisotropic filtering is not as good as nVidia's. This can somewhat be fixed by altering some driver settings but then the card will also perform -5% to -10% worse.

As far as the prices are concerned, I think there will definitely be some movement when the 6950/6970/570 are released but probably nothing major since some cards are just getting replaced. The major price drop(s) especially in nVidia's camp has/have already occurred (see prices of the 460 which have dropped from €200+ to €150 and lower or the 470 which has dropped from €300+ to ~€200 in recent months).

Thaurin said:

Hmm, interesting. I've never done SLI or Crossfire, but I thought it mostly worked with every game. I mean, all the benchmarks use it! The technology has improved a lot. But I've always been wary of it nonetheless. Maybe I should put in a better single-GPU card then, just to be (more) ready for the future?

Click to expand...

Benchmarks tend to use a select few games. Half-Life 2 is always one (or at least a Source engine game), Crysis tends to crop up and so does CoD I think. They use SLi/Crossfire in benchmarking tests so you can compare single solution vs double and so forth.

SLi and Crossfire still have a long way to go before being worth the money.

I had no idea about Crossfire/SLI. All the sites recommend it as an upgrade option, some outright recommending two cards right away. But oh well.

The biggest trouble I've put myself in by buying half-blind is the supposed noise-level of the 6870 (really glad it's just on load) and the socket getting replaced in about two months.

Well, I can live with it, I guess. This CPU will probably last me a good couple of years as far as games are concerned. I'm hoping Sapphire's 6870 has a more silent cooler, I'll have to check that out. But I wonder if there really is a more silent card at this end, because they're all pretty noisy on load, aren't they?

Oh, that PSU is still 700W by the way. I guess that's a bit much if I'm just getting one 6870, or even for two? I should change that. Recommendations?

Don't worry about new tech around the corner. There's NEVER a time when that isn't the case, and if you buy new tech just when it has arrived - you'll be paying a lot more money for it.

Basically, there's never a perfect time to buy - and as long as you can play the very latest games with all bells and whistles, and can do so for a long while, you're set.

You CAN conceivably be unfortunate and buy something just as some kind of brilliant tech is about to come out, but then developers take a zillion years to take advantage of new tech - so even in that case it's no big deal.

Don't pay too much for a case either, as it's completely irrelevant in most cases. Read up on some of the popular cheaper cases - and you'll do fine. Just don't buy a cheap AND bad case

Plenty of great and cheap cases around that will fit exactly what you need in them. I bought a Cooler Master for my last upgrade for something like 30 euro - and it's perfect for what I need. Not fancy in any way - but decent, and when my computer is under my desktop, I really couldn't care less what it looks like or if it makes a bit more noise than whatever. It's certainly cool enough and roomy. But that's down to subjective tastes.

But remember this is coming from a pragmatic person who cares about absolutely nothing except getting to play the latest games with a smooth frame rate. All the superfluous shit that people tell themselves is important, isn't for me. Also, I don't care in the slightest about new tech - unless it gives me a real tangible difference where it matters, and not in some theoretical future tests.

I bought myself an i7 950 - and to tell you the truth, there aren't many games around even today that take advantage of more than two cores - and when they do, they don't go about it in a smart way.

You just don't want a bottleneck - and that's why I recommended faster ram - even if that won't be noticable to you. But if you wait around until new tech comes out - you need everything else to "catch up" to avoid bottlenecking, and then you'd be paying a fortune or playing the eternal waiting game for the right deal.

What's important is getting to play cool games when they're out there, and not the very latest 100% optimal build.

Oh, and a 700W PSU is plenty. But you'd be throwing money away on the Crossfire setup - unless you REALLY care about high numbers in benchmarks. For actual gaming, the difference will be noticable in that same way - as in higher numbers, but your experience will be unchanged, and will that be worth twice the price of the most expensive part of the setup?

Consoles dominate gaming for the moment, so the VAST majority of games released are developed for them and the PC versions - even with highres textures and what not - will NOT demand a Crossfire 6870 setup for a LOOOOOONG time

I have a 5870 with an Nvidia 260 for the PhysX (A few games run like crap with PhysX without a dedicated Nvidia chip) - and there's not a single game I can't run at smooth frame rates at max settings (30+ FPS) - and I know what I'm talking about, because I test A LOT of games.

That's my take on it, anyway.

Thaurin said:

I'm hoping Sapphire's 6870 has a more silent cooler, I'll have to check that out. But I wonder if there really is a more silent card at this end, because they're all pretty noisy on load, aren't they?

Click to expand...

AFAIK, there are still no custom designs for the 6870 yet (contrary to the 6850 which sells in many custom versions already), i.e. Sapphire and other manufacturers have not released a 6870 card with an alternative cooler to this date. This will probably happen in the next few months but right now if you're shopping for a 6870, you're stuck with AMD's (supposedly noisy) reference solution.
As for silent cards in the same class as the 6870, well, there's the 5850 and nVidia's GTX 470 in the same class. As far as the 5850 is concerned, there are some cards from e.g. Sapphire and PowerColor that are silent under load and as for the GTX 470 there are two really silent models, the Gigabyte 470 SOC (with three fans) and the Zotac 470 AMP!.

Oh, that PSU is still 700W by the way. I guess that's a bit much if I'm just getting one 6870, or even for two? I should change that. Recommendations?

Click to expand...

I'd keep that 700W PSU. The more headroom you have the less strain/load is put on the PSU and it will likely stay cooler, more silent and on top of it all it'll live longer, too.
And you never know what the future might bring. Make sure that the PSU supports at least 2x PCIe 8-pin connectors for future graphics card upgrades.

The guy at the store suggested that any faster RAM might get the main board in trouble. That is, they weren't sure if the main board could handle it. And it's fast memory, in the first place. The SSD, too, is supposed to be the fastest around now.

As for the PSU, sounds good. Also, I checked. It does seem to have two 6+2 pin connectors.

nVidia GTX 470 is looking very interesting to replace the 6870 right now. I'll call them tomorrow. Supposedly better anisotropic filtering, more silent and overall a good second choice to the 6870. (I just still remember when I really, really, wanted a 5870 and 6870 sounds like that ).

Oh, the guy at the store suggested a Antec Performance One P183. Seems a little expensive and it's pretty big, too.

Glad I have some sane PC people here. My colleagues have been brainwashing me about Apple products. Like that the most expensive iMac handles gaming just fine. Ugh. But at least no one can made console jokes about me anymore in two weeks!

I changed my video card to a Gigabyte GTX 470 SOC. Thanks for that, it seems like a very nice card and very silent, too!

I hope my case suits it well, though, because I read that the heat needs to be really well ventilated because of the amount of heat being sucked away from the card. But for 135,- case that must be alright (still think it's a bit big).

Thaurin said:

The guy at the store suggested that any faster RAM might get the main board in trouble. That is, they weren't sure if the main board could handle it. And it's fast memory, in the first place. The SSD, too, is supposed to be the fastest around now.

As for the PSU, sounds good. Also, I checked. It does seem to have two 6+2 pin connectors.

nVidia GTX 470 is looking very interesting to replace the 6870 right now. I'll call them tomorrow. Supposedly better anisotropic filtering, more silent and overall a good second choice to the 6870. (I just still remember when I really, really, wanted a 5870 and 6870 sounds like that ).

Oh, the guy at the store suggested a Antec Performance One P183. Seems a little expensive and it's pretty big, too.

Glad I have some sane PC people here. My colleagues have been brainwashing me about Apple products. Like that the most expensive iMac handles gaming just fine. Ugh. But at least no one can made console jokes about me anymore in two weeks!

Click to expand...

The Crucial 256 6GB/s is faster - but it's nothing you'd really notice compared to the also very fast OCZ2, but I suggested it because of the size. Games are BIG these days, and people underestimate the irritation of having to uninstall and reinstall games. Of course, it depends on what you're like - but I'd certainly benefit from having a larger drive.

Your motherboard should list bus speeds, so you can figure out what memory it can handle. But, again, it's not a big deal - and will not be noticable in most cases. It's just that memory is rather cheap, so why not go for all the mobo can handle

About the case, you don't seem to really share my approach of not paying for things you really don't need - so I'll refrain from comment

Oh, and I would never recommend Macs for gaming. Macs are for people who don't mind paying for design and "comfort" - and who don't mind not having proper access to a proper gaming library. Emulation of Windows can never be the same thing - or at least, I've never seen anything close enough to make me consider such an option. Also, Macs offer nothing that I want - and I'm not a big fan of closed platforms unless I'm just going to do simple things with them. There's no denying they're cool and attractive - but those qualities have no meaning for me, in a computer.

DArtagnan said:

Games are BIG these days, and people underestimate the irritation of having to uninstall and reinstall games. Of course, it depends on what you're like - but I'd certainly benefit from having a larger drive.

Click to expand...

Me too, I have a hard time uninstalling games. But then again, there were about 30-40 games on my old PC and I played a fraction of them. Plus, installing should be lightning fast with SSD, no?

Your motherboard should list bus speeds, so you can figure out what memory it can handle.

Click to expand...

It does list DDR3-1600 as the most it can handle.

About the case, you don't seem to really share my approach of not paying for things you really don't need - so I'll refrain from comment

Click to expand...

It was recommended by the guy and I know nothing about good cases, so I agreed even with the price tag. I read a review on silentpcreview.com and it comes recommended. Apparently it's pretty quiet with good air flow, required for the GTX 470 SOC, so I'll stick with that. Plus, I think it looks rather nice.

Macs are for people who don't mind paying for design and "comfort" - and who don't mind not having proper access to a proper gaming library. Emulation of Windows can never be the same thing

Click to expand...

Well, here's the thing. Macs have been able to run Windows natively since the time Apple switched to Intel CPUs. You can actually just play everything out there on a recent Mac. But they are always really behind on video cards.

These colleagues indeed value comfort and design above all else and think I'm crazy for mixing and matching my own parts that supposedly will not work well together, result in an unstable system and a huge unsightly case in the living room. I've been hearing that for so long, I'm getting sick of it.

At least, it looks like this PC is going to be pretty quiet, which is one thing that I liked a lot about iMacs and Mac Mini's (the latter being excellent as home theatre computers).

Thaurin said:

Me too, I have a hard time uninstalling games. But then again, there were about 30-40 games on my old PC and I played a fraction of them. Plus, installing should be lightning fast with SSD, no?

Click to expand...

It depends where you're installing from

It's really a matter of comfort - but I hate having to uninstall games all the time.

It does list DDR3-1600 as the most it can handle.

Click to expand...

That settles it then

It was recommended by the guy and I know nothing about good cases, so I agreed even with the price tag. I read a review on silentpcreview.com and it comes recommended. Apparently it's pretty quiet with good air flow, required for the GTX 470 SOC, so I'll stick with that. Plus, I think it looks rather nice.

Click to expand...

Well, it's not that much money - and if you're happy…

Well, here's the thing. Macs have been able to run Windows natively since the time Apple switched to Intel CPUs. You can actually just play everything out there on a recent Mac. But they are always really behind on video cards.

Click to expand...

Really? Windows 7 natively? Hmm, well - I didn't know they'd gotten that far. I thought they used some kind of special software to achieve it - and I thought they used a different architecture for some of the hardware (apart from the CPU) - that would cause some issues. Then again, I haven't followed the development in a while.

These colleagues indeed value comfort and design above all else and think I'm crazy for mixing and matching my own parts that supposedly will not work well together, result in an unstable system and a huge unsightly case in the living room. I've been hearing that for so long, I'm getting sick of it.

Click to expand...

It used to be a bit of an adventure to get a PC running without issues - but these days it's not a big deal. I think the biggest challenge is tuning your operating system - and staying away from unnecessary crappy software.

That said, it's nowhere near the comfort level of an iMac. But they're simply too expensive for the hardware - regardless of the ability to run Windows 7 natively or not.

At least, it looks like this PC is going to be pretty quiet, which is one thing that I liked a lot about iMacs and Mac Mini's (the latter being excellent as home theatre computers).

Click to expand...

No one likes a noisy comp, but I think I have a relatively high tolerance level for that sort of thing. I don't obsess over it, that's for sure

DArtagnan said:

It depends where you're installing from
It's really a matter of comfort - but I hate having to uninstall games all the time.

Click to expand...

I've grown used to just inserting a DVD in the Xbox to start a game. I think I'm not going to like uninstalling games all the time neither.

Well, it's not that much money - and if you're happy…

Click to expand...

Except that it's still a little big... but maybe that's better for air flow?

Really? Windows 7 natively? Hmm, well - I didn't know they'd gotten that far. I thought they used some kind of special software to achieve it - and I thought they used a different architecture for some of the hardware (apart from the CPU) - that would cause some issues.

Click to expand...

I've run Windows 7 at work on an iMac for several months now. You use something called Bootcamp to install it (and drivers, etc.) and it runs natively. I have Mac OS X and Windows 7 in a dual-boot setup.

There were some minor problems, but overall the experience is the same. I've been playing King's Bounty - The Legend during breaks.

I think the biggest challenge is tuning your operating system - and staying away from unnecessary crappy software.

Click to expand...

The OS is a whole different discussion. I've been running Mac OS X for months at home and it's okay, very good even, in what it does. I certainly am going to miss a few features that I got used to. But I'm also kind of looking forward to some Windows 7 again.

Of course, the Apple fanboys will always say that Windows is horrible and Mac OS X is the best.

No one likes a noisy comp, but I think I have a relatively high tolerance level for that sort of thing. I don't obsess over it, that's for sure

Click to expand...

Running a Mac Mini connected to my TV at home, I also got used to an inaudible system to watch movies, etc. on. I think the noise on my PC will be louder, and I think I am going to notice that.