Finished Order $4600 gaming setup

[Rockinfella2k]

Well I am quitting my job in Afghan in about 8 hours from now. I ordered a gaming PC to be sent home so I can build it once I return to the USA after spending nearly 2.5 years in Afghanistan as a Civilian Contractor. I think this build will run well, I was going to go with a 680, but I wanted optimal maxxed out settings on the 30 inch without hiccup. Any thoughts, suggestions or what else I may want to pick up?


Picked up everything from NewEgg, and while I hate the fact they won't give you any package discount or price match anybody, they do have everything in stock, and I sort of like the 1 stop setup for an entire build.


Zalman GS1200 Case
Intel 3770k 3.5 GHZ processor
8 GB 2666 mhz G Skill Memory
EVGA 690 GTX 4GB Vid Card
Dell U3011 30 Inch Monitor
Thermal Take 1200 Watt Power Supply
WD Black 2 TB Hard Drive 6.0 Gb/s
Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD
ASrock Z77 OC 1155 Mother board
GIGABYTE GK-OSMIUM Gaming Aivia Osmium Mechanical Keyboard
Logitech G9x Gaming Mouse
LG Blu Ray Burner 14x
Windows 8 Pro
MADCATZ F.R.E.Q. 5 3.5mm/ USB Circumaural Stereo Headset
Xtrac PADS Ripper Optical Mouse Pad
ZALMAN Plus-B 6 Channel Fan Controller
Rosewill RTK-045 45 Piece tool Kit and some Artic 5 Thermal paste

Games Ordered:
Black Ops 2 , Borderlands 2, Assasins Creed 3, Battlefield 3
Flight Sim X, Driver: San Fran, Saints Row the Third

 

[CRCSUX]

Wow nice, your going to have fun.
What was the most expensive item?
Just wondering because $4600 thats like well over $9000 -_- in NZD.
Looked over it again, probably the gfx card im guessing. Or monitor

Id so love to give Flight Sim X a go on your comp. or BF3.

Well good luck to you, hope you have better luck with ordering off newegg than I did.

 

[lehtv]

Looks expensive. I hope you like it. I would never buy that myself even if I had the cash though, could build something similar for 2/3 of the money.

 

[AdamK47]

It's an adequate mid range PC I suppose.

 

[riversend]

RF2K, have a safe trip home and enjoy the build. Of note, most of the builds critiqued in this forum are done entirely from a price/performance mindset, so you will see some raised eyebrows wrt spending $4600 on a 30" gaming machine. Still, I have no doubt you will enjoy it, but you could get much the same thing for less.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That much? And not even a Socket 2011 build? Hmm...

 

[Termie]

Not sure if you were just happy about how much you spent on the rig, but overall, it's pretty nice.

You only made two obvious errors in selecting components. The first was buying the Thermaltake 1200w PSU, which is topped in quality and features by multiple less expensive PSUs. And that's ignoring the fact that you only need about 750w to run your system at maximum overclocks. The second was going with 8GB of DDR3-2666 RAM rather than 16GB of DDR3-2400 or below, which would have cost the same or less, and provided better performance in memory-limited situations.

Everything else looks great.

 

[etherealfocus]

I don't think s2011 would improve performance much since he's not doing anything that requires tons of PCIe lanes or memory bandwidth (or really even that requires a lot of memory). There's a fine line between going a bit over the top in pimping your rig and just outright wasting money.

On that note, the 840 Pro is way too slow. Try this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227772

 

[etherealfocus]

On a more serious note, Termie's completely right about the PSU and memory. If you're going balls to the wall there's no reason to not get at least 16GB of memory, and no reason to get anything above 2400 since the i7 doesn't care about it anyway. 2400+ exists for pro benchmarking and people who love their A10-5800Ks a bit too much.

And for the love of all that is holy get a good UPS for that thing! One power surge and you'll lose your saved games. And, umm, some hardware.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

apparently they dont have newspapers/web access in afghanistan, you went way too gangnam given that haswell will be out in a few months

 

[etherealfocus]

Doesn't matter, all indications are that Haswell will be another minor bump in CPU and a major jump in GPU that he obviously won't be using anyway.

If he was getting an ultrabook I'd agree that this is a bad time to drop a lot of cash. With a gaming rig, eh, buy one when you need and then upgrade as you need. He'll more price/performance out of the 3770K+mobo than out of most of the other components.

Also Haswell is Q2 so prob about a 6 month wait.

 

[Rockinfella2k]

Appreciate the Comments. I was looking at the 2011 and I couldn't seem to find the real difference, the only processors that I saw that supported the 2011 were the Sandy bridge processors and I thought that the Ivy was newer, that confused me a bit so I just went with what I knew.

To answer on most expensive items it would have to be the monitor at 999 and video card at 999.


Memory I was going to go with 16gb at like 2400 but just didn't see any reason I'd ever use that much memory, I can always change it out later, memory is only about 150$.

I really just do games, BF3, Warcraft and Call of duties I play those all the time, plus chatting/forums and music.

I was reading a review and on the 30 inch at 2560x1600 with the 690 it should hit about 100 FPS which is good because during intense battles it shouldn't drop much below 50FPS. The 680 avged about 60FPS on that resolution and I didn't want any hiccups during battles.


I took a look at that SSD drive link and yea 5000$ for the drive I could definetly not afford that.


Thanks for the comments, besides memory which I may still just change out at a later date I figured this would keep me up and running. I'm just glad to be leaving and not having to return to Afghanistan ever again.

 

[jacktesterson]

2x 7950's/670s and a Catleap and 8-16GB DDR3 1600 would save you a ton with same experience

 

[TerryMathews]

Well I am quitting my job in Afghan in about 8 hours from now. I ordered a gaming PC to be sent home so I can build it once I return to the USA after spending nearly 2.5 years in Afghanistan as a Civilian Contractor. I think this build will run well, I was going to go with a 680, but I wanted optimal maxxed out settings on the 30 inch without hiccup. Any thoughts, suggestions or what else I may want to pick up?


Picked up everything from NewEgg, and while I hate the fact they won't give you any package discount or price match anybody, they do have everything in stock, and I sort of like the 1 stop setup for an entire build.


Zalman GS1200 Case
Intel 3770k 3.5 GHZ processor
8 GB 2666 mhz G Skill Memory
EVGA 690 GTX 4GB Vid Card
Dell U3011 30 Inch Monitor
Thermal Take 1200 Watt Power Supply
WD Black 2 TB Hard Drive 6.0 Gb/s
Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD
ASrock Z77 OC 1155 Mother board
GIGABYTE GK-OSMIUM Gaming Aivia Osmium Mechanical Keyboard
Logitech G9x Gaming Mouse
LG Blu Ray Burner 14x
Windows 8 Pro
MADCATZ F.R.E.Q. 5 3.5mm/ USB Circumaural Stereo Headset
Xtrac PADS Ripper Optical Mouse Pad
ZALMAN Plus-B 6 Channel Fan Controller
Rosewill RTK-045 45 Piece tool Kit and some Artic 5 Thermal paste

Games Ordered:
Black Ops 2 , Borderlands 2, Assasins Creed 3, Battlefield 3
Flight Sim X, Driver: San Fran, Saints Row the Third

Where did you cross the $4000 mark, the LCD + GFX card?

If you were me, I would halve your budget and set the other half aside to upgrade. You worked your ass off in the sandbox and earned the right to spend your money as you see fit but those last 10fps cost you over $1000 and depreciation on that rig is going to be a batch and a half.

 

[Eureka]

Since you have the case and the motherboard for it, why a 690? Go with 2x 680s.

 

[etherealfocus]

He already ordered it so it's a little late to be giving build suggestions.

@OP yeah I was just having a laugh with the PCIe SSD; I've got a 128GB Sammie 830 myself and it works like a charm. Cost me 70 bucks on clearance at Newegg too.

I am really looking forward to the death of SATA and optical drives though. Think how small and efficient we could make cases that just held a mobo and some PCIe cards. Your box would be just deep enough for the mobo, a fan or two, and the front panel. Fans would have straight line of effect to all your components, we could pry cut out at least 25% of case volumes currently dedicated to 5.25" and 2.5/3.5" drives... for those of us with modest storage needs all we'd need is an ITX mobo with wifi and mSATA/miniPCIe for an SSD plus the full PCIe for graphics. Sweet. /tangent

 

[etherealfocus]

Oh, @OP again: you pry won't be bottlenecked by having 8GB of RAM right now (although I've heard BF3 and Flight Sim X can eat a ton - dunno, I don't play much except Starcraft II and occasionally Quake 3 with the gf's kids these days) but it's good practice to disable your pagefile with an SSD boot drive and it's much easier to hit a RAM ceiling under those conditions.

In the system in my sig the 4GB of RAM is definitely the weak spot. I get low RAM warning regularly just batch processing images in Fireworks while building working on a manual in PowerPoint. Ditto if I try to multitask at all in Photoshop or Illustrator (which is unfortunately about 50% of my job right now). I'd go buy the RAM upgrade myself except I'm hoping work will get it for me since it's technically their machine anyway. lol

 

[Eureka]

He already ordered it so it's a little late to be giving build suggestions.

@OP yeah I was just having a laugh with the PCIe SSD; I've got a 128GB Sammie 830 myself and it works like a charm. Cost me 70 bucks on clearance at Newegg too.

I am really looking forward to the death of SATA and optical drives though. Think how small and efficient we could make cases that just held a mobo and some PCIe cards. Your box would be just deep enough for the mobo, a fan or two, and the front panel. Fans would have straight line of effect to all your components, we could pry cut out at least 25% of case volumes currently dedicated to 5.25" and 2.5/3.5" drives... for those of us with modest storage needs all we'd need is an ITX mobo with wifi and mSATA/miniPCIe for an SSD plus the full PCIe for graphics. Sweet. /tangent

Those small boxes already exist, Intel NUC for one.

And it's not too late... usually you can sweet talk a return if you tell them it's unopened, they can waive the restocking fee. Just pay return shipping, which is $10. Always double check to make sure the refund is full first. Two 680s will be faster than one 690. So it's some food for thought.

 

[SPBHM]

for this kind of money, why not a 3930K?

 

[etherealfocus]

NUC will be great when I can buy a reasonably priced mobo with wifi and a free mSATA/miniPCIe slot. And a nice small case that still allows PCIe cards. For my purposes a 5800K is a way better fit for NUC than any Intel chip although of course it depends on what you're doing.

I'm more thinking ITX size with a cut down CM Elite 120 case, which'd be the size of a small toaster if not for the drive bays.

Fair point on the negotiating for a return though.

 

[Rockinfella2k]

I thought about 2 x 680s, but I'm not a fan of dual cards when I can get 2 cards in 1 card. It's less power and less heat. I could always throw a second 690 in there if I need to but with the current performance of 1 I don't see why I'd have to do that. As for memory I'll run it with the 8 GB and see how it does, if it is not up to par I'll just pick up two more sticks.

 

[lehtv]

for this kind of money, why not a 3930K?

Read thread -> post reply.

not

Post cluelessly.

Appreciate the Comments. I was looking at the 2011 and I couldn't seem to find the real difference, the only processors that I saw that supported the 2011 were the Sandy bridge processors and I thought that the Ivy was newer, that confused me a bit so I just went with what I knew.

 

[lehtv]

I thought about 2 x 680s, but I'm not a fan of dual cards when I can get 2 cards in 1 card. It's less power and less heat.

There are real reasons to prefer two cards over one dual GPU card. GTX 670 SLI practically performs the same as GTX 690 for $250 less. And you have the option of getting 4GB VRAM per card which can useful on the 2560x1600 resolution, and even then it would be less expensive than a 690. Or you could get GTX 680 4GB SLI which is even better when money is no concern. Finally, single GPU cards overclock better.

 

[Rockinfella2k]

There are real reasons to prefer two cards over one dual GPU card. GTX 670 SLI practically performs the same as GTX 690 for $250 less. And you have the option of getting 4GB VRAM per card which can useful on the 2560x1600 resolution, and even then it would be less expensive than a 690. Or you could get GTX 680 4GB SLI which is even better when money is no concern. Finally, single GPU cards overclock better.

Wow two 670s "pratically" forms the same speed? Thats weird because last I checked 2 x 680 marginalllly performs better than 1 x 690, so curious how those 670s are so fast? Plus I wasn't looking to save money, I wanted 1 card with big power, and with this in mind I can pick up a second 690 down the road and be done with it

 

[Eureka]

I believe the 670 perform within like 5% of a 680. So if two 680s perform marginally better than a 690, then two 670s will perform more or less the same as a 690. In fact, I believe the 690 is two 680 cores clocked at 670 speeds.