Gaming PC with good budget!

[rwiera]

Hello Community,

First of all, I would like to say “HI” to all of you and praise this community. Very well organized and fun to read. Recently discovered this forum after starting to do research for a new pc.

I must say I’m very overwhelmed by the advancements that took place in the last 3-4 years that I wasn’t active in gaming and it is very hard for me to jump in again. PCI-E 3.0, native USB 3.0 and Ivy B, so complicated today! Therefore, I would appreciate it, if you guys could help me a little building my new gaming machine.

I will be using the computer for heavy gaming and video editing. I’m OC friendly

I’m very unfamiliar with watercooling but I want to try it. From what I’ve read, buying a big case and part separately should bring good results. I would prefer an Intel cpu and the gpu should be Nvidia. I would love to try SSD(s). Is it possible to have a system ready to run Ivy (i.e. motherboard, ram, etc)?

My budget is 3500$ but not all of it has to be spent!

What parts do you recommend?

Should I buy the GPUs ready with water cooling block? Is SLI recommended?

How about SSDs? Which ones are current and reliable? Is raid 0 overkill?

What kind of Ram should I get and at what level of mhz?

Also, there are way too many cases for me to see which would be ideal for water cooling and radiators with lots of room to play around to upgrade. Which ones would you recommend?

What WC parts should I get to have very good cooling but not too much noise? How many radiators would I need to cool cpu, gpu (2), northbridge? Is there a good unit to track flow, temperatures and other related things which also looks cool and is easy to use?

Thanks and have a great day!

 

[sheroo]

Sandy Bridge - E is just around the corner - have you considered that at all?

 

[rwiera]

Sandy Bridge - E is just around the corner - have you considered that at all?

Yes I am actually. I'll be waiting for the reviews of SB-E of course, but until then, I could really use some help choosing proper SSDs, a good case that supports water cooling and other recommendations...

 

[yassarikhan786]

What capacity SSD are you looking for? Th 120 - 128GB seems to be the sweet spot for SSD's. There are high end SSD's like the OCZ Vertex 3, Kingston Hyper X and the Patriot Wildfire. The mid-range SSD's include the crucial M4's, OCZ Agility 3's and the Corsair Force 3's.

 

[fcb]

What capacity SSD are you looking for? Th 120 - 128GB seems to be the sweet spot for SSD's. There are high end SSD's like the OCZ Vertex 3, Kingston Hyper X and the Patriot Wildfire. The mid-range SSD's include the crucial M4's, OCZ Agility 3's and the Corsair Force 3's.

Yup, and don't forget the Mushkin Chronos. Those are actually very nice too.

 

[rwiera]

Yeah! 120gb seems to be enough and thanks for the recommendations, I'm comparing the performances and prices of them right now!

 

[yassarikhan786]

Cool. Let us know which one you go far. And yeah I forgot about the Chronos

.

 

[rwiera]

I'm probably going with OCZ, they seem to be good!

What kind of OC friendly, large ATX motherboard would you guys recommend either for a i5 2500k or the upcoming SB-E's? Are there any boards with watercooling blocks already installed?

 

[fcb]

There's quite a selection of the P67 or Z68 boards from MSI, Asus or Gigabyte that will be great for a 2500K. There's the Maximus and Sabertooth section of the high end from Asus that may interest you. The Pro series from the P67 section are great too. V Pro selections from the Z68 are nice as well. If you're looking at the Gigabyte line of motherboards, they have quite a few from their UD series great for performance and reliability. From MSI, they have the GD series for both P67/Z68 that you may take a look at as well. If you're planning on trying the SB-E CPUs, you'll be looking for X79 boards. How much are you planning to spend on just the motherboard? I think it's much better to have 3rd party waterblocks and cooling components for the motherboard if you are planning to fully watercool your system.

 

[rwiera]

There's quite a selection of the P67 or Z68 boards from MSI, Asus or Gigabyte that will be great for a 2500K. There's the Maximus and Sabertooth section of the high end from Asus that may interest you. The Pro series from the P67 section are great too. V Pro selections from the Z68 are nice as well. If you're looking at the Gigabyte line of motherboards, they have quite a few from their UD series great for performance and reliability. From MSI, they have the GD series for both P67/Z68 that you may take a look at as well. If you're planning on trying the SB-E CPUs, you'll be looking for X79 boards. How much are you planning to spend on just the motherboard? I think it's much better to have 3rd party waterblocks and cooling components for the motherboard if you are planning to fully watercool your system.

Up to 400US should be enough for the motherboard. I especially like the bigger ones that have enough space and of course OC functions. Does Gigabyte's assassin series support one of the CPUs I mentioned before? Does the Asus Maximus still come with that horrible extra "audio card"?

 

[fcb]

Up to 400US should be enough for the motherboard. I especially like the bigger ones that have enough space and of course OC functions. Does Gigabyte's assassin series support one of the CPUs I mentioned before? Does the Asus Maximus still come with that horrible extra "audio card"?

A standard ATX motherboard should be enough for all your components to fit, whether you're planning for SLI or XFire and additional PCI cards if needed. Yup the G1 falls into the Z68 boards I believe. It will support the future Ivy Bridge CPUs that are coming out next yr. The X79 will have its own line of G1 boards. For the current Maximus boards, they're using the onboard sound, which isn't really that bad. Most people will find onboard sound quite sufficient nowadays anyway.

 

[rwiera]

I read that the SB-E will realease November 14th but how long does it take for seller like Newegg to have them available? When can I find real test results and benchmarks?

 

[rwiera]

Will I need a Sata Raid controller for two ssd's or are good motherboards able to do that stuff now?

 

[fcb]

You'll have to give the different online or your local retailers to get the stock in. Usually it takes a few weeks for orders to get in.

The onboard Intel chipset controller will be fine for RAID. SSDs are so fast nowadays, you really wouldn't notice the differences in actual every day use. There's nothing to worry about.