The 'Build Me A PC' Thread
SnakeCharmer:
Sold my current rig to a buddy, so time to build a new one.
Budget:
2500.00 USD, including shipping, after MIR's if applicable. Shipping to 36601 zipcode.
Requirements:
I'm pushing 1920x1200 resolution, and am a bleeding edge graphics whore. So everything is usually jacked up as high as it goes. I want it to be quiet, which may be tough considering the budget/use. Prefer single card/GPU solution, but not averse to SLI or Crossfire, so in that regard an SLI mobo is probably the way to go for later (just in case), same for the PSU. Prefer Intel and nVidia, but not married to it. I'm not scared of overclocking. I'm tempted to look into watercooling, but someone would have to really try hard to convince me to do it. Nothing loud about the case at all, from sound/fans to graphics or LEDs (black never goes out of style).
Primary use:
Gaming 99 percent of the time. Burning movies/audio 1 percent of the time. If a BR drive/burner(s) can be squeezed in, awesome, but not a requirement. Mostly play FPSs and MMOs.
Do not need:
Any peripherals. Large amounts of storage. I back the important stuff up to DVD, and have a couple external 1TB HDD's. 250GB to 350GB HDD should be more than enough. 500GB and higher would be overkill. Do not need to worry about multiple monitors. My single 24" works just fine.
On The Fence wants/wishes (i.e. if budget allows):
NIC. Dedicated sound card with digital optical sound out and 5.1 support. Bluetooth capabilities. Lots of USB ports (6+ on the back alone).
Is nVidia ever going to come out with their 300 series cards? Is DX11 worth worrying about for the next couple years (by which time it is, new/better GPUs will be on the market)? Is it worth it to just game on my laptop until after the 1st of the year and take a look at building then?
Trippy:
If you know what you want why can't you spec your own?
SnakeCharmer:
Because I'm completely behind the times and don't want to handcuff a rig by being cpu or gpu bound, or any other number of factors. Plus, the obvious, of looking advice from people that know better, especially in terms of quiet components (psu, case, etc). Some things I'm just going to have to live with as far as noise is concerned, but I'd like to mitigate it was much as possible.
Knowing what I want out of a rig isn't quite the same as knowing how to achieve it. Seems to me that simply going through newegg or whatever and automatically clicking the most expensive component by default is a bad idea.
dusematic:
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/2009/10/ars-system-guide-october-2009-edition.ars
Salamok:
If I was looking to build a $2500 rig I think I would try and squeeze a 160gb Intel SSD in and live with that as my primary OS Drive. Probably offload all other storage to NAS. I think 2010 is definitely going to be the year of the SSD, performance glitches have been overcome and the price/gb is dropping down to mainstream levels. Just need to clear out all the OEM contracts with the crappy SSD providers and replace them with the guys that are actually delivering the decent products.
Cold Boot to logged in with Photoshop open in 6 seconds is definitely a performance boost that will be noticed.
Sounds like we have similar taste in cases, so I'll recommend mine yet again Coolermaster Sileo 500
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