A long awaited gaming build
Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:39 am
Hello All,
Long time TR reader here, haven't been around the forums for... well... how old are my children? huh.
It's been over a decade since I've built a tower (Athlon 64 3000+!), and I've been without a proper gaming machine for several years due to hardware failures and other happenstance. Now that things have turned around financially, I'm looking forward to building a slightly obscene gaming machine. For a while, I'd considered dropping 3 big ones on a tweaked Sager laptop, but as I spent more time thinking about it, I realized that wasn't the best use of my money.
Budget: Trying to keep it close to $3k, but up to $3,500
Uses: gaming, photographic editing, and other office/web development work.
Requirements: Due to how my house is set up, I *need* wifi in this box. The X79 Deluxe has it built in, but another mobo + pci-e card would work as well.
Thoughts: I'd thought about doing dual SSDs in a striped RAID for the boot/OS drive. Is this problematic? I don't have much experience with SSDs, so it could be a bad idea. I can make do with one 256GB as the OS drive, since I'll have the large mechanical drive for my media. I want this box to last as long as possible (I'm thinking 5 years), hence the hex-core + Titan + 32GB of RAM. I know it's overkill, but I want it. Maybe in a couple years I'll drop another 32GB into the box, since this board supports it. My original idea was a GTX 780, but I read a few forum posts about how the higher amount of VRAM would be better in the next few years.
I'm planning on starting my purchases around Black Friday / Cyber Monday, to hopefully save a little bit. I have a Microcenter nearby, so I can pick up some of these items there.
If you have any suggestions on alternate pieces, please let me know. I've done some research lately, but I've been out of "the game" for awhile, and I'm lacking the hands-on experience with todays hardware.
Thanks!
CPU: Intel i7-4930K (Ivy Bridge-E) + Corsair Hydro Series H80i Water Cooler
Mobo: Asus X79 Deluxe (LGA 2011)
GFX: Asus GTX Titan
PSU: Corsair AX860 860W
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB)
SSD: 2 x Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB
HDD: WD Red 3TB
DVD: LG Black 14X BD-R
AUD: Asus Xonar DX 7.1
Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 650D
+ Windows 8 Pro
Subtotal: $3,584.88
(edited for spelling)
Long time TR reader here, haven't been around the forums for... well... how old are my children? huh.
It's been over a decade since I've built a tower (Athlon 64 3000+!), and I've been without a proper gaming machine for several years due to hardware failures and other happenstance. Now that things have turned around financially, I'm looking forward to building a slightly obscene gaming machine. For a while, I'd considered dropping 3 big ones on a tweaked Sager laptop, but as I spent more time thinking about it, I realized that wasn't the best use of my money.
Budget: Trying to keep it close to $3k, but up to $3,500
Uses: gaming, photographic editing, and other office/web development work.
Requirements: Due to how my house is set up, I *need* wifi in this box. The X79 Deluxe has it built in, but another mobo + pci-e card would work as well.
Thoughts: I'd thought about doing dual SSDs in a striped RAID for the boot/OS drive. Is this problematic? I don't have much experience with SSDs, so it could be a bad idea. I can make do with one 256GB as the OS drive, since I'll have the large mechanical drive for my media. I want this box to last as long as possible (I'm thinking 5 years), hence the hex-core + Titan + 32GB of RAM. I know it's overkill, but I want it. Maybe in a couple years I'll drop another 32GB into the box, since this board supports it. My original idea was a GTX 780, but I read a few forum posts about how the higher amount of VRAM would be better in the next few years.
I'm planning on starting my purchases around Black Friday / Cyber Monday, to hopefully save a little bit. I have a Microcenter nearby, so I can pick up some of these items there.
If you have any suggestions on alternate pieces, please let me know. I've done some research lately, but I've been out of "the game" for awhile, and I'm lacking the hands-on experience with todays hardware.
Thanks!
CPU: Intel i7-4930K (Ivy Bridge-E) + Corsair Hydro Series H80i Water Cooler
Mobo: Asus X79 Deluxe (LGA 2011)
GFX: Asus GTX Titan
PSU: Corsair AX860 860W
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB)
SSD: 2 x Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB
HDD: WD Red 3TB
DVD: LG Black 14X BD-R
AUD: Asus Xonar DX 7.1
Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 650D
+ Windows 8 Pro
Subtotal: $3,584.88
(edited for spelling)