- Joined
- Dec 22, 2003
- Messages
- 12,383
As you chaps may have guessed from the Water Cooling thread, I'm in new box territory at the moment.
My current rig Starbug (all my boxes are named after ships from Red Dwarf) has been in service far, far, far too long now (6 Years 5 Months 27 days according to WolframAlpha) and has served me exceptionally well. I had Mesh Computers put it together for me back then because I couldn't be bothered to do it myself.
In all its service time the only issue Starbug ever had was when I (stupidly) melted the Asus 8800GT graphics card (I had the Company of Heroes one, fnar!) though it was all my own fault. Be warned if you will keep gaming for another 8 hours during hot summers after having already taken the case sides off, you get what's coming to you!
So, I've been tinkering on PCPartPicker with various configurations, etc and have basically decided that I'm going to go nuts this time around. I'm going to hand pick the parts I want and put it all together myself with a view to water cooling the whole rig in the future.
Here's everything that I've marked up so far which I'm in the process of picking up / have picked up / is on a van here / will be on a van here / etc.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£262.97 @ PC World Business)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-DELUXE(NFC&WLC) ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£299.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: *G.Skill Trident X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory (£264.75 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£92.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£92.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: NZXT Phantom 630 (White) ATX Full Tower Case (£89.59 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic X Series 1250W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£214.94 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: *Pioneer BDR-S09XLT Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (£56.50 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £1374.69
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
NB: Those are just the current figures on PCPartPicker, I'll come back at some point and add up the actual damage and what I got from where, if people are interested.
So, why are you reading this? Well chums, I'd like to hear your opinions, obviously. Also there are some questions that I've not quite gotten my head around just yet.
My current rig Starbug (all my boxes are named after ships from Red Dwarf) has been in service far, far, far too long now (6 Years 5 Months 27 days according to WolframAlpha) and has served me exceptionally well. I had Mesh Computers put it together for me back then because I couldn't be bothered to do it myself.
In all its service time the only issue Starbug ever had was when I (stupidly) melted the Asus 8800GT graphics card (I had the Company of Heroes one, fnar!) though it was all my own fault. Be warned if you will keep gaming for another 8 hours during hot summers after having already taken the case sides off, you get what's coming to you!
So, I've been tinkering on PCPartPicker with various configurations, etc and have basically decided that I'm going to go nuts this time around. I'm going to hand pick the parts I want and put it all together myself with a view to water cooling the whole rig in the future.
Here's everything that I've marked up so far which I'm in the process of picking up / have picked up / is on a van here / will be on a van here / etc.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£262.97 @ PC World Business)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-DELUXE(NFC&WLC) ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£299.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: *G.Skill Trident X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory (£264.75 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£92.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£92.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: NZXT Phantom 630 (White) ATX Full Tower Case (£89.59 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic X Series 1250W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£214.94 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: *Pioneer BDR-S09XLT Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (£56.50 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £1374.69
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
NB: Those are just the current figures on PCPartPicker, I'll come back at some point and add up the actual damage and what I got from where, if people are interested.
So, why are you reading this? Well chums, I'd like to hear your opinions, obviously. Also there are some questions that I've not quite gotten my head around just yet.
- Graphics, Graphics, Graphics, Graphics [Brand -v- Brand]
This is the one that is keeping me up at night. Having looked into the technology I get the gut feeling that AMD have pulled it out of the bag for this generation with the 290x and Mantle.
On the other hand I keep looking into water cooling and ASUS (I think I'm a bit brand loyal here btw) have these super sexy Poseidon graphics cards (ignore the Republic of Gamers bullshit) with cooling loops built right in which keep whispering in my ear. I'd love your thoughts on this chaps.
- Graphics, Graphics, Graphics, Graphics [Single or Double]
So the other one that keeps worming its way into my mind is that it now seems to me that multiple GPUs are a realistic option. There's massive appeal here for me now that AMD CrossFireX appears to let you run in what I think of as a "Just A Bunch of Cards" manner, i.e. that you don't have to buy identical pieces. Can you get serious GPU punching power by staying behind the curve and pairing cards? What do you chaps think about all this, would you run 2x matching NVidias designed to work in tandem, take the chance on high/low AMD combo (a beast flanked by far lesser minions) or would you just avoid all this shit completely?