Thinking New Computer....

Post by **Dissident** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 8:56 pm

Have had mine for almost 2 years, and was wondering what some people more in the know would have to say. To put it simply, I want to be able to run Starcraft 2 on the highest settings. My budget is ~1500, though I can go a bit higher for a considerable upgrade.

A few questions: Processors- No clue now. It used to be that a 1.5 gig was better than a 1 gig, end of story. Now, there are core duos, quad core, i5, i7......no clue what to get.

Video Card: Do I go high end single card, or go SLI with two mid-grade cards? Also, What is SLI?

Ram: I think is self explanatory, was thinking 12, is that enough?

I have a copy of windows 7, a perfectly good monitor, and ok speakers, so I am looking strictly for a tower.

I was thinking of going to ibuypower.com or cyberpowerpc.com

These sites offer customizable stuff, but I'm lost on most of it, especially when it comes processors, vid cards, motherboards, etc. Any ideas?

Post by **Noircogi** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 9:39 pm

The most recent system I put together has the following:

Asus P8P67 Pro motherboard, these were out of stock for a bit due to the Intel chipset bug but are becoming available again now. Mine is an early board and thus susceptible to the bug, but I'm not using those particular SATA ports.
Intel i7-2600K CPU (these are trivial to over-clock, mine's running at 4.4GHz, make sure to get a good 3rd party fansink, I'm using http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product )
GTX-570 GPU (non-SLI)
16 GB DDR3 RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD (Vertex 3 is coming soon and is going to be WAY faster though)
WD 2TB "Green" data drive
DVD R/W drive
Coooler Master HAF-922 case This thing is awesome, the huge fans make it extremely quiet.
Antec 750 W PS

That's a massive overkill on the amount of RAM but was only about $100 more than 8GB would have been.
Warning: I had to trim the plastic fan shroud on the fansink slightly to make it clear the memory DIMMs.

This is a really awesome system and runs very quiet. Make sure to hook all of the fans to the "controller" outputs on the motherboard so they only speed up when needed.

The whole thing was about $1500.

Make sure to install the 64-bit version of Win7 to make use of more than 3.2GB of RAM.

I have another system with a GTX-580 and the performance difference is not worth the vastly higher price IMO. That or two 570s in SLI are the only real ways to improve this system though. I think the 570 is plenty for pretty much any game at present.

Post by **Dissident** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 10:20 pm

Thanks for the reply Cogi!

I looked up the motherboard you recommended, but it seems like it is sold out at both newegg and tiger. I could go through a smaller place to order it, any opinion?

Also, is there a "brand" of video card you would recommend?

I looked and there are several gtx-570s

sparkle, elite group, pny, zotac, galaxy, asus, etc

Is there a difference?

Post by **Noircogi** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 10:27 pm

Intel had a problem with their Sandybridge chipset. Some of the 3Gb/S SATA ports will fail pre-maturely. The stock was supposed to have been purged everywhere and they're now re-filling with new boards. If you're not planning to connect a ton of drives, the original boards are fine. Just don't plug them into the 4 bad ports. That board has something like 10 total SATA ports on it. If you order from a small place, just ask them if it's new stock.

Brand doesn't really matter on modern high-end NVIDIA cards. We build them and sell them to those companies. The only difference is their warrantee and support. I just buy what's in stock and cheaper normally. Asus has good support so if the price is the same, they're a safe bet.

Alsmack · Post by **Alsmack** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 11:12 pm

I used to swear by BFG Technologies cards for nVidia, but Newegg quit carrying them so f* that shit. I've been using eVga and Asus and had no problems. In the past I've had horrible experiences with eVga and bad video RAM, but it seems they have cleaned their act up in that department.

Post by **Iane_Blaidd** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 6:17 pm

everyone knows ASUS is recalling a ton of motherboards right? they had a huge design flaw.

people chose what they want to chose. i hate ASUS i have had nothing but horrible exp with them and their products. i am really big on specific brands when it comes to PCs.

i am NOT saying don't buy ASUS i am just saying if it was me i would go with just about anyone else.

Alsmack,
you asked me once why i had such a huge credit with Newegg; well i cannot offically say because that was part of the agreement but lets just say it had something to do with that motherboard maker and leave it at that

.

Alsmack · Post by **Alsmack** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 6:47 pm

ASUS has lemons. All manufacturers do, in my experience. I'm not particularly bound to one or another.

If you're talking about the recent sandybridge chipset motherboards, that was Intel's fault, not ASUS.