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Soo.. I'm gonna build one Serious Games machine!!! And you can forget the recession!

UltraNEO*

UltraNEO*

macrumors 601
Original poster
Seriously, I wanna have a machine that's tuned and tweaked purely for the purpose of gaming and producing an insane number of frames. Think it'll be good for warming my terribly cold room too! 😀

Oh, Does anyone else have a modded PC running alongside their beloved Mac? Cause I think I'll need some advice... I'm looking at the following specs at the moment, kinda toying with them and researching more about the products.

Asus P6T6 WS Revolution
Core i7 @ 2.93GHz
6/12GB DDR3 Triple Channel PC3-14400C9 @ 1866MHz
Sapphire Atomic 4870x2 x2 (X-Fire)
Silent Water-cooling


Full Tower Lian-li or Coolmaster case...
with Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP
 
4870x2 is what I was looking at, wasn't going to dual link (or whatever the buzz word is for that now) though as just 1 would be more than enough for little ol' me 😀.
It's a beast. Nothing more to say. Chances are my next computer purchase will be a high end home-built PC given that I spend most of my iMacs time in XP as it is.

And if you were being serious about keeping your room warm you should omit the liquid cooling 😉
 
The Core i7 processors add little as far as speed for games goes, but if you're looking to use them for video, too, then they're all right. The GPU is excellent, and 6 GB of RAM will be more than enough. Seems like you don't mind spending a little money. 😉
 
How about dual core i7? or is that too much?
Solid State Hard Drive?
Iatkos or Kalyway? jokes
Definately a Coolermaster Cosmos S Case, i love mine
maybe 8GB Ram
 
Don't forget, you're going to need a massive (750W+, probably 1000) power supply to run all that.
 
You might not want to do water cooling unless you're comfortable working with the set up. Also, as I fall under the guise of the "thrifty" over clocker who can't afford to buy a new chip every year, most chips top out with their standard vCore on air.
 
Eidorian said:
Why such high specs?
Click to expand...

Technically, they're not really high specs here in the UK. Most users have Core2Duo's and Core2Quad clocked to 3.3Ghz or 4Ghz but from reading between the lines they don't seem to be very durable.

cleanup said:
Don't forget, you're going to need a massive (750W+, probably 1000) power supply to run all that.
Click to expand...

PSU wise, I'm thinking of a minimum of 850watts at least. Though the CoolerMaster Real Power 1Kw with it's modular PSU is tempting.

raggedjimmi said:
4870x2 is what I was looking at, wasn't going to dual link (or whatever the buzz word is for that now) though as just 1 would be more than enough for little ol' me 😀.
It's a beast. Nothing more to say. Chances are my next computer purchase will be a high end home-built PC given that I spend most of my iMacs time in XP as it is.

And if you were being serious about keeping your room warm you should omit the liquid cooling 😉
Click to expand...

Jesus... I'm Gob smacked! Those newly announced Sapphire Atomic 4870x2 comes in at a hair-rising £570 (approx $780 USD) EACH!!! 😱😱 Though they do come in a lovely but useless metal box! How much discount could I get if I told the sell the to keep the packaging? 😀

Mackilroy said:
The Core i7 processors add little as far as speed for games goes, but if you're looking to use them for video, too, then they're all right. The GPU is excellent, and 6 GB of RAM will be more than enough. Seems like you don't mind spending a little money. 😉
Click to expand...

Nah, won't be doing much serious work on this machine, I have my MacPro for that (see siggy), this machine ain't gonna be anything else but a glamorous yet luxurious console built purely for my entertainment. And at 138yen for one pound, buying hardware while being in the UK is fairly cheap! Might as well treat myself! Right?
 
kastenbrust said:
How about dual core i7? or is that too much?
Solid State Hard Drive?
Iatkos or Kalyway? jokes
Definately a Coolermaster Cosmos S Case, i love mine
maybe 8GB Ram
Click to expand...

I'm thinking about the Lian-Li TYR X2000 with hot-swappable bays.

mini-x2000d003.jpg
 
If you're serious about the watercooling, Silverstone TJ07, you can fit several big triple rads inside the case with a fair degree of ease.

For the powersupply, I would recommend this beasty. Shes big, bad and will power anything you throw at it, plus it got really high ratings as a quality PSU.

Other than that, your build looks nice. Watercooling is something that either you do it or don't, I felt like it, so I dove in headfirst and now I have roughly ~$600 worth of watercooling equipment, which is nice because when I upgrade it all moves with it, and will keep my machine nice and cool.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Technically, they're not really high specs here in the UK. Most users have Core2Duo's and Core2Quad clocked to 3.3Ghz or 4Ghz but from reading between the lines they don't seem to be very durable.
Click to expand...

Instead of getting the 940, get the 920 and a good heatsink for overclocking
 
No1451 said:
If you're serious about the watercooling, Silverstone TJ07, you can fit several big triple rads inside the case with a fair degree of ease.

For the powersupply, I would recommend this beasty. Shes big, bad and will power anything you throw at it, plus it got really high ratings as a quality PSU.

Other than that, your build looks nice. Watercooling is something that either you do it or don't, I felt like it, so I dove in headfirst and now I have roughly ~$600 worth of watercooling equipment, which is nice because when I upgrade it all moves with it, and will keep my machine nice and cool.
Click to expand...

I've never dabbled in water-cooling before, so.. for this I would consider myself a complete noob! lol

So, I have a couple of questions...

When the said system is build and in operation, would it be noisy at all? Or would that depend largly on the components I choose for cooling and pumping?

Also, what would you recommend as a decent coolant? I'm pretty sure people don't use regular tap water in the tubes... do they?

cherry su said:
A good heatsink would be the Zalman 9700. To make that work with the nehalem chips you need an adapter:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118045
Click to expand...

I'm thinking of going with a water or liquid cooler.
 
I wouldn't waste your time with water cooling on the i7. Just get thermal right ultra 120 with two awesome fans in push+pull. If you have a lga775 rig I would upgrade that before going to an i7 (lga1366) rig. Gaming performance of i7 and conroes is comparable, but i7 shines in all crunching/calculation tasks.
 
sangosimo said:
I wouldn't waste your time with water cooling on the i7. Just get thermal right ultra 120 with two awesome fans in push+pull. If you have a lga775 rig I would upgrade that before going to an i7 (lga1366) rig. Gaming performance of i7 and conroes is comparable, but i7 shines in all crunching/calculation tasks.
Click to expand...

Oh? Please enlighten me.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Oh? Please enlighten me.
Click to expand...

Pretty much all games ATM at high resolutions are GPU-bound, so the fundamental differences between the Core2 Quad and the Core i7 are unnoticable, the i7 netting you an extra frame or two per second.

When it comes to pure calculation though, the i7 stomps all over the C2Q due to its newer architecture with shorter pipelines as well as Hyperthreading technologies. The i7 shows up to Windows as 8 CPUs.
 
ReanimationLP said:
Pretty much all games ATM at high resolutions are GPU-bound, so the fundamental differences between the Core2 Quad and the Core i7 are unnoticable, the i7 netting you an extra frame or two per second.

When it comes to pure calculation though, the i7 stomps all over the C2Q due to its newer architecture with shorter pipelines as well as Hyperthreading technologies. The i7 shows up to Windows as 8 CPUs.
Click to expand...
Which is why I was asking about the high specifications as well. i7 rocks for video encoding and server side but you're lucky to beat a Core 2 in gaming.
 
ReanimationLP said:
Pretty much all games ATM at high resolutions are GPU-bound, so the fundamental differences between the Core2 Quad and the Core i7 are unnoticable, the i7 netting you an extra frame or two per second.

When it comes to pure calculation though, the i7 stomps all over the C2Q due to its newer architecture with shorter pipelines as well as Hyperthreading technologies. The i7 shows up to Windows as 8 CPUs.
Click to expand...

Oh.. Whoops.

sangosimo said:
I wouldn't waste your time with water cooling on the i7.
Click to expand...

ReanimationLP. I was referring to Sangosimo's comment regarding to water cooling on the i7. I didn't mean a comparison between the different generations, sorry about that. But thanks for the info.

Eidorian said:
Which is why I was asking about the high specifications as well. i7 rocks for video encoding and server side but you're lucky to beat a Core 2 in gaming.
Click to expand...

Because I can!

Call it a Tax right off, if that helps. 😀
 
But seriously, outta all the activities a computer system can undertake, most people automatically assume crunching numbers to decoding and re-encoding video would be the most intensive. Well, I've news for you. Running 3D intensive games, empowered by huge three-dimensional engines, will chew up just as much, if not more processing and graphical power! The next generation of graphics engine can produce fairly realistic worlds. If you want the game to play smoothly with truly intuitive UI, you'll need a system with the ability to perform!!

Take Crysis for example, published by EA.

new-crysis-dx10-screenshot-20061110001326035.jpg


crysis.jpg


Sure this game will run on the most decent Core2Duo system meeting the minimum spec. but if you wanna have a huge display with say a native resolution of 2560 by 1600, have anti-aliasing at max, you'll need a hole lot more! However, it'll depend on the types of games one likes to play. Sure stick to a lowend system if Chess is all you wanna play. 🙂
 
UltraNEO* said:
But seriously, outta all the activities a computer system can undertake, most people automatically assume crunching numbers to decoding and re-encoding video would be the most intensive. Well, I've news for you. Running 3D intensive games, empowered by huge three-dimensional engines, will chew up just as much, if not more processing and graphical power! The next generation of graphics engine can produce fairly realistic worlds. If you want the game to play smoothly with truly intuitive UI, you'll need a system with the ability to perform!!

Take Crysis for example, published by EA.

Sure this game will run on the most decent Core2Duo system meeting the minimum spec. but if you wanna have a huge display with say a native resolution of 2560 by 1600, have anti-aliasing at max, you'll need a hole lot more! However, it'll depend on the types of games one likes to play. Sure stick to a lowend system if Chess is all you wanna play. 🙂
Click to expand...
Once again you prove that games are GPU bound.
 
Eidorian said:
Once again you prove that games are GPU bound.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Don't waste your cash on an i7 and a compatible motherboard unless you want your PC to go further than gaming, and even then, is it really worth the money? Even some higher end C2Ds can outperform low to mid-range quadcores in gaming performance. As you add more cores you're just adding better multitasking/calculation performance. Invest your cash in GPU and memory resources, or even other goodies, like SSDs, RAID, a better monitor, a G11 + G5/G7, etc.
 
Just gaming, a C2D 8400 should do you just fine, with a nice set of 4gb of ram.

If you still want to spend that much money, consider SLI GTX280s, or wait for the dual GTX295 or whatever its rumored to be.


For the watercooling, there a few options, TFC(The Feser Company) has some good radiators, as does Thermochill. If you're cooling 2 of the big ATI dual solutions, I would say 1 triple at the least, maybe going so far as 2 triples(the optimum I would think).

There are 3 big factors to the success of watercooling, a good block, a powerful enough pump, and good radiation of the heat. Too much pump = too much speed, and temps start to suffer(the fluid won't collect the heat as efficiently). As for a fluid, I use and recommend Feser One, it comes in a lot of colours, and as an additive that is to be mixed with distilled water.

There are a lot of factors in watercooling, and loads of information, I really recommend reading the the www.xtremesystems.com forums(watercooling section) before making a decision. Note that even though the 8400 can get by easily on air, water could allow for silence/lower temps. Atm on my setup, the loudest part of the whole system is the powersupply, without the powersupply it is inaudible, even at night while sleeping. I'm running 1 triple thermochill, a dual and a single rad(forget the maker). With an 8800 Ultra and a C2Q Q6600@ 3.2, I was running(load) 40 on my highest core, and 47 on my gpu. Not bad imo, considering it was my first attempt at watercooling.

If you want some quick tips, feel free to PM me, and do check out those forums, loads of useful information/recommendations for good cases for watercooling.
 
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