planned high end gaming rig

ourorboros · June 5, 2013

Budget and Location: flexible, my current budget is around £2.7k but obviously if i can get similar performance for less i'd be more than happy, not overly willing to spend more, location is England, specifically london.

Aim: originally gaming, I want a high end gaming beast of a machine however as a secondary aim since first starting to plan this build i've become rather curious about high end machines in general and certainly want to move into the area of extreme builds and so on in the future, what i've planned so far has allot of room to improve as and when i can.

monitors: Asus PB278Q 27" LED LCD HDMI Monitor at 2560 x 1440, may or may not move onto multiple monitors in the future, if i do i would prefer a single monitor for gaming but to have peripheral monitors so while playing a game i could have a wiki open and youtube in other for instance, was also considering whether to have one high resolution monitor and one 3d monitor as the peripheral for movies and whether that would even be possible?

peripherals: none needed, i'll be upgrading the mouse and keyboard in the future but its not a pressing concern, my headset is fine and i will need to purchase windows 7 for the build.

why am i upgrading: because i can basically, i've not really had money before but with a new relatively well paid job and very few outgoing costs i can finally upgrade, my current rig is rather old but it doesn't have too many issues, i could keep using it but i simply dont want to, there are also a few personal reasons i want to change, sort of like when a person looses a tonne of weight they go and buy a whole new wardrobe sort of thing.

ok, so...

currently planned hardware(very flexible):

-Gigabyte GTX titan(while i do really want a titan im also rather curious SLI with cheaper cards)

-Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP7 Intel Z77 Socket 1155 Motherboard

-i7 3770k(wouldn't mind looking into haswell though)

-Samsung 512GB 840 Pro Series SSD(most likely going to get a HDD later on aswell)

-CoolerMaster Cosmos 2(this piece i am rather stubborn about and will not budge)

-need help with the RAM

-need help with the PSU and would prefer modular

-need help with fans/rads

on the point of cooling, i am very curious about water cooling and love to have some opinions on the pros and cons and on the point of aesthetics i'd prefer a red/green theme if that matters.

i built my current rig but was given a list of components, this my first time doing everyone on my own and i am basically jumping into the deep end, the case and the motherboard i picked specifically because of the room for improvement and ability to expand that it offers.

looking forward to hearing what people have to say.

Ouro

iAsuno · June 5, 2013

Get 780 instead. or SLI them if you feel like it. you may want to go sandy bridge-e but haswell/ivy will do fine. 8 gigs is enough for gaming but 16 gigs is a good choice considering the money you have. 1600mhz is a good speed but higher if you want again, since you have that money. PSU, corsair seasonic are good brands. corsair SP fans are nice but i have little knowledge in custom water loops.

AndThenThereWas1 · June 5, 2013

The 780 is pretty much as good as the titan for half the price. Currently 1 card will play any game on high settings. The 3770K in the US is only about $30 US cheaper than the 4700k. I don’t know about England though. If you do water cooling make sure to do a lot of research. I’ve been researching for the last 2 months on water cooling and I’m only now getting all the parts. Depending on how much you want to water cool the price can nearly double. I don’t know the prices in England so I can’t really give examples there but here I expect to pay anywhere from $300-600 US(mine is going to cost around me $600). you can also get a hydro 100i for much cheaper. Start here if you want to learn about water cooling:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky

As for the ram: There are many different brands, I would recommend you go with one in your price range that is at least 1600 MHz. I would buy 16GB at 2x8GB because this leaves room to upgrade to 32GB if you want to. In reality you don’t need more than 8GB for now.

My favorite PSU is the ax1200i, but it’s really expensive. I haven’t used many other PSUs so I don’t know of any lower wattage PSUs that are good. You can calculate how much watts you are going to need here:

http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/

Now for fans: the quietest fans I have found are the Noctua NF-F12 PWM Fans but they are really expensive. The corsair af120 performance fans also have some great reviews. It really all depends on if you want silence or performance. Some fans are designed for radiators and others are for case cooling. You have to do a lot of research. Here is a link to a linustechtips video on a few fans: