Office Overhaul-Big Rig, New Monitors Etc

[TheMightySals]

So since I moved house about 5 months ago ive been meaning to update my pc, peripherals, desk, speakers etc but never really settled on any firm idea of what to do.

New desk obviously means not alot in a hardware forum but mentioning anyway!

The machine- Will be used for gaming, rendering, live streaming Mostly RTS and MMO/RPG, I play alot of starcraft and Swtor and stream these and then I play alot more demanding games but not broadcasted. I do want to play the majority of my games on Max settings(something my current rig isnt capable of) or atleast high, respectable graphics for the ultra demanding games. im also looking to liquid cool for personal satisfaction.

Monitors, not too fussed about multi monitor gaming however I do use extra screens for work so I'm looking at a reasonabley priced set of monitors. interms of keyboards and mice, preferably more gaming orientated as the majority of time spent is gaming.

Speakers- not to bad in this area as of yet however I will Update these in the future as I have a pretty reasonable headset and speakers are decent enough quality.

Im reasonable up-to-date on building the rig and the general ideas behind the levels of componants howver I do need a little advice in alot of the areas (hopefully the lovely people of linustech dont mind to many questions). So here goes.

Graphics- so firstly, needs to be liquid cooled somehow, reasonably high and capable of multimonitor but not essential. the budget holds enough for sli. do i go with 680s/7970s or go slightly legacy for money and go say 580s/590s?

Audio-do i need dedicated? if so what?

SSDs- Best brand, model for price of around £150 each?

Monitors- respectable, sub £200 each monitors that are up to date and what not, imnot really an expert here as mine are currently about 6 years old so really out of touch here.

there is plenty of money for the build and im going to wait till next level haswell is out, too late to invest in ivy, even down the line and if ivy is cheaper means its worth the wait,

any advice on parts for this will be greatful :) thanks!

(also i'm aware of how terrible my grammar may be)

[Dim]

Sounds awesome, man! Desks and chairs are important too, at least to me :)

In terms of monitors, for that pricerange you should take a look at something like 3x 24" monitors (1080p). That will give excellent performance in gaming and help a ton in a work situation. You can also look at 27" monitors if you wish, but I wouldn't really recommend it (I feel it's a waste of money unless it's 2.5K Res). Dual 7970s will allow you to play any game at ultra with more than 60 fps, to start.

For audio, it's entirely up to you whether you want a surround system or a soundcard or nothing at all. Personally I don't care much for sound, so I don't bother with that stuff. But if you're an audiophile, take a look at some Xonar soundcards, though I'll wait for someone more knowledgeable on them to give an insight.

If you're going to wait until Haswell is out, you might as well wait for the HD 8900 series cards.

Can I ask your budget on the computer, and your preferred price within that budget?

[TheMightySals]

Thanks for the advice!

Pc wise looking to spend less than £2000 not including monitors

desk and chair probably about £500-600

then audio looking to blow out on speakers eventually but not right now, so mentioning your point, is a dedicaated card needed, not really, atleast not right away!

waiting for Has will allow me time to get more of a reserve of cash, so if i do go over, not that big of a deal, Tbh im looking for it to be a decent project, something I can be satisfied with after! like a car fanatic who spends hours polishing his alloys!

Budgets pretty loose, more of a preffered spend but if i have more fun spending more money on it, hey its my money after all! :L

[TheMightySals]

Thanks for the advice!

Pc wise looking to spend less than £2000 not including monitors

desk and chair probably about £500-600

then audio looking to blow out on speakers eventually but not right now, so mentioning your point, is a dedicaated card needed, not really, atleast not right away!

waiting for Has will allow me time to get more of a reserve of cash, so if i do go over, not that big of a deal, Tbh im looking for it to be a decent project, something I can be satisfied with after! like a car fanatic who spends hours polishing his alloys!

Budgets pretty loose, more of a preffered spend but if i have more fun spending more money on it, hey its my money after all! :L

The monitor about 600 for the 3 :)

[Guest]

Audio

Whether you get a dedicated soundcard is up to you and if you believe it is worth the cost. As mentioned, the Asus Xonar range are all very high quality, however it really depends on your budget.

SSD's

Intel 330's, Sandisk Extremes and Samsung 830's if you want a low cost drive that is incredibly reliable and performs well otherwise things like the Samsung 840Pro or Intel 520 if you want to spend a bit more and get your moneys worth in terms of performance.

Monitors

My favorites at the moment are the BenQ 2450H's - good all round color reproduction, VA pannel so they're alright for gaming but not as good as a TN but don't have the same quality issues. They're also in your price range. I'd go to your local electronics shop and have a look at monitors and see what you like though.

[Dim]

Okay, cool. Have you considered the 2011 board? This would mean you can build straight away, and with your budget it seems like a good idea to look at a six-core processor -- such as the 3930K. Really, your budget is good enough for something along these lines -- though, if you want to build it in six months, I can't be too specific:

- ~250GB SSD

- 3TB storage

- Six core Intel processor, such as the 3930K

- Compatible high-end board

- Top level AIO water cooler -- or alternatively your own custom water cooling system, though this is always more expensive and requires much research

- Crossfire 8970s?

- Reasonable 700-750W PSU with 80+ gold or platinum

- Do you want to water cool EVERYTHING? inc. Graphics cards?

- Any real case of your choice between $200-500

This is all I can really hint at for now, since it's difficult to predict future components

[Guest]

Intel Build 3770K on an Asus P8Z77 board of your choice with 8gb of Corsair Vengeance (16 if you feel you need it), H80i/H100i/H220, Samsung 840Pro SSD (Boot, programs), Seagate Barracuda 2TB (storage), Silverstone Strider Plus 750w fully modular (600w is also an option), whatever case you like - possibly the Fractal Design R4 because it's relatively simplistic compared with other cases which scream 'gamer'

This is sort of a rough template, CPU's and boards will come and go as time goes on but that's the core of what I would build. I've listed a variety of cooling solutions, one of which is yet to be released. They're all designed for a pretty aggressive OC up into the mid 4's.

I left out GPU because people spend hours upon hours arguing over which is a better solution. Personally, if you want single monitor gaming and multi-screen work space cards such as the MSI 670 PE or Asus CUII 670 will both do very well.

With the chairs and desk thing it's difficult to recommend that sort of stuff online as everyone's preferences vary - go try some out.

Good luck with it :)

[TheMightySals]

Thanks Dim!

Looks Like a Pretty decent recomendation!

Time wise the 6 or so months is that my funding isnt available till then for the majority of componants but the stuff i have faith in to not be instantly outdated ill get when I can ie HDD, maybe Monitors and desky type things, I already have 2tb of hdd, so i might think about another 2 and set up a back up/raid to maximise speed and

data safety!

I like the sound of this six core recomendation, always up for a good boast :L

Windspeed, Thanks for the monitor recomendation,ive looked at benq before but i havnt the foggiest of ideas about monitors so sort of went "well thats nice" and went about my day :L

[Guest]

Windspeed' date=' Thanks for the monitor recomendation,ive looked at benq before but i havnt the foggiest of ideas about monitors so sort of went "well thats nice" and went about my day :L[/quote']

Haha - well here's something.... I don't know if in-depth quite describes it... http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/benq_gw2450hm.htm

Basically monitors come in one of three main types of panel which I've listed below. For FPS gaming you ultimately want 120hz TN panel monitors. For photo work you want IPS and if you want somewhere in between then you go VA which is what that BenQ is.

TN Pannels Twisted Nematic panels have excellent response times varying between 1ms and 5ms which make them ideal for fast paced gaming like first person shooters. They're relatively cheap to make however they come at the cost of viewing angles, colour reproduction and contrast which makes them a poor monitor for video and picture editing.

VA Pannels Vertical alignment panels are like the middle between the two ends of the spectrum (IPS and TN). They have better contrast which gives you better blacks, meaning they are good for movies in pitch darkness but some can have a little input lag which doesn't put them as first choice for first person shooters but they aren't as bad as IPS panels They can also have problems with colour shifting, where colours shift dramatically from different viewing angles. I've found this to happen at a movement of only 40-50 degrees which can get annoying. They're similarly priced to TN panels and offer the better picture quality but they're not as good as IPS panels.

IPS Panels

In plane switching is like the holy grail of monitors for photo and video work. They're often available in huge screen sizes and have better colour reproduction, viewing angles and colour accuracy at the down fall of response time where it can be anywhere up to 15-20ms which is horrible for fast paced gaming. Up until a little while ago, IPS panels were rather expensive but recently there have been models released, particularly by LG that cost about the same as a VA or TN panel however I don't know personally how good they really are. There's quite a few different IPS panel types that all have slightly different construction types including the Super IPS that Samsung made - apparently it had better brightness and viewing angles but I haven't seen it for myself. IPS panels are normally also available at higher resolutions and different ratios such as 16:10 to accommodate say a full A4 page for a magazine editor.

[Dim]

If you don't intend to play games using Eyefinity, I would recommend getting either one of these:

- A 2560x1600 or 2560x1440 resolution monitor for gaming.

- A 120Hz IPS 3D monitor for gaming.

Then also getting one or two monitors to go alongside -- if you're only gaming on one monitor, you'd be fine with a single GTX 680 (or 780 in the future). This will let you spend more money on your monitors.

Personally, I would get three 2560x1600 monitors, and only game on one of them. Elsewise, you can get a nice 1080p 27" monitor, though you need to spend more money on cards to achieve 120fps in games

[TheMightySals]

Thanks both! definatly going to go for a higher res monitor, curently rocking a little 21 tv that is awful using hdmi input! struggles with 1920x1080 at a nice quality! not to bothered about frame rates, PC fps games I have never grasped multiplayer wise, I enjoy them singleplayer and visually i like to be impressed but not focused on every little bit of lag as thats just for fun, after ready the overviews from Windspeed (sorry dim, I have chosen my victor) i'm thinking those Benq or some similar VA monitors would be suitable, may use eyefinity for single player games although undecided as of yet!

Monitors i think ill add to the imediate purchase list! as you can tell, a little out of date here!

[TheMightySals]

Put some thought into this last night, My space allows to me to cleverly hide any bulky objects and hide them away but still be usuable. in one of the cupboards there is a power socket, In here im hoping to put a printer, router and some NAS, and then have that linked into my room for media, I have a lot of films, tv and music on my pc, not only would it be nice for backup but links to the TVs for media playing!

I hope to have some plans drawn out, and then to start work on them pretty soon, its all a case of waiting for the money to become available though!

In my mind so far:

-New Rig Following advice from above

-3 monitors, VA not to fussed on slidding heavilly both to gaming or editing so nice middle ground.

-New Desk, A bit bigger than my current one but with a lower profile, also with alot more storage space

-New chair, the one i have now is OLD, not that comfortable for long sessions either!

-Router, hidden, making it available for NAS and printer, also allowing me an easier link to the Xbox and media player from the pc

-Sound; eventually going to set up a new 5.1 sound, I have nice high cieling space so it would go nice and un noticed

-possibly auxillery monitor above desk as a proxy tv, would only be small and wall mounted for ease.

Should, by the time its all done look pretty sweet! designs to follow!

[YowZman]

Xonar cards are great. Whatever your wanna spend on a card, the nearest Xonar is the one for you.

If you wanna get super pro, I'd recommend the audioengine D1 outboard DAC and A2 powered speakers:

http://audioengineusa.com/

if you wanna go for really awesome sound, the D5s are a bit better and louder. a2 are just slightly muddy in the mids at high volume.

EDIT - A5s, not D5s

[TheMightySals]

@yowzman Ive looked at Xonar cards and they look quite appealing, is that ruling out creative cards instantly? i know their driver support isnt great but quality wise how different are the two at a sort of level price point?