Hardcore Gaming desktop?
May 5, 2010 by
Filed under graduation party supplies
I have made a deal with my son that if he has gotten straight a’s for every report card he has had since middle school To highschool graduation, I would buy him the most hardcore gaming system. The price is unbeliably high…. but i know its worth it. Can you tell me if these specs are good?
Case ( PSI CyborgX Mid Tower Gaming Case – Yellow )
iBUYPOWER Labs – Noise Reduction ( Advanced – iBUYPOWER Harmony SRS Sound Reduction System )
iBUYPOWER Labs – Internal Expansion ( [6-Port] NZXT Internal USB Expansion System + Bluetooth Module )
Case Lighting ( Cold Cathode Neon Light – Green )
Processor ( Intel® Core™ i7 980X Processor Extreme Edition (6x 3.33GHz/12MB L3 Cache) )
iBUYPOWER PowerDrive ( PowerDrive Level 2 – Up to 20% Overclocking )
Processor Cooling ( CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooling Fan System )
Memory ( 24 GB [4 GB X6] DDR3-1600 – Corsair or Major Brand )
Video Card ( ATI Radeon HD 5970 – 2GB XFX Black Edition – CrossFire Mode (Dual Cards) )
Video Card Brand ( Major Brand Powered by ATI or NVIDIA )
Motherboard ( [3-Way SLI] EVGA X58 SLI Classified w/ 2x Gb LAN, 4x PCI-E 2.0 x16 )
Motherboard Add-on ( ASUS U3S6 True USB 3.0 & SATA 3.0 PCI-E x4 Expansion card )
Power Supply ( 1250 Watt — CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 1250W Power Supply – Quad SLI Ready )
Primary Hard Drive ( 2 TB HARD DRIVE — 64M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s – Dual 2TB Drives(2TB Capacity) – RAID 1 Data Security )
Data Hard Drive ( None )
Optical Drive ( [10X Blu-Ray] LG BLU-RAY Re-Writer, DVD±R/±RW Burner Combo Drive – Orange )
2nd Optical Drive ( None )
Flash Media Reader/Writer ( 12-In-1 External USB Flash Media Card Reader/Writer )
Meter Display ( NZXT Sentry LX Aluminum Fan Control, Clock, and Temperature Display )
Floppy Drive ( Mitsumi 1.44 MB Internal Floppy Drive – Orange )
Sound Card ( Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series )
Network Card ( **$99 – $20 Instant Rebate!** Killer Xeno Pro Gaming Network Card )
Netbook / Notebook Bundle ( None )
Operating System ( Microsoft Windows Vista Business + [Free 60-Day !!!] Microsoft Office 2007(Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access ….) – 64-Bit )
Software/Game ( Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 )
Keyboard ( Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard )
Mouse ( Razer Imperator 5600dpi Ergonomic 3.5G Laser Gaming Mouse )
Monitor ( 27″ Widescreen LCD 1920×1080 Sceptre X270W-1080P – Built-in Speaker, DVI & HDMI Input )
2nd Monitor ( None )
Speaker System ( Logitech X-540 5.1 Surround Speakers + Subwoofer – Black )
External Hard Drives [USB 3.0/2.0/eSATA] ( None )
USB Flash Drive ( Corsair 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive )
Extras ( [Gaming Gear] Logitech Dual Action Gamepad )
Extras ( Sunbeamtech Lan Party Bag )
Power Protection ( None )
Headset ( Zowie Hammer USB Circumaural Headset – w/ USB Sound Card & Designed for Professional e-Sports )
MP3/MP4 Player ( 2GB MP3/MP4 Digital Audio/Video Player )
Video Camera ( Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 2.0MP USB Interface WebCam )
Advanced Build Options ( iBUYPOWER Specialized Advanced Packaging System – Protect your investment during transportation! )
Advanced Build Options ( Tuniq TX-2 High Performance Thermal Compound – The best interface between your CPU and the heatsinks )
Advanced Build Options ( Professional wiring for all cables inside the system tower – Achieve exceptional airflow in your chassis )
Warranty ( Standard Warranty Service – Standard 3-Year Limited Warranty + Lifetime Technical Support )
Rush Service ( Rush Service Fee (not shipping fee) – [RUSH !!!], Ship Out in Next Business Day )
The PC configuration is VERY good but:
I would buy an additional 10K or 7.2K(7200RPM) hard disk drive in order to install the operating system and the rest of the programs on it.
I would also buy a 24x capable DVD-RW drive since copying discs on-the-fly is faster than creating the image on the Hard Disk Drive and after that insert the blank CD / DVD in order to write the image written on the HDD.
You get SATA 3.0 and USB 3-0 which is great.
Also, 24GB of RAM at 1600MHz is superb.
I don’t think I need to talk about the CPU..we all know the Core i7 is the best in the world and …of course..yours is the Extreme Edition running at 3.3GHz..what could you think about more powerful than that in a Hardcore gaming PC..? (the CPU is neither dual nor quad but hexa-core….damn..)
One thing I would like to tell you: don’t use Windows Vista…it really sucks…Get Windows Se7en.
People who come to me to get their PCs repaired ask me about the operating system, and my answer is:
I can either install the Windows XP or Windows Se7en.
Although I have the Windows Vista DVD, I DON’T WANT to use it…it is REALLY a crap.
Ii would chose the Logitech Z-5500 Digital if I wanted to buy a powerful sound system.
OMG! OMG! – ……!!!!!! You absolutely have to be out of your mind to put this thing together for him…this is like so over done it is incredible! What is this, an $8,000 computer? I haven’t tried to put this together in cost, but just looking at some of the parts this could easily run $8,000 – $10,000 for this computer.
First of all, have YOU DONE ANY PRICE COMPARISONS? Have you run the prices on these things against Newegg.Com and TigerDirect.Com? Who is going to put this thing together?
Listen, Windows Vista is a HUGE MISTAKE! You don’t want to put Vista on this computer…Vista has too many driver problems and restrictions. If you are going to build this MONSTER, you need to have Windows 7 Ultimate Edition as a minimum.
I think that 24 Gigabytes of memory is WAY TOO MUCH! No game on Planet Earth is going to require that much memory – and in fact, if you have that much memory on this thing, it may well slow this computer down! I would recommend backing OFF on the memory to 12 Gigs Maximum.
I don’t know a single game on the planet that needs such an exhorbitant amount of memory – unless he happens to want to play War Games with the Pentagon.
Did he put this thing together? It must have one of everything on Planet Earth on here – and the new Intel 6 Core i7 980x cannot really be taken advantage of – there are no games I know of that will access all 6 cores due to a lack of multithreading in the code of the games. It is certainly NOT worth $1000 to buy that CPU!
My opinion is that you could well get along with a high end gamer computer for about $1800 maximum…that is where almost every other high end game player is at, unless of course, you just have to throw money away on purpose because you like to burn it up. This computer is not being built for gaming friend, this thing is total bragging rights – he may be the ONLY kid in the United States to own such a rig. But if the whole point is just to have the very VERY best of everything that exists right now at this instant in computing is the point, well, maybe that is the point.
The problem is, that in 6 months, this computer will no longer be top of the line. Some other things will come along to take its place. And in 2-1/2 years, this computer will be “OLD” technology. Computers are not an investment, they are a depreciable item and that means, like a car, when you drive it off the lot, it jus dropped by 1/2 the value that you just paid out.
There is no point in putting this computer together as far as I am concerned, it is TOTALLY overkill and TOTALLY unnecessary to build this in order to even play Crysis on the very highest settings that exist. He could well get along with a computer less than 1/4 of the cost of these parts and still have bragging rights – this computer is just plain overkill…why do it?
My recommendation is to completely back off of this this and to re-evaluate. Do some really hard study on some gamer sites and get recommendations for a realistic rig. Straight “A” or not, this computer is worth more than a car is in terms of parts cost alone.
Whatever you do, DO NOT INSTALL VISTA! INSTALL WINDOWS 7.
I concur that you need high-speed drives in this machine. If you have any one component not “keeping up” with the rest, you get a problem called a “bottleneck”. That i7 processor and the video cards are AMAZING, so you don’t want to get held up by the hard drive!
You’re already going to pay out the nose, so I’d use the RAID drives you have listed (those twin drives there) as your “Data Drives” and see if your seller can put in a Solid State drive for the primary Windows drive. Whereas regular drives spin platters while a little thing that looks like a record needle handles the read-write, Solid State drives do not. As such, they perform significantly faster. They are also significantly more expensive (500gb is usually around $1000!), so buy a smaller one and have them put WINDOWS 7 on it.
Not Vista. Windows 7. Windows Vista is the middle child between Windows XP and Windows 7; it’s full of issues and makes sure all of its problems are yours. Windows 7, preferably Professional or Ultimate edition.