Planning a to build a new system. Tips appreciated!

[Janus]

Hi,

So with Cataclysm approaching, I am planning to build a new system. The goals I set out for it are to be under 2,000 dollars and be as futureproof as possible. Below is what I came up with. I plan to buy this around thanksgiving to maximize on the price. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

-COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Black Steel/ Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case
- 2 X Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s running in RAID 0
- 2 X EVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card in SLI
- COOLER MASTER Silent Pro RSA00-AMBAJ3-US 1000W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active ...
- G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9T-12GBRL
- GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
- Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601950
- LG Black 10X Blu-ray Burner - Bulk SATA WH10LS30 LightScribe Support -

[Ualaa]

If the primary purpose is warcraft, I'd strongly advise against SLI/Crossfire being used. That's not to say, don't go with two video cards for the extra ports which allow for additional monitors.

Adding an SSD to the system would also be a fairly substantial boost. Either a cheaper SSD purely for your gaming folder, or something better like an OCZ Vertex 2 for both the OS and the gaming folder.

If you plan to make movies, it is a huge boost to be able to encode to a hard drive, other than the one you're playing warcraft on.

Nice system there.

[Tim]

Yup I agree with Ualaa the fastest way to speed up a system these days is to add a SSD. You can buy a 30GB fast SSD for around $70 bucks these days so it is fairly cheap.

[Janus]

Hi,

Yes the primary purpose is Warcraft and video capture in hd as I'm playing. I already have a dual monitor configuration on my one gfx card now.
Why the big no for the sli configuration? Can you elaborate on it please?

I have 5 different installs of the game on my hard drive partition, which is occupying 150+ gb, so an SSD would be a small fortune at this time to hold my gaming folders and the os (would need at least 300 gb)

[Ualaa]

You could put the Cache, Data and Interface folders onto the SSD, and Symbolic Link those to your other installs. Basically, Warcraft is then ~20GBs on the SSD and 15-20MB's on the other drives, for variable video/sound settings. All of the loading of zones/textures takes place on the SSD.

Warcraft is not optimized for SLI/Crossfire. Enabling either of these reduces your warcraft performance for the majority of users; similarly if you disable these, almost everyone gets a performance boost. Same deal on the X2 cards (on one physical board) for example the 4870 outperforms the 4870X2 for warcraft.

[kasper3577]

Originally Posted by Janus

-COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Black Steel/ Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case
- 2 X Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s running in RAID 0
- 2 X EVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card in SLI
- COOLER MASTER Silent Pro RSA00-AMBAJ3-US 1000W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active ...
- G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9T-12GBRL
- GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
- Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601950
- LG Black 10X Blu-ray Burner - Bulk SATA WH10LS30 LightScribe Support -

I like this setup, not a bad computer overall, but there would be a few changes I would make.
1. If you are doing air cooling and no water cooling, I would go with Thermaltake Spedo VI90001W2Z Full-Tower Case as a case, it is comparable in price with the one you listed. If you anticipate any liquid cooling, I would stick to the case you picked out, or even the antec 1200 case for the extra room.
2. for the HD's, running two 1TB drives in raid just seems too big. I would go with a 50GB+SSD for the game to reside on, and something like 2 160GB to 250GB drives for the main OS in raid 0, with a 1TB, or even with a 2TB drive, for saving all your misc files and programs on. Reason for the 160GB to 250GB main drives is some programs will not run outside of the main OS, thus this will leave you plenty of room to play with.
3. with the GTX 470's, you won't need 2 to play 10 copies of wow. I run a single GTX 460 768MB ram card and have no problems playing 5 accounts on it. Use a second smaller (220 or a 250) for a graphics processor only. I have my old 9800GT in mine and I get about 25fps higher than without it in on my main screen; not a great boost, but allows me to run 25fps on my 4 slave windows(in the background) and 60-85fps on my main window.
4. I really like that power supply, I have a 850 corsair 80 plus atx one now and have had 0 issues with it so far.
5. I never liked G.Skill memory. I have not found a set of their memory that wasn't some generic memory with a G.Skill name on it, let alone it actually worked with a MOBO I had at the time. Maybe it is just my bad luck with G.Skill memory, or maybe G.Skill memory just hates EVGA MOBO's, idk. For a recommendation, I might go with OCZ or corsair memory with the Gigabyte MOBO you chose. Just beware to only use one half of the slots for the memory, as filling up all 6 slots may work against you, or the mobo may not even read it. I have 12Gb of patriot for my evga x58 le mobo and can only use 6GB now becasue they are all 2gb sticks and 12gb would fill out all 6 slots. My computer blue screened at lease 6 times an hour with all 12gb in it.
6. The Gigabye MOBO you chose is still(I believe) the fastest mobo on the market. Great for overclocking as well.
7. I have been debating on upgrading my i7 920 to the i7 950, only difference is the 950 runs a little hotter than the 920. If you do overclock the cpu, I would recommend a liquid cpu cooler of some sort. I use the Corsair H50 on my 920 now, not because I need it, but just because it isn't another huge fan hogging up the top of my case. Everything else in my computer is air cooled.
and lastly, 8. if you find yourself reaching the cap of $2,000 and need to reduce the price of anything, this would be the first thing I would take out. A 20-50 dollar cd/dvd drive burner/reader is more than sufficient and you can always add the blue ray burner in later on.

Just my recommendations, or even things to think about before deciding what to buy for you new computer. And, if you can wait, those black Friday sales right after Thanksgiving are a pretty good time to shop stores for the stuff you want at bargain prices.

[Janus]

hey Kasper,

thanks for the great tips ! One question I have regarding the gfx card. How do you use another card as a gfx processor only?

Ualaa,
Is there a simple guide out there on how to setup symlinks?

Thanks for the insight, guys. Very helpful

[Nghtmr9999]

Looks like a good system. I'll be building one very similar to it (minus the GPUs in SLI).

Gogo Newegg Black November

[kasper3577]

Basically, you just put a second card into the MOBO and do not add the link to sli or crossfire them, under the NVidia control panel you can change the gpu preferences.

And, make sure to put the cards in order from top down or cpu/chipset side as slot one, then going away from them as slots 2, 3, etc. I would love to separate the cards for better airflow, but they just won't work that way.

So, for example, if you did get both of the 470's both with 1GB ddr memory, you can use both for processing and memory while only utilizing one of them for the actual screen output. This doesn't necessarily double the gpu performance, but will give it a boost like an overclocked card, and you will have 2GB's of memory to process video. Now, I might be wrong, but you should be able to run the streaming vid and play 5 accounts with the 2 470's like this over something like an sli configuration and better than using a lower rated card for the secondary graphics processor. And, you would have the advantage of sli if another game worked better with it to just shut down your computer, add the sli bridge, and restart. Nvidia's will auto reconfigure your previous setup and change to an sli configuration, but to go back to the othe configuration you would have to remove the bridge and then reapply the second processor as a slave gpu to get it to work again.

I would change my computer to the latter choice IF I had any games that ran better as sli, or if I played any games besides wow really. It gives a little more flexibility in how you can do things later on without reinvesting more money. If you only realistically play wow, I would buy a cheaper card like a 220 or a 250 with 1GB of ram on-board instead of the other 470...why spend money that you aren't going to at least get any real benefit from.

[Ualaa]

I used the program on this site, back when I used Keyclone: Link Shell Extension

My current software virtualizes the configuration file, so a single install still allows for varying settings on a per character basis.