New Gaming PC Suggestions?

Larsa said:

My dilemma is with the graphics card. I read that the HD Radeon 5970s were good, and I'm considering having two of them.

Don't. They scale very badly, and Tri/Quadfire+eyefinity does not work very well at all.

Larsa said:

Just to clarify I will be getting liquid cooling.

If you don't mind losing the Eyefinity option and have the PSU to back it up, then x2 480 SLI will handle the vast majority of titles with extreme ease.

Liquid cooling eliminates the heat/noise issue - the only major downside to 480 SLI is the massive power draw (hence the reason you'll need a good PSU).



The 5970 is a good card, but outside of benching, quadfiring a pair if them is a waste.

A 5970 + 5850/5870 Tri-fire setup would be a better option for single screen gaming goodness.

Alternatively, two/three 5870 E6 2GB is also another option. (the extra VRAM is very beneficial if you are planning on going Eyefinity)

5k you can build a kick.... gaming rig. But just remember no matter how you go in a couple month time there will be something that seems better. Maybe it's just me, my mother in law made a comment to my wife some 20 years ago she said I am never satified. It took me a while to relies but man was she right.

kellymac35 said:

5k you can build a kick.... gaming rig. But just remember no matter how you go in a couple month time there will be something that seems better. Maybe it's just me, my mother in law made a comment to my wife some 20 years ago she said I am never satified. It took me a while to relies but man was she right.

Amen Brother

kellymac35 said:

5k you can build a kick.... gaming rig. But just remember no matter how you go in a couple month time there will be something that seems better.

Technically speaking, it's already superseded - but that's the 'beauty' of technology, there is always something better around the corner.

It's the old catch 22 - buy now, be out of date. Keep waiting for the next big thing and you'll never buy anything

Although whatever setup the OP chooses to go with should realistically see him at the pointy end of gaming / desktop usage for another good 2-3 years.

Maybe it's just me, my mother in law made a comment to my wife some 20 years ago she said I am never satisfied. It took me a while to relies but man was she right.

Satisfied? I've heard of it - but I'm still not quite sure what it feels like

Larsa said:

I'm planning on building a new gaming pc this September and am wanting to make it as good as I possibly can. I have $5k saved up for it. I'm considering getting the Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition 3.33 GHz CPU and 6gigs of DDR3 RAM at 1800ghz. My dilemma is with the graphics card. I read that the HD Radeon 5970s were good, and I'm considering having two of them.

Would this setup work, or are there some problems? I want to play current and near-future titles on max settings as smoothly as possible. If you have any recommendations for alternative graphic cards that would be great too (or a different CPU if the one listed will cause problems.) Thanks in advance.

With that budget your entitled to a bragging rights PC.
Go for it if that is what you want.
I'll try to find time in my busy schedule to build and test it for you, just send me all the parts

The HD Radeon 5970 is a good choice.

As noted here and on many reputable benchmark sites, Ati/Nvidia work perfectly well with AMD/Intel, in any combination.
Have read the Intel-ATI combination is sweet :)

As mentioned, anything from an i7 930 and up will run anything you want very well, and you'll likely not notice much of a difference between any one of these and the i7-980X.

Get a nice SSD and the best quality PSU you can find.

You might consider to hold back 20% of that for the gotta have upgrade that you will run into in the next six months.

thefabe said:

I would just like to add whatever way you decide to go, don't forget to buy a quality power supply.
Check the motherboard manufacturers recommended Ram if available to avoid any problems with temperamental ram/mb combination.
I'm going to be building a new system soon and am looking at the i7 920 or 930 the x58 chipset and hopefully Mushkin Ram, probably a couple of GTX460's a 800w modular PUS, a full tower with cutouts for CPU changing without having to remove the MB and good cable management the largest SSD available and a 1 or 1.5 terabyte internal drive with the blu ray optical I already have. And either stick with the H50 CPU water cooler or The Ultra chillTec. But then I'm not planning on spending 5k for a system I just don't see any need for it for what I use my system for. My 2cents worth. Fabe

That sounds like one heck of a nice system, go with the i7 930 it's replacing the 920.
Good call on the SSD, IMHO it's the most noticeable performance upgrade you can do right now.
Get one big enough to put your OS and most of your programs, mines 40GB and using 16GB, the rest of my data is on a HDD. No need to store music, videos, pictures and any other files on a SSD.

smarteyeball said:

Although whatever setup the OP chooses to go with should realistically see him at the pointy end of gaming / desktop usage for another good 2-3 years.

Hopefully, but there's always something...

StoneHeart said:

Hey Larsa, i you're willing to go over budget you can have one of the ultimate rigs possible.

Here's my ideal spec:

...

Tell me what you think.
P.S. you can think up everything else you need.

WOW , that's definitely an ultimate machine