Hardware Review

[firescue17]

I have the opportunity to upgrade my hardware. I haven't been able to do so for about 10 years. Everything I used to know is irrelevant. I'm working with a soft budget of $1500 to $2000 US. I have some minor leeway in the budget; however, knowing my habits the extra money spent on performance gains will end up being consumed by loading more instances I have to cut it off somewhere.

This will be used primarily for gaming. Regular 4 - 6 boxing EverQuest. Occasional 8 boxing with the potential for 12 boxing, although I only have 8 accounts at the moment. *EVERYTHING* will be turned off on the slave accounts with minimal effects on the main (there just isn't anything worth seeing in EQ). I definitely want to record and edit boxing videos in a relatively decent resolution. I have no desire to stream. I also do freelance graphic / web design and various virtual assistant type duties; however, I expect my gaming requirements will be more than sufficient for the business / work tasks.

I will be using a local computer shop for assembly. Again, I've been out of the hardware loop too long. With my current knowledge, I'll end up with a bunch of incompatible parts or otherwise screw up the works. The shop fee will be ~$500 over the hardware total for assembly, OS, warranty, nuts & bolts, etc.

This is the hardware list I've come up with. Are there any glaring problems / compatabilities / other stupidity? Is there any overkill or do any of the items not have a cost / benefit vs. downgrading to a lower tier?

$500.00 - Shop Fee
$500.00 - Motherboard / CPU: MSI Z87-GD65 / i7-4770k
$300.00 - 32 GB RAM (4 x 8GB) This estimate may be high. I've never been particular about RAM. I just bought whatever matched set was cheapest at the time.
$220.00 - Graphics Card: Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5. This is the cheapest 3GB MSI card (to match the MB) I found.
$100.00 - Power Supply: 900W
$ 80.00 - Case
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$1700.00 + miscellaneous cost for hard drives. I'm not particular about them either. I don't even care about getting an SSD for the OS unless it's of comparable cost.
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1) Would I benefit from a second graphics card? I intend to run at least two and possibly three monitors. I already have three matched 1440 x 900 Dells. I would like to upgrade the monitors at some point; however, they are in perfect condition. If I don't use them now, they're just going to sit in storage (I've been secretly hoping one of them dies). I intend to dock certain programs (email, browser, IRC, Voice Coms) and specific game windows to a specific monitor, but I don't care about cross-monitor swapping since I drive from my Main Character. I won't be using Crossfire / SLI.

2) Is the power supply sufficient or should I go up to 1200W? Again it's been approximately 10 years since I worked with any hardware aside from replacing a dead card with whatever was cheapest at Tiger Direct.

3) Is there any super secret compelling reason to purchase a specific hard drive or RAM .

4) I am still using XP. I am equally irritated by the thought of having to learn either of Windows 7 or 8. Is there a compelling gaming reason to purchase one over the other?

5) Anything else I overlooked?

[Shadowandlight]

ok well let me run through a list of my opinions as I read your post

- $500 for building the unit seems far too high in my opinion. I used to charge 30-40% of the cost of the parts when I owned a brick & mortar store and I even thought that was high. Scout out ibuypower.com or similar stores for a better deal. I threw this together in 5 minutes as an example. http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/2013_Pal ... I/w/185495

- the 3930k or 3960k are a better option in my opinion. Granted, you can overclock the 4770k as well, but you get 2 more cores with the 3960k which makes a real difference. Granted, its also more money.

- Deff get an SSD drive. Well worth the money.

- 32 GB of RAM maybe overkill if your trying to save some $. You can always order 2 more sticks from newegg.com if you find yourself maxing out.

- I run x2 24" monitors off one video card. However EVE isnt very video intensive on the lower graphic settings so you may do well with dual video cards.

- Power supplies, more power is better. Buy what you can afford from a decent company.

- Most of the HD companies are pretty good now adays. I like samsung ATM (winning a lot of benchmarks) but they are all pretty solid. I've been partial to G Skill ram lately, cheap and performs well!

- Windows 8 is faster and more robust. I would certainly upgrade. Google some benchmarks. The start button was my only real annoyance.

[MiRai]

I'll check out the list of parts when I have a little bit more time, but to answer your questions...

1) Would I benefit from a second graphics card? I intend to run at least two and possibly three monitors. I already have three matched 1440 x 900 Dells. I would like to upgrade the monitors at some point; however, they are in perfect condition. If I don't use them now, they're just going to sit in storage (I've been secretly hoping one of them dies). I intend to dock certain programs (email, browser, IRC, Voice Coms) and specific game windows to a specific monitor, but I don't care about cross-monitor swapping since I drive from my Main Character. I won't be using Crossfire / SLI.

You should be able to split the load between multiple video cards. Sometimes that's more of a hassle and I'm not sure you want to deal with that.

I usually always suggest one single massive video card that can handle all of your needs.

2) Is the power supply sufficient or should I go up to 1200W? Again it's been approximately 10 years since I worked with any hardware aside from replacing a dead card with whatever was cheapest at Tiger Direct.

900W is actually overkill for that machine. It's unlikely you'll use more than 600-700W with both an overclocked CPU and GPU at full load.

I would actually spend a bit more on the PSU since it's such an important part of the machine and go with a very reputable manufacturer like Seasonic:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817151102

3) Is there any super secret compelling reason to purchase a specific hard drive or RAM .

Sure. Some have much better warranties than others and some have terrible reputations in the industry. For example, I'm not sure you could pay me to put anything OCZ in my system these days.

4) I am still using XP. I am equally irritated by the thought of having to learn either of Windows 7 or 8. Is there a compelling gaming reason to purchase one over the other?

People have their preferences, and mine is with Windows 7. I've thought about Windows 8 at times, but I think I would only switch if I didn't have to do anything besides play games on it.

I'm told that Windows 8 is more optimized, but I can't imagine that it'd increase my performance enough for me to want to learn that ridiculous interface (obviously a personal opinion) -- I also prefer the look of Aero (I'm sure someone will tell me that it can be enabled in W8 with some third party tool ).

[firescue17]

@Shadowand Light: I think I can swing a 3930k. I'm almost 100% sure I'll do that instead for the two extra cores.

The 3960 looks to be twice as much money; ~$1k vs. ~$500 for the processor alone. I think I'll have to pass on that.

I agree on the shop fee being high; but, they're local (and the only custom shop in town I can find). If the rig burns up, I can dump the smoking pile on their counter and let them deal with it I'm willing to pay a premium for the service at this point given how long I have been out of the hardware loop. I despise dealing with manufacturer's, warranties, RMAs, etc.

@MiRai: Thank you for the link on the Power Supply. I'll use that one instead.

Windows 7 it is. I forgot about the new interface with Windows 8.

[MiRai]

@Shadowand Light: I think I can swing a 3930k. I'm almost 100% sure I'll do that instead for the two extra cores.

The 3960 looks to be twice as much money; ~$1k vs. ~$500 for the processor alone. I think I'll have to pass on that.

The 3960X is completely unnecessary and it's only a minuscule boost in performance for a premium price, but a 6-core Intel CPU like the 3930K will set you up for long-term multiboxing and should make you very happy. However, you will need an X79 motherboard which may or may not run a little more than the Z87 you had selected prior.

If you need do to this build ASAP and want to buy a new 4930K before the street date, find me on IRC and I can give you a link to get one. If you can hold out, then they should be on e-tailers like Newegg either the first or second week of September.

[firescue17]

This is 13 EverQuest instances. I ran out of accounts

Thanks to all for the input. I'm back up and running: 4930K / 64GB; EVGA GeForce GTX 760 4GB; 256GB SSD with an H100 cooler. It's pretty sick. I'll post a pic of the case as soon as I get the cabling all pretty.

[MiRai]

Very nice.

Sweet. What motherboard?

[firescue17]

GIGABYTE GA-X79-UP4

In light of new events......
What u giys think about new line of Radeon grafic cards? Especially R9 290X