Advice on a new rig

Hey guys,

I've been multiboxing WoW (5 toons) for about two years now. I just startet setting up my first pro setup, still a work in progress but getting there.
With the recent WoW sales in December I got my self 5 extra accounts to 10-box, but my rig just isn't up for it. I've set all 10 instances to the lowest graphical settings, and as long as I walk around outside of the cities I get frame rates on my main of about 15 to a max of 20. But if I dare to enter the city my fps go down the drain to completely unplayable. I decided to OC my processor (i7 2600k) to 4500 MHz which makes to whole thing halfway playable but far from satisfactory. Also with Warlords of Dreanor, and it's UI and Char updates on the way I'm really in need of something new.

First a look at my current setup:

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe
Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40 GHz - be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2
Corsair Vengeance PC3 16 GB DDR3 1600MHz
Asus AMD 6970 CCU
Corsair PSU AX850
All tugged nicely in my Silverstone Raven RV03 Case

This rig will go to my wife, she recently started five-boxing.

My Logitech G13 and G19 as well as my Madcatz MMO 7 will be joining up with the new toy.

The new rig should be capable of playing 10-15 sessions of WoW (planning on doing some 15 boxing with my wife 5 accounts as well). As soon as I get a better Internet connection streaming should be possible as well.
Atm I have 4 monitors attached to my rig (see picture below). A 30 inch center flanked by 2 20 inch in Portrait and a 3rd 20 inch on top of my center screen (all Dells). May want to ad two more monitors in the near future. So will need enough monitor outputs.
I see some multiboxers still playing with/having 2 or more computers to box with, is there still a use for this?

Reading the forum and watching some of MiRai's very informative videos I've already learned that nVidia is the way to go, since SLI also supports Windowed mode. One or better two 780 ti sound like a good basis to start with (red there will be a 6 Gb version available shortly, would it be useful to get those instead of the standard 3 Gb?).
That about where to knowledge ends. I red a lot about the X79 and Z87 chipsets but have not been able to find any conclusive info on which is the best to go with.
Here and there I red some little pieces about RAM-disks, sounds interesting.

Fund wise lets start with a budget of 2.000 to 2.500 Euro. Budget can be flexed if needed.

I'm planning to purchase in about 1-2 months. Having hopefully the last big exam of my life on the first of march, when I pass this will be my reward

Thanx in advance for all your advice,

sP`!´Ke

[Ualaa]

I'd go for the newer 6-core Intel processor.
4930K I believe.
More cores is going to help a lot, especially as you add additional instances of the game.

I generally go with an after-market CPU cooler.
You can mess around with a water based system, if you're into overclocking and want maximum performance.
I generally go with an air based system, I liked the Noctua NH-D14, which was one of the better air coolers (but necessitated low-profile ram).
The height limit on your ram is going to depend on the CPU cooler you go with.
The stock cooler might be okay, if you don't overclock at all.
I generally do a moderate overclock, so having a decent CPU cooler is a decent idea.

As far as a motherboard goes, I've liked Asus and Evga in the past.
Really, you just have to decide on whether you're going to overclock and push the system that way, or go with stock speeds.
Even with a mostly stock system, you can easily do a moderate overclock with mainstream components... (lots of youtube videos for conservative overclocks).
The Rampage Extreme IV (or whatever the equivalent is today) is the board for pushing overclocking hard, while pretty much any of the gaming motherboards (I went with an Asus Sabertooth) will work well otherwise; they're all going to support at least Crossfire/SLI 2x, and have 4/8 ram slots, etc.

Ram isn't especially expensive.
Extra won't really do you much, but being short will impact your performance.
The 3930K used 4-channel ram, while everything else (the 4-core processors) were 2-channel ram at the time I built my system.
I'd assume the 4930K is also 4-channel, and if that is the case make sure your ram is 4-channel and not 2-channel, as that will enhance/limit the speed of the ram.
Either way, 4 sticks each of 4 GB gets you 16GB which is fine for 10-boxing; for 15-boxing, you'd be closer to having ram being the limiting factor... so 32GB might be a better idea.
Given the relative low price of ram, and to just future proof your system anyway, I'd likely go with 32GB.
I don't see the point of 64GB, especially with Solid State Drives for your gaming folder.

Video cards, you can go with Nvidia (which I prefer) or an Radeon equivalent.
That's really personal preference.
You'll want enough outputs on the cards, to be able to plug in four monitors.
So that's likely either an Eyefiniti (Radeon) card or two Nvidia cards.
If you want the top Nvidia card, its generally an x80 (480, 580, 680, 780 etc).
The x70 cards are the 'best bang for your buck', generally around 90% of the performance and 60% of the price.
For boxing, a lot of people have had mixed results with the x90 cards (which are actually two cards on one board), I'd recommend avoiding those.

I'd personally go with two SSD (solid state drives) in Raid 0, as your gaming folder.
I went with OCZ Vertex, but looking at where OCZ is today... I'd recommend a different company.
The last I looked at SSDs, the Intel 520s and Samsung 840s were strong; the Corsair Neutron parsed well on a lot of tests, but was too new (a couple years ago) to recommend.
Not really sure which SSDs to recommend, but I do really like having two SSDs in a striped (Raid 0) configuration for the gaming folder.
If you're going to video capture, you'll get better performance with at least three separate drives (one for the Operating System, another for the Gaming Folder, and the last for recording your movies).

Storage drives are quite cheap, so maybe grab a 3TB or so for everything else.
You can easily add more storage drives down the road, if you need more space.

Thanks for your reply Ualaa.

Your correct, the Intel i7 4930k is the new six core. With the 1155 socket so you say I should go with the x79 chipset.
At the moment I've got a be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 aftermarket Cooler on my 2600k with which I'm very satisfied, so I'll probably get another one of those. Or alternatively I could try watercooling once more, I had an corsair H80 on my 2600k initialy, but it was so damm loud I threw it out.
I've had good experience with Asus in the past and MiRai's troubles with his latest EVGA mobo have driven me away from that thought.
My current system has 16 GB of ram, I was thinking of at least 32 for my new rig, maybe 64 if i were to play around with a ramdrive. Still don't really now if it would bring me a real improvement over 2 SSDs in RAID 0.
I currently have an AMD in my system but am still disapointed with them for never allowing Eyefinity with my PLP monitor setup. Red a lot of possitive thing on nVidia so I think I'll try one of theirs, like I said I was thinking about the 780 ti, which I would need two of to support my monitors. I'm just not sure if two 780ti's is not going to be overkill for WoW?
I'll have to look into the current SSD market, two in RAID 0 would probably do for the gamingfolder and a third for Windows. I've an 8 TB storageserver in the basement so no need for extra storage in my desktop.

Anybody else got any insights to share?

sP`!´Ke