A friend of mine has come to me with help building an elite gaming machine where he stressed "Money is not a problem" and made it clear he would spend a couple grand if he had to. I on the other hand see no real need in buying the newest of the new yet and he doesn't really seem to "need" it despite wanting it. But its not my computer or my money so I'll give him a few suggestions. I'm here because I want Afterdawn help as I can't afford, nor have the need to spend all my money on a computer, I haven't kept up to date on the latest happenings of the core i7's and newest Phenom II's. Although from what I've read, there are some great advantages to using Intel over AMD these days as much as it pains me to speak those words. So I just want any opins on the best of the best performance parts that will sing together in perfect harmony Oh and he wants to run 3 monitors as well. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. ------------------------------------------------------- And what I am personally looking into is a core i7 950, 8GB PC# 16000 ram, havent really decided on what to do with the vid card yet as the new 5000 series ATI's are very new to me but I can assume he will want a minimum of 2. (I know crossfire but know almost nothing of quadfire. Although I'm thinking crossfire 5870's will do nicely - let me know) and of coarse liquid cooling to keep it nice and cool.
"Money is no object" is kind of a ridiculous idea to me, but then again, I'm not exceedingly wealthy. But even if I was, I don't think a really expensive computer would be something I would throw money at. But if that's what he really want's to do then Intel is definitely the way to go. I personally have never been a fan of Intel and have faithfully used the AMD line since my very first build. Since then I have build literally hundreds of computers for every need ranging from a basic, budget systems to really nice gaming systems. I have never had a customer that was unhappy with the AMD system I built for them. True, the AMD systems don't benchmark quite as well as the Intel counterparts, but the performance difference doesn't justify the cost difference to me. Besides, there are a number of other things that can bottleneck a system besides the CPU. Memory amount and speed, hard drive and MB cache, video memory among other things affect system performance. If money truly is no object, then go top of the line everything. It will probably end up costing $4,000, if he doesn't even flinch at that... make sure you add in your cut. Just my two cents. Check out my free guide to building a pc here
There is another thread open asking for $10,000 gaming builds...I posted a build over there. I had to scale a few things back to meet the $10,000 budjet (Easily could have gone over $30,000). Is the budget still "Unlimited"?
I think he wants to keep it at around $4000 or less... Honestly. I don't even know if I COULD spend that much on a computer even if I wanted to. In doing my research for this build I'm having a hard time getting my price even up to $2000. Although this guy really doesn't need it at all. He just wants it, which is a pure waste to me. I'm still going to make a regular non-ridiculous extreme gamer (extreme in the sense of being normal, and not spending a couple hundred extra just to get a slightly better 3dmark score) Thanks for the info, I'll be consulting those sources when I get home from work.
Its not that hard. Add a sound card for one, rather the onboard. Add more HDDs, a RAID card, Lighting Mods, upgrade the stock case fans. I doubt any stock case fan compares to Sycthe fans. Things like this.
It isn't hard to break $2,000 at all...the top-end video cards cost over $600, and you can use 2 (or more) of them...toss in an I7 and you are already over $2000 with nothing but a CPU and a couple of video cards. I'm not saying I would buy these top-end parts, but you can still blow a $2000 budget very fast even when buying the cheap stuff...a basic 1366 mainboard costs $270, the cheapest 1366 CPU is $290, and a pair of 5870 cards (not top-end) will set you back $400 each...that is already $1360 with no memory, drives, cooling, case, sound, wifi, power, etc...
And theres always adding more hard drives, add a proper raid card, thats about $300 alone, add LED mods and other such case mods, and dont forget investing in some quality fans. Most of that stuff is cheap, but it adds up in the end and adding more then one above part helps a bit to.
A good RAID card will cost a lot more than $300...you can hardly get a basic 4port unit for $300. While I do believe in RAID, and use it whenever I can, it has very little use for gaming; mostly just speeding up load screens a bit. If you have any budget at all, RAID is the last place you spend your money.
