Dat rig

Hello friends,

It is my intention to build a multipurpose rig starting this week, and as such I could use a little guidance. I've built one machine before (for my older brother), a budget gaming rig that clocked in around $600 all told; he plays WoW and LoL, so his little toaster handles both games admirably at 1080. My needs are a little different, so this project will be a little more ambitious. Let me explain…

 

Games:

StarCraft 2 is my drug of choice, and what I will be playing the most. I am also fond of Left 4 Dead (and Left 4 Dead 2), Portal (2), Half Life (2), and a ton of indie games and older stuff I play via emulators.

 

Settings:

Maxed, or quite-nearly-maxed at 1440 and 30+ FPS. Streaming (likely XSplit) in 1080 ideally, but I'll settle for 720. Assuming the eventual part selections are hackintosh-able, I'll also be streaming via the Camtwist/Soundflower/FMLE combo on the Mac side as well, with somewhat lowered expectations.

 

Content Creation:

I plan to edit video (saved from streams and otherwise) and upload the results in Youtube-friendly format. I also plan to do some music production, but that would likely be no issue for a computer that can handle all of the above.

 

Tweaking:

I've never overclocked a system before, but I'd love to give it a shot. I don't need miracles, it would more be for fun and as a learning experience. Never hurts to get everything I can for my dollar either, eh? I'm comfortable with close-loop liquid cooling systems, but I wouldn't be interested in a custom setup at this point.

 

Finally, I must admit to vanity; while function is certainly important, I also want my machine to be "pretty". I am not fond of garish cases, with a couple exceptions (the Corsair C70 comes to mind). The internal components ought to color match as much as is reasonable.

 

My budget is presently ~$1000 not including the monitor/keyboard/mouse/OS. I can push it to about $1200 if some items can be purchased about a month from now when the system is already up and running (a graphics card in an Intel-based system, for example).

 

Whaddayathink? Intel or AMD? AMD or NVIDIA? Halp.

Based on your needs, this is what I would recommend. This machine should easily handle anything you can throw at it Including streaming at 720p at 60fps, or about 30fps at 1080p. You will also be able to overclock your CPU as far as the chip will allow with the motherboard and heatsink I included.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1F6TX

Not a bad build ^.

 

For $1000, I wouldn't be doing anything different from that. Maybe an SSD can be added if you're willing to stretch your cost to about $1150 ish.

Definitely an AMD processor (the FX-8350) if you're streaming. The 8 cores will give you the best price to performance and I wouldn't be changing that either.

I like it! It's actually not too far off the mock up I put together myself today:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/wellstein/saved/2pCp

 

I'd probably eventually add a couple 2TB HDs mirrored for backup and additional storage, then throw some Noctua fans in there for style points. I picked the Noctua cooler on account of some great reviews/benchmarks, and also the bling factor. I like the one you suggested as well.

Thank you kindly for the recommendation regarding that processor; I've had my eye on it for a while. My buddies keep saying go Intel, but my interbutt research says otherwise.

I'll be including an SSD one way or another. I would go so far as to buy the SSD first and worry about the data drive in a month or so.

 

Query: Why suggest two 7950s as opposed to a single 7970 or the like? I picked the Sapphire in the linked build for price and on account of evidence that it's voltage-unlocked. I suppose a better way to ask is: is this a matter of preference, or are the two 7950s going to wreck the 7970 even if it's OC'd?

are the two 7950s going to wreck the 7970 even if it's OC'd?

Exactly. The 7950 is actually quite close to the 7970 in terms of performance, if not in price. For $360, a dual 7950 setup is a steal.

Word. Also, apparently there is a shiny "Reply" button I could have used last time around. Dual 7950s sounds like a plan. 

I won't be playing Crysis though =)

Not really too much of an FPS gamer, I'm all about RTS games which tend to be more CPU-limited as opposed to GPU-limited.