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.