New Gamer

Boom_Boom

Hey guys,

So I've been saving up for a new gaming pc build for two years and I think I'm ready to start buying. I'm pretty out of the loop when it comes to the recent stuff so I need some advice. My budget is around 2200.

Basically it's purely for gaming, I need everything except OS, mouse and keyboard. I plan to overclock a lot.

CPU: i5 or i7?
GPU: Would love either one or two 5970's but are they worth the money?
RAM: Not too pushed anything around 8gb to keep me going
PSU: Corsair HX100?
HDD: Samsung F3 2tb
Case: Cooler Master 932, would it fit 2x 5970's?
Moniter: Samsung 24" 1920x1080

Any ideas guys?

Solitaire

IMHO for Lunacy Booth builds its more about either style or overwhelming power, and if its the latter then its pointless to mention Quadfire and 1080p in the same sentence. Find some >1080p (2560*1600 and up!) >24" monitor first otherwise the dual HD5970s are an utter waste quite possible even in Metro

Boom_Boom

What would you recommend then? One 5970 or something smaller?

Deano12345

Oh... I love these type of builds !

Go with an i7 920/930 + a Gigabyte UD-Series motherboard - Good for 4+ GHz easily

6GB of Ram is plenty for ANYTHING. Everyone has their favourite ram, I like G.Skill (Check out the Ripjaws) and Corsair (XMS3 and Dominator ranges)

5970 by 2. Do you need it ? No.

Soooo, GO FOR IT and get a GTS250 from Nvidia for Physix processing, if your motherboard has enough PCIE slots

HX1000 is good, but its an old design, get an Enermax 85+ 1050W instead.

Get a 32/64GB SSD for you OS and games, and a pair of 1TB (they are much faster than the 2TB) set up in RAID 1 for your data

HAF is great, and it will fit 2x5970's

Solitaire

Had a bit of a gander at various benches. Some badly optimised games like Crysis, Metro and (to a lesser degree) Arma can have issues with 2560*1600, period. But I think I'm correct in saying you should stick with one HD5970 (and a low-end nVidia card for hardware HackX ) plus a top-notch 1080p monitor and find something else to spend the saved money on, or bite the bullet and spend over the odds to secure a 2560*1600 monitor and pair it with a pair of HD5970s.

Boom_Boom

Solitaire wrote: »

Had a bit of a gander at various benches. Some badly optimised games like Crysis, Metro and (to a lesser degree) Arma can have issues with 2560*1600, period. But I think I'm correct in saying you should stick with one HD5970 (and a low-end nVidia card for hardware HackX ) plus a top-notch 1080p monitor and find something else to spend the saved money on, or bite the bullet and spend over the odds to secure a 2560*1600 monitor and pair it with a pair of HD5970s.

Yeah don't think I can stretch to a 2560x1600 monitor so think I'll keep it to one 5970. Is the increase in performance noticable to the 5870?

Solitaire

It depends on the game and settings, but generally one HD5970 utterly destroys a single HD5870 in areas where even that bogs down, such as running certain ultra-intensive games with maximum settings and 4x/8xAA at 1080p. If you're willing to spend all that money a HD5970 is worth it.

lmimmfn

ATI's crossfire sux beyond tri fire, so going quad will actually reduce your FPS, DONT DO IT, go for 1 5970

Because youve so much cash to spend on a build lol, id add a second hand 8800GT, its nearly the same as an nvidia 250, but should only cost you 50euro second hand. Theres only the odd games that use it, ive one myself but its dead handy for Batman AA, Metro 2033 and Just Cause 2( although this is the only game i havnt tried it in and the demo was a bit messy to get working )

Solitaire

If you need to spend all that money for some reason you can dedicate some of what you've saved from the second HD5970 to some nice storage solutions. Decent SSD for starters

Ironbar

With this kind of money to spend go for the best in everything !

Don't forget to get Win 7 64-bit, otherwise your RAM over 3.5GB will be useless !