The Ultimate Dream Computer

Ah ok, I should have seen the original

 

Hello. Well I am looking to build a new computer. I have a budget of $1000 Can change depending on gains.

I want it to be for gaming. Motherboard should be able to run SLI. I want to be able to run all new games, Diablo 3, Guild wars 2, BF3, skyrim etc.. What I do not need to be included at this time is Monitor, Graphics cards, keyboards or mouse. I want a tower that glows blue and all the required parts to be able to do the above.

Go wild, let me know what I need and best place to get these parts!

 

you'll need a graphic card
without it you'll not be able to play anything good at all
well maybe black hawk down

 

Ha -_- suppose I should have specified I don't need one because I already have one

 

Which graphics card do you already have? Just to check that it is powerful enough to be of use with a high-spec system.

 

Yeah just having a "graphics card" doesn't help much. Some top-end cards from a few years ago are now a fraction the speed of today's top-end cards.

 

Radeon hd 6870
I will upgrade in future but ATM I need specs for a good computer thank you.

 

For the record if you have an HD6870, then it's crossfire you're looking for, not SLI.

In one week's time the new Core i5 3570K is released. You would do well to hold off purchasing until that is out, then pick one up and an accompanying P77 board.

 

Can someone lay out a build for a decent computer. I understand the i5 and p77 but what about ram, power supply... Thanks

 

My only question after all of this is about cases. Should you pick the case you want first, or the parts first? If you're trying to build a desktop computer that can run on 2-3 screens, what would be best?

 

Just curious, what would this computer ideally be used for?

 

You'll need a larger case, meaning not one for like a Mini-ITX or Micro-ITX Motherboard. I usually pick out the parts, then look at what kind of cases they have available for those options. The Motherboard details like on newegg, will usually say what kind of Form Factor it is, then you can look for cases made for that Form Factor (i.e. ATX, Mini-ITX, Micro-ITX).

 

Wow an FX-55, I haven't seen one of those for a few years!

 

WOW that is one hardcore old school rig! There was a time when I would have had reoccurring dreams about that kind of hardware. (Still probably would, lol)

I know if I had an FX-51, 53, 55 or 57, I would never want to get rid of it... Especially the Clawhammer FX-51 or 53. What classic stuff!

I remember the good ole days when the differences between Claw/SledgeHammer, Newcastle, Winchester, Venice and San Diego were important. This is the stuff that was relevant when I started building. I feel like I stepped in during some sort of golden age of home building. Good hardware was worth getting excited over, AMD was thoroughly embarrassing Intel, and Nvidia video cards actually had worse graphics.

Still sitting on my original X850XT from back in the day. My third video card ever, and my first high-end one. Sees use even to this day in assorted systems. Still miles more powerful than most integrated video, though unfortunately(or fortunately) that gap is shrinking quickly. It's only comparable to the really good AMD integrated these days, though it's worth noting that AMD's APU chips are fantastic CPUs and under-appreciated.

Another blast from the past:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1464

I remember reading articles like this and seriously considering a 6600GT for Doom 3, Far Cry, Half Life 2, etc. I miss those times!

 

I had systems either side of that era - the Athlon XP 3000+ and X800 Pro build was short lived due to the destruction of a PSU failure. That was my first foray into custom builds really as a metamorphosis of a shelf PC where almost everything but the CPU, board and one hard disk and stick of RAM was replaced. Its replacement was a ground-up custom built (but not by me) X2 4200+ and X1900XT. The CPU is long gone (sold to a user on this forum no less!), and the first motherboard (Asus A8N-SLI SE) only lasted a few months, but the case is still in use today, as is the graphics card on a periodic basis. The oldest card that sees continuous use nowadays is the X1600 Pro, which is in the PC I brought into work. Apart from a few glitches here and there (all Office 2013 related), it still works well in Windows 8. It's quite alarming when I realise just how old a lot of the infrastructure I'm using is now!

Reminds me - I need to rewrite my specs page again, it's changed a fair bit since last time.

 

You do have quite a lot of good hardware Sam

What I find hilarious, is the continuing stability of my Q6600 and X38-DS4.

3.708GHz 9 x 412MHz w/ 1.45v
2 x 2GB Mushkin XP Ascent PC2-6400 @ DDR2 825 CL 4-4-4-12 w/ 2.1v

All on a Corsair 550VX slightly newer than my malfunctioning 620HX that affected OC stability. The 550VX still reports the same voltages as when it was new. (knock on wood)

Very nice performing system. Still quite high end, and remains the benchmark I measure all my other hardware by. Has never skipped a beat, frozen, or crashed in 4-5 years(hard to keep track of component age, lol). This tells me I could have probably gotten a much stronger OC with it when it was new. The Tuniq Tower has interestingly always been just fine on the Q6600. Idles in the high 20s low 30s and usually never touches 60 while 100% load. To top it all off it's usually stuffed into a cabinet and Folding@Home all day

What excellent hardware. Am very fond of that old girl and wouldn't have a single complaint if still using it as my main box

 

Coming to you now from my X38-DS4 (that turns 5 in April! :O), which used to house the Q6600 I had for a few months before trading up to a US import Q9550 E0 (back when we only got C1 over here!) as my Q6600 was one of the newer batches that wouldn't overclock very far.
For the past 3 1/2 years (so most of its life) the board has homed an E5200 purchased for the princely sum of £50. What an amazing bargain that was. With 4GB of RAM and a 60GB Corsair Force 3 SSD that was also a similar figure, this machine absolutely flies in Windows 8. It's barely distinguishable from the 4Ghz i5 750 in my games PC for desktop usage. Just goes to show how important memory and primary storage are for a machine's performance. The office here has a load of Lenovo machines that also have E5200s, but with Win7, 1GB of RAM and mechanical disks. They are borderline unusable. It's only through using a Citrix-delivered cloud desktop that people can really do any work on them.

 

I remember quite clearly you also used an OCd E4300 as your primary desktop CPU up to and including your 4870 X2. It was the desire for the second card that drove you to a quad core, yes?

Of course that was at a time when the budget CPUs didn't really differentiate much from the high end ones. What did the E6 series have over it, extra cache? Woohoo.

Later on when quads started to get more prevalent, it wasn't so easy to get such cheap performance

Had an E6600 for a short while, then an E6750. The E6600 was good, but the E6750 was a masterpiece. 3.6GHz all day and night.

 

Correct. The tangible indicator was, as much as I hate to admit it, 3dmark. I added the 4870X2 in place of the 4870 and the score basically didn't change. I put the Q6600 in and it suddenly jumped enormously. I could tell the difference in games too, but nonetheless 3dmark provided me with a very loose 'numerical' indicator that I needed a beefier CPU. The E4300 was still a nice chip as it could do 3.2Ghz quite easily despite a starting clock of just 1.8, and believe it or not, at that clock speed, per-core it was pretty much the same level of performance as a 3.4Ghz Phenom II, and that was back at the beginning of 2007, for a cost of just over £100 (or $135+tax). I still have that CPU too and it's reunited with the X1900XT in the old Windows XP box, although that doesn't see much use of late. Need to try and find more uses for it really, that PC's too pretty to leave languishing in the cupboard

 

I think we all would like to hang onto favorite hardware of years past. I sure try