A good long lasting gaming and multipurpose rig?

[dlf]

You all figure this will be a good rig for playing most current games (and past games?)

• Budget - Within about $1500 (American)
• Resolution - At first 1680 x 1050 - Eventually HD (and a dual monitor setup)
• Games / Settings Desired: Everything from DOS era on, yes you read that correctly. Most should probably be high settings (if not ultra)
• Any other intensive software or special things you do (Frequent video encoding, 3D modeling, etc) - Folding at home (may run in background) - no Video editing, no modeling
• Country - USA
• Parts that can be reused: Not that I can think of (see current specs as to why)
• Buying Parts: Before the end of the year, hopefully before fall or end of summer
• Will NOT prebuilt

Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/6s6U
Part price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/6s6U/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/6s6U/benchmarks/

• CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($179.99 @ Microcenter)
• CPU Cooler: Cooler Master V6 GT 93.7 CFM CPU Cooler ($44.99 @ Newegg)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3P ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($184.98 @ Newegg)
• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($81.00 @ Newegg)
• Hard Drive: Crucial M4 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($294.00 @ B&H)
• Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($119.99 @ NCIX US)
• Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($264.98 @ Newegg)
• Case: Corsair 500R White ATX Mid Tower Case ($139.98 @ Newegg)
• Power Supply: Raidmax 850W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($99.99 @ Amazon)
• Optical Drive: LG WH12LS39 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($69.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $1479.89
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated 2012-04-04 22:13 EDT-0400)


These I will buy later. If a better monitor can be suggested that'd be excellent)

Monitor: Asus VE276Q 27.0" Monitor ($273.42 @ Mac Connection)*
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Full (32/64-bit) ($239.99 @ B&H)

Current specs:

• Case: No idea (although it is a HP slimline, gray) - that should give some idea of the sort of case.
• Motherboard: Asus A8N-BR (Pyrite) (1 PCI, 2 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Video, LAN, IEEE-1394)
• Motherboard Chipset - nVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE, AMD Hammer
• Power Supply: No idea
• Processor: DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2000 MHz (10 x 200) 3800+
• CPU Cooler: A fan
• Memory:
• - DIMM1: Kingston 1 GB DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM (5-4-4-12 (at) 266 MHz) (4-4-4-12 (at) 266 MHz) (3-3-3-9 (at) 200 MHz)
• - DIMM2: Kingston 2G-UDIMM 2 GB DDR2-667 DDR2 SDRAM (5-5-5-15 (at) 333 MHz) (4-4-4-12 (at) 266 MHz) (3-3-3-9 (at) 200 MHz)
• Hard Drive: 250 GB ATA drive
• Optical Drive HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GSA-H20L ATA Device (DVD+R9:8x, DVD-R9:4x, DVD+RW:16x/8x, DVD-RW:16x/6x, DVD-RAM:5x, DVD-ROM:16x, CD:48x/32x/48x DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM)
• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit

And what I wanted in a new system:

Hardware

• USB 2.0 speeds that are minimum of 30 MB a second
• USB 3.0 speeds that are at lest 300+ MB/s [I will get / use an SSD]
• Firewire (and or eSata port) --- because I have a external hardrive that has both along with USB
• At lest a solid terabyte (1.5 TB)
• Has either a VGA or DVI port (current monitor I have has both)
• Also has support for HDMI (for the future monitor)
• Multi card reader (although I mainly need SD and Memory Pro Stick Duo)
• Able to use a PS3 controller AND A XBOX 360 controller (yes I know 360 is native support . . .)
• I would like a quad core.
• Multiple internal DVD drives - one blu-ray drive (watch movies, burn backups) - Also to make installations faster
• Plenty of 3.5/5.25 drive bays . . .

Software

-

• Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit) (Main OS) -- Mostly for languages
• - Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit (if needed)
• - May first run Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit - as I have both 32/64 bit discs now)
• - Windows XP (if 64 bit won't run some of the games I have) (if needed)
• - Folding@home - (although I use my PS3 for that when I'm not using it)

Gaming Software:

Will use steam:

• Elder Scrolls (Morrowind -> Skyrim)
• Portal 1 & 2
• Batman Arkham (Asylum/City)
• Sonic Generations
• Quake (all)
• Doom (all)
• Wolfenstein (3D) & 2009 - and the others
• Commander keen
• Bioshock (1/2) (perhaps infinite)
• L.A. Noire
• Bejeweled 2/3
• Peggle
• Various COD's
• anything else that interests me

• Will use CD/DVD's of the games I have:
• Warcraft 2 - Tides of Darkness & Beyond the Dark Portal
• Warcraft 3 - Reign of Chaos & Frozen Throne
• Diablo 1 - 3 (when it comes out)
• The Sims 1 - And all expansions
• The Sims 2 (probably)
• Simcity 4000 & Rushhour
• May use emulation (to run up to the PS2/Wii)

Other Thoughts

• Eventually a dual monitor setup (and one be HD resolution)
• I will wait for some parts (hard drives, GPU, etc) to drop in price.
• Will wait for IvyBridge. . . .
• I WANT UEFI, NOT regular old BIOS (that this slimline has
• May eventually like a dual GPU (crossfire?)

Monitor Thoughts:

• First and foremost: HD
• Supports: HDMI, DVI, Displayport (if the motherboard of the computer does)
• Within 1 - 2 MS response time
• Screen size - 25 to about 27 inches (this desk doesn't really have a lot of room)
• Also is widescreen.

[Tradesman]

Looks like it will be a good rig, one question on it though, you've chosen the Z68 UD3, but from the component list, it doesn't look like you'll be using the SSD Cache ability or the use of the on-board available GPU via the CPU, so might give the to the P67 UD3, which has the same feature set (less the two mentioned, and save $70+, then could put that into higher end Video or DRAM, both of which would be advantageous to gaming

[dlf]

That should not be the motherboard, http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-p8z68mpro should be. I choose this more for the UEFI than anything else . . . . If a motherboard is closer to $100 than $200 - has UEFI, Intel's smart response tech and what-ever else I'd probably be fine with that.

[Tradesman]

UEFI is the standard replacement for the older BIOS and used in basically all P67/Z68's and Smart Response is primarily a caching utility that uses an SSD, most people go with a 20-to 60 GB SSD for that as it's what it's dedicated to - a bad thing about the Technology is that it's a cache on an SSD, which means write after write, and writes are the bain of an SSD, and it is fast yes, but you can do better with a fair amount of DRAM and using a RAMDisk for cache and temp files. The SMART RESPONSE is basically a spin of the RAMDrive, but with todays prices on DRAM, getting a more expensive SSD for only cache use, especially considering the life of it may be short is sort of cost prohibitive.

[dlf]

If I had quad (triple?) channel memory and decent amount of RAM (more than 16 GB probably) I'd like to try a RAMdisk. As for the 256 GB SSD -- I presume some of the games I get will have long load times thus I put them on the SSD and it should (I hope) reduce load times.

[Tradesman]

DataRam has a free version of RAMDisk that you can try, it's limited to 4 GB, but you could redirect all you browser temp and cache files to it and still have 12 available (you can also redirect Windows temp files, Office and other apps that have temp files. On the SSD, I'd load your OS on it, along with your primary apps and then the games you want on it (in the future, if the 256 starts feeling small can always pick up another one and set the two up in RAID, rather than go a 256, I got a pair of 120 SSDs in RAID ) for the OS, apps, etc, then send all the temp stuff to a RAMDrive