This section sounds like a dichotomy, but really it's not. One can spend a lot for a gaming rig and get a really poor return on investment. I'm all for spending money if you have it to spend, but only if it makes sense. A lot of high-end systems seem determined just to spend money for the sake of spending money. This section will spend money .. lots of it, but will still try to be smart about it. Yeah, that $1000 hand-painted case looks cool, but it doesn't help you frag that poor sod who greatly deserves it. That triple monitor panoramic view backed by two or three of the highest-end graphics cards on the planet just might though.
As mentioned in the introduction, all prices are from Newegg unless otherwise specified. No special prices (e.g., after mail-in-rebate prices or combo prices are used if that can be avoided. You should be able to load these items in your cart and get them at or near the prices quoted.
CPU - No change this time. As with the March 2010 build, my CPU recommendation for this build is the Intel Core i7-980X (Extreme Edition), which is based on the Gulftown core. For a number of enthusiast builds before that, I recommended the Core i7 920 (and later the 930) over the costlier 9xx models above it. That's because of the 920's fine overclocking ability, which allowed it to be clocked higher than those models. That said, it doesn't matter how much the 920 can be overclocked, it can't be overclocked to have two more cores. I cringe at paying the ridiculously large amount of extra money for an unlocked multiplier, there's no denying that the Intel Core i7-980X is the fastest desktop CPU on the planet today. At least the price has dropped nearly $100 since March. Undoubtedly, there will be cheaper (i.e., clocked slower) versions of this architecture someday, but the 980X is what's available today.
The move from 45nm to 32nm die size allowed two more cores to be added while maintaining the same TDP of 130W. That's nothing short of incredible. They added roughly 50% more transistors and kept the same power dissipation. Benchmarks show that the two new cores give a nearly linear increase in processing throughput for those applications that can make use of multiple cores. As games have started to use multiple cores as a standard, this is important to a gaming build. Clocked at 3.33 GHz per core and with Intel's Turboboost technology allowing selected cores to go to 3.6GHz, it comes somewhat overclocked from the 920's speeds to start with. Early benchmarks from the Guru of 3D, Overclocker's Club, and bit-tech show that reaching overclock speeds of 4.3 - 4.7GHz is possible (with water cooling in most cases). Newegg has the full retail version of the 980X and a new bargain price of $1,000.00. (That is $80 less than in March. Joy.)
CPU Cooler - Since the plan is to support overclocking the CPU, a good aftermarket cooler is in order. In this build, the GPU cards also deserve some water cooled goodness. The motherboard we're choosing below also supports water cooling of the north bridge. All-in-all, it's time to go with a full water cooling kit. I'm going to refrain from water cooling the disk drives .. at least this time. The cooler for this build will be a standard water block cooler from Danger Den, the 1/2" OD (outside diameter) MC-TDX for Intel I7/Nehalem/1366. Since I'm going with water-cooling, I'm going to put all the cooling-related items in a new category.
Before I discount the stock cooler completely, however, I do want to send some kudos Intel's way. The stock cooler on the Core i7 920 et. al. series was barely adequate to the point of being laughable. It worked, but overclocking with it was really not an option. Intel has responded with a serious cooling solution for the 980X, the DBX-B, which can be seen at the bottom of this article at the Overclocker's Club. This cooler includes a backplate, so it must be mounted to the motherboard while it is outside the case, but hallelujah we don't have to worry about those terrible stock posts popping out of the motherboard. Thank you, Intel.
Motherboard - The new Intel 980X doesn't require the most expensive motherboard money can buy, but with the graphics solution I'm going with, it's turns out to be a good idea. I'm sticking with Gigabyte on this build since they're my favorite motherboard maker at the moment, but for this build, I've chosen the top-of-the-line GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD9. At $700, it's not cheap, but has dual NF200 chips to support up to four graphics cards with x16 lanes for each. It also has the wonderful heavy copper PCB of the Ultra Durable (UD) line, 24 power phase design, DDR3 2200 memory support up to 24GB, 10 SATA ports - two of which are SATA3 (6.0 Gb/s), 6 USB 2.0 ports on the back (two of which are combo USB/ESATA2 ports), 2 USB 3.0 ports and headers for 6 additional USB 2.0 ports, which can be used to run USB 2.0 to the front panel of the case. The rear panel also has a switch for clearing the CMOS, which can be very handy when testing overclocking setups. The motherboard has onboard switches for power and reset to aid in building the system and LEDs all over for monitoring northbridge voltage, southbridge voltage, northbridge temperature, northbridge power phase, system power phase, memory phase, memory voltage, CPU voltage and CPU temperature. These are very nice while building, and with a case with a window, allow for a quick visual check of the system at any time. A unique addition to this motherboard is the passive cooling of the X-58 chipset that also sports built-in water block connections. More information on this motherboard can be found at Gigabyte's web site. The manual can be downloaded here.
Memory - In this component, I'm going with 6 GB of Mushkin Enhanced Ridgeback DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Model 998826 memory. It has very good timings of 6-8-6-24. In the last build, I specified Mushkin Enhanced Redline 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Model 998691 memory. That memory had some of the lowest factory timing settings I've seen to date - 6-7-6-18. However, it seems to be completely out of stock (even directly from Mushkin). Mushkin makes an even faster version, Model 998730 with 6-6-5-18 timings, but it's also completely out of stock. It sounds like some supply issues are been occurring with their ultra-fast line. Depending on the overclocking, we may have to relax the timings a bit, but those are great starting numbers. Even with this speed, the memory does not exceed 1.65V maximum for memory. You can find out more about this memory from Mushkin's web site. There is problem with the Redline memory with Ascent heatsinks, which was pointed out in this article at Hardware Canucks. That is that the memory heat spreader/heatsink is so wide that it's not possible or very tight to put in two sets of these in adjacent banks.
Graphics Card - With the release of the Nvidia GTX 465, GTX 470 and GTX 480, we finally have some real challengers to the ATI 5800 and 5900 series. To reach the frame rates that a pair of 5970s in 4-way Crossfire racked up, we would have to go with dual or triple SLI configurations of the GTX 480. With a couple driver revisions since last March and some articles showing very good scalability of the GTX 480's in double and triple SLI, I think we have a winner. [1],[2],[3],[4] While I'm not strictly an Nvidia fan boy - I've owned both brands over the years - I generally prefer Nvidia products over ATI ones simply because I have had significantly fewer issues with Nvidia drivers. Now that Nvidia is about to release their version of surround monitor gaming on three monitors, I'm happy to go with Nvidia. (Although Nvidia's 3D Vision Surround may require 3D equipment as part of the set up. I'm not clear on that, yet.)
The downside of triple SLI 480 GTXs is heat, power, and noise (with stock cooling). There are a number of videos that let one hear the sound of a GTX 480 running under load. It's noisy. It sucks a lot of juice, too, but that just means we need the mother of all power supply units. The heat and noise we are going to handle with water cooling. Danger den makes a very nice nickel-plated water block for the new GTX 480. We're going to need three of them, plus two SLI water cooling kits to join them together. It's a pretty sight to behold though. Three boards in SLI require three PCI-Express x16 slots. That's why the expensive GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD9 motherboard has been specified. It has four. Since we are going to be water cooling, we don't need to start with an overclocked model (that typically sports better air cooling). I've been happy with my current MSI Nvidia GTX 275, so for the GTX 480s, lets start with three MSI model N480GTX-M2D15-B ones. This turns out to be $20 cheaper than the pair of 5970s in four-way Crossfire.
Sound - In my own machine, I have a Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Champion Series sound system. This is the one with the separate breakout box for headphones and various audio/midi inputs and outputs. I'm not an audiophile by any means, but I can tell the difference in the sound quality between this card and the onboard sound of the various motherboards it's been in. I keep moving this from build to build because I like it so much. Vista-64 support is solid and Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit) drivers are stable. If I had any complaint, it's that the drivers are too stable; they haven't been updated in months. I've chosen the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional 70SB088600002 Sound Card. This is a repeat from several previous build recommendations. Because the motherboard has no legacy PCI slots, a standard PCI card won't work. Therefore, we go with a PCI-Express (x1) card that can fit in the bottom slot below the graphics cards. There's no need for a separate box for front panel audio since the card has support for such on it. (Previous X-Fi cards often did not support front panel audio short of having the break out box.) There is more info about this card at Creative's web site.
Case - My first choice would be the Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW full tower case even though it costs $300. The size of this case is large, but the motherboard is even larger - an XL-ATX form factor. There is an approved list of cases for the GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD9 and the Obsidian 800D isn't on it. Instead, I'm going with a Cooler Master HAF X RC-942-KKN1 full tower case, which is on the list. It also has room at the top for the radiator for the water cooling system. There is more on this case at Cooler Master's web site. The manual is found there. Bottom line is everything should fit inside and it's $100 cheaper than the 800D.
Power Supply - No beating around the bush with this power supply. Wimpy PSUs need not apply. Go to the Nvidia's SLI Zone web site and specifically go to the certified power supplies section. Check out the PSUs listed under three GeForce GTX 480 GPU's, you'll see none are less than 1200W. Those graphics cards are powerful and require real power. The CPU is a decent little hand warmer, too. The motherboard requires not one, but two 8-pin CPU auxiliary power connection. For this, I'm only looking at my top tier manufacturers. I'd like to have gone with PC Power & Cooling, but they seem to be dropping out of the highest-end of the market as their largest current PSU is only 950W. As I did in the march build, I'm going with another of my favorites, Enermax and their Galaxy EVO EGX1250EWT 1250W 80 Plus Bronze Certified Power Supply. It has active Power Factor Correction (PFC) (as do all PSUs I recommend nowadays), it's modular, and the 80-Plus Bronze certification means the unit is at least 85% efficient at 50% loading (although we'll be loading it beyond 50% which makes it less so). It comes with the two 8-pin connections for the motherboard, the three 6-pin + 8-pin connections for the GTX 480s, and plenty of power left for the hard drives.
Hard Drive - I would still like to go hog wild here and go with only Solid State Disks (SSDs) in a RAID 0 or 0 + 1 array, but they are still prohibitively too expensive to get "enough" storage space. RAID controllers also don't pass the TRIM command through to the SSDs, so that's an issue. The TRIM command causes the SSD to do garbage cleanup to keep themselves tuned up. There have also been some benchmarks that seem to indicate that RAID cards for these drives may even hinder their throughput. For this build, I'm going a single new OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTX200G 2.5" 200GB SATA II drive that uses the new Sandforce controller. Unfortunately, this relatively small size means jockying files and apps around, but the speed of SSDs is too amazing to ignore. The SSD drive will be for booting the OS and for your most-used apps and games. All other files like video, pictures, lesser used applications and games on a standard hard disk RAID array. The case being used here is plenty big enough, so we could put in the SSD and still have room for a RAID 0 or RAID 0+1 array. I'd been a big proponent of Western Digital's Velociraptor drives, but, with one or two exceptions, they can't even run in the same races as these new SSD drives.
Many cases will require an adapter to allow (usually up to two) 2.5" SSD drives to fit in a 3.5" drive bay. However, this case can hold 2.5" SSD drives in the lower two 3.5"/2.5" hot swap bays just below the 5 1/4" bays. Additionally, the top internal 3.5" bay also has a 2.5" adapter. An item to keep in mind is that once the SSD is up and running, we will want to shut off any Windows automatic defragmentation of the disks. SSDs don't defragment like a hard disk and the extra writes just serve to shorten the SSDs life. Windows 7, which we are using as our OS for this build, has native support for SSDs. (Look up the TRIM command.)
We still need a bit more storage than just one 200GB drive, so I'm going with my current favorite hard disk vendor, Western Digital, the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB SATA hard drives. I've added not one, not two, but four drives to be used in a 0+1 RAID array. RAID 0+1 is my preferred RAID type in that it provides the security of a mirrored RAID 1 array with the speed of a striped RAID 0 array. Having lost not one, not two, but three disks (not at the same time, however) in my current RAID 0+1 array recently, I vouch for it. I replaced the failed disk and rebuilt the array with no data loss all three times. That's the point. This setup then is a 2TB array made from 4TB of disk drives. It might sound wasteful, but if you crave speed, but require security, this is the ticket. We certainly have room in the case, and we're not trying to conserve money here; we're just not trying to waste it. Additionally, a smart person might set up automatic backup of the key files on the SSD RAID 0 array to the traditional hard drive RAID 0+1 array. (Hint, hint.) Newegg has these back in stock again, so I'm going with a pair from them and another pair from TigerDirect. (We get them from different sources in order to try to avoid getting four from the same [potentially bad] batch [if that were to happen].)
DVD-RW - While DVD-RW drives are a commodity, Plextor quality is still the best. For this component, I've selected the Plextor 24X DVD/CD Writer Black SATA Model PX-880SA with LightScribe support & 2MB Cache, SATA interface, Retail version. The price has dropped $13 since October's build to $40. That's a good price, in my opinion. I've loved every Plextor burner I've had (even when they had only SCSI drives).
Water Cooling System - We're going with water cooling for a couple reasons: the a single GTX 480s run hot and the fan revs up its RPM to a really noisy level as it heats up. A water cooling system will be much more effective a managing heat and noise. As mentioned before, the motherboard already includes a water block for the north bridge (which uses 1/4" ID tubing). For a complete system, we need a radiator (with two 3/8" ID fittings), a fluid pump (with two 3/8" ID fittings), a fluid reservoir (with two 3/8" ID fittings), a CPU block (with two 3/8" ID fittings), a GPU block for each graphics card, a set of SLI adapters (x2 for the three graphics cards), a 3/8" ID 45° adapter for the top side of the GPU block of cards (coming from the north bridge area), a 3/8" ID 90° adapter for the bottom of the GPU block, a pair of 3/8" to 1/4" Inside Diameter (ID) T-adapters (for routing a loop to the north bridge water block that uses 1/4" ID tubing from the main 3/8" ID line going to the CPU and GPUs), a flow monitor, 3/8" & 1/4" ID tubing and fluid. I'm going with one vendor for most of these these components - Danger Den. Swiftech would be another good source, but I like what I saw with Danger Den. The Cooler Master HAF X case has screw holes for triple 120-sized radiator (sans the triple 120mm fans). We will add the optional 200mm top fan thus using the pair of 200mm fans to actively cool the radiator.
The route I've planned is from the radiator to the CPU block (using a Danger Den MC-TDX for Intel I7/Nehalem/1366 with acrylic back plate), then routing to the GPU area with a Acrylic Tee with two 1/2" OD connectors and one 3/8" OD used to create the 3/8" loop to the north bridge, while the main 1/2" loop continues to the GPU cards. The graphics cards themselves will be bridged with a pair of SLI adapters connecting together three Danger Den DD-GTX480 Nickel Top and Base GPU water blocks - one for each GPU. This will travel the flow meter, then to the reservoir and pump unit and finally back to the radiator. Some 1/2" tubing and a little 3/8" tubing is needed as well as fluid for the system. We need to pay attention whether the blocks come with compression fittings or some other type fitting and order clamps or extras as needed. The flow indicator to let us know that the water is circulating through the system.
Operating System - Here we go with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM version for $95. This particular version is for system builders, which means you get to do your own product support. I'm not sure how that's any different than the retail version when it comes right down to it. I always end up tracking down my software issues myself. There's just so much info available on the web I've never found the need to use the Microsoft telephone support system.
Miscellaneous - There are a couple miscellaneous items with this build. The first is a 12g tube of Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound to be used as the thermal compound to be used with the various water blocks. This is a big tube, but we are going to be using it a lot. The second item is an additional 200mm fan for the top of the case.
This build is usually the most fun to do because there are no explicit cost limits. Putting together a water cooling system though is pretty tedious work. There are a lot of pieces parts and everything is sold separately. This build, the cost of the system went from $5,434 for this build to $6,094 even though several of the components cost less. Most of the increase in this build was in the cost of going with water cooling. The extra heat and noise generated by three Nvidia GTX 480s in triple SLI had to be mitigated. Add one or even three (at least 24" and probably 30") monitors and a good set of surround sound speakers. I'd like to be able to afford one myself.
If you build this system (or one based off of it), I love to hear from you with any tips, problems, praises or jeers you have by emailing me.
March 2010
January 2010
October 2009
August 2009