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 the 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 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 - This is the same CPU as in the August and October builds. I'm still looking to find another king of the hill. We're going to want to overclock the CPU as far as possible. The 920 has been overclocked at and above 4GHz by everyone and their brother, and allows finer overclocking than the similarly priced Core i7 860 since the CPU multiplier is unlocked. The 920 (Nehalem) processor is $289. The next models up, the 940, 950 and 960 are nearly twice as much at $550 and up. The top model, the 975 Extreme is $990. For this rig, we really want the fastest CPU available, but paying nearly $600 or $1000 for an increase of .4 and .67 GHz, respectively is just money wasted. We're going to beef up the cooling here to allow for smooth overclocking well beyond the 975s stock speed. As far as doing the overclocking is concerned, a lot of sites can help with the settings to try for. One useful one I found is at tech Power-Up.com, which has a list of the settings other have used during successfully overclocking the 920. X-bit labs also has a nice Core i7 overclocking guide as does Hot Hardware.com Dec 2008 and Hot Hardware.com April, 2009.
CPU Cooler - Since the plan is to support overclocking the CPU, a good aftermarket cooler is in order. The one chosen for this build is the Cooler Master V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP. I gave serious thought to going with either water cooling for the whole system or with a special CPU-only water cooling kit as well. I just couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger on one. There's a lot of extra work involved with water cooling all the devices in the case (CPU, GPUs, northbridge, power phasing MOSFETs, memory, hard drives, etc). We can still air cool at a reasonable level with very good overclocking overhead using this cooler, a large case with decent airflow and a number of (large, quiet) fans. While we won't be able to overclock into the upper stratosphere this way, it will be more than fast enough for anything out there today (and the next couple years at least). I expect this to allow CPU overclocking to at least 3.6 GHz, but 3.8 GHz or better should also be possible with stability. 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. This thing's heavy, so the backplate's pretty much a requirement.
Motherboard - Since I'm sticking with the same CPU, I'm again sticking with Gigabyte on this build since they're my favorite motherboard maker at the moment. For this build, I've spec-ed the GA-EX58-UD5 as the motherboard. At $270, it's not cheap (nor is it the most expensive), but Supports triple SLI or Crossfire (at x16,x16,x8), has the wonderful 2 oz copper PCB, 12+2+2 power phasing, DDR3 2100 memory support up to 24GB, 10 SATA ports, 8 USB ports on the back (with headers for 4 more such as the front panel of the case). The motherboard also 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, 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. More information on this motherboard can be found at Gigabyte's web site. I will admit looking long and hard at the EVGA E758-A1 motherboard because of a number of good reviews. That would be my second choice only because of the 12 GB memory limit (which seems absurd today), 1 fewer SATA ports, 4 fewer USB ports on the back and 4 fewer overall USB ports. There is a rebate on the EVGA board to bring its price down to the same as the Gigabyte one is at with a current instant savings. I like instant savings more than sending in rebates. If you looked at the list of overclocked systems and their parameters pointed to under CPU above, you notice a lot of those builders used the GA-EX58-UD5.
Memory - In this component, I'm going with 6 GB of very fast Mushkin Enhanced Redline 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Model 998805 memory. This memory is made specifically for the X58 chipset and has some of the lowest factory timing settings I've seen to date - 6-8-6-24. Depending on the overclocking, we may have to relax the timing, but those are great starting numbers. Even with this speed, the memory does not exceed the 1.65V maximum for memory. You can find out more about this memory from mushkin's web site. I don't know how I missed this memory last time, but it's in here this build. My one hesitation about this memory as pointed out in this article at Hardware Canucks, 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 - The Nvidia GTX 295 has finally been replaced by the ATI Radeon HD 5970 as the fastest graphics card on the market. Like the GTX 295, which has a pair of GPUs in SLI internally, the 5970 has a pair of GPUs in Crossfire mode. While the motherboard for this rig handles up to three matched graphics cards using either Nvidia SLI or ATI 3-Way Crossfire, we're going to go with a pair of ATI Radeon HD 5970s, the SAPPHIRE 100280OCSR Radeon HD 59702GB 512 (256 x 2)-bit GDDR5 video card w/ Eyefinity. That's right. This rig is going to be created for triple-monitor goodness. The monitors themselves are not going to be figured into the cost. Just set aside money for a few 30" monitors. Can you say 7680x1600 resolution? Yum. You would need to get the latest Catalyst 9.12 hotfix drivers, but then you know to always get the latest drivers for all your new hardware, right>
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 available. With that in mind, I've chosen the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional 70SB088600002 Sound Card. This is a repeat from the two build recommendations. Because of the layout of the motherboard, a standard PCI card won't work. Therefore, we go with a PCI-Express (x1) card that can fit in the slot "behind" or "above" the first graphics card. With this card, 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 - While I still like the Antec Twelve Hundred full tower computer case, but there's another case that's caught my eye. That case is the Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW full tower case. At $280, it's not cheap, but it has some incredible features. First off, it's just dead sexy -- if a computer case can be sexy -- with a black brushed finish and tight fit. It has three separate heating/airflow zones. It has four hot-swappable SATA bays for drives. It has superior cable management. We will add three additional 120mm fans along the tops of the case to suck air out of the case. The size of this case is very large, but the graphics cards we have chosen are very long and get quite warm. This case allows for the airflow needed to keep them cool. The manual for this case is at Corsair's site and more general information can be found as well.
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 dual GeForce GTX 295 GPU's, you'll see none are less than 1200W. Those graphics cards are powerful and they require real power. The CPU is a decent little hand warmer, too. For this, I'm only looking at my top tier manufacturers. I'd like to have gone with PC Power & Cooling, but at $500 for their 1200W unit, I'll have to pass. (Come on, now, PC Power & Cooling.) Instead, 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).
Hard Drive - I debated about going hog wild here and going 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. Additionally, RAID controllers don't pass the TRIM command through to the SSDs. The TRIM command causes the SSD to do garbage cleanup to keep themselves tuned up. For this build, I'm going with a pair of 160 GB drives as JBOD. The first drive will be for booting the OS, putting on your favorite apps. The second would be for games currently being played hot and heavy. Unfortunately, these sizes mean jockying files and apps around, but the speeds are too amazing to ignore. The general scenario is to put the OS, some often used apps on the SSD. Having a second drive will allow the current games being played to be kept on an SSD. 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 the new SSD drives.
The generally recognized market leader seems to be the 2nd generation Intel SSDs, but they are only available in sizes up to 160 GB. Rather than one of these, we'll go with a pair of Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2M160G2XXX. IBM reduced the price back to $489 from $609 for these since the last build. Compared to a standard hard drive (whether in a RAID configuration or not), any of these latest SSDs are lightning fast. PC Perspective has a nice comparison chart.
You may note that in the Miscellaneous section below, there's an adapter to allow up to two 2.5" SSD drives fit in one 3.5" drive bay. These are really made to fit in laptop drive bays, so the adapter is required for desktops. Another 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 a logical 320GB 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, but two 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 both 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 ZipZoomFly. (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 $10 since October's build to $43. That's still a tad on the expensive side, but I've loved every Plextor burner I've had (since their SCSI-only days even).
Operating System - Here we go with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM version for $105. 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 few miscellaneous items with this build. First is four extra case 120 mm case fans, a tube of Arctic Silver 5 to be used as the thermal compound between the Intel i7 920 and the Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler, and finally an SSD 2.5" to 3.5" drive adapter.
There are no explicit cost limits here, which makes designing this build a lot of fun. That said, wasting money is stupid, so I've tried to be somewhat outrageous without being frivolous. This machine should be lightning fast at booting, playing games, sorting out your life, curing cancer, or any task you put it to. This build, the cost of the system went from $3,778 in August to $4,215 in October and up to $4,546 for this build. Last build, I was irked that most of the increase in cost was just increases in the prices of many of the components. That happened to some of the components in this build, but the extra few hundred dollars in this build allows for Eyefinity with 3-6 monitors. The monitors will be expensive, too being 24" or larger - most likely 30." Just imagine though being surrounded by the panoramic views.
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.