powerclown

Can you guys recommend some specs for a state of the art, hardcore gaming system that would be ready to handle the new wave of fps games about to ship? Budget ~$2000-2500. Thanks for any help...

Jesus Pimp

Check out http://www.hardocp.com

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bltzkriegmcanon

Jesus. What is the deal with people having this much money set aside for a gaming rig. Incredible. It cost me less than $900 to build mine. Granted, it's getting a little old in the joints, after 15 months of use, but it's still got at least another year in it. Nonetheless, I will answer the call as best I can. So, a eh?

Well, I'll see what I can dooooo. First and foremost, I'm here to recommend Intel. I can give some damn decent AMD-based solutions, but in reality, guys like Lasereth are the real people to give recommendations on that.

First off, video card. Since you've got $2500 bucks to spend on the uber-rig, let's get you something nice. My opinion, you're gonna have the choice of either a) ATI's newest God-card the X800 Pro Platinum or b) an Nvidia 6800 Pro Ultra GT. Both cards are gonna run you around 500 bucks, give or take a few.

For the CPU, if you're wanting current-state-of-the-art, I suggest either a P4 3.2C or a 3.2EE. Those 2 chips are Intel's current best, and by God they will continue to run games DAMN good for the next 2+ years easily. Now, the 3.2C is gonna hit you up for about $266, and the 3.2EE will spank your wallet at $900+, but with your budget, going overboard on the processor is worthwhile.

Mobos. There are many choices out there, and more becoming available everyday. But, for our purposes, a high-performance-beast-of-a-mobo must be recommended. My recommendation is the ABIT IC7-MAX3 . Simply one of the best on the market, and an overclocking beast of a BIOS. That shit will take you far dude.

Now RAM. I recommend some of the Good Shit. Let me introduce you to the DDR PC-3200 .

That be some sweet shit. It'll run you $179 for 512, and you'll probably want to do another 512, to really max out the performance.

After these recommendations, writeable drives, HDD, case, power supply, mouse, keyboard, and monitor become sort of meaningless. But, I will express opinions on what I like.

Cases: Thermaltake's Xaser V Wingo V7000A. I like it a lot, and will probably acquiring it this summer. However, it doesn't come with a PSU, but I lack expertise in that area, so I'll leave someone else to that. The least I can say is that it 1) should be P4-approved, and 2) fit your case, gotta make sure of that.

Mouse, meh, it really doesn't matter, performance-wise per se, but since you're going to be gaming, you should *probably* go with a simplistic ball-mouse, and while they seem ancient and are easily dirtied (if you live in a dust factory), the general low-cost and extremely high controlability of a ball mouse simply outweighs the fact that it could possibly get dirty. With that in mind, I recommend this simple Dell 3-button mouse and as far as keyboards go, also this cheap, simple Dell Keyboard. At $1.99 apiece, how can you resist? They're super cheap, and if'n you don't like them, well, what's 2 bucks in a budget of over $2000?

HDDs: I recommend you just monitor websites like Techbargains for crazy deals that places like Staples, OfficeMax, Office Depot, and Best Buy occasionally offer. The deals are insane, you can usually get a steal on a Maxtor or Western Digital, like a 250GB ATA133 8MB Cache for like 150 bucks or something ludicrous like that. Good shit. Better than the deals you can even get from Newegg.

Oh yeah, when ordering online, and, believe me, getting shit like this from stores like Best Buy and Compusa is a 200% ripoff guarantee (excluding hdd's ), use sites that garner only the highest of ratings from Reseller Ratings, such as Newegg, Directron, and Xoxide. No lower than a 8.0 would gain even a browse from most people, much less a purchase. But, that's my piece. Take it for what it's worth, and if someone can do better, please have at it.

Total price: $2351 - given 1024 MB PC3200 Corsair XMS, 2 250 GB HDD's ($300), a P4 3.2 EE, and no PSU. Or as low as: $1376 - only one hdd, a P4 3.2C, no PSU, 512 MB PC3200 Corsair XMS.

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What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

MooseMan3000

That depends what you need with it... the big one is the monitor. If you need a new monitor, and you want a nice gaming monitor, subtract at least $200 from that budget, and more likely in the $300 range. More if you want a big flat panel.

However, for about $2000 we can still put together a pretty sweet rig.

So to begin with, we look at CPUs. With that money, I'd spring for an Athlon 64. Most things won't take advantage of it yet, but it will be worth it in the long run. So we'll say an Athlon 64 3000 for about $200.

I don't think you'll want the stock heatsink that comes with some retail packages, so you'll need another heatsink/fan unit. I don't know enough about these to recommend a good one (I think Thermaltake is pretty good), but we'll say about $30 for the unit plus a little thermal grease.

We'll need a motherboard to go with it, though which one is not crucial... so you can get a solid MSI or Gigabyte for about $80. Try this.

For RAM you'll want a pair of 512s (for a total of 1 GB), probably, since that's going to run fastest with the 64. If you're going to do overclocking at all, you'll need high quality RAM, which is unfortunately expensive. So you can get 2x Kingston HyperX (their "gaming" RAM) with built in heatsinks for about $300.Here.

Video Card - Probably the most important part of a gaming machine. Since you have the money, you may as well get the best. I prefer ATI, so I'm going to recommend the Radeon X800 Pro, for $400.

Sound Card - Pretty important. If you want to watch DVDs or have surround sound, you'll need a good one for a good sound experience. A Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS for $90, here.

Hard drives- I'd toss two in, just because you can. Western Digital 36 GB 10,000 RPM Raptor $110
Then any 80 GB 7200 RPM drive ~ $80.

Let's see. So we have the expensive stuff out of the way. If I added right, we're at about $1600 right now.

So all you really need to add is external drives (DVD-RW, CD-RW, whatever you want... $150 or so), a case with a good PSU ($150 tops. Unless you want mods ), buncha fans and cables and whatnot ($100 maybe), an OS and some shiny new virus software ($150ish) and you're about set.

So to recap.
Athlon 64 3000 ~ $200
Heatsink/Fan unit ~ $30
Motherboard ~ $80
2x 512 MB pc 3200 Kingston HyperX ~ $300
Radeon X800 Pro ~ $400
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS ~ $90
Western Digital 10,00 RPM 36 GB Raptor ~ $ 110
80 GB 7200 RPM HDD ~ $80
Random stuff I mentioned at the end ~ $550

Estimate: $1840.


These are all rough prices, because I'm not sure where you want to buy all your stuff. I also don't know how "hardcore" you want it, so I just took a guess. Furthermore, there's about a 93.6% chance that I've forgotten something (too late... must finish post...) that will add another couple hundred to round out the $2000.

Then you can get a sweet monitor and some pimpin speakers, and you'll be set.



Edit: I started writing this response before either of these other two hooligans. Listen to me first

Gotenks

ASUS K8V (K8T800 Chipset (Via)) ; onboard sata x4, onboard audio (good), onboard lan (gbit) - $111
AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1 MB L2 Cache - $270 (the 3000+ has 512kb L2, another 512 is a huge difference)
Corsair XMS 1gb PC 3200 (512x2), 2-3-2-6 latency - $354
Radeon X800 Pro (nuf said) - $400ish
WD Raptor (sata) 36.7 10k-rpm (windows drive) - $111
WD 200GB IDE (ATA133) 8mb buffer x2 - $254
ThermalRight SLK948U (AMD64 model) - $40
Arctic Silver 5 - $8
Lian-Li PC-60 Mid Tower - $95
4x ThermalTake 80mm - $24
1x ThermalTake 96mm - $6
Lite-On Multi-Rom Drive : 52X CD-R, 32X CD-RW, 52X CD-Rom, 16X DVD-Rom - $48
Antec 480W True Power PSU - $83
Round cables for IDE - $10

Total: $2,033

Just my 2 cents~

EDIT*

400gb storage, 36gb games/apps. Exchange case fans depending on if you care about noise. I wouldnt get anything more than that for myself... anything more would be a waste imho.

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MooseMan3000

See? Forgot about the cache on the 3000. I agree, the extra 512 makes a lot of difference. Go with the 3200. It's a much faster processor, all around.

My prices toward the end were a little high, so you can probably squeeze a little more out of the $2k, like Gotenks has done. Ultimately, though, a lot of it depends on your preferences.

Side note: I'm only here again because I can't sleep

Gotenks

I think the reason your prices were high is because of your "extra's" totalling $550. As well as you added an O/S which he probably already has (most of the time people don't include O/S's with suggestions). Those two alone bump at least $300~350 off.

There's no need to spend $2,000 bucks on a comp now`a`days though, my sys is fine, and only cost me around $1500 (I constantly upgrade). The new age games coming out will be able to run on dx8 cards (with dx9 drivers) fine medium settings w/ no AA/ASF. I personally need my speed for video production and graphic work.

Either way, it's your money, that you saved up for... and you deserve to do what you want with it. If you want, you could probably squeeze an FX51 system in there, but you'd have to downgrade the vid card, memory and case/psu. I think what I posted is a very well balanced solution for gamers. The peripheals change from person to person. But as far as i'm concerned I don't think i'll have anyone say that I made a big mistake in my suggestions -.-.

EDIT*

Insomniacs unite! (woke up at 9pm tho)

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TawG

basicly what everyone else said except get a good CRT over an LCD and get 4s steelpad, and a few packs of padsurfers. Would also like to recommend microsoft intellimouse explorer 3, dont get IME 4, it has a stepless scroll and it sucks. You might also want somekind of gaming glove you dont want to burn skin when playing cs with a low sens.

and ofcourse, a sorround sound headset, and another high quality headset with a mic, and youre setup for just about anytype of hardcore gaming.

Lasereth

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.0 GHz - $282
Thermaltake Silent Boost CPU Fan (Socket 754) - $30
ABIT KV8 Motherboard - $101
Corsair XMS RAM 512 MB x 2 - $282
ATI Radeon X800 Pro 256 MB Videocard - $461
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz 5.1 Dolby Digital Decoding Soundcard - $36
NEC 8x Dual-Layer Black DVD-RW Burner - $93
Lite-On Black DVD-ROM 16x - $26
Sony Black Floppy Drive - $11
Western Digital SATA 10k RPM 74 GB HDD - $205
Maxtor 250 GB 7200 RPM IDE HDD - $200
Enermax Noisetaker PSU 600w - $160
1 Rounded Ribbon Cable - $5
Lian-Li Black Aluminum Case, Model PC-65B - $115
ViewSonic 19" Black Monitor - $155
Microsoft Windows XP Professional OEM - $141

$2,303

Cancel the monitor and Windows if you already have them. A keyboard and mouse (the BEST) can be found at www.directron.com for $2 each. Check out their Dell Quietkeys and their Dell scroll mice. Best gaming equipment ever!

-Lasereth

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Dragonlich

Actually, I heard the Logitech MX510 mouse is pretty sweet for gaming.

...but then again, I use a trackball, which I think works great.

As for the rest of the 2500 dollars: it's all about balance. You can get an uber-processor, but with a slow harddisk, that's going to be your bottleneck.

Generally, for gaming:
- I'd get a bloody fast videocard (x800-ish, although it's relatively expensive, and I haven't even seen benchmarks...).
- Then I'd get 1 gigs of ram, preferably with low latency, but not too expensive (really low latency will cost you a lot of cash for just a tiny bit of extra speed).
- After that, you need a good *stable* mobo/processor combination. Either AMD athlon, Athlon64 or Intel P4. Just get a cheap yet fast combination. What I mean by that: a P4 at 2.4 Ghz will cost you more than a comparable Athlon processor, so that athlon would be a better choice. At the higher speeds, the differences become less obvious, and it comes down to personal taste.
- I'd go with Lasereth's advice about the harddisks: get a WD raptor harddisk (74 gigs if possible, 'cause it's even faster than the 36 gig version); I have it myself, and it is indeed *very* fast. Beyond that you could get a large harddisk for storage; get one with 8 mb of cache, just because, and sata if you want it (won't be much faster, though!)
- get a good, nay, very good power supply, with plenty of watts, but don't go overboard here. More than 420 watts should be plenty. for now anyway...

as for the sound: most modern motherboards have quite a good on-board soundcard. The advantages of an "extra" one would be: better effects in games (Creative EAX and the like), and, more importantly, reduced processor load and higher framerates in games.

there you go...

powerclown

Thanks guys, just awesome...
Funny how memory can be more expensive than the motherboard. Im still undecided as to whether to go AMD or Intel. From what I understand, and I may be wrong, is that AMD is best for gaming while Intel is best for graphic apps, multimedia, web surfing etc. Another decision if I go AMD is socket 939 or socket 754. My current build is an Athlon XP 2000+ with 1G RAM, 7200 rpm drives and a 9800pro. It is starting to show its age gaming-wise.

Question: Is the 76gb raptor drive excessively loud?

Thanks for all your suggestions, Im going to cut and paste them all and save for reference.

Lasereth

AMD is generally slightly better than Intel for gaming (and much cheaper) while Intel dominates the media creation, decoding, encoding, etc. Higher clock speed = faster media creation.

I'd definitely go Socket 939 clown, but I honestly don't think there are any 939 motherboards out there yet. If you want to wait, there will be some soon, and it would definitely be a better choice. That would allow for big-time future upgrades. Socket 754 won't last as long as socket 939. Whatever you do, don't buy a damned socket 940 motherboard.

I'm not sure how loud the Raptor drives are...they are 10,000 RPM, and that's sure to be pretty noisy. Maybe a TFP member can tell us how loud they are compared to regular IDE hard drives?

One question, though: how is your 9800 Pro starting to show it's age?? That's still a top of the line videocard, man! The only thing in your current setup that's showing it's age is the Athlon XP 2000+. With a new processor + new RAM, you could have a top of the line gaming machine with a small fraction of the price.

-Lasereth

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Dragonlich

The current raptor I have (36 gig) has one platter (disc), and is reasonably quiet. It's not the spinning that you hear, it's the head that moves over the disc. That is audible. In fact, I can hear that over the rest of my (quiet) system, unless my cd-drive is spinning. I suspect the 74 gig version is slightly louder (2 platters instead of one), but not overly so.

If I have to compare it, it's a bit louder than my WD 120 gig drive. But again, that's just the occassional "crunch" when it moves the drive heads, which is not a constant sound (unless you're going to play a game, for example).

In other words: even though it's a 10,000 rpm disc, you won't hear much more of it than you would with a (quiet) 7,200 rpm disc.

(edit: ran a defragment run, and just *had* to edit my results. the "crunches" are quite a bit louder than those of my normal drive. but still not as extreme as people seem to fear.)

powerclown

Thanks for the raptor HD info....sounds a bit too loud for what im looking for. The quieter the better. I think Ill probably stick with the 9800pro, and go the AMD socket 939 route, 1gb ram, a top soundcard, probably the SantaCruzTB, a DVD-RW drive, Ive got an excellent old Apple 20" crt that ive used for years and love, and a coolermaster tower that i can hopefully reuse. Ill probably go with an Enermax PS, not sure the wattage yet. Windows XP Home, keep it simple. Im going to also check out those mouse choices, as that can help make or break the gaming experience imo. And hopefully those 939 boards will be out soon.

Thanks again and feel free to add anything to the list whenever.

theburner

My setup is very similar to what has been listed....
P4 3.4
IC7-Max3
1GB PC-3200 Corsair MATCHED Pair
9800 Pro Graphics
3 x 120 GB Samsung SATA HDD (RAID 0 on 2)
Thermaltake 7000A Case
Sparkle 500 Watt PS
Misc Drives and Opticals.
My only wish was that I spent the extra $50 and got ECC RAM or Registered RAM. Not a huge performance boost, but many of the RAM manufacturers recommend ECC or Registered for 512 DIMMS and higher.

Oh yeah.. If you use the Thermaltake Case don't worry about the noise. That is the case I have and ALL I hear are the fans if I have all of them (6 I think) at 3000 rpm. Granted the rig is in my TV Room and not my bedroom, but the Raptor Drives performance MORE than outweighs the noise factor for me.

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bltzkriegmcanon

Great specs. One question: I was just checking thermaltake.com, because I'm considering getting the very case you have ($95 on Xoxide!) and I was curious if it's a mega-hernia box. I mean, I saw that they're 30 lbs with nothing in them, and I wanted to see what you though about it. Oh yeah, how's that sparkle working out for you too?

__________________
What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

theburner

Sparkle rocks the house. My take on Power supplies is the heavier the better. Go to your local CompUSA and pick up their own brand 300W, and then an Antec or whatever else they have in 300W. You can feel the difference! I have had ZERO issues with Sparkle and am very impressed. Just remember, there is a great deal of brand loyalty out there, and you will never change someones mind!
Thermaltake Cases are heavy as SHIT. I think mine tops out now around 45-50 lbs EASY. However, I don't go to LAN parties so it sits under my desk until I change the config. Weight wasn't an issue for me there. One thing I don't like about the 7000A... SATA Drive Location: If you look at the picture, they mount sideways. You have to be careful with your cable and power cable when sliding the side closed or you could pull it off.
I just built my brother a system using the VM2000A. Even fully configured I don't think it weighs more than 10lbs. That is a sweet system, but didn't hold the devices I wanted to install (3 Opticals, 1 IDE 120GB, 3 Sata 120GB (2 in raid 0, the other storage). However, if you don't have the media requirements I did that VM2000A is a SWEET case. Just take care with your cables, it can look pretty nasty in there if you don't clean it up (hates side windows, messy by nature!

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powerclown

Browsing around the Xoxide site I came upon this thing. Nostromo n50 SpeedPad. Has anyone used it? Like it? Hate it? Driver issues?

bltzkriegmcanon

Damn, theburner. That be light! I might just have to get to liking silver, even though I'm a black case kinda guy. But that's awesome, just 4 kg, (8.8), and 10 loaded, hmm. How would the VM2000A do with, say 1-2 opticals, 2 ata133's and rounded cables, an ATX mobo, an ATI, and 2 cold cathodes and a transformer?

I dunno about that pad man, I've never used it, and it seems kinda overdoing it, that is, unless you play 8+ hours of CS a day, then it's probably right up your alley.

__________________
What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

theburner

Blitz..
It is super light. One of my buddies made fuin of my case because it was a hernia case, his was aluminum. I bulilt the 2000A for my brother My buddy isn't laughing any longer, this thing is very light. May be 15lbs, but it is WAY Lighter loaded than my 7000A is empty.
Your config on the 2000A is fine. One of the 5" bays is taken up by the fan controller, so you are left with 2 more externals. I used one of the 3.5" externals for my floppy, but the 2nd had a HDD behind the cover. There are 2 internal 3.5" for HDD"s, so your config is fine. ATX mobo is fine.. I have an HP proprietary with only 4 PCI slots, so I have 3 empty ones. Full size ATX will work fine. I also have 1 cold cathode mounted on the bottom of the case (short mobo made that easy!). One step I didn't take that I wanted to was to paint the internal aluminum to accent the light.. Being my bro's pc and all I didn't take the time.. After working with both of the Thermaltake cases I am a huge fan. No cut fingers, good solid construction, close tolerances (no Lian-Li mind you!) and nice peripheral mounting sets. Good luck if you try the case! Lemme know how it goes.

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Gotenks

I have tried that same pad for playing multiple games with. I didnt really like it during FPS games due to me having so many hotkeys that it wouldnt fit on the pad. But when it came to mmorpg's/rts, that thing can make a difference. Although I wouldnt personally buy it for myself due to my loyalty to the allmighty keyboard, I would reccomend it to someone as a working as intended product.

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