Building a new *high-end* gaming computer

[Douglas]

For reasons that aren't important here, I will soon be treating myself to a new computer, and I have the desire and money to make it a quite high end one. This is a bit of new territory for me, as I've never built a computer without a much stronger budget consideration in mind, so I'm turning to the Playground for help.

Given a practically unlimited budget to build the ultimate dream gaming desktop machine, what should I buy? I'm not going to spend double the money for a 2% improvement or anything like that, but if it's feasible I'd like something capable of such ridiculous feats as running completely smoothly with 6 VMs going at once that are each running the most performance-intensive game on the market at the highest settings - and all that with barely a whisper of noise.

I'll want at least one SSD, of course, and I've heard of such things as running two graphics cards in parallel and liquid cooling, but beyond that and "more of everything" (multiple CPUs?) I don't know very much.

[Gnoman]

Over-the-top rigs are generally unsatisfactory in actual use, even if you have a reason for that much power. I know people who have fairly moderate rigs that need to run an extra air conditoner or place the computer in a seperate room (running cables through the wall) in order for the room temperature to be bearable. In the spring, not just summer. Even a liquid-cooled system can have that problem, because the heat still has to go somewhere.

[Seerow]

One thing worth asking up front: What sort of display are you planning to use? I was actually looking at something like this a while back (more out of curiosity than practical consideration, I didn't win the lottery recently unfortunately); and was looking at a rig with 4 linked graphics cards... and then after looking around, the people actually using a setup like that were doing so to have 4-6 monitors hooked up to be used as a single screen with a ridiculous resolution. To me, that sounded pretty uncomfortable (I'd rather have a single big screen than a bunch of big screens, just because big lines in the middle sound like they'd get annoying), so I decided if I was going to go all in on a gaming PC, I'd go for something closer to moderate than top of the line.

[Ashtar]

If you are in the ridiculously expensive range for a private individual (but cheap for a business), my company has started to pick up Supermicro workstations with two Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2697 v2 (12 Cores, 30M Cache, 2.70 GHz) inside, 512GB to 1 TB of ECC RAM, with a couple of graphic cards in them. That runs in the 10-12'000$ range. You'll have to check with your local distributor what is available.

We do asset optimization for energy companies on them, the Supermicro workstations turn out to be half as expensive as HP servers. Sure you do lose out on redundant power supplies and a few HP management tools, but if you're not managing large numbers of servers, it doesn't matter.

Something like a SYS-7047GR-TRF or a SYS-7047A-73/T.

If you don't need so many cores, you could aim for a processor with less cores and more MHz, like a E5-2643V2 with 6 cores at 3.5Ghz, for a total of 12 cores in the machine.

[Douglas]

Over-the-top rigs are generally unsatisfactory in actual use, even if you have a reason for that much power. I know people who have fairly moderate rigs that need to run an extra air conditoner or place the computer in a seperate room (running cables through the wall) in order for the room temperature to be bearable. In the spring, not just summer. Even a liquid-cooled system can have that problem, because the heat still has to go somewhere.

My apartment tends to be on the cold side, but that is a point I should think about. As I understand it the computer industry has gotten pretty good about going into low power modes when full performance isn't needed, but there are limits to how far that can go and it may not be universal.

One thing worth asking up front: What sort of display are you planning to use? I was actually looking at something like this a while back (more out of curiosity than practical consideration, I didn't win the lottery recently unfortunately); and was looking at a rig with 4 linked graphics cards... and then after looking around, the people actually using a setup like that were doing so to have 4-6 monitors hooked up to be used as a single screen with a ridiculous resolution. To me, that sounded pretty uncomfortable (I'd rather have a single big screen than a bunch of big screens, just because big lines in the middle sound like they'd get annoying), so I decided if I was going to go all in on a gaming PC, I'd go for something closer to moderate than top of the line.

I don't want big lines in the middle as a multi-monitor "single-screen" setup like that would have, but I might consider 3 or 4 monitors to be used as separate screens. My current setup has 2 monitors, and I often find myself with both screens filled and bringing up something else that I'd really prefer to show in addition to what's currently on screen rather than overlapping and partially (or completely) hiding something.

If you are in the ridiculously expensive range for a private individual (but cheap for a business), my company has started to pick up Supermicro workstations with two Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2697 v2 (12 Cores, 30M Cache, 2.70 GHz) inside, 512GB to 1 TB of ECC RAM, with a couple of graphic cards in them. That runs in the 10-12'000$ range. You'll have to check with your local distributor what is available.

Where are the price tags, I couldn't find any?

I know I said practically unlimited budget, and I suppose I could spare $10k if I decided it was worth it, but that's really pushing the envelope on how extravagantly I'm willing to spend here.

I was originally thinking in terms of buying components and assembling it myself, but I don't know how much that would save me, and I suppose a warranty that yes, the parts really do all work together, and yes the liquid cooling system is set up correctly and won't leak all over your expensive electronics (I've read that can be tricky to handle for amateurs) would be good to have.

We do asset optimization for energy companies on them, the Supermicro workstations turn out to be half as expensive as HP servers. Sure you do lose out on redundant power supplies and a few HP management tools, but if you're not managing large numbers of servers, it doesn't matter.

Something like a SYS-7047GR-TRF or a SYS-7047A-73/T.

If you don't need so many cores, you could aim for a processor with less cores and more MHz, like a E5-2643V2 with 6 cores at 3.5Ghz, for a total of 12 cores in the machine.

12 cores sounds like plenty at first impression, but thinking about it I don't really know how much multithreading modern games do these days, and how much of it goes in the CPU vs GPU.

And yeah, I definitely don't need multi-server management tools for my single gaming machine.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Well, these are the specs for TotalBiscuit's computer. Haven't done a price check on any of these, but I think he said it was about 5k?

CPU: i7-3930k @ 3.2ghz

RAM: GSkill RipjawsX 32GB 2133MHz

GPU: 2x Nvidia Geforce GTX TITAN

SSDs: 250gb Samsung 830

2x 250gbOCZ Agility 3

HDDs: WD Cavier Black, 4TB

[factotum]

As I understand it the computer industry has gotten pretty good about going into low power modes when full performance isn't needed, but there are limits to how far that can go and it may not be universal.

Perhaps more to the point, what happens when the full performance *is* needed? It presumably will be at some point, or else there would be no point having the performance available--and you don't necessarily want to have to strip to your underwear because it gets so darned hot in your computer room when you're playing a game at the height of summer.

[Ravens_cry]

On one hand, all that power may come in handy someday, but on the other, standards change. It won't be any good if your graphics card has the memory to run Crysis 7: Cray Melter Edition if it doesn't support the new shaders and techniques the newer games use.

[hajo]

What sort of display are you planning to use? .. 4-6 monitors hooked up to be used as a single screen

Depends - if you run a flightsim, and one monitor each is showing the instruments, and a window to the left/front/right - that might look "natural"

Also, even wikipedia has some links to building PCs for gaming.

[Brother Oni]

--and you don't necessarily want to have to strip to your underwear because it gets so darned hot in your computer room when you're playing a game at the height of summer.

Depends on what type of game you're playing.

[factotum]

Depends on what type of game you're playing.

I did say "necessarily"...

[Ashtar]

Seeing as you are in California, you should have no trouble finding a distributor for Supermicro. In Switzerland, we were able to order from a local large distributor.

I saw that Newegg for example has Supermicros in stock on their lists. I'm sure you can find out if there are any others.

[Max™]

Now, I've got a 21 inch 1920x1080 monitor set up with a vesa arm mounted 17 inch 768x1366 next to it and I am greatly preferring using the smaller monitor sideways as it is more useful for reading and such:

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Now, with 1920x1080+768x1366 running off of an old GT440 and an i3-3220 I was able to play FFXIV on surprisingly nice looking settings or my current favorite "game" which is just getting myself lost somewhere in Celestia and trying to fly back to Earth with pointers/labels for everything smaller than a galaxy turned off.


I've seen higher end setups with monitors like 2x 21 inch turned sideways with something like a 30+ inch in between.


I found this as an example of how small bezels get, I've got just under an inch total between my screens, but they're just bargain monitors I picked up rather than the sort of higher end ones with setups like this:

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Pushing into the multi-high-end card range you really need multiple screens to even begin to make use of it.

When you start getting setups like this to play with:

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You're looking at either getting a couple of upper mid-range cards or moving fully into the high end stuff.

Right now I know a GTX-690 is ridiculous as it's basically two GPU's in one card, close to a grand last time I saw. You could get a modern enough motherboard which would support running two in SLI, 32 GB of 2133 or faster ram, and something like an i5-4670k as a starter target with i7-4930k or better as an excellent "future-resistant" step, though with both you'll want to make use of the ability to overclock them. LGA-2011 sockets on X79 chipsets are the current top of the line as I recall, you can still get great performance from older sockets, but you do that to save money not make a gaming monster.

Honestly though, something like the i5-4670k, dual GTX-770's, 32 GB of ram, a motherboard ready for upgrades down the road, and a nice multi-screen mount+at least three 27 inch or larger monitors will probably set you up really really well. You'd still need to invest in a good cooler, but not the same setup as you would want with the "all out" GTX-690/i7 type of rig.

Note that unless you've been gaming on a system roughly equal to the i5/dual 770 setup, you would have a hard time telling what the extra cash did with the i7/690 or better setup.

You're talking stupidly high framerates on multiple monitors on ridiculous settings either way, not sure if you or I could tell the difference between running one of these games on max settings and getting 180 fps vs 200 fps, really.

[Animastryfe]

This subreddit is all about building PCs, with links on the right side of the page to many online resources. I am also planning on building a high end PC some time this summer.

[AgentPaper]

I recently did something similar to this, though my budget was $2,500 rather than $10,000. I did a bunch of research, put together a bunch of high-end parts, and (eventually) got the desktop of my dreams going.

...and then 6 months later, I bought a laptop for half the price that was just as powerful, if not more. It's now my main computer, and all my desktop provides me is the convenience of not needing to carry my laptop to and fom work.

While it may once have been better and cheaper to build your own desktop, these days you'll probably get a better deal and a better computer if you simply spend your time reasearching and hunting down a goos deal on a laptop (back to school deals are great for this).

If you really want to throw down $10,000 on the best computer youcan get, then fine, but you'll probably be better off spending a fraction of that and saving the rest for something else. Like a new computer in a year that will be even more powerful than the "supercomputer" you'd get today, for a fraction of the cost. Or a car. Or a trip to thebahamas. Or any of a hundred other things you'll realize you want once you can afford it.

[factotum]

While it may once have been better and cheaper to build your own desktop, these days you'll probably get a better deal and a better computer if you simply spend your time reasearching and hunting down a goos deal on a laptop (back to school deals are great for this).

For many applications, that may well be true (although I'd like to see a citation, myself). There's one application for which it most definitely is *not* true, though, and that's *games* (which is kind of important here, considering that's what the OP is building his machine for). The graphics hardware in a laptop will not and *can* not match a desktop graphics card--how could it, when the desktop graphics card might pull 250W at full load and the power budget for the entire laptop is half that?

[AgentPaper]

For many applications, that may well be true (although I'd like to see a citation, myself). There's one application for which it most definitely is *not* true, though, and that's *games* (which is kind of important here, considering that's what the OP is building his machine for). The graphics hardware in a laptop will not and *can* not match a desktop graphics card--how could it, when the desktop graphics card might pull 250W at full load and the power budget for the entire laptop is half that?

I suppose if you just really need to be able to play the latest Crysis game at the highest settings, then a laptop isn't going to cut it, but even for gaming you rarely need anything more powerful than this. The card there will run most high-end games on high graphics settings. And that's hardly the most powerful laptop out there (just the first one I found, it being a later model of what I have now).

Edit: If you do end up deciding to try and build a super-computer, though, I think you might find some more specific help over at reddit.com/r/buildapc. It looks like someone was doing something fairly similar to what you are, which might provide some useful ideas. That was 6 months ago, so it's probably mostly relevant, though you may want to make a new post to get some more specific and up-to-date advice.

[factotum]

Wow. Just looked up a review of that 860M on Tom's Hardware and they reckon the laptop it was installed in was pulling more than 160W of power at full load! I'd dread to see the size of the power brick on that thing, and I don't think I'd realistically want it anywhere near my lap, either...

[Hiro Protagonest]

I suppose if you just really need to be able to play the latest Crysis game at the highest settings, then a laptop isn't going to cut it,

*Ahem* whitespace

System Requirements
Minimum:
OS:Windows XP
Processor:Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 or higher / AMD Phenom II X2 or higher
Memory:4 GB RAM
Graphics:nVidia GeForce 8600 series or higher / AMD or ATI 4850 series or higher
DirectX®:9.0
Hard Drive:15 GB HD space
Sound:DirectX compatible Sound Card
Other Requirements:Broadband Internet connection

Recommended:
OS:Windows 7
Processor:Intel i5 processor or higher / AMD Phenom II X6 or higher
Memory:6 GB RAM
Graphics:nVidia GeForce 540 or higher / AMD HD 6870 or higher
DirectX®:9.0
Hard Drive:15 GB HD space
Sound:DirectX compatible Sound Card
Other Requirements:Broadband Internet connection

[Douglas]

*Ahem* whitespace

Those are requirements to run the game. They are not requirements to play the game smoothly on the highest settings. Or, at least, I will be surprised if they are, and I also don't know how PlanetSide 2 ranks compared to other games on performance requirements.

Thanks for all the advice so far, I'll be looking it over in the next few days.

[Max™]

Not directly what you were after but I wound up looking at it after hopping through a few of the links from here, and mother of god...

http://www.redharbinger.com/?portfol...-desk-complete

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...should have sent a poet...

[Hiro Protagonest]

Those are requirements to run the game. They are not requirements to play the game smoothly on the highest settings. Or, at least, I will be surprised if they are, and I also don't know how PlanetSide 2 ranks compared to other games on performance requirements.

Thanks for all the advice so far, I'll be looking it over in the next few days.

According to the dev team, no computer that currently exists on Earth can run the game on all ultra settings. "Ultra" in the game just means "ultra textures, everything else high".

It did get a major optimization update a couple months back. But yeah, if you want to run PlanetSide 2 on 60+ fps, you need a high-end computer.

[tyckspoon]

Wow. Just looked up a review of that 860M on Tom's Hardware and they reckon the laptop it was installed in was pulling more than 160W of power at full load! I'd dread to see the size of the power brick on that thing, and I don't think I'd realistically want it anywhere near my lap, either...

Yeah, that sort of 'laptop' goes in what's called the 'desktop replacement' category; they are fully designed and intended to be used at a desk, tethered to a wall, possibly with a separate mouse and/or keyboard in use, and generally to provide the same sort of functionality most people would use a full size system for (even up to gaming, although you'll want to also be using a good quality external cooling accessory for that if you don't want to fry your laptop or make it heat-throttle itself back down into lower performance.) Those are only 'portable' computers in as much as it's relatively easy to pack it up and take it to a different desk - you're not going to be using it on the move or unplugged for very long.

[AgentPaper]

Yeah, that sort of 'laptop' goes in what's called the 'desktop replacement' category; they are fully designed and intended to be used at a desk, tethered to a wall, possibly with a separate mouse and/or keyboard in use, and generally to provide the same sort of functionality most people would use a full size system for (even up to gaming, although you'll want to also be using a good quality external cooling accessory for that if you don't want to fry your laptop or make it heat-throttle itself back down into lower performance.) Those are only 'portable' computers in as much as it's relatively easy to pack it up and take it to a different desk - you're not going to be using it on the move or unplugged for very long.

Yeah, that sounds about what my laptop is. I guess "laptop" in this sense is a bit of a misnomer. I even have a second monitor hooked up to it along with my mouse and headphones, and it handles any game I throw at it just fine. Of course, I don't really play any FPS games, so maybe I'm not working the graphics card as much as I could, but it does handle Total War: Rome 2 without breaking a sweat, so there's that.

Also, it does get fairly hot. I haven't had any problems with overheating like I did my old computer, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's throttling itself back to compensate. I've tried a few external cooling fans, but none of them seemed to have any real effect. Do you know of one that works well? Preferably something quiet, if possible.

[Winter_Wolf]

I've found laptops and desktop replacements to have generally inferior heat management capabilities to proper desktops. Oh sure you might have the hardware to run a game at full quality, but you start running into issues within a few minutes as the computer tries not to melt. I've had a notebook burn itself out because it simply could not cope with the heat generated by its high end components. My old pos desktop is slow to start, but once it gets up, it never needs to throttle anything (my PSU must be awesome because I'm right at the "one more component and it fails" line.). My current laptop is awesome for about five to ten minutes before it needs to throttle performance to keep from bursting into flames and it still gets freaking hot.

[Douglas]

I couldn't find anywhere selling actual fully assembled SuperMicro computers with all components, rather than just a case or something, and that reddit link appears to be focused a lot more on build-it-yourself than I want. Some google searching led me to Digital Storm, a company that specializes in full custom builds of high end gaming machines.

I'm currently looking at ordering this, which seems to me to be a reasonable balance between performance, noise, and heat, assuming the general claim to quietness for the Slade model in general is valid. Any comments or advice on either the company or the build? I know the review score on Yelp is a bit lackluster, but the low number of reviews makes me think it's mostly selection bias. ResellerRatings is much more positive about the company, but I'm not familiar with that review site or how it works.

[Max™]

Curious why you'd do double SSD's and a single 780 instead of 1 ssd and 2x 780 in SLI?

Should be about the same price, but the 8 TB of "slow" storage should be plenty and needing more than 1 tb of speedy SSD loading is a heck of a thing.

I'd skip out on their monitors entirely and get something like three 24" with a nice mount, or two 27" and a mount. Can find 2560x1440 monitors from the korean manufacturers with reliable quality for less than was listed there, though I can't think of the names of them for the life of me, cat something comes to mind. http://www.ebay.com/sch/Monitors-/80...c&LH_PrefLoc=2 is the general idea, looks like the same quality monitor as you had selected for what, $300~350 is doable?

[Don Julio Anejo]

I'd actually get something like 3X 512 GB SSDs and run them in RAID 5. This way, you get the performance increase of RAID 0, with extra parity/protection of RAID 1. If any of the drives fails, you lose nothing. You would have 1TB of space available.

For FPS-style games I'd get one huge monitor (i.e. 30" at 2560x1600) and 2 smallish monitors (1600x900) that can flip vertically. Great for FPS, first-person RPGs (gives you main field vision and peripheral vision). Lets you open other things like lolnexus on the side monitors for games like LoL (but you can play LoL on a shoebox with a pocket calculator in it, so this part doesn't really matter). More balanced vertically than with 3 equal widescreen monitors while still offering increased field of vision.

Keep in mind that 3x monitors running a game can make a lot of people dizzy and disoriented. Try it in a store before you commit.

If you realistically are only going to run 1 game at a time on these monitors, a GTX 690 and/or dual 780's will be fine. If you really do want to run 6 VMs each one running crisis on a multi-monitor set up, you're looking at server-level hardware. Like, dual LGA2011 Xeon CPUs that Max was talking about. 8 GB of RAM per VM (48 GB total, + host OS = 8x8 sticks for 64 GB) and too many graphics cards to count (equivalent of a 780 for each VM). Don't think you can fit under $10k budget and ATX case. Pretty sure you can use it as a heater in -20 degree weather.

If that was an exaggeration with VMs, something like an i7-4930k (Ivy Bridge Extreme Edition) on an LGA 2011 motherboard with 32GB of RAM (64 if you want to run a RAMdisk) and a pair of nVidia 780 Ti's will play anything and everything on the market for a few years to come on like 3-4 monitors.

[factotum]

I'd actually get something like 3X 512 GB SSDs and run them in RAID 5. This way, you get the performance increase of RAID 0, with extra parity/protection of RAID 1.

It probably wouldn't be that much of a performance increase, given that SSDs can already saturate the entire bandwidth of the SATA connection with just a single drive (at least on reads).

[Douglas]

Curious why you'd do double SSD's and a single 780 instead of 1 ssd and 2x 780 in SLI?

Should be about the same price, but the 8 TB of "slow" storage should be plenty and needing more than 1 tb of speedy SSD loading is a heck of a thing.

On the SSDs, because I can afford it and experience has taught me it's really really hard to overestimate how much of some technological capacity will turn out to be useful or needed in the future, and I don't think there's any meaningful tradeoff other than price involved.

On the 780, a single one can apparently support 4 monitors, I suspect its performance will be plenty for what I actually use it for, and I think adding another in SLI would substantially increase noise and heat.

I'd actually get something like 3X 512 GB SSDs and run them in RAID 5. This way, you get the performance increase of RAID 0, with extra parity/protection of RAID 1. If any of the drives fails, you lose nothing. You would have 1TB of space available.

I thought about RAID 5, but the RAID option says it's for storage set 1 and within any single set no option goes above 2 drives. I just checked, though, and configuring a top-of-the-line Aventum II works the same, so I suspect they can apply RAID to a combination of sets 1 and 2 if I pick the same drives in each. I'll ask.

I'd skip out on their monitors entirely and get something like three 24" with a nice mount, or two 27" and a mount. Can find 2560x1440 monitors from the korean manufacturers with reliable quality for less than was listed there, though I can't think of the names of them for the life of me, cat something comes to mind. http://www.ebay.com/sch/Monitors-/80...c&LH_PrefLoc=2 is the general idea, looks like the same quality monitor as you had selected for what, $300~350 is doable?

For FPS-style games I'd get one huge monitor (i.e. 30" at 2560x1600) and 2 smallish monitors (1600x900) that can flip vertically. Great for FPS, first-person RPGs (gives you main field vision and peripheral vision). Lets you open other things like lolnexus on the side monitors for games like LoL (but you can play LoL on a shoebox with a pocket calculator in it, so this part doesn't really matter). More balanced vertically than with 3 equal widescreen monitors while still offering increased field of vision.

Keep in mind that 3x monitors running a game can make a lot of people dizzy and disoriented. Try it in a store before you commit.

Good points, even if their monitor price is competitive (which you're disputing) they still only offer 1 when I want a set of 3. I doubt I'll be running a single game on multiple monitors at once, but that arrangement with a large central and two vertical side ones for reference material sounds good. I'll look elsewhere for it.

If you realistically are only going to run 1 game at a time on these monitors, a GTX 690 and/or dual 780's will be fine. If you really do want to run 6 VMs each one running crisis on a multi-monitor set up, you're looking at server-level hardware. Like, dual LGA2011 Xeon CPUs that Max was talking about. 8 GB of RAM per VM (48 GB total, + host OS = 8x8 sticks for 64 GB) and too many graphics cards to count (equivalent of a 780 for each VM). Don't think you can fit under $10k budget and ATX case. Pretty sure you can use it as a heater in -20 degree weather.

If that was an exaggeration with VMs, something like an i7-4930k (Ivy Bridge Extreme Edition) on an LGA 2011 motherboard with 32GB of RAM (64 if you want to run a RAMdisk) and a pair of nVidia 780 Ti's will play anything and everything on the market for a few years to come on like 3-4 monitors.

Yeah, that was exaggeration. It would be nice to have that ability, and I might technically be able to pay for that kind of build, but it would cost too much more for no benefit I'd actually use, sound like an air tunnel, and double as a space heater. I might actually run 6 instances of a game at once, but it won't be one as demanding as Crysis.

New configuration here.

And just for kicks, the most expensive build possible in their configuration system, weighing in at $41,057.