I had a machine built by Dell which I upgraded by hand a few years ago. I had opted for a core2quad at the time since I'd rather max out RAM than go with the QPI i7 with only 3GB DDR3 for comparable cost. Huan seems to have processors covered though and the i series had come a long way since then.
I went with a ATI 5750 since it was one of the few DX11 cards available at the time. I suppose there are plenty of those available now though. DX11 will help with the game playing but you'll likely need to be running Windows. Tom's Hardware keeps a nice "graphics card hierarchy" comparing mostly ATI and Nvidia products. SATA 3.0 headers are nice to have if you plan on SSDs at some point. I can discuss SSD, and storage in general, at considerable length, if that's something you're interested in. Otherwise, I am a Western Digital kind of guy. And the Momentus XT is not really worth it. While I am a big proponent of Flash, RAM locality is king. Is this a price efficiency build? Futureproofing? Main workload? On Feb 14, 2012 2:46 PM, "Huan Truong" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Dear All, > > > > I'm thinking of building a new system, which I do relatively rarely. > Since my > > kids are getting older, it would probably be good if it could play games > now > > and in the future. I'm wondering if anyone who's looked into components > > recently has any advice. > > > > I've done some quick searches online and found recommendations for, say, > > Intel Core i5-2500K processor and NVidea GTX 560 ti which seemed to be a > good > > balance between price and power for the range that I'm looking in. I > haven't > > gotten my brain around the choice of motherboards yet. > > > > Any recommendations out there for these or other components, either good > > brands or specific models? I'd also be interested in anyone who's had a > good > > experience with companies that will do the assembly for you---I like the > > assembly, but it's hard with two kids and not a lot of time when they're > not > > awake. > > > > I've always found NVidea more stable than ATI in Linux, but I don't know > if > > that's true any more---I'd be interested in whether anyone had recent > > experience. > If I had a choice, I would go with Intel Integrated Graphics. It always > worked flawlessly since three years ago (with all fancy graphics > acceleration capabilities). ATi seems better than NVidia but is still a > hassle when it comes to multi monitors and hot plugging support (which > might be less of a problem with your desktop, as it's a fire-and-forget > thing). > The new Sandy Bridge has the GPU built-in and you can always plug a card > in later if you find the Intel Graphics too weak so I don't see any reason > to buy a discrete graphics card at the beginning unless you want to do some > CUDA calculation that requires a NVidia card. > If you're looking for processors, this link might be helpful for you. > http://ark.intel.com/products/family/59134 > For the processor, I am currently having a 2100T ( > http://ark.intel.com/products/53423) which has the thermal design of 35 > Watts. For i processors: All the T models consumes about 1/3 what a normal > processor in the same range does, which reduces heat, fan size, and noise > and is not much more expensive, but can neither overclock nor have VT > directed IO. All the K models can over clock but doesn't have > Virtualization for directed I/O which can reduce your performance when you > run virtualization and want the virtual machine to use physical I/O devices > directly (increased performance?). All the naked model can't overclock but > has VT directed IO. > My i3 is plenty fast for my Android compilation (which totaling about 6GB > in code, and the whole thing compiles in < 2hrs for the first time, and 20 > minutes for subsequent compilations). I *personally* think that slower > processor doesn't have that much of an impact compared to a slower hard > drive (SSD all the way. I have an Intel SSD which served me well so far... > almost 2 years!). > My motherboard is the cheapest one I could find on Newegg with decent > ratings and solid caps/whatever capacitors that they advertise that works > with Sandy Bridge, it seems like it's ASUS branded. > > > > > > -- > > Scott Thatcher > > Associate Professor of Mathematics > > Truman State University > > [email protected] >
