New Computer Build

[kaplin42]

Just got to build myself a new desktop computer for Win. 8 research, and gaming naturally. I had a budget of $2k, and when I bought all the parts, it came out to $1,914. I just got it built up yesterday, with a Windows 8 install disk on a flash drive, the OS installed in 2 minutes, literally. Now, anyone got any good ideas for a game that will push the system?

Spoiler!

Link to public wishlist Sharktopus Build on Newegg

[QuikSsurfer]

Metro 2033
The Witcher 2

Both of these would be great benchmarks.

[The Franchise]

$2000? **** you.

[Fish]

Only 32GB of RAM?

[kaplin42]

Originally Posted by Fish

Only 32GB of RAM?

Yeah I thought 64 would be over the top.

I have to figure out how, but I think I might try and make a RAM drive just to see how that works.

[Mr. Laz]

$2000 is a lot for a build sans monitor


congrats



fyi why 2 different video cards?

[kaplin42]

Originally Posted by Mr. Laz

$2000 is a lot for a build sans monitor


congrats



fyi why 2 different video cards?

Doh, it's only one card the 7970, which might explain why it's over budget on that.

and I have 3 x 24 inch monitors at 1920 x 1200, so I didn't need anymore, same with a case, I have one that I like a lot so I just reused that one.

[Buck]

God damn ****a.

[BigMeatballDave]

fap

[Frazod]

Nice. I'm waiting for the price to come down on those solid state drives, but will probably make the switch at some point.

[nstygma]

do you work with After Effects? i'd like to know how well that performs

[kaplin42]

Originally Posted by nstygma

do you work with After Effects? i'd like to know how well that performs

I don't, but I did get the whole Adobe Creative Suite 6.0 Master Collection.

To be fair, my job gave me the budget for the machine, and all the software I use. I just also get to take it home and play games on it as well.

[Pants]

Damn. That's a nice ****ing rig, man.

/jealous

[hometeam]

If you are going to OC you don't want that much ram, its a tiny performance increase (over 16) and will limit your overclock on the top end, I promise. Not to mention

Why windows 8? Are you doing touchscreen stuff? If not, stick with 7. Also, why do you have 2 different graphics cards? Where is your case and cooling solution? Where is your HDD storage? Why that Mobo? Are you planning on using the thunderbolt functionality? because you are paying for it. Why such an expensive power supply? There are great power supplies that can do the job for cheaper. It doesn't seem like a cohesive and well thought build.

edit; See some of my questions answered above - What case are you using?

[kaplin42]

Originally Posted by hometeam

If you are going to OC you don't want that much ram, its a tiny performance increase (over 16) and will limit your overclock on the top end, I promise. Not to mention

Why windows 8? Are you doing touchscreen stuff? If not, stick with 7. Also, why do you have 2 different graphics cards? Where is your case and cooling solution? Where is your HDD storage? Why that Mobo? Are you planning on using the thunderbolt functionality? because you are paying for it. Why such an expensive power supply? There are great power supplies that can do the job for cheaper. It doesn't seem like a cohesive and well thought build.

edit; See some of my questions answered above - What case are you using?

Will try to answer your questions, but first a brief story of why.

I do IT for a private school, and we change out all of our computer hardware (laptops, tablets, desktops) every 3 years. Well the next change will be coming summer 2014. When we do this, we usually have no choice but to use the current OS at the time, which will me Win 8 (we are windows shop). So, generally we get a budget to build a PC so that we can start researching the new OS, new software i.e. Adobe CS 6.0 vs 5.5, Office versions and a whole host of other crap. Unfortunately, my team all has to agree on the hardware that we order for the most part, we are allowed Cases and Video cards of our choice. So hopefully this explains why some of it is not "ideal" and perhaps overkill.

Motherboard was the better of the two choices we had, while none of us are serious OCer's, Gigabyte does have an app called Easy Tune which quickly OC's your system to mild, medium or insane. I just did the mild one, and went from a 3.5Ghz CPU speed to 4.1. No, i didn't look at how it stepped up the RAM, OCing is just not my thing, but I figure as easy as the Easy Tune is, why not. The Thunderbolt is a nice feature, and I will give it a go down the road, but for right now it's just chilling there.

I didn't buy an extra internal drive because we all have the 1 TB Western Digital Black, and I have a 3 TB External USB 3.0 drive, so the 512GB SSD was plenty for me. Plus, other then my movies, I just don't have that much stuff.

As for the amount of RAM, it was more of a "Just because we can" thing. Our last system that we built had 6 Gigs, and I barely used that, 32 is just ridiculous, but again, why not?

Windows 8 is because we have to do research to figure out how we are going to deploy it to our users in a way that will work for them, and meet our guidelines.

Power supply was an experiment, yes there were others, but along with our CPU cooling solution, we thought we would try this just to see.

My case is a Antec Dark Fleet-85 it's huge, but air flow is great, and I have never had any heat issues with it.

CPU cooling solution is the Antec Kuhler H20 620. We wanted to go with a different solution, but they were out, so this was a last minute decision and we thought we would try out the closed liquid cooling system. If it works, great, if not, we will find something else.