Intensive care

[Seventh777]

$40K on RAM alone!

Probably more than consumers, even enthusiasts, are prepared to spend.

It's a high end server board, but it could bring complex numerical modelling to the amateur enthusiast with over 50K to spend. Maybe by now it is no longer so expensive, but so far I have not seen more than 32Gig offered in the consumer marketplace.

You don`t have to fill it up in one go bud, if I were you and had the money to invest in a top end rig, I would most definitely start with a MB that had the capabilities of being able to max out, to cope with the present days market, that MB iirc was around $1500 on release which = around £1k, so probably cheaper, you haven`t got to spend anywhere near 50k, I know for sure if I had around say 5k for a new build rig the 1st component without any shadow of a doubt would be that MB .

 

[skiny]

You don`t have to fill it up in one go bud, if I were you and had the money to invest in a top end rig, I would most definitely start with a MB that had the capabilities of being able to max out, to cope with the present days market, that MB iirc was around $1500 on release which = around £1k, so probably cheaper, you haven`t got to spend anywhere near 50k, I know for sure if I had around say 5k for a new build rig the 1st component without any shadow of a doubt would be that MB .

What exactly would you need a 5 thousand dollar computer at home for? 1/4 of that would build you a pretty damn fast computer capable of handling anything I can throw at it.

I guess you could pop in a 12 core processor but I think for most people that would be pretty serious overkill.

By the way, my old computer used to take about 8 minutes to load Civ5 and then load the scenerio. I never timed it but I'm sure it was at least 8 minutes from starting the game to actually playing it.

Now it's less than a minute to load the game AND the scenerio. I don't even get to see the starting animation. It loads fast enough that it just jumps right to the menu.

 

[Seventh777]

What exactly would you need a 5 thousand dollar computer at home for? 1/4 of that would build you a pretty damn fast computer capable of handling anything I can throw at it.

I guess you could pop in a 12 core processor but I think for most people that would be pretty serious overkill.

By the way, my old computer used to take about 8 minutes to load Civ5 and then load the scenerio. I never timed it but I'm sure it was at least 8 minutes from starting the game to actually playing it.

Now it's less than a minute to load the game AND the scenerio. I don't even get to see the starting animation. It loads fast enough that it just jumps right to the menu.

I just mentioned 5k as an example, even with the T7500 MB you can build one for a lot cheaper, if I were still the type that upgrades my set up once a year or so then it makes sense to have a very high end MB to start with .

 

[Reefer]

 

[vinylweatherman]

I think this would be overkill for me as I am not into this multi screen high end gaming. I am looking for something that will not struggle with Microgaming, and not throw a tantrum when I try to install Google Earth and street view.

I usually upgrade an existing rig once or twice before getting a new one. I upgraded the old Windows 98 PC a couple of times to the best it's motherboard could handle.

My view on the second one was to choose the best processor available. At the time, I didn't worry too much about the motherboard, but this time I think I should also choose an upgraded version of available.

The custom build companies may charge more, but they are supposed to know which components work best together, so only have these as options. I was not looking at their top of the range gaming rigs, or their flight simulator multi screen monster, but something at the top end of "normal" desktop PCs. This seems to be (at present) the new Ivy Bridge processor family, SSD for OS and programs, and HDD for storage. Fastest memory on offer, and taken to the largest amount the motherboard can handle, which seems to range between 16Gig and 32Gig.

The one I saw was the opposite of the traditional macho extreme look for high end PCs, and it was in an unusual designer case. Cooling can be upgraded, and this is probably worth doing as I suspect my current PC gets too hot sometimes, even though it has not tripped out due to exceeding any threshold.

As well as being good for Microgaming, it should have my niece drooling over it, and then get her annoyed when she finds she can't just walk in, switch it on, and help herself

 

[mclee321]

Hi Vinyl,

Just a few mentions from a IT guy. I work as a systems engineer and have to outfit networks and infrastructure upgrades to many an office. We regularly spec up VM hosts, servers and workstations and I'm a bit of a nerd having been playing with PC's since I was a toddler. My humble observations on your upcoming PC -

1. 32gig of RAM is overkill for a home PC, unless you plan on CAD or seriously heavy photo/video editing. Chopping up a few mpegs or re-sizing a photo does not justify the cost. 16 is more than enough.
2. Unless you want to spend a absolute epic amount of cash on all SSD storage - Get 1 large SSD for the OS and program installs, then 4 large hard drives. RAID 1 and 2 Hard drives in a stripe to increase storage performance inside the PC. Stick the other two in a NAS (home editions cheap now), and set up a back up to there.
3. The only real difference between Core i5 and i7 is the price. Yes i7's have 4 virtual cores and a performance increase, but it's tiny compared to the premium you pay.
4. Spend well on a good mid/high range discrete graphics card. Even if you don't game, this will help massively with video playback and Casinos. Many windows components can use the graphics card for hardware acceleration; media players, compression programs, web browsers and flash. If I'm not mistaken most downloaded casinos run in a browser and flash environment.

Cheers.

 

[jetset]

Interesting post - especially your view of i5 and i7.