Maximum PC

Hi all,

I am building a new PC, I tend to build every 5 or 6 years. My current rig is a dual core AMD Athlon51, 2gb ram. I did upgrade the videocard a few years ago, but games just dont run well on my current PC anymore. When I built it, it was top of the line (early 2006).

My new rig will be near top of the line as well. I justify the cost by telling myself I won't mess with it until 2018.

My question is about the mobo. I obviously want close to top echelon. USB3 is needed, enough PCIex16 lanes for 2 video cards, possibly,etc. Maximum PC's recommendation for best LGA2011 (I am going with a core i73930K) seems odd. On newegg it gets crushed in the reviews, and its fairly old. I know lga2011 boards are not new, but can anyone vouche for Maxpc's recommendation (asus p9x79 deluxe). Just looking for what everyone thinks is the best o the best at the moment. I am going with two Samsung 830's (no raid) and a single (for now) Radeon 690

You state you want top of the line, but imho there are different levels of top of the line lol. So I will just ask, budget?

I can't say anything about the ASUS mobo you reference, but I think MaxPC went with the LGA 2011 socket and Sandy-E CPU because what else can it do? If it has to go a notch above a Core i5 CPU there is nowhere else to go but Sandy-E in terms of performance and price. But mainly price, as gaming performance is not significant between the two chips.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/552?vs=288

Anandtech doesn't have a Core i5-3570K in their bench, so I compared the 3930K to a 2500K (which is about 10% slower than a 3570K). Yes, the 3930K looks great in most benches vs the 2500K, but the gaming benches near the bottom are relevant here, right? If $ is not an object, then yes, Sandy-E is the way to go right now. That may change though next year when Haswell comes out or when/if Intel releases Ivy-E.

The decent enthusiast gaming build includes:
- Core i5-3570K CPU
- Z77 / 1155 mobo
- 8 GB 1600 RAM
- SSD

From there, each dollar gets only incrementally better performance. If you need/want the performance, yeah of course it's justifiable and worth it. I'm just saying