Maximum PC

Hi All

I am looking to build a new gaming rig as my old PC as been upgraded to death and so I want to start fresh again.

The PC will be 80% used for Games, 20% used for development work (This also involves running a few VM sessions)

The games I curently play whether good or bad

World Of Warcraft
Guid Wars 2
Star Wars - The old republic
Kingdoms of Amular
Darkstriders II
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Now my current PC I have to play these games mostlly on low settings which annoys me as I miss allot of the detail in some of these games, my monitor at the moment is a 24" Dell 2407WFPHC Monitor running at 1920 x 1200. I want a rig that can play these games at high end settings and will be able to play new games at high end settings for at least the next year or so. I may upgrade my monitor to either a 32" High def monitor or 2 high def 24" monitors, not sure yet.

I havent built a PC in a few years so I am behind the times with the tech, but I did have a look and thought os something along these lines. As I say I am behind the current tech trend so I may be way of base with the below, so any and all help is appreciated.


Thermaltake Level 10 GT Visionary Black (Yes I know its an acquired taste)
Asus Rampage IV Extreme Motherboard
Intel Core i7 3930K 3.2Ghz
Corsair H100 Hydro Series Extreme CPU Cooler
32GB Corsair Vengeance LP Memory
GPU Not sure Either
4GB EVGA GTX 690 915MHz GPU, 3072 Cores, 6008MHz GDDR5 or 2 x 2GB EVGA GTX 680 SC, 1058MHz GPU, 1536 Cores, 6208MHz GDDR5
850W Corsair Pro Series, HX, Modular, 80PLUS Gold
240GB OCZ Vertex 3, Sandforce SSD, Read 550MB/s, Write 520MB/s OS Drive
3TB Seagate Barracuda, SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache Data Drive or 2 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda, SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache Raid Setup
LG BH10LS38 Blu-ray Writer
Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty

Please any suggestions or changes to the above is appreciated.

Cheers

Druid

Undecided on OS either Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit or Microsoft Windows 8 Pro 64bit

I know nothing about VM sessions, so if I give you faulty advice, please disregard my deficiencies. But I do know a little of gaming, so perhaps I will be able to help

First of all, you have some premium parts there, so I will assume your budget is ample and flexible around what would make the best build suitable for your needs. In other words, you are able to afford what it will cost, "it" meaning a rig that meets, perhaps exceeds, your needs. The good news (again disregarding VMware or whatever?) is that for gaming, you do not require all that and can comfortably spend less. Here is a cost-conscious build you might consider as a starting point to your eventual build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/knkF

Notes:
- The Core i5-3570K is an Ivy based CPU and nearly on par with the faster i7-3770K in terms of gaming, but about $100 less. Also it's about $300 less than the i7-3930K Sandy-E CPU you propose.
- The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (or Evo) are best bang-for-buck air coolers, cheap and will serve you well. AIO water cooling systems will have some advantages over it, but higher performance air coolers will generally outperform the likes of even a Corsair H100.
- Your specified mobo is an Extended ATX form factor, which does not fit in your selected Thermaltake case. But as with the CPU, I've changed it for a feature-rich ASUS mobo. You could probably go even cheaper, but I'll leave it in for now.
- 8 GB of decent RAM is enough for gaming.
- As of now, the PC Power & Cooling PSU is priced right and works for your build. Otherwise, I would have gone with a 750 or 850 watt Seasonic PSU which is also overkill, but can accomodate SLI in the future if so desired.
- To push a single 1920 x 1200 panel at least 50-60 FPS at the highest settings, a GTX 670 is all you practically need right now. Unless you plan to use a multiple monitor setup or unless you want 120 FPS on a 120 Mhz panel, that is. But check the Anandtech bench comparison of the GTX 670 vs the GTX 690 and you decide if the $1000 price of the GTX 690 is worth it to you:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/598?vs=555

Again, this could be a starting reference point that you could build up upon? Higher priced parts will get you incrementally better performance for sure. Or it could be a build that can be upgraded with a second GTX 670 GPU later down the road when/if appropriate.

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

Sorry the Case is the GT Visionary, its the big brother to the GTS.

32gb is purley for running multiple VM sessions, as most games only run on 32 bit clients 4gb is plenty but I need the memory for the VM sessions.

I did look at the i5 CPUs but from what I read the i5 dont support Hyperthreading and I need this capability for a development project I am working on hence the i7 and after reading a view reviews the i7 3930 seems to be a good Chip for Performance and price.

OS has to be at least Pro Edition for Domain support.

The only reason I went for that Mobo is it was bundled in a deal with the CPU, as for as GPU is concerned, I have no idea any more and just sorta picked the newest one out thinking it would do for a while.

I do a lot of VM work (in test lab and production) so let me speak on that part. You do not need the 3930k, thats overkill. I run 3 Server 08 R2 VMs, 1 Srv 2012 VM, 2 XP, and 3 win7 VMs on my one desktop and the only bottleneck is Harddrive. I have a I7 3770k processor without overclocking. In Virtualizing the CPU rarely tends to be the bottleneck. I highly suggest the 3770k so you can overclock if you want/need to but you get the benefit of the hyper-threading that the I5 processor's don't have.

Second thing is the RAM.....I would suggest 8GB modules and think about right now how many VM's you'd run at one time and how much RAM you'll be giving to each VM. With 8GB modules you can start with 16GB and work your way up to 32GB to help save some money instead of going the full 32GB when its not needed. I have 16GB and as you can see in my first paragraph, I run all those VM's at once and RAM is not a bottleneck for me either.

Third thing is HDDs.....Having a 240GB SSD seems overkill unless your loading VM's on it as well. The key here is to have 1-2 VM's per HDD. Don't bother with RAID as it won't help as dramatically as you think. Again, 1-2 VM's per HDD as the HDD is the main bottleneck for VM's always. I have heard success from friends running VMs just on SSDs and it being lightning fast but again they reiterate 1-2 VM's per SSD so it depends on where you want to spend your money. I'd love to get 5-7 120GB SSD's but its more economical for me to get 6 1TB HDD's. Your choice there.

With all that in mind, ensure the Case has enough 3.5" bays and the motherboard has enough SATA3 6.0Gbps ports for all the drives you need in your VM session setup. Ensure you buy enough RAM to handle how many VM's you will be running and how much RAM you'll be giving each VM. Those are key so start planning that out now by doing the math.