Hello all,

I am planning on having a new gaming rig within the next month after my PC died quite a while back! So far I have this:

Thermaltake Soprano - Black
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz @ 3.6GHZ
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO (Socket LGA775)
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3LR iP45 Socket 775
Sapphire Radeon 5870 1GB
2x 320Gb Samsung HD322HJ F1 SATA
2x OCZ 4GB PC2-8500 DDR2 1066MHz Gold Dual Channel (2x2GB)
Corsair 750W TX Series PSU
Akasa AK-ICR-01B internal Card Reader

Already have DVD-RW and Windows 7 64bit on the way.

Intel Core i7 is too expensive and i5 doesn't have hyperthreading and less cache than the 9950? It also needs more expensive DDR3 (Can get 8GB DDR2 for the price of 4GB DDR3)

I need it to play GTA and Crysis well along with future games coming out such as rFactor 2, Dirt 2 etc at 1920x1200. It should run LFS, rFactor, NKP etc easily with AA/AF at max

Opinions?

Matt.

Edit:// Budget is around £900 as I have got to put £300 away for the nice Fanatec GT3 RS Clubsport Edition as my Logitech G25 died just before my PC did! Talk about double whammy

Since you're going to be going ATI, and your PSU will have enough wattage to go Crossfire, I'd recommend a Crossfire capable board. And it's easier and cheaper to find on on the AM3/AM2+ platform.

So I'd recommend a Phenom II 955, any 790fx am2+ botherboard, and a Xigmatek heatsink to match since it's better than the AC7.

Crossfire/SLI is not really an option unless you're on unlimited budget, HD5870 is really fast single-gpu card and should run all games just fine until the next generation of cards roll out. It probably won't run Crysis2 at full details, but it's not very efficient to spend tons of money on computer so it can meet the requirements for one tech. demo.

Since the introduction of Intel's new CPU lineup, Q9550 prices have dropped a lot and it's probably the best option in ~200€ price range considering you don't have to break the bank for LGA775 motherboard and couple sticks of DDR2 ram. For gaming purposes, i7 would be overkill since there's very few CPU limited games.


Edit: By the way, what kind of system you currently have and what is actually broken?
It's waste of money to buy new computer everytime single piece of hardware breaks down, which doesn't happen very often.
Over the past 15 years, I've had 1 broken HDD and couple fans with worn-out bearings.

Quote from Crommi :

Edit: By the way, what kind of system you currently have and what is actually broken?
It's waste of money to buy new computer everytime single piece of hardware breaks down, which doesn't happen very often.
Over the past 15 years, I've had 1 broken HDD and couple fans with worn-out bearings.

My OCZ 600watt PSU (which has quite a good reputation) let me down by failing on me and taking everything with it!

Before I had an AMD X2 with 4GB DDR2, ATI 4870 512mb, 250GB HDD Sata II and Vista X64.

Decided on this for my new rig setup:

Intel Core i5 2.66GHZ OEM
Coolmaster Hyper TX3 CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L Intel P55 Socket 1156
Patriot Viper 4GB PC3-10666 1333MHZ
XFX ATI Radeon HD4870 1GB DDR5
500GB Samsung Spinpoint F3 Sata II
650W TX Corsair PSU
Windows 7 64bit (Arrived)
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 OEM

Will add another 4GB of DDR3 and a Blu-Ray player after I get my new Wheel

Decided i7 is pure overkill for what I need and i5 is better than Core 2 Quad Also decided on a 4870 1GB, reason being I only play sim racing games along with a bit of CSS and Football Manager.

Im pretty sure this will handle rFactor 2, the Codemaster F1 game (IF its a sim :P) and any updates for LFS and NKP!

Crysis likes high clockspeeds and is very gpu intensive. GTA IV likes quadcores and is very cpu intensive.

w/ y moverclocked e8400 and 5850, I'll get better framerates in Crysis than you, but you'll smack me around like I stole something in GTA IV, because you have a quadcore.

Quote from Gabkicks :

Crysis likes high clockspeeds and is very gpu intensive. GTA IV likes quadcores and is very cpu intensive.

w/ y moverclocked e8400 and 5850, I'll get better framerates in Crysis than you, but you'll smack me around like I stole something in GTA IV, because you have a quadcore.

I wont miss playing GTA and Crysis anyway, will just play my racing games

Got my Xbox 360 for playing FPS with mates

Then why the hell do you need such a rig if you only play racing games?

Quote from Bose321 :

Then why the hell do you need such a rig if you only play racing games?

I dont wanna have to replace it in a years time (well maybe the GPU but thats it).

I use a 24" screen at 1920 x 1200 so that kills some performance plus I run everything with max AA/AF.

Its quite suprising how much juice iRacing needs to run at full with AA/AF.

Need it to run rFactor 2 and maybe the Codemaster F1 game if its not like their usual crap "sim" games

Core i5 is less money that the Core 2 Quad 9950 so that was an easy choice, will be great for multi-tasking in Win 7 and Football Manager too

I'm a fool. Just ordered an x58 motherboard, 3sticks ddr3 ram, and an i7 920 processor -_-

Quote from Gabkicks :

I'm a fool. Just ordered an x58 motherboard, 3sticks ddr3 ram, and an i7 920 processor -_-

Will be a great system for multi-tasking, rendering etc

Won't notice that much of a difference in games though, unless DX11 will take advantage of it!

Still good buy though