speaker system battlefield 3 image
ArmyGuy
I am (for the most part) knowledgeable about building computer for gaming, but motherboards have always been a little trouble (mainly with reliability with certain brands). But i am trying to build something completely different now. I am building it in an AZZA 9000 White Full ATX tower. It can accept the bigger ATX mobos and I would like to have one. Also, with this case, (search it on new-egg and watch the video about it), it is HUGE. I want to put a Corsair H100 CPU liquid cooling system on it but with certain mobos, (mainly standard size) it wont reach the radiator in the top of the case.
Now this is for a hardcore, dedicated gaming rig and I am looking to spend max 350$.
Also, I need help deciding on a processor. I was thinking an Ivy Bridge i7, but I am not sure what is the newer and better stuff out there.
It has been about 5 years since I built a new rig from the ground up.
Thanks for any help in advance!
Answer
My experience is in Component Engineering and Procurement Engineering from many years at IBM and Lenovo (now retired young) and I've been answering and researching forums and gaming web sites quite a bit and learned some key things. As long as you are experienced and knowledgeable, you should understand my view:
First of all, about CPU choice- Definitely Intel core i series at the latest releases.
Gaming does not seem to use more than 4 cores and no hyperthreading. When I saw a comment about Battlefield-3 designed for 6 cores, I found a test done with a 1st gen i7 where he underclocked it, turned off 2 cores, turned off hyperthreading in separate tests. The frames per second remained identical.
Old games used 1 core. Mid-time to a couple of years ago 2 to 4 with the 2nd two pretty weakly. The latest games probably use 4 cores effectively, but they are not at 6 cores in their software design yet and may not bother to be, and certainly virtual cores of hyperthreading are a waste.
When you compare i5-3570K, i7-3770K, i7-3970X, you see that in excluding hyperthreading, and then accounting for idle cores, the difference in performance is only a few percent despite the strength in non-gaming and video editing that fully uses the CPUs.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/11/10/battlefield-3-technical-analysis/7
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html
http://www.cpu-world.com/cgi-bin/CompareNParts.pl?PART1=Intel_CM8061901281201&PART2=Intel_CM8063701211800&PART3=Intel_CM8063701211700
I have thumbs-down from hard core gamers that think it's better because they spent so much, but when you see them side by side and lab tested, even CPU intensive games aren't getting the difference. Some games recommend the i7's for maximum results, but unless they wrote in for hyperthreading, it cannot be notably better. If you put the extra $100 or more into the graphics, you do better.
i5-3570K and i7-3770K both support pcie x 16 3.0 when motherboard is able to. The fancy i7-3930 and i7-3970's show pcie x 16 at revision 2.0 as Sandy Bridge. I think your choice is gaming should be the i5-3570K, and if you want to spend a bunch more, you go i7-3770K and it should overclock a little higher. You might get a 10 to 15% performance boost over the i5 when a game is cpu dependent and high graphics enough not to max out. 60 Hz displays max at 60 fps, and visual perception maxes at about 40.
About a motherboard, you have PCIe x 16 3.0 number of slots for SLI/crossfire. Single at x16, one at x16 and one running at x4, then x16 as single and two running at x8 sharing bandwidth, and top end boards able to do 2 at x16. Those are probably what you want.
You look for terms on the web site like Mil spec and all solid Japanese capacitors, and 2 ounce copper to get the highest reliability. gold plating could be flashed on or 30 microinches or anything in between and looks the same. The digital power can be of different forms and after seeing a few specs you might notice differences. On board audio has improved and Realtek 898 rivals standard sound cards if you raise the volume with amplified speakers. Some have dual internet. Some various wireless functions. You choose about USB 3.0 internal to bring to the front of the case and eSata and ieee1394 firewire and decide the case to match it. There are high rated older design cases still with USB 2.0 only. Azza 9000 has 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, e-SATA, HD Audio, Mic Front Ports. eSata is not common on motherboards especially as an internal I/O. You may need to wrap back through the back panel when it has eSATA
This is a shopping and compatibility check site and you can share your part list as the permalink or saved:
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/motherboard/#sort=a6&c=52
Put in the CPU first and matching motherboards display.
Then it is a one-by-one check.
Asus and Gigabyte are tops. MSI and Asrock generally slightly lower. Most others you can skip.
If you are on the 1155 package CPU rather than 2011, there are only a few uber-expensive boards.
The case holds XL-ATX, E-ATX, Full ATX, Micro ATX
And, when you consider RAM, note that the memory controllers of latest Intel only support to 1600 speed plus XMP self-overclocking, and with WIndows in 4GB and graphics cards with their own plus sharing a couple of GB, 8GB RAM is usually enough.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboard/P8Z77_WS/#specifications
P8Z77 WS is impressive with 4 PCIe x 16 slots where 2 can run at x16 as a double bandwidth.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-p8z77ws
Also seems to have the double port internal USB 3.0 instead of splitting one.
Many nice features.
Certainly there are many good boards, but need to choose your cpu first.
[adding: Power supplies are the least understood and most neglected. My answer here is already too long so you can look back at my other answers or email with questions]
My experience is in Component Engineering and Procurement Engineering from many years at IBM and Lenovo (now retired young) and I've been answering and researching forums and gaming web sites quite a bit and learned some key things. As long as you are experienced and knowledgeable, you should understand my view:
First of all, about CPU choice- Definitely Intel core i series at the latest releases.
Gaming does not seem to use more than 4 cores and no hyperthreading. When I saw a comment about Battlefield-3 designed for 6 cores, I found a test done with a 1st gen i7 where he underclocked it, turned off 2 cores, turned off hyperthreading in separate tests. The frames per second remained identical.
Old games used 1 core. Mid-time to a couple of years ago 2 to 4 with the 2nd two pretty weakly. The latest games probably use 4 cores effectively, but they are not at 6 cores in their software design yet and may not bother to be, and certainly virtual cores of hyperthreading are a waste.
When you compare i5-3570K, i7-3770K, i7-3970X, you see that in excluding hyperthreading, and then accounting for idle cores, the difference in performance is only a few percent despite the strength in non-gaming and video editing that fully uses the CPUs.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/11/10/battlefield-3-technical-analysis/7
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html
http://www.cpu-world.com/cgi-bin/CompareNParts.pl?PART1=Intel_CM8061901281201&PART2=Intel_CM8063701211800&PART3=Intel_CM8063701211700
I have thumbs-down from hard core gamers that think it's better because they spent so much, but when you see them side by side and lab tested, even CPU intensive games aren't getting the difference. Some games recommend the i7's for maximum results, but unless they wrote in for hyperthreading, it cannot be notably better. If you put the extra $100 or more into the graphics, you do better.
i5-3570K and i7-3770K both support pcie x 16 3.0 when motherboard is able to. The fancy i7-3930 and i7-3970's show pcie x 16 at revision 2.0 as Sandy Bridge. I think your choice is gaming should be the i5-3570K, and if you want to spend a bunch more, you go i7-3770K and it should overclock a little higher. You might get a 10 to 15% performance boost over the i5 when a game is cpu dependent and high graphics enough not to max out. 60 Hz displays max at 60 fps, and visual perception maxes at about 40.
About a motherboard, you have PCIe x 16 3.0 number of slots for SLI/crossfire. Single at x16, one at x16 and one running at x4, then x16 as single and two running at x8 sharing bandwidth, and top end boards able to do 2 at x16. Those are probably what you want.
You look for terms on the web site like Mil spec and all solid Japanese capacitors, and 2 ounce copper to get the highest reliability. gold plating could be flashed on or 30 microinches or anything in between and looks the same. The digital power can be of different forms and after seeing a few specs you might notice differences. On board audio has improved and Realtek 898 rivals standard sound cards if you raise the volume with amplified speakers. Some have dual internet. Some various wireless functions. You choose about USB 3.0 internal to bring to the front of the case and eSata and ieee1394 firewire and decide the case to match it. There are high rated older design cases still with USB 2.0 only. Azza 9000 has 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, e-SATA, HD Audio, Mic Front Ports. eSata is not common on motherboards especially as an internal I/O. You may need to wrap back through the back panel when it has eSATA
This is a shopping and compatibility check site and you can share your part list as the permalink or saved:
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/motherboard/#sort=a6&c=52
Put in the CPU first and matching motherboards display.
Then it is a one-by-one check.
Asus and Gigabyte are tops. MSI and Asrock generally slightly lower. Most others you can skip.
If you are on the 1155 package CPU rather than 2011, there are only a few uber-expensive boards.
The case holds XL-ATX, E-ATX, Full ATX, Micro ATX
And, when you consider RAM, note that the memory controllers of latest Intel only support to 1600 speed plus XMP self-overclocking, and with WIndows in 4GB and graphics cards with their own plus sharing a couple of GB, 8GB RAM is usually enough.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboard/P8Z77_WS/#specifications
P8Z77 WS is impressive with 4 PCIe x 16 slots where 2 can run at x16 as a double bandwidth.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-p8z77ws
Also seems to have the double port internal USB 3.0 instead of splitting one.
Many nice features.
Certainly there are many good boards, but need to choose your cpu first.
[adding: Power supplies are the least understood and most neglected. My answer here is already too long so you can look back at my other answers or email with questions]
Need help for the 100th time, can't build own computer, need help on creating one on cyberpower?
Christina
Well, for the first problem: I can't build my own, so please don't tell me to.
2nd: This is for my brother who is a massive gamer but his computer drowned and he has no money.
3rd: I have a tight budget of 1000 dollars, and I need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse with this desktop. Windows 7 included.
I really just want the computer to be able to play games such as Chivalry Medieval Warfare, on possible highest setting. I've asked thousands of questions like this. PLEASE I JUST NEED HELP!
Answer
With your budget, here's the best I could do... The configuration is saved for a few days:
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1EUEKJ
Core i5 3470
8GB RAM
GeForce GTX 650 Ti (EVGA superclocked)
500GB hard drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Keyboard, Mouse & Logitech speakers
500W Corsair power supply
Your total is $903 with free shipping.
The hop over to Amazon and grab this monitor:
http://www.amazon.com/Hannspree-HL203DPB-20-Inch-LED-lit-Monitor/dp/B006C2CYGI/ref=sr_1_21?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1359595607&sr=1-21&keywords=computer+monitor
You could also check places like CostCo- see if they've got something for that price.
Going with a less expensive 1600x900 monitor instead of 1920x1080 actually improves results in games- he'll be able to play titles like Battlefield 3 and Arma II on ultra settings instead of high. The higher your monitor resolution is, the more powerful your graphics card must be to achieve high frame rates.
You can modify the Cyberpower options slightly if you want, like a 1TB hard drive instead of 500GB for something like $12, or a 600W Corsair power supply for $9 more, but you're already cutting it very close on price. Don't go for the "standard" power supplies, those aren't very high quality and have a reputation for failing within 6 months.
Note that CyberpowerPC is more expensive than building from scratch, you could get a much faster system for the money if you had someone who could assemble the parts. But if that option isn't available, this build is probably your best bet.
For gaming in general and real-time strategy games in particular, Intel CPUs are much better performers than AMD. So I don't recommend going with an AMD-based computer.
Good luck!
With your budget, here's the best I could do... The configuration is saved for a few days:
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1EUEKJ
Core i5 3470
8GB RAM
GeForce GTX 650 Ti (EVGA superclocked)
500GB hard drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Keyboard, Mouse & Logitech speakers
500W Corsair power supply
Your total is $903 with free shipping.
The hop over to Amazon and grab this monitor:
http://www.amazon.com/Hannspree-HL203DPB-20-Inch-LED-lit-Monitor/dp/B006C2CYGI/ref=sr_1_21?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1359595607&sr=1-21&keywords=computer+monitor
You could also check places like CostCo- see if they've got something for that price.
Going with a less expensive 1600x900 monitor instead of 1920x1080 actually improves results in games- he'll be able to play titles like Battlefield 3 and Arma II on ultra settings instead of high. The higher your monitor resolution is, the more powerful your graphics card must be to achieve high frame rates.
You can modify the Cyberpower options slightly if you want, like a 1TB hard drive instead of 500GB for something like $12, or a 600W Corsair power supply for $9 more, but you're already cutting it very close on price. Don't go for the "standard" power supplies, those aren't very high quality and have a reputation for failing within 6 months.
Note that CyberpowerPC is more expensive than building from scratch, you could get a much faster system for the money if you had someone who could assemble the parts. But if that option isn't available, this build is probably your best bet.
For gaming in general and real-time strategy games in particular, Intel CPUs are much better performers than AMD. So I don't recommend going with an AMD-based computer.
Good luck!
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Title Post: Need help on deciding a Motherboard for a gaming computer?
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Author: Yukie
Thanks For Coming To My Blog
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