Hardware Revolution

For other computer systems, see: Computer Systems

It is time for the 7th segment of this series of articles on what hardware parts to choose in order to build your own custom computer. This segment will focus on a very high-end gaming computer, with a set budget of 2500$.

As the name implies, I will suggest to you all the hardware parts required to build your own custom build desktop computer. For the time being, I will not recommend a screen, but I will suggest that you either use a CRT type of screen or a 2ms, maximum 5ms LCD screen. Be careful for LCD screen latency, that is the time between when the action happens and when it shows on the screen. As a gamer, you cannot tolerate this and it is not indicated nowhere, so you will have to check out reviews. If you are interested in a particular model, check out the reviews on it before buying it. Feel free to ask my opinion on it as well

As for the keyboard and mouse, that is entirely up to you, as each gamer have his own preferences.

For the Operating system, I do recommend Vista 64bits, to fully use the 4GB of RAM and for the DIrectX 10 support. With the Service Pack 1 now released, it is a more mature operating system than it was before.

I encourage you to comment, ask any question you may have and if you going to buy a new computer soon and are unsure of what kind of computer you require to answer you needs, please contact me, it will be my pleasure to assist you. You can Contact me through this link.

The 2500$ Gaming System was designed for a person who uses a computer mainly for gaming (Casually called a “gamer”) and who’s looking for an excellent gaming computer, with over the top performance, with a large budget for this computer. This system will be amazing at running video games and will be very great for other uses as well. It is based on a Socket 775 platform, which allows for upgrades in the future. You will be able to swap your cpu, video cards, ram for better performing ones if you want to do so in the future.

Here are my recommendations for what hardware to use to build a great gaming desktop computer. These are the parts that I believe that will answer your needs, for a gaming system with outstanding performance that is. For each part of the system, I will tell you my choice, the reason for it and a link to buy the item. Of course, I’m open to suggestions, comments, questions so please post them.

My hardware parts recommendations:

Cpu: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Processor BX80570E8500 - 3.16GHz, 6MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Wolfdale, Dual-Core, Retail, Socket 775, Processor with Fan for only 353.99$
Click here to buy it for only 353.99$!
This is a very high-end gaming system and I’ve chose nothing else than the fastest dual-core processor available on the market. Why not a quad-core? For the same price range, a quad-core is slower and most games performances don’t scale well from 2 to 4 cores. For a gaming system, you want raw speed and a large cache, which is what you get here. 3 years warranty, which is voided by overclocking for your information. That is if you kill your chip. If you know what you are doing when overclocking, I wouldn’t worry about it and just go ahead and overclock this awesome cpu, which has a lot of overclocking headroom. Just a reminder to keep reading information and ask if you have any question related to overclocking.

Video Card: XFX GeForce 9800 GTX Video Card - 512MB DDR3, PCI Express 2.0, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV for only 309.99$ X 3 for 3 Way SLI = 949.97$
Click here to buy 3 of them, for only 949.97$!
That’s right, we are going for a 3 Way SLI setup. Yes, I hear you say, isn’t a single video card better than 2 or 3 or why didn’t you go for a SLI of GX2 9800 instead?! I was thinking of using two 9800GTX at first, then I compared prices, performances and I’ve found that those 3 9800GTX cannot be beaten for the price! They are cheaper than 2 8800GTX/Ultra or 2 9800GX2 and other high-end video cards and that it will beat the all of that in most benchmarks. Also, GX2 are rumored to have a lot of drivers issues and do not scale well in Quad SLI. Also, the 9800GTX are excellent overclockers, so go for it!
929.97$ for three 9800GTX might seem expensive but when compared to a SLI of 8800GTX or Ultra(Easily over 1200$!), it’s pretty cheap and it will perform much better!
Did I mention that it includes a lifetime warranty?!

Motherboard: XFX nForce 780i 3-Way SLI Motherboard - NVIDIA nForce 780i, Socket 775, ATX, Audio, PCI Express 2.0, Dual Gigabit LAN, S/PDIF, USB 2.0, Firewire, Serial ATA, RAID for only 272.99$
Click here to buy it, for only 272.99$!
From what I read, SLI offers better performance on Nvidia chipsets and they are the only ones who supports 3 Way SLI at the moment. This motherboard offers 3 Way SLI support, 6 USB ports on the backplate, dual Gigabit LAN, two PS/2 connections, DDR2 support up to 1200mhz and RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5 support. Is there anything else you could possibly want from a motherboard? This is the perfect candidate to help us overclock our processor at a very high speed, use three video cards in SLI,two hard drives in RAID 0 and very high-speed DDR2.
1 year warranty.

RAM: OCZ Reaper HPC Dual Channel 2048MB PC9200 DDR2 1150MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB) X 2 for a total of 4GB for only 201.98$
Click here to buy it, for only 201.98$!
This is a high-end gaming system and we want all the bandwidth we can possibly have from your RAM. With 4GB, running at 1150mhz, dual channel and timings of 5-5-5-18, this will blow your mind. It also offers lifetime warranty.

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM, X 2 in a RAID 0 setup. 121.99$ X 2 = 243.98$
Click here to buy 2 of them, for only 234.98$!
In order to have your OS, programs and more importantly, games load faster, you are going to use RAID 0. In simple terms, this imply using two identical hard drives and splitting the data between them, so that nearly doubles the write and read speed of data. Plus, you get the storage space of two hard drives, that is 1280GB or 1.28TB is this case. If you don’t have enough with that much space, you can always add more hard drives in the future. I would recommend two more of the same model that you have, in order to keep using RAID and to ensure compatibility. 3 years warranty.

Case: Ultra Black Aluminus ATX Mid-Tower Case with Clear Side, Front USB, Firewire and Audio Ports 85.99$
Click here to buy it, for only 85.99$!
Good price, Ultra is a renowned company many products. The case includes a Cpu air duct, which is great, as it brings cold air directly to your cpu cooler, dropping the the cpu temperature by a few degrees usually. 3 years warranty.

Power Supply: Silverstone OP800 800-Watt Power Supply - Quad PCI-Express, Active PFC 243.99$
Click here to buy it, for only 243.99$!
I’ve used an Ultra Power Supply for my own system and I’ve never had a single problem with it. 800 Watts and 66A available on the single 12V rail. Enough connections to power up everything you will have in your system as well, but you will need to use 2 Molex To Pci-Express connectors for your 3rd Video Card, which are included with your video cards. 36 months warranty

Cpu Cooler: ZEROtherm / CF800 / Socket 775 / Copper Base / Heatpipes / CPU Cooler 26.99$
Click here to buy it, for only 26.99$!
A very efficient cooler for its price, this will help you overclock your Core 2 Duo cpu. At 18dba, it will be very silent as well. 1 year warranty

DVD Burner: 2 X Sony DRU190A 20X DVD Rewritable Drive - 20x DVD±R, 8 DVD+RW, 6x DVD-R, 8x DVD±R DL, ATAPI/EIDE, Black 29.99$
Click here to buy it, for only 29.99$ X2 59.98$!
A 20X DVD Burner and it’s from Sony. Why 2? It’s very useful when you are making a CD/DVD copy, as you can read from the original disk and copy it directly on the new CD/DVD, without having to pass by your hard drive first. You can also burn 2 CD/DVD at once with that setup. At this price, it’s a great deal. 1 year warranty.

Case Fan:Thermaltake Silent CAT 120mm Case Fan - White 2 for 31.98$
Click here to buy it, for only 31.98$!
To ensure that your case stays cold with those 3 video cards, you will need a good airflow in your case! These 2 fans will do the trick, while remaining silent at 16DBa

Sound Card: Integrated Sound Card with support for 8-channel audio. It would have recommended a dedicated sound card, but the 3 Way SLI setup is taking all the slots available on the motherboard!

Total price: $2462.84
Add taxes; I’m in the province of Quebec, Canada, so in this case it’s 5% GST and 7.5% QST, for a total of 12.5%.
Final Price: $2779.94

Ratings -On a scale of 10- :
Gaming : 9.5/10 You will be able to play pretty much any game with max quality and full AA AF. You will be able to use a screen up to 24″ and still use max quality for any game. Nearly the best performance you can get.
Office : 9/10 This system is based on a dual core processor; it will run most applications very quickly, it will run several cpu intensive programs (Image/Video editing, media burning) at once without latency(lag). Quick on multi-threaded optimized applications as well, great at multi-tasking. The raw speed will help you a lot.
Overclocking : 6/10 This system was designed to be overclockable,  so you will be able to squeeze a lot more performance by overclocking, from the cpu, video cards and the ram. Intel Core 2 Duo cpus are renowned for being amazing overclockers, especially the Wolfdale core, based on the 45nm process. Thus why this system is using after-market cooling, in order to overclock to a really high speed. Reaching 4.0ghz on your cpu is a reasonable and realistic goal. Even more if you’re lucky or have more experience with overclocking.
Also from what I’ve read the GeForce 9800GTX overclocks very well too, but with 3 of them next to each other, you will have to keep an eye on the temperatures
Power consumption : 2/10 In short: 3 Way SLI and overclocking; With a low-energy 45nm processor, 2 hard drives and a 3 Way SLI setup, this system will consume a very large quantity of electricity. The video cards will be the parts which will draw the most power.
Value for the money: 6/10 This system will offer you outstanding performance for quite a large price tag.

In conclusion: Is this the perfect 2500$ gaming system? It is certainly the best I could design at this given time, given the current promotions and using brand new parts. Can you find better parts or better prices? Probably, promotions ends and starts everyday, prices drops, new products come up, sellers clear their warehouses. You could also buy a used or refurbished product on Ebay, from various websites, friends, a local shop, etc. There’s a reason why this is called a custom computer =)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and if you have any comment or questions, fire them away!
Let me end this article with a question: What kind of system would you like me to “build” for you? What are you needs and what is your budget?

Cheers, Mathieu.