So I Need a New Rig

[Cynical Cat]

So new rig zone. I want something fairly new and capable, but not bleeding edge. Suggestions?

[Dark Silver]

Based on personal preference:

CPU: Intel I5 Quad Core(Ivy Bridge) 3.1ghtz

Motherboard: ASUS Z77-A

RAM: G.Skill DDR3 1600 - 8GB

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 650 1GB GDDR5

I'm always a fan of Intel processors - Asus Motherboards have never steered me wrong, neither has G.Skill RAM or EVGA Video Cards. These are the brands I usually go to (dependent on pricing) for the various components, and the rig should be reasonably future proofed with easy upgrade routes for the foreseeable future.
simply choose a case that you like that would fit the components, a suitable Power Supply (I'd suggest something in the 700w range), your choice of Hard Drives and Optical Drives, and there you go.

Of course, my laymen's choices might be inferior to someone like Marcao's or B4's choices.....but there ya go.

[White Haven]

Rough budget? That'll define just how much rig a rig-chuck should rig, and so forth.

In general terms, Intel CPUs are the way to go right now. If you don't need the system right away, Intel is launching its next generation in June, which is a thing to keep in mind, but if there's time pressure then ah well (Not sure what the status of this is given the other thread). SSDs are awesome if you can afford one without gimping the rest of the system. The 650 DS suggested isn't bad, but a 660 is a healthy jump up in performance if it's affordable. Really, though, to do a proper recommendation we'll need some vague idea of your desired price range.

[Cynical Cat]

Budget isn't really an issue. I like pretty graphics and I like games running smoothly, but the difference between playing Skyrim on medium and high settings isn't something I don't care about. I don't want bleeding edge, but I do want something that I will be using for several years before upgrading and I do want something that will play the games of the next few years. I can afford bleeding edge ridiculousness, but I don't want it.

[White Haven]

In that case, build something recockulously bleeding-edge, ship it to me, and I'll ship you mine. :D

More seriously, for a 'good but not holy shit' gaming system, you're probably looking somewhere in the 1000-1500 range. I5-I7 chip, bog-standard non-overclocking board, 8-16 or so gigs of RAM, Geforce 650 or 660TI, ~700w PSU, well-cooled and wired case, SSD & hard drive or just a hard drive if you want to save some money. Do you already have a Win7 license you can use, or do you need that?

And of course the earlier question, do you want this now, or in 3-4 months once Haswell comes out and changes everything?

[Hotfoot]

Do you really think Haswell is going to "change everything" with regards to gaming rigs?

[White Haven]

Hotfoot, as I explained to you in Skype, you are a fucker of the finest mothers.

[Cynical Cat]

In that case, build something recockulously bleeding-edge, ship it to me, and I'll ship you mine. :D

Let's see, the guy who won't even spring for a body in Eclipse Phase and wants everyone else pay for puppet sacks to carry him around wants a free computer. Why am I not surprised?

Well right after you're running a game of Eclipse Phase for me, a game I once described as "the coolest game I'm never going to play". Oh wait, that's Cameron.

Or after a game of Vampire where I can play an awesome Tzimisce koldun. Oh wait, that's more likely to be General Havoc.

Or Earthdawn. Oh wait, that would be frigid.

Or impress me with your faceorrific awesome. Oh wait that would be Marcao.

[B4UTRUST]

Thermaltake nVidia edition steel fulltower case - $110
EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2662-KR GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Video Card - $230
2x Seagate Baracude 3TB drives - $140 each
OCZ Fatal1ty 750W Modular Gaming Power Supply - $100
G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 - $75
ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 - $250
Intel Core i7-3820 Sandy Bridge-E 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor - $300
Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F60GBGT-BK 2.5" 60GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - $85

Total $1430

It's all in USD though so conversion to CAD will vary that in total end cost I think. Not sure what the current exchange rate is. Shipping to me would be about $5 if I did the super saver free shipping for everything that qualified. That may vary to Canada as well.

Some notes on this. I've always been a big fan of Thermaltake cases. Yes, they weigh a freaking ton in some cases but they're good solid cases that are well cooled and have always been, to me, worth the money. The modular power supply to me is a must for good cable management. You keep what power connectors you need and use, pull off the rest preventing a huge tangle of unused cabling cluttering up your build and blocking air flow. The SSD and the 2 3TB drives are more off of what I would get for myself rather than what you may want. I'd put my speed intensive programs and OS on the SSD and keep it pretty uncluttered and install/store the bulk on the other two drives. This would decrease load times and general drive clutter that creeps in after awhile. The Asus board has 6 internal SATA ports so you'll have plenty of drive expansion room. There is no onboard video so a video card is a must, but for gaming that's a given anyway. The video card in question should keep you running the latest games for awhile and is SLI capable if you wanted to drop a second one in. The motherboard supports quad-sli configurations if you wanted to go absolutely crazy. I did not include a wireless NIC or DVD drive as I didn't know if you would pull those from your old rig or not but both are readily available for really cheap anymore so you figure about $60-70 more for both combined depending on what you get. 8GB of RAM should hold you over nicely for quite awhile, you can upgrade it up to 64GB on that board and it has a total of 8 memory slots.

For $1500 you could do a lot worse and honestly could probably find something better if you really want to look. But as a quick run through of good parts priced decently this is what I came up with and would probably be close to something I would build for myself were I going to build a new rig. I'd probably put in a few more 3 or 4tb drives and the second video card but that's me. You can get better processors but the price increase is pretty high for what is in my opinion not that much return. Best yet, I'm pretty sure this thing can run Crysis on max graphics full screen without lag.

[frigidmagi]

Or Earthdawn. Oh wait, that would be frigid.

Urge to kidnap players and force them to learn Earthdawn... Rising!

[Hotfoot]

Or Earthdawn. Oh wait, that would be frigid.

Urge to kidnap players and force them to learn Earthdawn... Rising!

With Roll20, you can just set up the steps as macros. After that, we only need to know what step we're rolling. It actually makes it easier.

[White Haven]

As far as B4's specs, I'd put my own spin on a few bits, probably trade some CPU/MB pricing (to z77 and LGA1155-socket) for an SSD that's not hilariously small. I don't know about you, but given Win7's 20-30 gigs and even a token number of games, 60 is absolutely and in all other ways unworkable. As for the case, my personal recommendations go towards Coolermaster for having good cooling and easy underboard wiring, but Thermaltake's not a bad option, so no real objection there, just another alternative.

If you do go with B4's CPU/MB setup, I seriously question his choice of memory, though. The only real reason to go with an LGA2011-socket setup on a quad-core CPU is to get access to quad-channel memory, and then he's turned around and quoted two sticks of RAM.

[B4UTRUST]

Whitehaven, a lot of it with the quad-channel memory was room for expansion as needed rather than loading it all in up front. And as I said, it was a quick run through. There are bigger/better builds out there no doubt. 8GB to start with would run just about anything he'd want, the board supports up to 64 and he could easily drop in a second set of that RAM to expand it to 16 and still have room left over for more RAM. Dropping in another stick or two of RAM and a bigger drive don't really equate to a serious upgrade to me, more of a routine performance enhancement. But your point is well taken.

As far as the SSD goes, I normally run my systems in a different manner than most people it seems, simply loading my OS and a few always on programs onto my primary drive(the SSD in the case of this build) and loading everything else to other drives. To me this seems to reduce the creep and clutter on my primary drive that over times seems to start bogging them down. I could be imagining it, of course, but in general I notice an overall greater performance rate vs people who load everything to one drive. Again, that's just my preference on how I've done things for quite awhile and what works for me. My HTPC for example has nothing but the OS and the media front end software on it on my C: drive and the other 4 drives hold all the actual data(Close to 12TB now, I think). Same for my gaming rig. I loaded the LibArc Minecraft server to the primary drive but otherwise other than the OS and a few other smaller programs, everything is loaded to one of the half dozen secondary drives. The two 3TB drives should be able to hold damn near everything he'd want, assuming he's not half as bad of a digital packrat as I am. If he is, well then he's going to need another couple of 3 or 4TB drives, but that's up to him to decide and let us know I would think.

[White Haven]

The bulk of data and non-performance-intensive apps should be on magnetics, yes, but games are not non-performance-intensive apps, and benefit hugely from being on the SSD. That, of course, requires a non-postage-stamp SSD.

EDIT: As far as quad-channel memory, I was more getting at the 'let's not spend a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars extra on a motherboard for quad-channel memory if we're not going to use quad-channel' than insisting Cat needs quad. *grins*

[B4UTRUST]

Fair enough point on the quad-channel issue.

As for a larger SSD, OcZ makes a 1TB SSD for $2500. That should be sufficient space, right?

[White Haven]

As hilarious as that is, Newegg has a Samsung 840-series (non-pro, so not top end, but pretty damned good nonetheless) 500GB for 339.99 right now, or so sayeth this morning's email. that's a sale price of course, but the 840-series drives appear quite commonly on the short-duration Newegg sale lists, so if you don't want to jump on it right away, it'll be back at some point. The 840 Pro drives are some of the best (sanely-priced) drives on the market right now, but you do pay for that privilege; they're not ludicrously-priced, but they're not cheap either.

EDIT: And 240-256GB drives are on sale even more frequently, for similar prices per gigabyte. If you're interested in an 840 Pro drive, the 256GB version goes on sale far, far more often.

[Josh]

Urge to kidnap players and force them to learn Earthdawn... Rising!

I'm still up for a forum game of some sort, though my knowledge of the setting is minimal at best.

I do have a rulebook PDF kicking around somewhere on my drive.

[B4UTRUST]

Urge to kidnap players and force them to learn Earthdawn... Rising!

I'm still up for a forum game of some sort, though my knowledge of the setting is minimal at best.

I do have a rulebook PDF kicking around somewhere on my drive.

I'm sure if you don't I probably have all the game books on a drive somewhere... I mean I've got every other freaking system known to man apparently so why not