Your Dream PC at ~$3000

homerdog

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I often find myself specing out builds on Newegg just to see what I could do in a given price range. Many PC hardware sites often feature "build guides" that list all the parts you would need to build a capable gaming PC across different price ranges.

Just now I went to Newegg and built out what I would consider my Dream PC, which I have attached as a PDF with all the links intact (does anyone know how to hyperlink to a Newegg part list?). This is what I would build if I was more or less rich and money was no object, while not going overboard (for the most part :D) on parts that cost 100% more for a 5-10% performance advantage.

So I was wondering what you guys would do, given a similar budget. Form factor is whatever you want it to be.

What PC would you build on a ~$3K budget? Not a hard budget limit, if there's a part that you just have to have but would go over by $100 (like me) that's fair game. Hell if you'd rather get slightly inferior parts but have the PC built by some OEM like iBuyPower I'd love to hear that too.

Also if you want so show what you can do for ~$1000 I'd love to hear it. I'm of the opinion that you can build a perfectly capable gaming rig for that price.

P.S. any critiques of my build are more than welcome!
 

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  • 2015-07-11 Dream Build.pdf
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Only one GPU, for shame... also why 2 SSD's? Especially the expensive one. Don't have time right now but if I have time I'll browse newegg later. Oh and how did you make that pdf? Also your case is to boxy for me.
 
I don't think the extra you're paying for a 5930k instead of the 5820k s worth it, considering you're going with a single GPU solution, therefore not needing the extra PCIe lanes.
In fact, for a single-GPU the X99's LGA2011-3 may not be the best platform.
Skylake is coming out as soon as August 5th, and with it being a "tock" architecture it may clock like crazy. Plus, you'll get an iGPU with proper HEVC decoding/encoding (could become huge for streaming, for example).
Early benchmarks put the 6700K at stock as fast as a 5820K, by the way.

I also don't get the need for such ultra-high-end storage solutions. One 256GB SSD for the O.S., one 512GB/1TB SSD for games, plus a HDD for less bandwidth-sensitive stuff should be able to cover your needs.
No need for 32GB of DDR4 either.. 16GB should be good for a long, long time (at least for gaming).

To summarize, that motherboard+CPU combo would make sense for multi-GPU. For a single GPU, I'd bet on the new platform.
 
but its not about covering your needs its about going batshit crazy
one 512GB/1TB SSD for games
Blasphemer, burn the heretic ;)
for games i'd be looking at 2x 6tb drives
also id get a good forcefeedback wheel and one of these
Q1MYNBb.png
 
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I could blow MORE than $3K just on the CPU, if I had imaginary levels of cash. I'd love to build a machine with an 18-core xeon or two, coupled with a full stable of DIMM slots all packed with memory modules, then do nothing at all with it except run folding@home on all the cores, just to see what kind of points-per-day score I could rack up... :LOL:
 
1000$~ build
6cgqjq.png

3500$~
35gooi.png

Quick and dirty but that's about what i'd get
 
I take it that intel PCIe card is there for more performance, but isn't a much cheaper M.2 SSD going to get about the same results? M.2 also uses a direct PCIe connection, instead of a SATA controller.
It'll cost half as much per-GB as that Intel card and most high-end motherboards already have one or more M.2 slots anyway.
 
Yeah i could probably save a few bucks here and there but that is the reason i said quick and dirty. When i am going to spend that sort of money on a new PC i'll probably do more research than just select stuff that looks good on paper.
 
t (does anyone know how to hyperlink to a Newegg part list?).
You can add all the parts to your cart then save it as a wish list. No one will be able to see it yet until you make it a public wishlist with a name though.
 
Only one GPU, for shame... also why 2 SSD's? Especially the expensive one. Don't have time right now but if I have time I'll browse newegg later. Oh and how did you make that pdf? Also your case is to boxy for me.

I'm not hot on AFR and I think a single 980Ti would be plenty for me. The 2 SSDs are because one of them is the fantabulous Intel 750 PCIe 3.0x4 NVME drive, which I would put Windows and a select few games and programs. The 1TB drive would be for more games (unlike davros I don't have every game in existence installed at the same time :D).

I just "printed" the wishlist to a PDF with a PDF printer I have installed. I was very surprised it kept the links.

I don't think the extra you're paying for a 5930k instead of the 5820k s worth it, considering you're going with a single GPU solution, therefore not needing the extra PCIe lanes.
In fact, for a single-GPU the X99's LGA2011-3 may not be the best platform.
Skylake is coming out as soon as August 5th, and with it being a "tock" architecture it may clock like crazy. Plus, you'll get an iGPU with proper HEVC decoding/encoding (could become huge for streaming, for example).
Early benchmarks put the 6700K at stock as fast as a 5820K, by the way.

I also don't get the need for such ultra-high-end storage solutions. One 256GB SSD for the O.S., one 512GB/1TB SSD for games, plus a HDD for less bandwidth-sensitive stuff should be able to cover your needs.
No need for 32GB of DDR4 either.. 16GB should be good for a long, long time (at least for gaming).

To summarize, that motherboard+CPU combo would make sense for multi-GPU. For a single GPU, I'd bet on the new platform.

I agree with literally everything you've said here, but this isn't something I think I would ever actually build unless I had so much money that spending $3K would make no impact at all on my life. Like davros said it's about going crazy :)

1000$~ build
6cgqjq.png

3500$~
35gooi.png

Quick and dirty but that's about what i'd get

Thanks!

I take it that intel PCIe card is there for more performance, but isn't a much cheaper M.2 SSD going to get about the same results? M.2 also uses a direct PCIe connection, instead of a SATA controller.
It'll cost half as much per-GB as that Intel card and most high-end motherboards already have one or more M.2 slots anyway.

Remember not all M.2 SSDs are NVME or even PCIe. In fact most M.2 SSDs on Newegg are SATA 6Gbps, and I couldn't find a single one that was NVME. Otherwise yeah I wouldn't waste a PCIe slot on an SSD. Slim pickins right now in this department. :neutral:

You can add all the parts to your cart then save it as a wish list. No one will be able to see it yet until you make it a public wishlist with a name though.

Aha!
 
but its not about covering your needs its about going batshit crazy

In my book, batshit crazy = Crossfire or SLI.

In homerdog's list, I see a lot of stuff that will bring negligible results in gaming (PCIe SSD, >16GB RAM) and is bound to drop in price rather quickly.


Here's my proposition:

- SLI of the Zotac 980 Ti AMP Extreme. This is the card that holds 1.3GHz, the fastest 980 Ti in the market.
- 128GB SM951 Samsung M.2 for the O.S. (yes, these are NVME)
- 512GB SM951 for Games
- 4TB Hybrid Drive for everything else (games too, of course)
- Change CPU to 5820K because PCIe lanes don't matter that much for SLI.
- Change motherboard to a simpler ATX X99 model because it has two M.2 slots
- 1000W Seasonic PSU 80+ Gold because those Zotac need lots of watts.
- 4*4GB of the cheapest DDR4, because 16GB is absolutely enough and at quad-channel that thing isn't ever going to need more bandwidth

Total: $2700 and guaranteed to show about 2x the gaming performance of the one in the first post, at least where SLI is supported.
 

Attachments

  • Dream Build _ToTT.pdf
    122 KB · Views: 0
Not to mention VR which will use a single GPU per eye. That should scale really well. I've always been pretty anti-dual GPU but both DX12 and VR look to be much more compelling use cases than what we've seen in the past. I still think 3 and 4 way sli/xfire is pretty pointless though.
 
Personally, I would load up on multiple cpus sockets, MFT of ram, and a single GPU to pass-through to a Win10 VM, where the other cpus, ram and drives are running on the virtualization monster host, KVM or ESXI. That would provide for a solid development network and a reasonable gaming machine and my NAS needs.

Forget about running SLI/Crossfire for gaming. Forget about excessive storage for just a single machine.
 
You're right about VR but I'm not gonna touch VR until it reaches 2nd or 3rd generation of maturity... don't wanna be disappointed. Need to save up too.

and my NAS needs.
Do you run in a mostly NAS environment? If so do you run gigabit ethernet and how's performance/responsiveness? I was thinking about doing this for my documents and AV files. Also how expensive is it? Haven't gone so far as to look into prices yet.
 
Personally, I would load up on multiple cpus sockets, MFT of ram, and a single GPU to pass-through to a Win10 VM, where the other cpus, ram and drives are running on the virtualization monster host, KVM or ESXI. That would provide for a solid development network and a reasonable gaming machine and my NAS needs.

Forget about running SLI/Crossfire for gaming. Forget about excessive storage for just a single machine.

I agree the whole "VM hypervisor with GPU accessed through IOMMU" thing is material for a dream PC. Nvidia does disable the feature though : they make it a Quadro or Geforce Grid feature, which is a bummer. I'd choose a GTX 960 4GB otherwtse, just because a dual slot 120W card is a power hungry enough vid card, historically.

I would have two GPUs though, one for a linux desktop (say an AMD R7 240 or 250, single slot) and one for a Windows VM (possibly R9 370 4GB or R9 380 4GB. Well with $$$ here's the Fury Nano!). Actually I would want AMD's Iceland GPU for the small card, which I presume to be GCN 1.2. AMD said you need GCN 1.2 for the future breed of linux drivers, if I'm not mistaken.

Display is part of the rig, let's say a 2560x1440 32" with VA panel that runs at 75Hz. Can use DVI input for the linux GPU and DP input for the Windows GPU. (but ideally I should be able to toggle with through software!)

Different version of batshit crazy : I would go with a 990FX motherboard (Asrock Extreme 6?) and FX8320E. Can have suboptimal hardware if money is not a problem.
Xen hypervisor, two cores for the linux desktop and six cores to the linux desktop.
Xonar DX sound card for linux and integrated sound card for Windows ; I'll just use analog stereo output, both go to a 3-way DJ mixer.
 
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