Building a Box for BioShock and Beyond [Archive]

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Not One Of Us

08-14-2007, 11:18 PM

Update posted (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?p=1063547#post1063547)

It's time.

I know how we all so much love the never-ending threads of "help me build my new PC!," that unfortunately, since I have the parts almost all decided, this thread will be for feedback on the selection for compatibility and pricing purposes. Or, if you have something else to recommend, why the fuck not.

This box is being built to replace my currently three-year-old system. I'm going all out here: I want it to run BioShock at the best possible quality, so drag Levine's ass in here. I also want it to last through TF2 and, hopefully, into Spore and Fallout 3 with minimal upgrades.

Anyways, here we go!

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017R)

When I read that BioShock would support quad core CPUs, that settled my decision. This is the lowest end of the Core 2 Quad chips, but if it's as I've read, that really doesn't fucking matter: it's still a killer. And for the Newegg price of $264.49, it's the money-saver in this build!

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3P (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128047&Tpk=GIGABYTE%2bGA-P35-DS3P)

Unless things have changed in the past couple years, Gigabyte is my preferred motherboard maker. Then again, motherboard makers are like hard drive makers - all of them have had their fair share of problems. Barring any poor reviews, I'll be going with this. Lots of SATA ports, works with the Quad-core and, if I ever feel retarded enough, I can use SLI for my video cards with the two PCIx16.

RAM: CORSAIR Dominator 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145043&Tpk=CORSAIR%2bDominator%2b2GB%2b(2%2bx%2b1GB)%2b24 0-Pin%2bDDR2%2b1066) and CORSAIR XMS2 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145030&Tpk=CORSAIR%2bXMS2%2b1GB%2b(2%2bx%2b512MB)%2b240-Pin%2bDDR2%2b1066)

My main PC problems in the past have always been from RAM, so fuck it, let's go high quality. Only going for 3GB total as I've read that 32-bit OS' only take advantage of that much. If wrong, call me on it.

HDD: Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033&Tpk=WD740ADFD) and Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148136&Tpk=ST3500630AS)

Raptor for the OS/Primary programs, Barracuda for other programs/music/blahblahblah I NEED MY GIGS.

Video card: BFG Tech GeForce 8800Ultra 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express Water cooled (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143111&Tpk=BFG%2bTech%2bBFGE88768UWCE)

Yes, I am insane. Also, I live in Phoenix.

Sound card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Stupid Fucking Name Series Sound Card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102014&Tpk=Creative%2b70SB046A00003)

Blah blah blah, Creative sucks, etc. but fuck it - I NEED my drive bay. Replacing my Audigy 2ZS Platinum.

Case: Koolance PC3-720SL (http://www.xoxide.com/koolance-pc3-720sl.html)

Built-in watercooling, looks nice in all ways; total price after all additions comes to about $460. Anyone got comments or other recommendations for built-in watercooled cases let's hear 'em.

PSU: ULTRA 550W X2-Connect (http://www.xoxide.com/ultra-x-connect2-titanium.html)

Mmmm, selective cables...

And now for my undecided portion of this post:

Monitor!

Oh shit! What should I get? I've heard recommendations for a certain Westinghouse 37" LCD HDTV monitor, but I'm not so sure, and it seems hard to come by now, while also a bit pricey. On the otherhand, the safe route would be the Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP-HC (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-5647), which looks delicious and cheap.

While the primary purpose of the monitor is to act as a gaming monitor for my PC, I wouldn't mind it doubling up for my PS2, 360, Wii(?); so, Dell 2407 owners, of which I know there's a lot of you, I ask: how's the component video look on this thing? Equal to a TV (or HDTV for the 360's case)? I'd love to catch up on my never-ending ATLUS and NIS backlog (stop fucking releasing games!), but would rather they not look worse on my monitor than they already do on my HDTV DLP. 360 spoiled me in that regard.

UPS!

Oh fuck! A recent power outage claimed the life of my previous UPS, but even though I had one, I'm not what you'd call an 'informed buyer' in this regard. So really, any recommendations on what to pick up for this beast of a system being built? I'd like good power filtering with a backup battery of about 10 - 30 minutes, if possible.

And that should be it. Using my old "could-kill-a-person" keyboard, and my 5.1 speakers are recent and my mouse is good. Comments? Recommendations?

Gary Whitta

08-14-2007, 11:54 PM

This is very similar to what I just built, only I went for the E6850 Dual Core over the 6600 Quad.

Kunikos

08-15-2007, 01:13 AM

Dual 500GB's in a RAID 0 stripe will beat out a single Raptor in both burst speed and wtfhueg size. Raptors have great spindle speed but, honestly, that only helps with a large amount of small files (such as for a web server).

I had a 32GB 10K RPM Ultra 160 SCSI drive for years as my primary Windows drive and it was so much slower than the Western Digital 80GB 8MB cache I picked up two years later it wasn't funny.

Also, screw that PSU. Go with a SeaSonic (the Corsair ones are rebadged SeaSonics) instead for 80%+ efficiency, modular cables, dual +12V rails, all the new PCI express plugs, etc, go for the 600W+ one. If you want to splurge go for the 750W PC Power & Cooling PSU (although mind that it's a bit longer than most).

Monitor: Samsung 22" Widescreen LCD should run you $280 or so and the 1680x1050 resolution will bring a lesser system to its knees. It will be easier on your eyes (better refresh and text clarity) so if you sit closer than couch play for your PC then I'd go with a real LCD monitor (not a TV).

DDR2 1066 RAM will only net you about 5% speed increase. For the cost, it would be better to instead just get more RAM and make sure that the RAM is perfectly matched. DDR2 800 A-DATA CL5 2x1GB is $78 and 1x512 is $45. Spend the savings on your video card?

8800 Ultra is just stupid. For the amount you pay you will be forehead-slapping when the GeForce 9 comes out and blows it away for half the price.

Also, that video card will NOT fit in that case unless you take out the entire drive cage section (with a dremel no less).

Get the latest issue of Maximum PC, and wait for the Cooler Master Cosmo case to come out. It's awesome, and you can use the magazine article to roll your own liquid cooling system. If you're going to buy prepackaged you may as well just buy a Dell XPS (and shoot yourself).

I sure as hell wouldn't buy an open-box CPU either; warranty is cut from 3 years to 30 days. Yay?

DeepT

08-15-2007, 06:41 AM

Except that when the GF9 comes out, it will be just as expensive as the 8800 is today. Of course it will come down in price eventually, but then why get it when the GF10 is on the way?

Actually I think the choice for the more expensive GF8 card vs a cheaper one should be tied to your monitor resolution. Mine is 1920 x 1200 and there is a big difference between the top end GF8 cards and the lower end ones. However, if I were running at 1024 x 768 the lower end cards would be fine.

Lunch of Kong

08-15-2007, 09:24 AM

Vesper

08-15-2007, 09:35 AM

While the primary purpose of the monitor is to act as a gaming monitor for my PC, I wouldn't mind it doubling up for my PS2, 360, Wii(?); so, Dell 2407 owners, of which I know there's a lot of you, I ask: how's the component video look on this thing? Equal to a TV (or HDTV for the 360's case)?
The 2407's component input is garbage. Don't use it for HD content. It'd be fine for 480p from a PS2/Wii, though. On the other hand, VGA from a 360 to the 2407 looks awesome. That's what I use (and DVI for my PC).

Contrai

08-15-2007, 10:22 AM

If you plan on getting Gigabyte, they have recently updated their motherboards to revision 2.0.

The only thing confirmed so far about the new revision is they replaced the back panel area with four more USB ports, and got rid of the parallel and serial ports. They also reduced the printing clutter on the pcb.

I don't know when retailers will receive these new revision boards though, as I recently order one last week and got the old revision.

Linoleum

08-15-2007, 10:58 AM

I don't see Direct X 10.1 as a big deal considering all the high end games are going to be targeted for the GPUs on the 360 and PS3 anyway.

Contrai

08-15-2007, 11:22 AM

Zipzoomfly has your X-Fi Platinum for $115 after $50 mail-in rebate. You could also wait for reviews on the Auzentech Prelude, it is suppose to come out this month.

mono

08-15-2007, 11:52 AM

Definitely get a 24" 1920x1200 display; 1680x1050 is for grandma's.

The Dell 2407 is a great display, but as Vesper noted, the component input sucks. It was actually decent on the now-discontinued 2405, but took a big step back on the 2407. Just use VGA for your 360 console hookup.

I don't think the 8800 Ultra is worth the extra $100 over the 8800GTX. I also wouldn't worry about the DX 10.1 spec. Every video card on the market sucks ass in DX 10.0 anyway. To run DX 10.x games down the road, you'll end up buying a 2nd gen DX 10.x card. Not to mention that game dev houses aren't exactly clamoring to release DX 10 games. Hell, id's next engine, at least 2 years out, will only be DX 9.

Kunikos

08-15-2007, 12:39 PM

The reason? DirectX 10.1. The spec is out, and none of the current DirectX 10 cards have the features required by DirectX 10.1.

Direct3D 10.1 is an incremental, side-by-side update to Direct3D 10.0 that provides a series of new rendering features that will be available in an upcoming generation of graphics hardware.

* TextureCube Arrays which are dynamically indexable in shader code.
* An updated shader model (shader model 4.1).
* The ability to select the MSAA sample pattern for a resource from a palette of patterns, and retrieve the corresponding sample positions.
* The ability to render to block-compressed textures.
* More flexibility with respect to copying of resources.
* Support for blending on all unorm and snorm formats.

So will GeForce 9 have these things?

Kunikos

08-15-2007, 12:41 PM

I don't see Direct X 10.1 as a big deal considering all the high end games are going to be targeted for the GPUs on the 360 and PS3 anyway.

Except for maybe games that are primarily developed for the PC first then ported to the 360 and PS3 afterwards (or concurrently but the developer prioritizes doing 10.1 stuff).

I think a better argument is the lack of market penetration for Vista and the DX10 level video cards. It's going to be another couple of years before developers can count on more than 1-5% of their customers having a card that can do DX 10.1.

Chicken and egg problem, I guess.

unbongwah

08-15-2007, 01:00 PM

As Jason said (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1061123&postcount=8), DX 10.1 isn't a big deal. Since I don't think DX9 support is going away anytime soon, I wouldn't worry about DX 10.1 being a requirement.

Coca Cola Zero

08-15-2007, 01:51 PM

You cannot build a complete box today that will be remain on the cutting edge of gaming technology past BioShock.

The reason? DirectX 10.1. The spec is out, and none of the current DirectX 10 cards have the features required by DirectX 10.1.

You must wait for the next gen cards for DirectX 10.1 support.

Horrors! When the DX10.1 cards are out, DX10.2 will be in the late planning stages, if not already announced! Why even buy a DX10.1 card then? It's pointless! You might as well never buy a videocard again! You're stuck with the one you have now FOREVER, because of fucking Microsoft!

Zylon

08-15-2007, 02:00 PM

You cannot build a complete box today that will be remain on the cutting edge of gaming technology past BioShock.
You realize you just said that it's impossible to go beyond the cutting edge, right?

I'm pretty sure that's self-evident.

ydejin

08-15-2007, 03:51 PM

The Dell 2407 is a great display, but as Vesper noted, the component input sucks. It was actually decent on the now-discontinued 2405, but took a big step back on the 2407. Just use VGA for your 360 console hookup.
FWIW I've got a 2707. When I plugged in an XBox 360 into the component input it looked terrific. A Wii running at 480p looked like crap though -- to my eyes worse than it did at 480i on an SD TV. Plus unfortunately the 2707 doesn't support 1080p.

Marcus

08-15-2007, 04:14 PM

Plus unfortunately the 2707 doesn't support 1080p.

It should over Vga if I am not mistaken.

Bleeding Edge

08-15-2007, 05:22 PM

I can use SLI for my video cards with the two PCIx16.
You can't run Nvidia boards in SLI mode on anything other then Nvidia motherboards. You could use 2 ATI crossfire boards.

Personally I don't see much value in SLI, but anyway FYI.

Not One Of Us

08-15-2007, 06:17 PM

Update:

Case: A couple people have brought to my attention that the videocard will not fit in that case, so the case selection has now been changed to the PC3-726SL (http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=28_43&products_id=186). It was a weird interior design that I've seen before but have never messed with, but whatever. Total price will only bump up $100 more.

Monitor: Probably going with the Dell, though you guys have done well to confirm my fears of shitty component inputs. Anyone got a good TV tuner-like card to recommend or something? I'd really like to play at least my PS2 with this setup.

And still, UPS! Need recommendations!

mono

08-15-2007, 08:20 PM

I'm using this CyberPower (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842102048) UPS to good effect. I don't really have anything interesting to say about it. It does have a blue light on the front-mounted power button which represents two potential drawbacks:

1-If your PC happens to be in your bedroom it could be annoying.
2-The blue button attracts the attention of your 1-year old son who likes to push it and abruptly power off your rig.

SergioBAM

08-15-2007, 08:26 PM

1) Duck tape over the infringement.

2) See above.

mono

08-15-2007, 08:36 PM

Well, I don't have the PC in my bedroom, and since my wife and I started chaining the kid to the radiator in our basement, #2 hasn't been a big problem.

That was a joke.

wumpus

08-15-2007, 08:54 PM

Watercooling is really, really annoying. I had a Koolance case, and I'll never do that again. It's just not worth the extra hassle over high-end air cooling these days.

wumpus

08-15-2007, 09:00 PM

And drop the Ultra, for God's sake. The Ultra is like a tax on stupid people. Let other stupid people pay it so we can benefit.

Gary Whitta

08-15-2007, 09:58 PM

Watercooling is really, really annoying. I had a Koolance case, and I'll never do that again. It's just not worth the extra hassle over high-end air cooling these days.
I was just reading an article about how to perform maintenance on a water-cooling set-up in the new Maximum PC - what a pain in the ass! I had no idea it was so much hassle...

Michael Fortson

08-15-2007, 11:03 PM

I'm using this UPS, which would power my system for a few hours:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101225

Unobtrusive. Can sit horizontally or vertically. The power button can't be accidentally hit (there's a several-second delay). Very solid, well-made, 3 year warranty, and a better value than my previous APC. Commonly carried at local stores (got mine on sale at CompUSA).

Kunikos

08-16-2007, 07:25 AM

For UPS, the ones that have an LCD or VFD read-out on the front are pretty damn cool because you can take one look at it and see what its temperature, current power draw, or battery remaining is.

I was just reading an article about how to perform maintenance on a water-cooling set-up in the new Maximum PC - what a pain in the ass! I had no idea it was so much hassle...

Yes, also dangerous-- if you have a leak you can seriously damage your computer parts!

Rimbo

08-18-2007, 11:56 PM

Gary Whitta

08-19-2007, 12:19 AM

That's an absurd amount of money for a case, IMO.

SergioBAM

08-19-2007, 01:41 AM

holy fuck, the empty case alone costs more than an xbox360 + vga card + bioshock game

But he is keeping PC gaming alive. There is no amount of price you can put on that.

Rimbo

08-19-2007, 01:43 AM

ehrm.. that should be "vga CORD," not card...

and yes, that's an absurd amount of money for a case.

wumpus

08-19-2007, 02:08 AM

This thread embodies everything that is wrong with the economics of bling-bling PC gaming.

It ain't right.

Uncle Larry

08-19-2007, 09:43 AM

That oughtta make one hell of a sig.

marxeil

08-30-2007, 06:34 AM

So I just bought an E4400 (It only seems like I'm cheap, prices here are insane). I'm trying to decide whether to wait for nVidia's next crop to come and then get a 8800 320MB (i'm not gonna buy it for the current 350$ it costs here), or just get an ATI1950 pro (only 250$ - yeah). Mind I'm not very particular with high settings and all. I've managed to pull an AMD2500+/Radeon9800 until my mobo burned a capacitor a week ago.

So what is the lowest spec machine anyone uses to run Bioshock?