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Looking for some assistance in building a $5,500 budget PC

662 views 20 replies 6 participants last post by  fateswarm 
#1 ·
Heys guys!! Last year i sold my PC to pay for a family members medical bills... She's just won a lawsuit and been compensated and has paid me back..so its time for a new PC!!! My budget is $5,500.. You may think I'm crazy?! but i would also like this to include keyboard/mouse/2 monitors and obviously the computer itself. I was hoping someone who enjoys theory-crafting computer builds would be able to do one for me using the website i'll be using to purchase parts (Australian prices are so high atm -_-).

My goals:
1) I used to be a League of Legends streamer, and i would love to get back into it!! So i need a machine thats capable of handling 1080P Streaming, whilst gaming and having a 2nd monitor available to use.
2) I have a 70'' TV that i would like to have hooked up to the computer so that i can stream netflix whilst i game, so that my girlfriend can be somewhat entertained while i get my nerd on!
3) VMwares.. I'd like to be able to have 5 running whilst doing the above, each using 1GB of ram, 1 processor with 1 core.
4) The smaller the computer, the better, but i have room for a large case if its needed!
5) Future proof! This will probably have to last me a good 3 years

I think that pretty much somes up my needs, keep in mind i don't just play league of legends - i'd really enjoy to be able to pickup some games that are visually amazing too!!

Parts and prices: www.pccasegear.com

thankyou!!
 
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#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by South80 View Post

Nice budget. Have you ever thought of going with dual xeons? They cant overclock but having that many cores and RAM will be perfect for Virtual machines.
Hey bud, thanks for the reply. To answer your question, i haven't been keeping up with tech the last 12 months so i never ever thoughts about the Xeons.

I've gotta head out to work now for a few hours, hopefully someone incredibly bored or who enjoys these kind of theory builds could help me out while im gone.
 
#5 ·
This is what I would go for. You get a nice capture card, an awesome SLI setup, a relatively small case, one display for gaming, one for movies/images, etc.. And you can always switch them around for certain games since you aren't spanning into one virtual desktop.
Plenty of fast RAM, a hyperthreaded Haswell that you can de-lid if feeling like it, if not - it will handle stuff cool anyways. 5 cores for the VMs, if dedicated (this is worst case scenario, when the usage is 100%
tongue.gif
), and you are down to 3 cores for games and the other work. You could go with a dual-socket mobo, but then you let the overclocks go, and since games aren't optimized for multicore solutions, you are generally looking for the highest per-core performance processor. Hence OC is quite viable for the near future.

Add in ~$180 for the keyboard and mouse, the rest goes into water cooling.
The 144Hz 1080p panel for the games, the 60Hz 1440p for streaming/other stuff.
If the money come out short, I'd drop for a 256GB SSD.
thumb.gif


HOWEVER I strongly suggest a Korean panel monitor, if possible. A 1440p 96Hz+ monitor for well under $350 is so totally worth it. And then you can add the additional 100 bucks for water cooling.

 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by fragamemnon View Post

This is what I would go for. You get a nice capture card, an awesome SLI setup, a relatively small case, one display for gaming, one for movies/images, etc.. And you can always switch them around for certain games since you aren't spanning into one virtual desktop.
Plenty of fast RAM, a hyperthreaded Haswell that you can de-lid if feeling like it, if not - it will handle stuff cool anyways. 5 cores for the VMs, if dedicated (this is worst case scenario, when the usage is 100%
tongue.gif
), and you are down to 3 cores for games and the other work. You could go with a dual-socket mobo, but then you let the overclocks go, and since games aren't optimized for multicore solutions, you are generally looking for the highest per-core performance processor. Hence OC is quite viable for the near future.

Add in ~$180 for the keyboard and mouse, the rest goes into water cooling.
The 144Hz 1080p panel for the games, the 60Hz 1440p for streaming/other stuff.
If the money come out short, I'd drop for a 256GB SSD.
thumb.gif


HOWEVER I strongly suggest a Korean panel monitor, if possible. A 1440p 96Hz+ monitor for well under $350 is so totally worth it. And then you can add the additional 100 bucks for water cooling.

Yeah the apps i run in Vmware aren't exactly demanding. Also curious if running 2x 256GB Samsung 840 Pros in RAID 0 would be a good idea?
 
#9 ·
The performance difference will not be notable in real-world scenarios. You can, however, RAID 1 them for redundancy if you keep important data. But then again, you can do that on an external HDD.
rolleyes.gif

I find no point in RAID 0-ing SSDs in such normal occasions.

You can still stick 2x256GB SSDs just for the sake of it and keep them as separate drives. (But that is justified in certain scenarios, again. For your case: perhaps run the VMs off of the one?)
I would do that ^
 
#10 ·
i7 3930K and two 780s/Titans in a Rampage IV extreme.

That's a good place to start from. For gaming dual Xeons aren't really a good choice due to the low clock speeds, 3960X and 3970X offer no extra performance over a 3930K when OCd so there's no reason to spend the extra $500 for those, and the quad core 3770K, 4770K models don't have some of the virtualization features that the 3930K has and also only have 4 cores.
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alatar View Post

i7 3930K and two 780s/Titans in a Rampage IV extreme.

That's a good place to start from. For gaming dual Xeons aren't really a good choice due to the low clock speeds, 3960X and 3970X offer no extra performance over a 3930K when OCd so there's no reason to spend the extra $500 for those, and the quad core 3770K, 4770K models don't have some of the virtualization features that the 3930K has and also only have 4 cores.
My next question then is, would it be worth waiting until the 4930k is released? Its not too far off is it?
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by fragamemnon View Post

The performance difference will not be notable in real-world scenarios. You can, however, RAID 1 them for redundancy if you keep important data. But then again, you can do that on an external HDD.
rolleyes.gif

I find no point in RAID 0-ing SSDs in such normal occasions.

You can still stick 2x256GB SSDs just for the sake of it and keep them as separate drives. (But that is justified in certain scenarios, again. For your case: perhaps run the VMs off of the one?)
I would do that ^
Actually thats a really good idea, running VMs off the 1 SSD =]
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lukeyboy89 View Post

My next question then is, would it be worth waiting until the 4930k is released? Its not too far off is it?
If you're waiting a while anyways then the 4930K should arrive at the same price point in early September.

It'll offer around 7% better perf overall. Whether you think it's worth it is up to you.
 
#15 ·
I noticed alot of people already said it, but I would also vote for 2 xeon proccessors (Xeon 5600 or 5500 series maybe). They will give you 24 virtual threats which will last as high end for the next few years probably.
With a large budget you can make it as future proof as possible so choose a board with lots of channels for ram and gpu's. You can always keep upgrding then.... I suggest a board like the super record 2, im using it myself and i can really recommend it
biggrin.gif
 
#17 ·
I beg to differ, mate.
Games in general utilize more than 2 CPU cores (be it virtual or real) in probably 5% of the cases. For the time being, four cores are plenty for the majority of games, and even then not every title will benefit the extra resources.

We are slowly entering the age of real multicore utilization in gaming.
wink.gif
 
#18 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lukeyboy89 View Post

Yeah the apps i run in Vmware aren't exactly demanding. Also curious if running 2x 256GB Samsung 840 Pros in RAID 0 would be a good idea?
I would never reccomend running ssd's in raid 0 due to the lack of TRIM support. Unless you are into benchmarking then running ssd's in raid 0 offers very few real world benefits
 
#21 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Allsolid478 View Post

In my experience virtual cores are good enough for gaming you just need real cores with rendering if you ask me. Intel said on their site that the biggest advantage of ht is in gaming
Intel said that for the those understanding the technology very well. It doesn't apply generally.

What they meant there is that since 1) Gaming is quite deficient in running multiple cores to the fullest (it's very hard to sync with the main thread without inflicing massive latencies hence games are generally single-threaded with a few helper threads (at best) in most cases) and 2) Hyperthreading mainly helps when the load on the individual cores is not yet 100% but there is also a lot of switching occuring (the main reason HT gives a good boost is during switching and general intercommunication between the cores), then gaming with its low CPU usage on a per-core basis, will see a boost from HT.

The problem is that this does not work in practice on 4 cores or above (apart from a minor boost) because simply live simulations such as games are so bad at using multiple cores (for the reason I posted on "1)" above) that even 3 cores are probably the same performance with 999 cores or 99999 cores on hyperthreading nowadays.

People are imagining that 8core consoles will change all that but it's genuinely not the lack of hardware that makes it hard, it's really technologically and mathematically inherently hard to sync with the main thread of a simulation such as a game without inflicting massive latencies and rendering the whole effort worthless.

tl;dr: They mainly meant i3(and mobile i5) 2core/4 virtual core hyperthreading there. 4 real cores and above are rarely needed on most games.
 
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