Broin's New Rig

[Tbone]

I'm so excited for his new computer that I figured I'd post the specs for him. We had to put it together pretty fast because it was a Black Friday special, so hopefully I didn't lead him astray. I think this is pretty much what he ended up with:


Paladin Dr.I
Link
Thermaltake V9 Gaming Case (Black)
Intel® Core™ i7 950 Processor (4x 3.06GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-1366] with Enermax Dual Silent High Performance Fan Upgrade (Push-Pull Airflow)
12 GB [2 GB X6] DDR3-1600 Corsair
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 - 2GB
[SLI] MSI X58 PRO-E Motherboard with [Free] Internal USB 3.0 PCI-E 2.0 x1 Expansion Card
Primary HD: 128 GB Kingston SSDNow V Series MLC SSD
Data HD: 1TB SATA-III 64M Cache Single Drive
Blu-Ray Reader/ DVDRW Combo
3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) 64-Bit
Standard Warranty Service Standard 3-Year Limited Warranty + Lifetime Technical Support

Now if he ever keeps crashing, we'll know it's just him. I think he'll have it in about a week or so.

[Ragnarok]

How much did this cost?

[Tbone]

I think about $1400. You can get it even cheaper without some of the upgrades (lesser SSD space, etc.)

[Fuse]

That's a 2000+ machine on a non-special day. You should have that for many many years.

[Broin]

Yeah I'm all giddy inside just thinking about it... Of course when it shows up it'll kind of be like blasphemy for me to touch it with all the user error coming its way

[Da6onet]

Would have been nicer if they popped a 470 in there (oc's nicer than the 460), but the 460 will still handle anything you throw at it for at least the next three years (and dual 460's will handle any sli supporting game for the next 6!). Very solid system indeed.

[Tbone]

Yeah, I couldn't really justify springing for the dual as I don't know how many games actually take advantage of it and they were already upgrading the single to 2GB for free.

[Winter]

I weep with joy at the marvel before me.  Soon will come overwhelming jealousy.

--
Winter

[Lithium]

I don't know how many games actually take advantage of it and they were already upgrading the single to 2GB for free.

Most games have some form of optimization for dual video cards. Even if it does not, the drivers provide a significant level of optimization as it offloads half the screen to one card and half the screen to the other. A typical increase in framerate would be 15-40%. This means you can turn up the resolution, filtering (AA), and other eye candies while maintaining sufficient framerates.

The key here is actually processor/motherboard throughput to handle the tremendous amounts of bandwidth that two cards require. Something Intel processors are actually very good at. Onboard graphics memory is nice to have but typically there is little to no difference in 1GB vs. 2GB (unless maybe playing at extremely high resolutions) because the memory is hi-speed and textures are typically not that memory consuming--yet. It is kind of a marketing ploy, especially when my findings on newegg shows that it makes the card 30-40% more expensive.

[Subb]

Bah.

[Tbone]

I just noticed my SLI was disabled...wtf. I have no idea how long it has been disabled...maybe the entire time. I just enabled it though! Now my computer is EVEN BETTER!

[Anamodiel]

A year from now I'm hoping I'll get a computer for graduating... Worse comes to worse I'll have to wait two years until I graduate with my CPA.

Gah.

[Lits]

.........ooooo pretty......

[Lithium]

A year from now I'm hoping I'll get a computer for graduating... Worse comes to worse I'll have to wait two years until I graduate with my CPA.

I'm sure you'd be surprised at the money you'd have if instead of spending $50 a week on boozes you you actually saved it in like a bank.

[Tbone]

A year from now I'm hoping I'll get a computer for graduating... Worse comes to worse I'll have to wait two years until I graduate with my CPA.

I'm sure you'd be surprised at the money you'd have if instead of spending $50 a week on boozes you you actually saved it in like a bank.

Good point. You could also stay home all day, eat cheap vegetable mush for substance, and avoid all social contact and put even more money in the bank!

As a matter of fact, if you're reading this, then that means your computer is on and you are spending money on power. You could turn your power off right now and have even more money in the bank! Just sit in the dark!