dream machine

[Patriot]

hey guys ... one of my friends ... (he has been on here before... texas something lol)
he was gonna be building a computer for one of my other friends... and then I was gonna be overclocking it...

well I have been talking to him and kinda asked when he was building it cause I would love to come over and have fun with him...

and he said that he doesnt really have the time and if he would ask my other friend if I could build it for him....

well... budget be $2500
he wanted a i7 975 12gb ram 4 5850s (for eyefinity) thats about all I know...

If you had to finish out the rig... what would you do... (and would you swap the cpu for a lower one)

I think one 5850 has been bought I think everything else is in limbo...

[Ryan]

Solid state of course, Why not do the 920 and put it on water?

[jebo_4jc]

right, get one or two OCZ Vertex (the 120GB has the best speeds, but they are all fast)

I wouldn't go with 4 GPUs. Seems like most of the scaling articles I've ever read say the 4th GPU rarely adds a justifiable amount of performance vs 3 GPUs. Really, if the 5850 hasn't been bought yet, maybe consider starting with two 5870s. Less driver overhead to deal with.

The CPU could go both ways. You can sure save a lot of dough by overclocking a 920. ($199 if you have access to a microcenter....I can buy it if you need me to). But a good stepping 975 would OC to 4.5ghz without putting any strain on the mobo.

[Patriot]

lol oops... 2 5850s for eyefinity dunno how I did that...
and yes we have a microcenter though it is still a bit of a drive...

right, get one or two OCZ Vertex (the 120GB has the best speeds, but they are all fast)

I wouldn't go with 4 GPUs. Seems like most of the scaling articles I've ever read say the 4th GPU rarely adds a justifiable amount of performance vs 3 GPUs. Really, if the 5850 hasn't been bought yet, maybe consider starting with two 5870s. Less driver overhead to deal with.

The CPU could go both ways. You can sure save a lot of dough by overclocking a 920. ($199 if you have access to a microcenter....I can buy it if you need me to). But a good stepping 975 would OC to 4.5ghz without putting any strain on the mobo.

[jebo_4jc]

I practically drive past MC 5 days a week, so I'd be happy to buy anything there provided I get paypal'ed first

[Patriot]

I practically drive past MC 5 days a week, so I'd be happy to buy anything there provided I get paypal'ed first

to save $80 and get a D0 ? that shouldn't be to hard to convince him... heck if he chooses to go the other way... I could always keep it

he already wanted me to overclock it after my other friend built it...

more importantly... What motherboard choice... he didnt want to spend the $400 on a classy... but is it worth it vs another say p6t (that just got revved to include usb3 and sata 6gb)

[jebo_4jc]

I don't know. I haven't seen anything that really convinced me that the super x58 mobos are any better than the normal x58 mobos in terms of overclocking. It still seems like a mix of luck (getting good samples), cooling, and OC skill. Even if I were building a dream machine for myself I think I would save the money and buy a ASUS or Gigabyte board that had the features I wanted like USB3 or SATA6 (if I wanted those.....which I guess I might as well) and most importantly the best PCIe layout.