SB Gaming Rig

[Cherpin]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Gaming.

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
1500 CAD with taxes in

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
Canada

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.
I see Intel as being the only option for this budget, but if someone can convince me AMD can compete at this price point then so be it. Not using AMD video cards, I've owned a few of them and the drivers are always trouble.

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
640gb WD Caviar Black

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
None

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
Overclocking

8. WHEN do you plan to build it?
ASAP, already started buying parts.

9. What resolution do you use?
1920x1080


Here's what I've found so far:

THINGS IN BOLD HAVE ALREADY BEEN PURCHASED/PREVIOUSLY OWNED!

Case: CM HAF X nVidia edition
CPU: Intel i7-2700k (Intel RE Holiday deal)
Ram: 2x4GB G.Skill Sniper Series 1866 F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR
Mobo: ASUS Maximus IV Extreme B3 (not sure here, would like suggestions)
Video card: EVGA SuperClocked GTX 580 (eventually get a second one)
SSD: Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 120GB
HDD: 640GB WD Caviar Black
Soundcard: ASUS Xonar Essence ST (music quality a bit more important than game audio)
PSU: Corsair TX950W PSU
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Thats what I've got so far.

EDIT: Decided to save my money for the next platform that will actually bring a big performance boost. Gonna go with a simple SB gaming setup for now.

Thanks for any input/help!

[Arinoth]

If you are planning on running tri-sli you should really think about going the X79, as its where it absolutely destroys SB. SB you'll be stuck with x16 x8 x8 if you are lucky, whereas you can get x16 x16 x16 when it comes to x79. Also, if you checked out our review you can see x79 performs better in games with tri sli cards then x58 (which essentially performs the same as SB but has more lanes then SB), ie tri sli scales a lot better with x79.

Taken from our review

[dandelioneater]

^^ hmm... it scales considerably better. Interesting

[Arinoth]

And remember, X58 has more lanes for tri sli then SB does (typically/natively)

[Eldonko]

I would go with x79 for tri-SLI. It will be notably better than Z68. 3930k + x79 board of your choice. newegg.ca has 15 of em in stock so it all depends on what you want to pay.

[Luay79]

P67 and Z68 trounce X58 in GPU multi-scaling. I don't see why you can't even go one lower to Asus WS P67 Revolution for $250 and downgrade the CPU to i5 2500k. You're guaranteed to have enough headroom to overclock your 3 GTX 580s and i5 CPU within 1050W.

Also, I would choose the Rosewill Thor 2 over the HAFX based on air-cooling performance and noise emission.

[Razamatraz]

To go Tri-Sli on P67 or Z68 you will pretty much have to go with an NF200 board if you want good performance scaling since they only natively support 20 PCI-Express lanes...There are also only a few boards that can do it properly...the P8P67-WS revolution and gigabyte UD-7 come to mind.

I would suggest going to something like the Gigabyte X79 UD3 with 4 properly spaced PCI-Express slots to handle your three 580s and still put the Xonar in, and the cheapest LGA 2011 chip. (If the 4 core version was out I'd consider that, but so far only the 3930K can be had)

I'd up your PSU to the AX1200 to ensure three 580s will run along with that big CPU.

Case sounds good.

RAM, go to a 4 channel kit...no need for the super fast timings with 4 channel...9-9-9-24 should be fine.

Would pick Crucial M4s over the Muskin SSDs..RAID 0 is going to be overkill but your call. MYself I would go to a single 240/256 Gig Unit since they run significantly faster than the 120/128s anyways and you have more failure chance in a RAID 0 array.

That puts you at about the $2500 with the first 580 included...I assume you weren't trying to include all three in that price.

[Dragonstongue]

Well, considering your price comfort zone, why bother Tri sli, just go dual GTX580 3gb cards, at least they have enough memory to handle thier power.

Also as far as case choices, Thor V2, Enermax Fulmo, Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra, Silverstone Raven 2E or Raven 3, are a couple choices.

I guess it is personally hard for me to recomend choices I would never go with myself, I cannot justify the cost increase for not much performance increase, however, we all have our own choices after all.

The rives I have read for the X79 is, it is very awesome performance true, but is a pretty hefty price increase for not giving near as much return in the dollar compared to say Sandy B 2500/2600K, theses still are very fast chips dont forget.

Anyways, my recomendation is either Dual GTX590 if you really have cash to burn, or dual GTX580 3GB which are still way uber powerfull, and can at least handle insane details AA/AF in places that even 590x cannot(due to the extra memory attached to them)

590s can cough due to lack of Vram, ASUS Mars II way pricey but best 590 you can get show that they are lacking Vram at very high res/settings, dont get me wrong, still way fast, but 580 3gb are more then most would ever need anyways :)

I have the caviar black 640, they are quite fast drives, and quite cheap now as well, I would however add 1 SSD into the mix for the OS stuff, after all, are you not trying to get the most out of your system, a slow hard drive can affect this as everything relies on everything being as fast as it can be. I had 2 caviar black 640 partioned/shortstroked for the best speed I could get out of them, recently went OCZ 60Gb Agility 3 FM 1.13 and its a huge deal faster, well worth it, but it is more cost effective to go with 120gb or maybe 180gb models, they tend to be faster, and of course larger, so you dont have to be as carefull not to run out of room

[draemn]

I didn't read everything, but I hope I read enough to chip in without foot in mouth syndrome :)

1) Why tri-SLI for GTX 580s?!?! Unless your multi-monitor gaming, there is almost nothing that 2-way SLI 580s can't handle. The cost/benefit curve is also retarded and the next generation of GPUs will be a HUGE jump forward in performance (which I wouldn't wait for, but I'd keep in mind before spending too much on GPUs in the meantime). I'm pushing 3x 1080p monitors off dual 570s and I can run every game at max settings AND MOST games at 5932x1080 (surround) with max settings & AA.

2) Yeah, the 570 and above start to lose some performance at the 8x range (which you need NF200 on z68 to even get 8x with tri-sli). You're looking at a 5-15% performance hit depending on the game. X79 really doesn't become that important until 3-way as a result (unless your running more than a 6970/570)

3) 1200kw PSU isn't sufficient for tri 580s & overclocking IMO.

4)I totally agree with the comment of buying 3GB cards for SLI if you're going high resolution (27" and up) or multi-monitor.

HOLD THE LINE! You said P67... I think that was a mistake... you should be buying Z68 if you don't go with X79

[Razamatraz]

Nothing wrong with P67 if he's using RAID 0 SSDs as OS/APP Drives anyways.