new build - $5000 - tips?

[battlemarz]

Why would you dig up a 4 month old thread? lol

 

[jfergie]

Back in my high school days the largest guy on the football team was named Ward... he was a big guy... REALLY big... and his buddies took him to one of those steakr. That was a $45 meal... you're talking $5000.

It just seems silly to everyone but you.

Doens't seem silly to me. I certainly don't mind him spending his own money on his own computer. And, if he gets 'ripped off' and wins and the other guy doesn't pay. Oh no.. he has to KEEP his kick-ass computer system? The horrors of it all...

I just spent $5k today on a system. and will probably add $1k SSD. I can tell you I've wasted money on worse things (women, booze). Hmm.. I can't believe I said that was a waste. I'd do it again. Anyway, I figure it costs me, say $2k in lost value in a year (i.e. my system is worth $4k a year from now?). Seems like money well spent if I get the use out of it. My car loses more value and I'll use it less.

The question I have, and I think will get answered by his build-out, is how much cheaper/better a completely custom system is. I didn't want to spend a single minute of work on mine (other than reading some reviews), so I bought mine pre-built and added some stuff.

I am sure someone custom tweaking their machine will do better, but I am curious to know how much they gain by putting in the extra effort. I am sure mine won't be as tweaked - but I hope it isn't half the speed either.

Mine: Water cooled I7, 12 GB ram, Quad-SLI 295's, 4TB storage. I am sure this is an OC'ers cardinal sin, but I don't know what kind of motherboard or PSU (other than 1200W). Since I wasn't doing any of the customizing or OC work myself, I deferred to the experts. I'll run some benchmarks when I get it and compare to the other system.

I am going to add SSD myself, I couldn't decide and wanted to get the machine built. I am leaning towards Dual X-25E 32GB Raid-0. My Windows 7 system drive right now is using 110GB, but that's with everything installed. Hoping I can cut this down to 64GB. Better would be to get the drive up to 128GB I suppose. Or, are there good ram-drives or any other options. I don't care about the boot-up time since I leave the computer on. But, once it's up and running, hoping everything is smoking fast. I'll upgrade to 24GB of memory as soon as practical and upgrade whatever SSD/Ram drive as I go as well. Other than that, this is my system for the next couple of years I think.

 

[bmuell]

I'm curious do we have any results from this "contest"?