planning to build a super pc (sort of)

Hi Guys,

I live in Thailand It's time to give away my PC to my nephew. I am building a new pc now. I have not paid much attention to pc technologies in the past 4 years. Last time I know I was using GTX 280.
This PC has 3 functions for me. 1. Racing simulator 2. some 1st person shooting 3. Flight simulator.
I went to gather information as to what parts to put in and how much and came out with below list.

My goal is to build a very high performing PC without using the top CPU and GPU model.
Also I want rfactor 2 be able to run 120fps with everything turned on.



Chassis Volair SIM 700
CPU i7 4770k 353.1
Mainboard Sabertooth 319.7
HDD WD2tbx2in raid1 179.3
SSD vector512 658.7
RAM corsair 8gx4=32g 294.3
VGA GTX780x2 1593.8
DVD-RW Blu ray. 115.4
P Supply Strikes 1100w 121.8
case Corsair 133.7
CPU liquid cooler 127.6

Total 4597.50

What do you guys think of this build this?
Is my build enough to hit 120fps in rfactor 2?
Look forward to hear from you.

Sam

 

No screens ?
P Supply Strikes 1100w 121.8 = Why so much power?
700 or 800 only

 

Will have 3 monitors at 27" each.
We will be doing a bit of overclocking, two hot running gtx 780, we looked at the 700-800w and were not confident. The next move up is all the way to 1100. I blew up PSU before.

Do you think this set up will do 120fps with rfactor 2 turned on full?

 

I don't think anything can run rF2 at 120 FPS right now, but you'll be good with that 3GB GPU, and you should definitely get the bigger PSU.

 

Thanks a lot realkman666,
would you say what kind of frame rate I can get? with everything turn on and anti alias turn off (I guess the most difficult function for GPU). Can I get consistent like 60-80fps?

By the way I try to search builds for pc before I post this message. I could not find new builds like mine. Could you point me to the right direction if there is a technical page devoted to it?

Thanks a lot from Thailand!
Sam

 

I don't know about 120frames with triple screen resolution. But i run 1080p with an old phenomx4 @ 3.6ghz and a gtx670, I get 120fps half of the time and min no less than 60 apart from the grid, this is with most things on full, shadows high, shadow blur fast, no enviro reflections, road reflections low. So my setup is not the greatest but it gives enough, Im sure you could find the right compromise on settings to get 120fps regularly enough.

 

i have 1 evga gtx680 4gig running triple 23" getting anywhere from 60 to 120 frames depending on track silverstone 72 fps in pits. until sli is better i would not go that way or until it is use 1 card they say at the moment it runs better last i read. ( more memory buffer the better for triples )

 

You'd be surprised at how much AA I can get away with on a GTX 560 SE, I set it at 8x and get around 50 to 60 FPS with decent settings. Anything less than that and the effect is barely noticeable.

I have never tried triple screen, so it is hard for me to guess, but with the power you'll be packing, you'll have a very fluid game by simply lowering the most demanding effects if necessary. I'm sure there are topics about triple screen setups around here to help you guess. Keep in mind that rF2 is hard to predict and a bit janky. Some people have a much better PC than me and still get a very bad frame rate when they turn on the mirrors, but it barely bothers my PC. Also, they might have one setting somewhere that totally destroys their frame rate and they don't know about it.

What I'm saying is that it looks like your PC will be fine for maxing almost everything and easily getting way above 60 FPS, but you might have to do some troubleshooting. No one knows in advance, that's just how rF2 is.

You could try to look for threads that discuss CPU and GPU usage to see if certain models are problematic for whatever reason. Logic doesn't always work for rF2, at least not yet.

Weird trees and average track objects aside, I have never seen a sim look prettier than having the sun bathe the cockpit of the Maserati as this. You can't tell much from the screenshot, so you'll just have to believe me. ;P

View attachment 8649
View attachment 8650

And make sure you follow the experts' advice for the PSU. With the Asian heat, these two GPUs and any possible overclock, I think you'll need the extra power. Even a good PSU will deteriorate over time, and that's why I had to replace a 600W OCZ with a 580W brand new PSU just to finish the school year. I imagine a lower tier unit would deteriorate faster and perhaps cause problems before you realize it. I'll keep my cheaper X-Supply for now, but if I were building a PC from scratch, I would get quality without a doubt. If need be, just get a smaller SSD instead and spend more on the PSU.

What will be the wheel and shifter?

 

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z87-GD65-GAMING.html
http://www.msi.com/product/vga/N780-TF-3GD5-OC.html


You seem to be skimping on case I would bump it up to the 650D

I would go for 2 x 2TB Blacks over cheaper green / blue are they , seem so at that price.

Then again I would not raid a sim tower.

 

One of the things to look at in power supplies is the number of 12V power rails, the more the better in most cases. You also want to pay attention to how stable the power is at 85% load as that is the optimum for most PSU's. When you look at PSU's you will see bronze, silver and gold ratings, this is like Olympic medals, but you should really not consider any PSU that isn't at least bronze rated.

I also see you are planning on overclocking the system and using water cooling. What do you plan on using to get the heat out of the room once you have it away from the CPU/GPU? Consider duct work with fans that will take the heat from the radiator and blow it out the window or you will be building a room heater. I would also suggest that you invest in water blocks for the video cards as well as the CPU so that the most important things are all being water cooled. Don't leave anything to chance there. Overclocking is all about the cooling.

The CPU you have selected is more than enough for gaming and likely overkill, especially when overclocking. For a gaming rig you really don't need to get anything higher than the i5 as the system won't perform very much better with an i7 and the cost difference is very noticeable. As for the SSD, have you looked at the OCZ Vertex 4 drives? If I were you I would also consider looking into learning about ram drives and how best to utilize them. If you purchase a decent ram drive program you will be able to set up at least one large drive and it will make things much faster than any hard drive on the market. This won't speed up the games themselves, but will seriously speed up the load times. You can set your system to boot up and load a ram drive that has the game you intend to play loaded on it, and when you are ready to play, it will seem almost instant for loading the game. Keep in mind how large games are now, this will likely require about a 10Gb ram disk or more to fit rF2 on if you have lots of mods to load as well.

That should get you to thinking and investigating more.
Hope it all works out well for you.

 

Nice, with monitors you use? tv? monitor? led? lcd?

A 600 w good brand PSU is the same as 1000 w cheap PSU.

About the PSU, more important that the number of w is the brand, one good is Thermaltake or Coolermaster.

 

That will be a nice computer...
Dont skimp on case or PSU
To me, with that budget, after all the research I did... I would go with a 690 and max out the cpu and mobo...
and upgrade the psu and case. There is some really good advice in this thread. I love my cosmos 2

I went with 32gb of 1866 quad channel ram. As mentioned I intended to use a 12-14gb ramdisk but the SSDs are so fast its almost moot... almost... ramdisk is extremely fast but I found it had the odd stability issue, but Im only speaking for myself there...
I also went with two smaller SSDs than one big one and mostly for reinstalling the os.
Good Luck... You will definately enjoy it once you get it... Are you building it?
You should be right in your target FPS in most cases. some small adjustments will keep it there.
Everywhere but Silverstone ... silverstone is a beast right now

 

Thanks John,
Will definitely look into that matter. Last thing I need is blowing up another PSU, damage something in the process, have to carry my big and stupid PC into town to change parts.

Regards,
Sam

 

re: update to the build

Hi all,
Thanks a lot for all the comments. I really learned a lot and they gave me a lot of directions to do more research and reading. At the moment I have modified my plan a little:

Chassis: Obutto R3volution with buttkicker gamer 2 (At the moment I can't get a response from the brand's distributor in SE Asea so I emailed Obutto directly to try to get an answer)
If I can't get this set-up I will use my home office's L-shape desk for the moment. I really like the versatility of Obutto, and the sim cockpit feeling (never had the space nor budget for one until now).

MB Sabertooth (Checking to see if other boards available or going to be available soon which can handle OC better at similar price)
HDD (No raid just 2x3TB or 2x2TB. I work a lot on video editing, download HD movies, but RAID too complicated for me. I guess I will just backup more often)
SSD vector512 (move back to 265GB to reduce budget.)
VGA GTX780x1 (Will wait for O/C version to arrive Thailand, and use 1 instead of 2 at the start)
P Supply Strikes (need more research to see what is available here)

After research, readings, the above set up looks more realistic to me at the moment.

The biggest investment is a SIMS cockpit. Obutto's product is the only one I found good for three purposes. (SIMS, gaming, some light home-works.)
Will do 27"x3 @ 5760x1080 for sims, and 1920x1200 for FPS games. I do not fancy 3 monitors for gaming, as frame rate drops a lot with 3 monitors at 5760x1080 unless I go SLI but that has its problems. I need to visit the shop and check if I can switch btw 1 to 3 monitors with ease though.

2nd biggest investment is GPU and it can break one's heart. The GPU was a iffy issue but now quite clear & settled. GTX780 is good for the money, $350 less than the $990 Titan at 90% of Titan's performance (crazy NVidia). SLI could be difficult as I am not experienced in that, so going for 1 card in the beginning and overclock it to easily surpass 1 Titan set up. But to be ready for O/C and future SLI I will look for O/C 780 version because they usually come with large dual fans to better keep temperature at control and runs quieter at idle.

I think 256GB is enough for a long time. 1TB just came out at $600 state-side. The price I have to pay for 512GB SSD here is ridiculous.

That's about it. Now it is getting the chassis, and get it shipped to Thailand which will take weeks.

Sam

Thanks for the information. I realized that 120FPS is not realistic in most games, even with 2 GPUs. 80FPS can be achieve-able and I found in anantech mentioning OC'ing monitor to keep the refresh rate V synced at 70 or 80. Need to read more about it.

Thanks for the comment after research I have reduced my target to 60-80fps 3 monitors for sims, and 60-80fps+ at full setting for 1 monitor FPS gaming.

I am learning this idea that fps in flight and racing sims (especially in this case FlightSimX & rfactor2) is not 'totally' directly dependant on PC's computing power. It has a lot to do with tweaks here and there, settings, mods, etc. Thanks for pointing out, I think it can be a slow progress to learn but worth it if I can have 80-100fps racing at Silverstone

Thanks for the photos of the Maserati cup race (cup race I think?)

Will definitely look into PSU, am backing off from 512GB SSD.

My wheel is G27. I usually turn force feedback off because it is not realistic compare to real race car driving.

That MSI GTX780 with big fans is definitely what I need...

Thanks a lot and really got me into thinking, my 38 years old brain is not like 18 yrs old no more
Apparently I know nothing about PSU. I will just go pick up a reliable brand name with enough Watts.
I always game in an air-conditioned room now. I found out the hard way years ago when my pre-CORE era CPU overheated and fused to one useless block even with a giant heatsink and blower. Gaming with an OC PC in south-east Asia's hot temperature gives one hot burning lower legs. And 10 degrees Celcius ambient temperature translates to multiple times core temperature.
I know nothing about ram drives but I am backing from 512GB to 256GB SSD. I need i7 for multi-tasking video editing as I will also use this computer heavily for some leisure work. (I forgot to specify this in the first post

I will not use TV. Most likely Samsung led monitors. For me the difficult part decide over 24" or 27", and I will not go over 1080. Yes that PSU thing.... keep me thinking...

No I will not skimp on PSU, after so many advices.
At the moment I am kind of decided on 780 OC edition for the already big dual fans straight from factory. Once the system is up and running I will think about if it is necessary to add another 780 and deal with the SLI issue.
What do you mean by two smaller SSDs one for reinstalling OS? Do you mean that I should keep windows in one SSD, and install games in another? I noted somewhere that I should install add-ons, mods in traditional drive.
Locals will build it. In Thailand it is usually select parts, shops will build PC for free. Parts come with 1 year warrantee.

Yes lots of useful information here. Couldn't have gotten this far by myself at all. Thanks for the SIM community.

Sam

 

One other note about your OC'ing. If you get a radiator setup that has room on both sides for fans, install more fans. The best setups I have seen use push fans on one side and pull fans on the other side of the radiator, moving air more efficiently that way.

 

I am learning too, ah ah. Most games and programs are also limited by the programming complexity and threading optimization (and such complex things), and as we all know, rF2 is not fully cooked yet. Also, if you want a lot of opponents on the track, like 30 Maserati Trofeo cars in full detail, it will hurt the performance no matter what.

As for V-sync, it is not well optimized yet, so I get some weird stutters and mild tearing even at a stable frame rate, but you should definitely try it, because it makes a big difference. I use a G25, and if you use the base settings, you only get force feedback on the curbs and some bumps, so it's not overdone. You should try it at least a little bit. I tend to set up more resistance because I need the immediate sensation.

I hope you will post about your experience once you start playing.

 

Does it really make a difference, besides having a backup if one fan fails?

 

Absolutely... One nice thing about the monster case.... airflow is not an issue... I have a 200mm intake pull in the front, a 140mm exhaust at the back, a 140mm intake pull on the inside of the door for the main chamber and the two exhaust fans with the h100i in pull with a 140mm intake in pull in the lower chamber for the ssds and the psu,
Avg cpu temp after r factor 2 session is 49-53c oc@(i backed it off to 4.2)
both gpus are around 53-58c
and the ssd is 28c

With all the airflow, I don't have to spool up the fans at all, they are all set to auto, and the thing does not sound like an airplane landing... Its much cooler in Canada though and it isnt the humid heat usually.

In relation to the ssds, yes, I have windows 7 on a 128gb ssd and rfactor and other games on a 256gbssd. I also have an 1tb external harddrive hooked up by usb3.0. Transfer rates between ssds get up around 400/500mb a sec and the usb 3.0 transfer rate to the external is about 22-23mb a second... plenty fast.

 

Yes it does really make a difference. You have the ability to move either more air through the radiator at any given time, or the same air with lower fan speeds due to having more than 1 fan doing the work. This setup will ensure that the air is actually moving through the radiator and not going around it. The biggest thing is that with most fan setups, the contact area to the radiator is not exactly flush and there will be air gaps allowing air to move where you don't want it. You could build a custom shroud and seal it to the radiator or you can have fans on both sides to help make sure you have enough air moving through instead of around it.

 

Double your RAM.