Gaming Upgrade Kit stub

$3189 Ultimate Game Design/Development Rig - February, 2012

Posted on February 7, 2012

Game developers and designers are running rampant with technology of late, and whether it's real-time ray-tracing or simply designing the most complex, over-the-top games possible, strong systems have become a necessity more than ever. Rendering, encoding, and compiling times can be unbearably slow with the wrong hardware (often taking an entire night for a single, complex scene), thankfully though, this game development PC build does its best to relieve some of that time requirement.

ultimate-game-dev-pc

We've designed this rig to be ultra-customizable: the price is scalable all the way from $2000 to ~$3200, making it a sound starting point for resource-hungry game designers and developers everywhere. If you're just planning to play games and aren't very interested in any professional tools, you may want to consider our $679 i5-2500 build instead (or follow our guide to build your own). But hey, if you have money to throw around, enjoy it!

 

Just remember, developers: With great power comes great responsibility -- like paying your electricity bill. Here's the list:

Ultimate Parts ListNamePriceRebates/etc.Total
Video Card2xEVGA GTX 570$720-$90, Free Shipping$630
CPUIntel i7-3960X Extreme (COMBO 1)$1050Free Shipping$1050
CPU CoolerZalman V-Shaped Cooler$80Free Shipping$80
MemoryG.Skill 16GB Quad-Channel$89-$9, Free Shipping$80
MotherboardASUS Rampage IV Extreme X79$470-$470
Power SupplyCoolerMaster 1050W PSU (COMBO 1)$250-$45$205
Hard DriveHitachi 1TB 7200RPM HDD$130-$130
Solid State DriveOCZ 240GB Agility 3$296-$20$276
Optical DriveLite-On Optical Drive$18-$18
CaseThermaltake Level 10 GT$250Free Shipping$250
Total$3353-$164$3189

 

Optional Add-ons (pick and choose as budget allows)

Add-on Parts ListNamePriceRebates/etc.Combined Total
Operating System
Windows 7 64-bit Pro Edition$140Free Shipping$3329

 

We're going to start slightly out of our regular order this time since the CPU is the most interesting in this build.

CPU:

Quit simply stated, this is the best processor we've ever used in a PC build. We advocate quite regularly that "more cores doesn't mean better" for gaming -- which is true, many games still use 2-4 cores -- but that's not true for development. Compilers, encoders, and render programs eat CPU and memory alive, and unless you can keep feeding it to them, you'll fall short and wait forever.

This LGA2011 CPU (of the Sandy Bridge-E line) won't be shelved any time soon; in fact, it's entirely likely that it will outperform many of the early Ivy Bridge lines. The i7-3960X Extreme has six cores, operates at 3.3GHz (3.9GHz turbo boosted) natively, has 15MB of L3 Cache, 6x256KB of L2 Cache, and -- this is the most important -- supports quad-channel memory. The days of Nehalem's triple-channel memory are sadly gone, but that can now be replaced by this extreme CPU. We combined the CPU a 1050W PSU to save you $45, find the combo here.

Are you a gamer and not a developer? Really, you don't need this. If you're an enthusiast, of course, have fun!

Want to save $500? Go with the 3930k. The difference isn't massive (diminishing returns on the 3960X), but the price difference certainly is. The only problem? It's hard to find in-stock.

Aftermarket Cooler:

Since many of the closed-system liquid cooling solutions are no better than their mechanized brethren, and because mechanized is a cool word, we've opted to go with Zalman's CNPS11X V-shaped cooling design, which provides dual heatpipes on a standards-breaking layout. We saw this cooler at PAX East 2011 and were impressed with it ever since, and this build is the perfect opportunity to make use of it.

Video Cards:

Seldom do we go the SLI/CrossFire route (personally, I can often be cited as saying "I'd go with a single, more powerful card instead"), but this case is different. Two GTX 570s will blow away any single-card configuration at the moment, and for game development, it'll make your life much easier for multi-tasking. If you're a programmer, NVIDIA enables its users to program their professional-grade cards for specific tasks, so you may want to look into the Quadro FX series for that. Post a comment below or in our forums if you need help picking one out.

Is it necessary to have two cards? No, absolutely not. But look at the title -- we're building the ultimate machine, here. Our below GTX 580 option will be sufficient for most users.

Want to save $300? Consider a GTX 580 (use the promo code EVG202B for $30 off) instead of the dual GTX 570 configuration. If you go this route, you could also decrease the cost of the PSU by quite a bit since you won't need as much power -- consider this $160 PSU instead. Note: The 7970 can outperform the GTX 580 in some instances. Research your programs and see what is recommended.

Memory:

Before I forget: Use the code EMCNHNH37 to get 10% off this RAM.

G.Skill is right up there with the likes of Mushkin, Corsair, and OCZ when it comes to high-performance memory at an affordable price. This PC3-12800 quad-channel memory won't have any problems at all with your memory-intensive programs. If you have to render and compile multiple instances at that same time, though, you may want to consider getting 32GB of memory. Check the requirements on your program for that.

You get 16GB of quad-channel RAM (which is natively supported by the motherboard and CPU) for best development potential. Think of multi-channel memory like adding more lanes on a highway: the easiest way to fix traffic problems - aside from driving a tank to work - is to add more lanes to the road.

As a bonus, the red/black combo matches the motherboard.

Motherboard:

This is where things get interesting: You need an LGA2011 board for the new CPUs, and despite there being numerous $250-$350 range boards in this area, we're building an epic PC that will destroy everything when it comes to benchmarking and development. The Rampage IV Extreme is known for its sheer number of connectors, its overclocking enablers (many software and BIOS improvements over other boards make overclocking easy), and size. It's an extended-ATX board -- not just any ATX board -- so be careful if you choose a different case than the one we've supplied.

The board comes prepared with a few thermometers/temperature gauges, 4 SATA 6Gb/s ports (that'll be important in a minute), 4 SATA 3Gb/s ports, 4 PCI-e 3.0 x16 ports (read about PCI-e 3.0 here) that allow for dual at x16/x16, triple-SLI at x16/x8/x16, or quad SLI at x16/x8/x8/x8. If you're looking to add more video cards, make sure you grab a more powerful PSU.

Want to save $100? Get this P9X79 instead. There's really not a very big difference between these boards, and most people won't notice or care about the software advantages of the Rampage IV. The Rampage IV is red, though. That's certainly worth something, right?

Power Supply:

There's no reason whatsoever to skimp on the power supply when you're spending as much as we are here. This enthusiast-grade PSU burns 1050W and has all the connectors you'll ever need for this rig, including upgrade paths.

The fanciness continues, though, as Cooler Master provides a front-panel fan speed controller with this high-grade PSU.

The Cooler Master RS-A50 is combined with the above CPU, giving you a $45 instant combo discount.

Solid State Drive:

I've linked this who-knows-how-many-times, but it's still important: Here's why you would want an SSD. This really isn't an optional part -- sure, you could downgrade the SSD to decrease cost significantly, but in the end, you still need an SSD for development. If you don't get one, it's a massive bottleneck. We've opted to use OCZ's Agility 3 for this build; it uses SATA III on MLC architecture (which really just means it has a longer lifespan than triple-level-cell architecture), and although PCI-e connections are a bit faster, the price on this is too great to pass up. It's a full 240GB and has an impressive max read / max write speed of 525MB/s and 500MB/s (respectively).

Install your development programs, your OS, and a few games on here.

Unfortunately, the drive is only rated for 2,000,000 hours of life, so for those of you -- like myself -- that plan to live for an additional 228.159105 years, you might be out of luck.

Want to save ~$140? Get the Agility 3's smaller brother, the 120GB edition. It's a bit smaller, but will still perform admirably for all your core functions.

Hard Drive:

We're still waiting for that HDD market recovery, but in the very least, at least the 1TB drives aren't too horribly priced. Hitachi's a very reliable brand for hard drives, and while I'd potentially recommend a RAID array for redundancy, this 1TB drive will provide enough space to get you started. Consider buying larger ones at the end of the year when prices are normal -- like this 4TB drive.

On a development or corporate system, even if that company is yours, you should consider setting up some sort of server-side backup / redundancy system to prevent data loss. You never know when a hard drive will flake out on you, when a virus will manifest itself, or when other bad things happen. This is a topic for another article, though. If you want to set redundancy up locally, look into mirrored RAID arrays (which means you'd have to buy more drives, unfortunately, but the data loss might cost you more than the drives would).

Optical Drive:

It's probably time you start considering blu-ray drives (especially if you're burning massive files to discs), but for the time being, let's stick with something simple. This MSI SATA optical drive ships free with the case we've selected (below), but it's not very fast and has gotten two fairly mediocre reviews. If you feel like risking it, you could just accept the free drive and go on your way. If you are OK with spending a few extra bucks to get something slightly faster and more reliable, consider this tried-and-true LITE-ON burner.

24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM

Want to save $18? Take the free drive and see how it works out for you.

Have $70 to spend? This ASUS BD/CD/DVD RW drive (because more acronyms is better, as we've learned from Red vs. Blue) has great value for the functionality.

Case:

Might as well get a killer-looking case for the system that's going to cost a fortune to build, right? Besides, you need something massive to accommodate that large motherboard and heatsink. We briefly mentioned the Thermaltake Level 10 GT series in our gaming cases of CES article, but this one's the real deal. Here's the cooling setup:

- 1x120mm bottom fan (intake) (optional - buy it here for $3)

- 1x140mm rear fan (exhaust)

- 1x200mm front fan (intake)

- 1x200mm top fan (exhaust)

- 1x200mm side fan (intake)

Cool enough for you? Remember, larger fans are quieter fans, and this case has a lot of large fans. Since you're reading this, you probably have a lot of money to spend. If that's the case, consider checking out some of our methods to souping-up your case (majorly non-functional, but fun to look at).

Surge Protection:

Don't be regretful. Protect your investment. Consider this $35 Belkin investment to protect your PC (you might want to buy it from Amazon or us.ncix.com to avoid shipping costs).

 

Whew. That was long and complicated. Post in the comments below if you have anything fun to say or if you need help building. Consider our hardware forums for extra help.