Processor: 2x Dual (Intel Xeon E5645 2.40GHz (12MB Cache) (Six-Core CPU)
Motherboard: EVGA Classified SR-2 Workstation Board (Chipset: Intel 5520) (Supports Quad-Core and Six-Core CPUs)
System Memory: 12GB DDR3 1333MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series (2GBx6 Configuration)
Power Supply: 1000W Digital Storm Certified (Dual/Triple/Quad SLI Compatible) (Silent Edition Highly Recommended)
Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (1TB Western Digital Caviar (7200 RPM) (64MB Cache) (Model: Black Edition)
Set 1 Raid Options: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 2: Multimedia\Data: 1x (1TB Western Digital Caviar (7200 RPM) (64MB Cache) (Model: Black Edition)
Optical Drive 1: Blu-Ray Player/DVD Writer (Play Blu-Ray and Burn DVDs)
Optical Drive 2: DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 24x / CD-Writer 48x)
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card(s): 1x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 3GB (Includes PhysX Technology)
Add-on Card: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion (Includes Front I/O) (PCI-Express Slot Based)
Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 4: Sub-Zero LCS Cooling System: CPU Only
H20 Tube Color: - Not Applicable, I do not have a FrostChill or Sub-Zero LCS Cooling System Selected
Chassis Airflow: Upgrade Chassis With Zalman Performance Fans (Up to 6 Fans)
Noise Reduction: Noise Suppression Package Stage 2 (Optimized Airflow & Fan Speeds with Noise Dampening Material)
CPU Boost: FREE: Stage 1: Overclock the processor between 3.3GHz to 3.9GHz (Cooling Upgrade Recommended)
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-Bit Edition)
Recovery Tools: Windows Recovery Toolkit (Bundled with Windows 7 CD)
Speakers: Corsair Gaming Headset HS1 (Model CA-HS1NA


Here is my second attempt at trying to figure out what I need to have a machine that will play Cliff of Dover and Rise of Flight with all option to max and have a machine that would last for the next number of years. Last machine purchased was in 2004. Lasted till now until Win 7 with DX 10.

I am not techie and not sure what is really needed...just took items that sounded good and was recommended..

Would like some input on
items that are wasted
items that are missing and needed
items that cancel other items out.
items that cause bottleneck for speed and storage of the machine in games.

Please feel free to tell me what you would use "instead of" in the list as well.

What is Raid....(I know it is a bug killer, but what does it mean in computers and why is that important if it is important)

I would prefer to stay with Nvidia as this has always been good experience.

I would never attempt to build one myself...unless someone who knows what they are doing tells me step by step and is standing next to me.
If I buy a computer ready made, I want them to have call center customer support in Canada (hopefully), but needs to have a depot that can fix things in Canada (preferrably Toronto).

Thanks..I await your guidence or laughter at my expense

The dual server chips with the SR1 motherboard is a waste of time and money. Multi-cpu motherboards are for applications that can use many threads like video editing or scientific computing (say Matlab). Not sure about CloD and thread use, but have yet to see a game which uses more than four threads at a time. CloD is a buggy mess anyway, and is not what I would target my next $4000 home system at anyway.

RAID is a method for sending and retrieving info from more than one hard drive. Take the name Jack for example, and say you have two hard drives. In a RAID 0 setup, j would go to drive 1, and a would go to drive 2, c would go to drive 1 and k would go to drive 2. Basically you double the write and read speed. If you use RAID 1, then j goes to both drive 1 and 2, a goes to both drive 1 and 2, etc... and you have two drives filled with the exact same info.

Your best bet is a much cheaper, and faster Intel LGA 1155 setup with say an i2600K cpu, an ASUS Z68 board and one or two solid state drives (with a regular hard drive for backup and holding images).

S! - WD

Agree with the above...you can build a much more efficient yet cheaper solution.
Here's my two cents in conjunction with what WD has said:

In reality you probably won't need 12GB of RAM; 8 should be more than enough. Also, an SSD would be better for your operating system/games storage rather than a mechanical drive (but you can still keep one HDD for storage/backups). Then only reason to get more than 8GB is if you wanted to use a RAMDrive or if you do a LOT of work on your desktop with multiple resource-hungry apps running at once.

You most likely won't need a 1000w PSU...a good name brand, gold/silver rated 700w should be fine (unless you plan to do tripple-SLI or something that requires a lot of power).

If you're not an 'audiophile' and/or don't have a good sound system, I'd drop the soundcard too as most new mobo's come with on-board sound integrated (usually 7.1 capable), and it will do fine for the "normal" pc user.

Your GPU is good; but the 6xx series is due out a little later this year, so you could wait and get the same for cheaper or just go with a 600-series card

Hope this helps!

edit: also, if money is no issue and you want the best, try a "boutique" pc builder like Falcon Northwest, Alienware, or Digital Storm. They focus on gaming machines and will give the the best options...for a price, of course

Jack, just a thought, you might want to tell people on your other thread your over here now

As I said on the other thread, Cliffs of Dover is very poorly written software, you might get studders even on a top end machine.

Rise of Flight on the other hand, is very well written, and will most surely run well on quality hardware.

I say this simply to help manage expectations.

Also as stated in that prior thread, Solid state drives (SSD) are going to be needed to really help unlock those systems. SSD's are basically giant flash cards (like you would put in a digital camera), as opposed to Hard Disk Drives (HDD), which record to a physical disk, which is spun up using a motor.

SSDs:
+Are EXTREMELY fast compared to HDDs, you'll "feel" this speed by oberserving lower loading times, and faster program openings.
+No moving parts, potentially run cooler than a HDD
+Smaller than HDD's

-Much more expensive per Gigabyte than HDD's.


My advice would be to have the primary hard-drive be a SSD, onto which your Operating system, and a few key games go. On a secondary HDD such as the one you have selected, put media files such pictures, music, and videos. This is a good way to leverage both the raw speed of SSD's, and the affordable storage of HDD's.


Let me put it this way: my next component upgrade will an SSD myself. I'm just waiting for the black friday price drops.

Thanks aggressor.

Can you give me an example of an SSD that is common. I am not sure if Dell showed it on their site.

Based on everyone's suggestion...here is my next try.

Let me know your feedback..



PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i7 960 Quad Core Processor (3.2GHz, 8MB Cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
CHASSIS COLOR Cosmic Black, Alienware Area-51 Chassis
MEMORY 6GB DDR3 1333MHz (3x 2GB) Triple Channel Memory
GRAPHICS CARD Dual 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460 - SLI Enabled
HARD DRIVE 256GB SSD - Solid State Drive
(only sized HD with SSD - is this enough..I can put a second HD non SSD. but I will sitll have my old comp. running older xp programs that will probably have some older games and work files (excel, photos, music, etc etc)
MONITOR No Monitor
ENTHUSIAST ESSENTIALS USB 3.0 Controller Card
SOUND CARD Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
OPTICAL DRIVE Dual Drives: Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (BD-ROM; DVD/CD Burner) and DVDRW
OptionsALIENFX AlienFX Color, Quasar Blue
OS CUSTOMIZATION Alienhead Glow
FACTORY INSTALLED GAMES Steam and Portal™ Factory Installed (should I see if this can be deleted?)
AVATAR Alienhead 3D
KEYBOARD Alienware TactX™ Keyboard
MOUSE Alienware Optical Mouse, MG100
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 1 Year Basic Service Plan
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2010
SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee SecurityCenter, 30-Days
Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader
Misc 5 Please contact me regarding Dell's exclusive internet offers
BASE Alienware Area-51
Cooling Option Alienware™ High-Performance Liquid Cooling

Here’s my feedback, since it seems you don’t have a budget ceiling, it looks like you just chose the most expensive parts you could, and not the right ones.



These 2 Items are a waste of $$ unless your running a Business server, both items are optimized for memory mapping functions and not Gaming/Home User functions.
Running Server Components will not show you any performance at all outside of server/workstation/VirtualMachine functions.

Either get a 2600K i7/z68 Mobo Platform or AMD Phenom IIx4 or x6 / AM3 Mobo Platform.



Again. anything over 8 GB is rarely used in a Gaming platform.
2x4GB DDR3 would be Optimal.
And running anything over 2 slots isn’t recommended either.



Running 2TB worth of Mechanical Drives instead of a SSD Primary and a 1TB for Backup/Storage is a waste of performance as well.
Install the OS on the SSD, Install all programs onto the 1TB, Set Windows 7 To Backup to the 1 TB.

Running 2 Optical these two optical Drives are a waste of money.
Optical Drive 1 Does Everything Optical Drive 2 can do and more,
Remove Drive 2 and same yourself Power, Heat and space. And money (well $20).


Just use whatever LAN that comes onboard the Mainboard. The Gaming LAN cards are a Gimmick t.b.h.



The Dual GPU cards t.b.h. are a gimmick, as they share the same performance as 2 sli cards. At a higher cost.
If one GPU fails the entire card does, both heat sources under the same shroud. Under-clocked to manage heat

I would get two 6950 2GBs in XFire or two eVGA 560 ti 2GB (both of these Dual Card setups would run about $500, compared to $750-$800 for a nVidia 590 or AMD 6990.)
If money isn’t an issue then get two AMD 2GB 6970’s in XFire or two nVidia 3GB 580’s in SLU, this would be optimal performance for anything that doesn’t support SLI.

This would also allow you to over-clock more if you wanted too as the heat sources are divided under 2 heatsinks, and if one card fails you can use the other in a single card configuration.



I can’t say anything about this as I have bought an Creative SB Card w/ Front I/O kit the last 3 system’s I’ve built,
Unless your doing studio work this really isn’t required, as most on board sound chips can do DolbyDigital, DSP Effects and SRS w/ no problems now.



Depending on what CPU you get this is over kill for the CPU Part, also depends on the overclocking they do.. I don’t see them O/C a 2.4 GHz Server CPU to 3.4+ GHz like they claim below.
I7 2600K CPUs run 3.4Ghz and Turbo to 3.8GHz.
Chassis Airflow is good.



Whatever floats your boat, I use headphones when I play games so I can hear my system at all.


If they’ll overclock for free and its stable.. sure why not.. as noted above i7 2600K’s run 3.4Ghz already and Turbo to 3.8.. so…


Looks Good….


I have no experience with this product so I cant really say anything.

Thanks Skate,,,
Can you look at my new specs on the dell machine (right above your replay) and see if I am getting closer to earth.


Agressor,
I know that COD is buggy....but with time, I believe that the developers will fix this enough for my enjoyment

ok,

Assuming this is an Alienware Area-51, and looking at option options for each category on dell's customizer.

Heres My notes/changes on some parts.


PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i7 960 Quad Core Processor (3.2GHz, 8MB Cache)
This is Good, as there is no visual difference in games between 3.2GHz and 3.33GHz

OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
Good

CHASSIS COLOR Cosmic Black, Alienware Area-51 Chassis
Good

MEMORY 6GB DDR3 1333MHz (3x 2GB) Triple Channel Memory
Triple Channel 3x2GB is Good.

GRAPHICS CARD Dual 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460 - SLI Enabled
I would Switch this out

I’d Go wit: 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580
This is nVidia’s flagship Single GPU Card.
The 500 Series is Faster, Smaller, Cooler Than the 400 Series
The 460 1GB’s are End of Life Cards so support is limited.
CoD Doesn’t really like SLI so I wouldn’t try to Run Dual Cards.

That and SLI'd 460's just barely beat the performance of a single 580. But games that dont support SLI'd would suffer to 460 Single GPU Specs.
The 580 gives you the best setup for running CoD and pretty much anything on a Single Screen.


HARD DRIVE 256GB SSD - Solid State Drive
(only sized HD with SSD - is this enough..I can put a second HD non SSD. but I will sitll have my old comp. running older xp programs that will probably have some older games and work files (excel, photos, music, etc etc)\
$600 is A LOT for a 256GB SSD, by about $200, I’d Just Use a Regular 7200KPRM Drive w/ a Large Cache. The only thing the SSD would Change is Windows Boot Time and Game load Time, it will have no effect on Frames/sec in games.
So I’d Go With: 2TB - SATA 3Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache HDD

OptionsALIENFX AlienFX Color, Quasar Blue
Be Careful w/ Alien FX and Their Software.
The Software they install to control Lighting seems to hog resources.

FACTORY INSTALLED GAMES Steam and Portal™ Factory Installed (should I see if this can be deleted?)
You Can Delete Steam after you get it if you don’t want it, I find steam the best place to purchase games for up to 80% retail at times.


SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee SecurityCenter, 30-Days
If you have the option to remove this, I would, McAfee is garbage and over priced.

I'd love nothing more than to see CloD fixed, but I have my doubts. I think the future of Prop based dog-fighting lies in 777 and it's software engine.