Help me spec a Bad Ass gaming rig!

[imagamejunky]

Hi guys!

Please help me out. I'm hoping to get a lot of responses here. After spending countless hours on my Virtual Pin Cab I'm finally going to dive into building an Arcade/Console Emulator cab. I'm not planning on playing PC games on it as of now. I'm hoping for specific recommendations from you for the pc rig.

Here's what I've been looking at lately and this is NOT set in stone..

CPU- i7 4790K?

Z97 Motherboard- Maybe Asus Z97 Deluxe or one of the ROG Maximus VII's. Maybe the EVGA Classified?

GPU- EVGA or ASUS GTX 970 or maybe the 980?

Memory- 16 or 32GB DDR3, Corsair?

Storage- Samsung EVO SSD, and some large Hard Drives as well

What do you think?

Essentially I am asking those of you who have built or are building a cab what you would recommend. I don't want any problems running ANY emulators. I want this pc to be able to play everything I throw at it without frame rate problems at 1080P resolution.

If you were to build your cab all over again, what would you put in it? Please be specific.

Also, What storage drive sizes do you recommend? I have read that some of you have 240 or 500GB SSD's along with multi TB's of hard drive storage as well. What would be benificial? I will be installing every game I can get my hands on along with all of the artwork and videos that will run on beautiful GameEx.

Please give me your honest opinions.

Thank you in advance!

Junky

[tthurman]

At this point I would seriously consider holding out for Broadwell, and take advantage of what small increase in performance it nets you, as well as the power savings. To a large processor speed and memory are what gets ate up in the emulation world. You'd also be fine with a i5, but yeah, I'd rather have an i7 too.

I've had some ASUS ROG Maximus boards, and think they are pretty nice. In recent years though I've got some real dogs from ASUS, and no longer have the brand loyalty to them I used to. After I had to RMA a P5K Deluxe Wi-Fi 7 times in a row, I got a bit tired of dealing with them. This doesn't mean I wouldn't buy one of their MB's or cards, but pay careful attention to their GPU fans in the reviews, if you see problems in the reviews, best bet is they are spot on.

About a year ago I built a digital audio workstation for my boss with an ASROCK (ASUS value line), and was quite impressed with it. I wouldn't shy away from them if I found something I liked.

I spec'd a Samsung EVO for my dads rig, he couldn't be happier, and I don't blame him. I think you'll be quite satisfied with them.

Magnetic storage is so hit and miss who knows. My last purchase was Toshiba 2 TB (after they bought Hitachi's drive division) and they seem to be a good balance of capacity and performance. I've been running them since perhaps April.

You've selected quality stuff, just depends on what you want to do with it. If you plan to OC, that would lean me towards a more top end ASUS or Gigabyte board. If not, then really no reason to spring for a board with a bunch of options you won't use.

Keep us posted!

[Draco1962]

I am running a smaller SSD for my OS and GameEx, yet have my PC games, MAME and other emulators on my secondary drive (1TB WD Velociraptor @10K RPM). Any hit in performance with it setup this way is not visibly noticeable.

[imagamejunky]

I appreciate the information guys!

Thanks

[KRC]

i5 4690k will be more than fine, has a saving of $100+.

The latest Haswell i5 processors have more than enough power.

But if you can afford it, build it

ps. I'm an i7 user but a relative of mine has an i5 4670k and it's just as good.

[imagamejunky]

I started a new thread with my first day build photos. Thanks for the input guys.

Junky

[ClassicGMR]

I know this is late to the party but I did this build:

(The only weak spot is the video card but I had it in the house already. It'll be replaced eventually)

* AMD Quad-Core A10-6800K 4.1GHz processor
* Biostar Hi-Fi A85W motherboard
* Team Vulcan 16GB RAM (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 2400 (PC3 19200) (Supports up to 64GB Memory)
* ZOTAC nVidia GeForce GT 240 1GB DDR5 HDMI video card
* Lite-On 24X SATA Internal DVD+/-RW Drive
* ADATA USA Premier Pro SP600 2.5-Inch 64 GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (OS Drive)
* SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200.12 ST310052AS 1TB SATA II Hard Drive (Data Drive)
* EMC CX-SA07-500 500GB 7.2K RPM SATA II Hard Drive (Data Drive)
* 850-Watt 80plus Blue LED PSU
* Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit WITH COA

Cost me $500~ to build myself. Stupid AMD procesor had to be RMA'd twice before I got one that worked though.

[stigzler]

All very good. But could they handle pong?

[nullPointer]

Actually ... the system requirements for DICE are quite a bit more hefty than you might expect.

System Requirements
Since it's simulating every single chip separately, it's very slow... Probably about a 3-4 GHz cpu would get it running full speed. It runs at about 20-25 fps on my 2.2 GHz Athlon XP.

Having said that, I think the build's proposed in this thread should be able to run Pong without issue.

[stigzler]

System Requirements

Since it's simulating every single chip separately, it's very slow... Probably about a 3-4 GHz cpu would get it running full speed. It runs at about 20-25 fps on my 2.2 GHz Athlon XP.

That's bonkers.