Just ordered my new Maingear gaming rig!

[WelshDragon]

After several years of my old computer struggling to play my favorite games at moderate settings, I broke down and pulled the trigger on a new system from Maingear... the only hard part now is the wait! This beast should be able to run Shogun 2 at full detail, and anything else for that matter (at least for a year or two). Does anyone else have a Maingear rig? I've read good things about them, and they were super helpful when I called with questions about the build. Also, is there anything I flubbed up on the specs? Cheers!

MAINGEAR F131 Chassis With One-Piece Aluminum Front Construction - Black with Acoustic Dampening
Motherboard: Asus® Sabertooth X58 Supporting SLI/CrossFire, USB 3.0, and SATA 6G
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-960 3.2GHz Quad-core with Hypethreading (Redline Overclocking Service)
MAINGEAR LiquidX 1750 Supercooler [DUAL FANS]
Memory: 12GB Patriot® Viper II (Sector 7) DDR3-1600 Enhanced Latency (3x4GB)
Graphics and GPGPU Accelerator: AMD® Radeon™ HD 6970 2GB GDDR5
1000 Watt Silverstone ST-1000G 80+ Gold Certified Modular Power Supply ROHS
Hard Drive Bay One: 128GB Crucial® RealSSD™ C300 SATA 6G (w/TRIM) (for the OS)
Hard Drive Bay Two: 1.0TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6G 7200rpm 64MB Cache (for storage and games)
Optical Drive One: 24X Dual Layer DVD RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology
Audio: 7.1 Channel High Definition Surround Sound Supporting S/DIF Optical and Coax Out
Network Adapter: On-board Gigabit Ethernet
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
The Final Finesse: Designed, Manufactured, and Supported in the USA -
Angelic Service Warranty: Lifetime Angelic Service Labor and Phone Support with 3 Year Hardware Warranty

[Shaio]

Nice... that rig is like the tinniest fraction from just ridiculously powerful.

Only thing i spot is wrong is.. western digital, get any other brand of hard drive, preferably samsung or Hitachi, all your other parts appear top notch to me, but that hard drive is just a waste of money, western digital stuff is notoriously bad.

I cant stress how bad western digital hard drives are....

Other then that only improvement i can suggest is a second HDD in a raid, having games on a fast drive improves performance and load times alot, a ssd just for loading windows seems a little extreme.

[WelshDragon]

Nice... that rig is like the tinniest fraction from just ridiculously powerful.

Only thing i spot is wrong is.. western digital, get any other brand of hard drive, preferably samsung or Hitachi, all your other parts appear top notch to me, but that hard drive is just a waste of money, western digital stuff is notoriously bad.

Really? I've always had good luck with WD drives. Hmm... the only other 1tb option was a Samsung, but it had a smaller cache size...

[Shaio]

Really? I've always had good luck with WD drives. Hmm... the only other 1tb option was a Samsung, but it had a smaller cache size...

Every one I've ever brought, and every one any of my friends have ever owned has failed within a year. O.o thats my experience of them anyways, maybe they ship rejects to my country? i dunno. I'd still suggest the samsung drive over the wd one, less chance but with a brand that means better quality.

Id also suggest dropping the ssd and getting a second terabtye in raid instead, that way you'll have speed, and be able to fit all your games on your fast drive. For the cost of ssd you migth even be able to make yourself a really fast raid or 2 2tb raids.

Windows doesn't really require that much loading.. So you'll lose a little startup speed, but all your games will be loading almost twice as fast, and i suspect your pc will spend more time loading games then windows right ?

PS: if its powerful enough to open portals to hell.. tell me where the portal is.

@polecat ofcourse 12 gig of ram, almost enough to make a ram drive and load games onto it... which is awesomely fast beyond any level of sanity.

[PoleCat]

...@polecat ofcourse 12 gig of ram, almost enough to make a ram drive and load games onto it... which is awesomely fast beyond any level of sanity.

Now that's a fair point. I haven't done so myself but I see the attraction.

[ROFL Copter]

You don't need the 960. The 950 is more than enough and costs half the price.

[WelshDragon]

You don't need the 960. The 950 is more than enough and costs half the price.

True, I guess I went a little overkill to make sure it stays viable longer.

[ROFL Copter]

True, I guess I went a little overkill to make sure it stays viable longer.

You payed $300 for 200 mhz?

[WelshDragon]

You payed $300 for 200 mhz?

It was the last component left as I was building out the system, and I was actually under budget... Probably should have pocketed the cash, but I went with the newest card under my cap.

[mrcrusty]

Another 6970 would've been so much more worth it. What a waste. I mean, you can overclock the i7 easily to ~4.2 Ghz without much trouble.

[PoleCat]

Why 12GB of RAM? How could you possibly use that much? And was the i7-960 the best they offered?

[WelshDragon]

Another 6970 would've been so much more worth it. What a waste. I mean, you can overclock the i7 easily to ~4.2 Ghz without much trouble.

They offer redline overclocking to that point, and it will be as you said, around 4.2Ghz (some reported upwards of 4.4). I didn't want to run two GPUs for simplicity.

Why 12GB of RAM? How could you possibly use that much? And was the i7-960 the best they offered?

It was only another $60 or so to go from 6 to 12gb of RAM, so I figured what the heck. The next step up on the core processor was a significant amount of cash, so with the overclocking the i7-960 3.2GHz seemed like enough horsepower.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

It was only another $60 or so to go from 6 to 12gb of RAM, so I figured what the heck.

This is the same reason I bought 16GB of DDR3 for my latest gaming PC RAM is dirt cheap right now.


I would have waited a couple weeks and gone with Sandy Bridge. You can hit 5.0Ghz. on air with the $320 i7-2600k.

@ Shaio: Tough luck for you I guess, I've used WD drives for years without em' giving out on me.

[PoleCat]

...I would have waited a couple weeks and gone with Sandy Bridge. You can hit 5.0Ghz. on air with the $320 i7-2600k....

What's the base clock on it?

[Top-Tier-Tech]

What's the base clock on it?

3.4 base and 3.8 in turbo mode. On Sandy bridge CPU's you overclock the turbo boost so it only goes to the higher clock when there is a load on your CPU that actually needs it.

[PoleCat]

Fair enough. Just curious.

[ROFL Copter]

Intel has fallen to the Dark Side. Theres no other way to explain this.

[WelshDragon]

Intel has fallen to the Dark Side. Theres no other way to explain this.

Whatever they are dabbling in, it's kicking some serious tail right now.

[Freddie]

Angelic Service Warranty: Lifetime Angelic Service Labor and Phone Support

That's a hell of a warranty!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I'll get my coat.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

That's a hell of a warranty!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I'll get my coat.

You intentionally left the "3 year hardware warranty" part out of your quote making it look so much more impressive. I thought "no way could it be that good" checked and... nope.