Hi all, I'm a bit unsure about the direction I need to go with my new build and was hoping someone here could help. To be blunt, I have a severe and aggressive form of Crohns disease and, as the years progress and things worsen, when I'm not in hospital being unzipped I'm finding myself more and more housebound and to be frank it's driving me a wee bit insane. I'm looking to build a PC that will be able to cope with both intensive pro-audio (and some video editing) applications (what I do when I'm "well") but also be able to cut it as a high spec gaming rig to make my life when I'm bad and stuck at home a bit more bearable (I'm an Elder Scrolls/Fallout junkie/modder...although anything with an expansive, realistically detailed, sandbox flavour is definitely my thing!). A friend of mine has offered to put it together, however his work schedule is incredibly intensive and he's away a helluva lot so I'm trying to spec it and order it myself so he can build it in one go with as little hassle on his part as possible. This is my existing dual boot rig: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz Asus S775 Intel P35 PCI-E ATX OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz (OCZ2RPR800C44GK) Radeon HD 5870 Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (for Audio recording) RAID Array: 2 x Maxtor DiamondMax 22 500GB 7200RPM S300 32MB Cache 3.5" 1x Western Digital 500GB Caviar Green 32MB SATA 1x Highpoint 2680SGL OEM CARD RME Fireface 800 (External Soundcard) Gigabyte 550W ODIN PRO PSU Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) Xilence XPF120R Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan Xilence XPF80R Red Wing 80mm Quiet Fan Acer P243W 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor (main) LG L207WT 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor It's built into a Compucase 4U Rackmount Case: http://www.compucase-hec.co.uk/ipc_4u_s411.htm that fits in my home studio rack. I'm more than happy to use whatever parts from this existing rig that may be suitable for the new one. A mate of mine has already suggested the following set-up: X58-G1-Sniper S1366 ATX Mainboard 24GB of Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (1x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 memory Core i7 Extreme i7-980X Corsair H50 Water Filled CPU Cooler The only problem is, is that at least one FireWire port is essential for me to run my external soundcard and the Sniper doesn't have one. So, my questions boil down to the following: 1. Should I go for the 980x as the best balance between multi-threaded performance with audio recording software and gaming "power"? 2. If so, do I go for the G1 Sniper and just add a Firewire card or is there a better mobo that will have it in-built along with plenty of USB 3.0/eSATA ports for my many external HD's and other more fancy stuff like HDMI, Surround Sound/Home Cinema connectivity and the like (I also use the computer to play 1080p movies on our home TV). 3. Would it be worthwhile buying another Radeon HD 5870 and running them together to add power to the gaming side of things or would I be better off going for something completely different? Luckily my budget is reasonably high (for me anyway! ) as I'd originally put aside funds for a power Mac so I have £3000 available. However, where CPU's are concerned, I tend to try to aim for getting something that's "one step behind" the newest model to try and get the best bang for my buck so to speak and ideally I'd like to try and find a bigger monitor (a tri-screen set-up would be a nice thing to eventually aim for) and buy some new studio software. As far as overclocking goes I'd be happy to go down that route but probably only a mild overclock. Alongside performance my prime concern is stability (something my current system has never seemed to achieve). I'd rather go for a CPU that was powerful pretty much straight out of the box than to take a less immediately powerful CPU and have to push it to achieve performance. If anyone could help it would be very much appreciated.
