I'm looking at building a new super comp.

I know a little bit about computers but not a ton. So I asked a friend to suggest a good build. However he does not play poker therefore may not know the best specs for HM2 etc. Therefore I'm posting it here to see if there's any changes I should make before I go ahead with it!

The main use of the computer is for poker, HM2, large DB min 10mil+ hands, up to 18 tabling on 2 x 30" HPZR30w possibly adding a 3rd or 4th later. Other uses might be some photoshop/video editing and maybe the odd gaming such as Starcraft 2 etc (but most likely not too much gaming). Main focus is on poker. I also stream videos from my computer thru PS3/Xbox onto a projector (not sure what part of computer is used for that).

$$ isn't too much of an issue, but I'd rather not spend too much extra on something thats not needed, aka not going to make a huge difference.



Here is what my friend recommended:

Corsair Obsidian Series 800D Full Tower Case EATX 5X5.25 4X3.5 Hotswappable 2X3.5INT No PS USB 1394
MSI Z77A-GD55 ATX LGA1155 Z77 DDR3 3PCI-E16 4PCI-E1 SATA3 DVI HDMI VGA DX11 USB3.0 Motherboard
Intel Core i7 3770K Unlocked Quad Core Hyperthreading Processor LGA1155 3.5GHZ Ivy Bridge 8MB Retail
Mushkin Enhanced Redline Frostbyte 16GB 4X4GB PC3-17000 DDR3-2133 9-11-10-28 Quad Channel Memory
(3x) SanDisk Extreme 240GB 2.5IN SSD SATA3 SDSSDX-240G-G25 Solid State Drive
(1x) Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA3 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB Cache 3.5IN Dual Proc Hard Drive OEM
Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance CPU Cooler System LGA1366 2011 1156 AM2 AM3
Corsair Professional HX750W 750W ATX 12V 62A 24PIN ATX Modular Power Supply Active PFC 140mm Fan
MSI GeForce GTX 570 Twinfrozr II 732MHZ 1280MB 3.8GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI Minihdmi PCI-E Vide *IR-$10*
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64BIT DVD SP1 OEM


1 SSD for Windows 7, and 2 X SSD in RAID 0 for PostgreSqL/Poker

Current System would cost me about $2300 and I budgeted $3000 so I have some room for improvements if necessary.


He also said that 32GB of Ram will be slower than 16GB of ram so its probably better to go with 16GB as 32GB is overkill anyways. True?

Will buying a more expensive motherboard make much of a difference? such as this one instead of one above:
ASUS Sabertooth Z77 ATX LGA1155 DDR3 SLI 3PCI-E16 4PCI-E1 SATA3 HDMI DisplayPort USB3.0 Motherboard


So if there is anything you would change that would make it better please let me know. I really appreciate any help/advice I can get!

Thanks for your time!

• The board's no good for this. It's only got two SATA 6gb/s ports and you've got 3 fast SSDs.
• Or, why not just grab two of those SSDs in RAID 0 and put everything on that?
• Hard drive fine
• Cooler fine
• PSU is nice
• Video card is tricky not knowing how you want to game. If you'd just stick to one 30" playing SC2 and similar, you could get two lower-powered cards with all four of your needed inputs and keep power in check.
• 8GB RAM is working fine for me across the entire Adobe suite, if you're a casual user here or there you don't need more RAM. You can get 16GB if you want, but yes 32GB will be a little slower since the timings in the higher capacities do that plus you'll never benefit from it. For what you're talking about really 8GB is a lot, 16GB is a ****load and probably a waste of money but otherwise won't hurt.
• You can get a little benefit from 4 sticks of RAM that you probably won't notice either, but it's okay to buy two 8GB sticks. Reduces two possible points of failure, less crap to break.
• Win 7 Pro - compare against Home Premium here. 64-bit OEM is critical but I say stick to Premium unless you see a feature you really need. It's a $40 markup for nothing otherwise.
• Processor is fine, but look for deals on the 2600k and 2700k. They're not that far behind and you can find them cheaper. Those will be excessive parts too.

It's overbuilt for what you describe in just about every way. If you're a casual Photoshopper and gamer and need an all-around excellent poker machine, I'd suggest dropping down to an i5, one SSD, 8GB RAM. Save $ for a display or something like that. You guys need some kind of workload that will take advantage of those high-end parts or they'll sit there half-asleep and performance will be about the same as something a lot cheaper.

I appreciate all the info! I probably won't downgrade any parts as i'm under my budget already. I'd rather be over powered then underpowered . So just making sure all the parts will work and if I should upgrade any of them a little.

Thanks for the info!

You don't need a special motherboard unless you are looking for some heavily overclockable features and need certain things like extra SATA ports or something else. Just find one a Z77 from a good brand and make sure it has really good reviews if you can help it. I'm a Gigabyte man usually and I own this one but some people looks like they got some duds.

Unless you really know you want some special offering, I like sticking to lower-frills boards $120 or less, as long as they're reliable and have what I need in terms of outputs. Costs really add up when you start going for every shred of performance.

You don't need the OS on it's own drive. People will segregate stuff for various reasons but I don't see any real cause for that here. You don't need to run two in RAID, but it would certainly be faster if you did. Just remember the more parts you have the more that can go wrong too.

With multiple video cards you have to watch power draw. Get two power hungry cards and you could cut it close on your power supply. The card you chose can run both of those displays easily, for something simple like poker virtually any cheap card today can do two 30's. Gaming is where you need the video card power. If you had two modest video cards with 4 usable outputs you could still have all the monitors supported and game well on one 30" no problem. A pair from this page might give you some ideas (read the article).

What are y'all doing in HM2, lol. I've used it on a 5400RPM HDD and didn't have any issues, though I don't run a lot of queries in succession typically so I can wait a couple of seconds here and there for something to pop up. Triple RAID 0 SSDs seems a bit intense in any case, but I like it!
Don't worry about being underpowered, lol. I think people underestimate how powerful mid-range builds are these days. Average computing power has gone up relatively and average computing costs has gone down. The only essential parts to your build are the SSD(s), two graphics cards (that do not have to be that powerful since you're not going Crysis 3-Eyefinity style on this bad boy) and 8GB RAM. You could just build around that in a way that you have the best upgrade options down the road (my philosophy typically).
That being said if you're not bothered about the price, then there is no need to go cheaper. It's just funny how everybody puts out the disclaimer that they don't have to spend more on things that they don't necessarily need and then when you suggest more "sensible" options they end up getting the more expensive one anyway :P.

That's why I mentioned in OP I'm looking for any changes that would make it "better". I probably should have specified that I'm not looking to cut costs on the items listed so far, but if there are parts I should spend a touch more on if they will make a big enough difference in performance.

But with that said I will take all advice into account before deciding. And its a good learning experience for me as well!

Thanks for your input!

I've gone off the deep end! lol Going serious overkill here after doing a little more research. There's a sale on bunch of these parts that end tomorrow. And I wanna make sure they will all work together. Think I'm going to go with the following:

-Corsair Obsidian Series 800D Full Tower Case EATX 5X5.25 4X3.5 Hotswappable 2X3.5INT No PS USB 1394
-ASUS P9X79 Pro ATX LGA2011 X79 DDR3 4PCI-E16 2PCI-E SATA3 USB3.0 SLI CrossFireX Audio Motherboard
-Intel Core i7 3930K 6 Core 12MB 3.2GHZ Hyperthreading Unlocked LGA2011 Processor No HSF
-Mushkin Enhanced Redline Frostbyte 16GB 4X4GB PC3-17000 DDR3-2133 9-11-10-28 Quad Channel Memory
-OCZ RevoDrive 3 240GB PCIe Sandforce SF-2281 SSD Solid State Disk Flash Drive
-SanDisk Extreme 240GB 2.5IN SSD SATA3 SDSSDX-240G-G25 Solid State Drive
-Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA3 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB Cache 3.5IN Dual Proc Hard Drive OEM
-Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC 980MHZ 2GB 6.0GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card
-Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance CPU Cooler System LGA1366 2011 1156 AM2 AM3
-Corsair Professional HX750W 750W ATX 12V 62A 24PIN ATX Modular Power Supply Active PFC 140mm Fan
-Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64BIT DVD SP1 OEM


I believe this OCZ Revodrive PCIe will be almost double the speed of a regular SSD. Hope I got that correct?

Advantage of 2 SSD's is easier to backup/restore just windows or just database. So If I go with the PCIe SSD and a regular Sandisk Sata 3 SSD which drive should I put the OS on and which the database? And where to install all the programs?? Or should I just put everything on the OCZ revodrive because its so much faster and forget about the extra SSD and hope I don't run out of space?

Does all of the above work together?

Thanks again for all the info! I've learned a lot and I'm not ignoring your ideas of where I can save $. I understand its overkill of what I'm getting but it all fits in my budget so just gonna max it out.

MSI GeForce GTX 570 Twinfrozr II 732MHZ 1280MB 3.8GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI Minihdmi PCI-E Vide

You might want to look into the same card by MSI with more than 1280MB.
I'm not sure if you plan to play any decent games at a huge resolution but it's very good to have more than that. Just do a google search and you should find why.

Use one SSD for window's OS and then the other SSD for pokerstars, pokertracker or HoldemManager, Games, and anything else is the best approach imo.

Ya the updated system I chose:

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC 980MHZ 2GB 6.0GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card


or do you mean use "MSI GeForce GTX 670 OC 1045MHZ 2GB 6GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card" this one instead of the gigabyte one?

Ok just an update on what I decided to go with:

-Corsair Obsidian Series 800D Full Tower Case EATX 5X5.25 4X3.5 Hotswappable 2X3.5INT No PS USB 1394
-ASUS P9X79 Pro ATX LGA2011 X79 DDR3 4PCI-E16 2PCI-E SATA3 USB3.0 SLI CrossFireX Audio Motherboard
-Intel Core i7 3930K 6 Core 12MB 3.2GHZ Hyperthreading Unlocked LGA2011 Processor No HSF
(2x)-Mushkin Enhanced Redline Frostbyte 16GB 4X4GB PC3-17000 DDR3-2133 9-11-10-28 Quad Channel Memory
-OCZ RevoDrive 3 240GB PCIe Sandforce SF-2281 SSD Solid State Disk Flash Drive
-Samsung 830 Series 128GB 2.5IN SATA3 MCX Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD
-Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA3 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB Cache 3.5IN Dual Proc Hard Drive OEM
-Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC 980MHZ 2GB 6.0GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card
-Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance CPU Cooler System LGA1366 2011 1156 AM2 AM3
-Corsair Professional HX750W 750W ATX 12V 62A 24PIN ATX Modular Power Supply Active PFC 140mm Fan
-Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64BIT DVD SP1 OEM


They couldn't get the OCZ Revodrive to work with Windows... so I ended up throwing in another SSD to boot from and using the OCZ for HM and all other apps.

This system is blazing fast!!! Imports hands at 1700 hands/second. I can load a million hand graph in about 2 seconds. And If I switch any filters it only takes a second to refresh. So super pleased with it so far!

Hey guys, I don't want to open up a new thread just for my question, but my PC has not been performing as fast as I'd like it to lately.

I play poker at like 10 different networks, run HM1 (HM2 is just way too slow performance wise and has nasty bugs), Tableninja, Spotify and maybe some extra software sometimes like StackandTile for example.

My current PC looks like this:

- Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16Ghz
- 3.17GHz, 3.50GB

I have no knowledge of computers, and these are the specs I could find. Do I need a new computer (and go through all the bother of spending $, reinstalling stuff etc. etc.) OR should I just try to fix my current one (as in, is this one supposed to be fast enough)? Would really appreciate your help here! Thanks

Bullitos: It's pretty close. You have enough CPU and RAM to get by with, though without much room to spare. That's provided you aren't running that much stuff at the same time and a ton of tables. You could run CCleaner and Malwarebytes and see if that helps. If you stick with it there are going to be limits and it's not near as fast and the new stuff, but it should be tolerable.

If you can re-use your desktop case, hard drive & DVD drive & have a free 90 minutes or so, you could gut the core parts and replace them with modern parts and be good for the next four years or so easy. Not all that much to it so long as you own a Phillips head.

Thanks!

I actually do run a lot of stuff at the same time, I open up like 60+ tables since I play a lot of HU.

But I like your suggestion, do you have any specific advice for which core parts I should use?

I think SSD HD will make a big difference if you aren't using one currently...

I have a Samsung HD753LJ. Not a SSD HD as far as I know.

So should I buy a SSD HD, open up my computer case, plug it in and install my pokersites, HM etc. on my SSD HD and expect a lot of improvement?