ChanmanV and I talked a while ago about me assembling a new system for him. His budget was pretty high (anywhere from 2-2.5k), but we were able to assemble what he wanted for much cheaper. He needed a system that could stream at 1080p/60fps while still being able to tackle any game at 1080p. I’ll go over my rationale for each part below.
CPU – Intel 4770k
Haswell offers the best single-threaded performance on the market right now. That makes it a great choice for gaming, as many games still do poorly in regards to multi-threading. The fact that this offers hyperthreading also makes it a good candidate for streaming, as programs like OBS and Xsplit definitely take advantage of multi-threaded processors.
Cooler – Corsair H100i
I really love this cooler. It’s quiet, it looks nice and clean, the blue light is tasteful and it’s incredibly reliable.
Motherboard – Gigabyte UD3h
Gigabyte was the king of Z77, so I’m still a bit partial to their UD3H boards. This board provided excellent OC support for me, and has plenty of features for extra USB/SATA ports, as well as support for crossfire.
RAM – Crucial Ballistix 16GB DDR3-1600
We went ahead and threw 16GB of 1600 RAM into the case, even though he probably could have gotten by with 8GB.
GPU(s) – XFX Radeon HD GHz edition 3GB 7970 X 2
At this price, Xfire’d 7970’s are pretty much the best option you can go with for graphics. AMD has been taking massive steps to remedy their microstutter issue, and the 7970 continues to be a very cost-effective card for high performance systems.
Case – Thermaltake VN300M1W2N ATX Full Tower
We went with this case because ChanmanV wanted a case that he could easily add or remove a HDD/SDD from. This case is cool because if has a hot-swappable bay right on the top of the case, allowing you easily and quickly pop a drive in or out.
PSU – SeaSonic X Series 1050W
This PSU is a tad on the overkill side, but once you factor in PSU aging and the desire to overclock both GPUs and the CPU, it becomes a reasonable purchase.
DVD Drive – Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE
Just a standard optical drive for reading DVDs.