building from scratch.

[Raion]

Wow, $5,000...well, I don't know what to tell you as for parts, but I do know what to tell as for where to shop for them. If you love money as much as I do, you want to save as much of it as possible. http://www.newegg.com has a lot of good prices and reliable service and no, I'm not at all affiliated with Newegg..

[s0nIc]

well since u wanna spend dat much for a gaming box... u should have what every gaming box desirably have....

Fanless Cooling System.. them liquid cooling stuff.. ive had friends who spent a lot to have that installed on their system.. apparently its REALLY cools down your system, without the humming of the fan.

[foxyloxley]

definately the SATA route and RAID 5 config too

sorry MLF but SATA is the future
and a big budget = future proofing required
plus the newest games are going to be taking anything upto 3GB EACH

as for the rest, well whatever you buy will be obsolete [relatively speaking] by the time it is up and running ..............

so get out there and spend ........
which leads to the REAL debate :
buy online
or
in a real shop

with that much in the kitty, I would be hitting the high street for some SERIOUS retail therapy
get the 'basics' online for the deals
but get your hands dirty for the fancy stuff

any shop will deal if you are spending well ...............

[JewishIntent]

Well lets see, i would suggest you make sure that whatever mobo you get is CrossFire ready. In case you are not familiar with what that is, its ATI newish technology that allows you to have 2 video cards working in tandum. All you need is a CrossFire ready mobo, and 2 crossfire enabled vid cards, and they have been maiking almost all of thier vid cards CrossFire enabled before they even released the mobos. They dont even have to be the same speed.

As far as which vid cards to go for with that type of money i say go all the way and run 2 of these bad boys together

ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512 MB Pcie16 Graphics Card

. . . . 1024 mb video . . . . yummy



For your proc i have always preferred AMD to Intel, so i would suggest the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ / 2.4 GHZ Processor, dual core all the way.

Liquid cooling would be great.

Probably at least a 550 watt cpu annd with all expensive **** and definatly a ups.

get one of those nice wall mounting HD TVs since those vid cards will have the video out on the back and use it for your monitor.

[unvi$ible]

hi,
well i am building/upgrading my pc all the time and i dont think is cheaper to do it byyourself any more but you have choice to put togather parts you want.
Well i have not seen any advertised pc in australia for gaming which comes close to $5000
in pc user magazine you can find some really good ones and nice reviews for them.
In computer trader i think the beast (most expencive system comes around $5000 mark.
As you are probably aware amd+gaming=lot of heat.As suggested nice investment in cooling and nice case is a must.
Thermaltake has released new fanless cooling system but its not that excpencive(300 mark).
If i was in your position and had that budget i would not go pass this case )))):
http://www.i-tech.com.au/products/59...Edition_II.asp
I think they are the best cases on market.(why most of people probably dont hear for them is price. )
That cases are COOL.
HAHAHAH really cool.
hope you will post the photos when you finish-i think we would be definitelly interested to see it.
Good luck.

[Aspman]

Internal Raid 5 (WD raptors) for games and OS, some sort of external storage (NAS?) for less urgent data.

You including monitors in the build money? 2x19" tft.

Soundproofed cabinet?

[MasterTsunami]

CPU: AMD FX-57
Price: $1,011
Single CPU core performance for gaming will still beat the dual cores anyday. And when most games do finally catch up to the hardware, this Socket 939 chip can easily be replaced with an X2 series.

Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Price: $165
THE motherboard for gamers right now. SLI support and a ton of other goodies. And the PCI-E support on this board gives you the full x16 speed for both slots, as opposed to splitting it up into two 8x slots like most other boards.

Video Card: 7800GTX 512mb (2 of them in SLI)
Price: $1500 total
These cards kick major ass. There really is nothing else to say. SLI wins benchmarks over and over again against the CrossFire series, and nVidia's latest card trumps the X1800XT. If you can afford, you should get it.

Ram: Well, you want to get something with low latency. Probalby two 1 gig sticks to start with. DDR400 should be more than enough, and it is the maximum that board will support. Get four gigs if you really want to.
Price: ~$400 for two 1 gig sticks

Harddrives: Raptors are nice. Don't put them in Raid though, as that will actually decrease their performance. Your best bet would be to get a 74 gigabyte or 36 gigabyte Raptor drive for your OS, and then three or so larger SATA drives like Seagate in Raid-5 for data et al.

Get a good powersupply too. OCZ is pretty good. You'll want to make sure you spend some money on this piece, as it can be the most crucial part of the system. And make sure it is SLI certified; you'll want something above 500 watts.

Save some for a liquid cooling system and a good case. You'll want liquid cooling because that system will be very loud with fans.

Don't forget a monitor. 24 inch LCD from Dell maybe? Get one with a low latency, 12ms or less. And DVI input.

Err, that's all I can think of right now.

And that buddy, is one kick ass gaming system.