why he needs more power ???

hi guys,
Recently a friend of mine got me to build a system for him, he is basically a teenager with quite a deep pocket from his parents side. So I went forward and built him this:

Intel i5 2500K ($230)
Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H Mobo ($170)
Zotac GTX 460 Fermi x 2 ($250)
Enermax EMG800EWT PSU ($178)
G.Skill 8 GB DDR3 ($80)

Some friend of his showed him his dual socket skultrail system with high score in some benchmarks. And now he told me that the system I built for him is rubbish :confused: So he wants me to build one that can match an old Core 2 based skultrail system.. and he wants me to sell his old system after about 40 days of usage :/ what can be done about this now?
 

Kayden

Tech Monkey
Tell him skulltrain boards are no longer being manufactured and that ship sailed a while ago unfortunately. It's not fair but it's how it is. Good luck.
 

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
Heh... which benchmarks would they be? did he show him any games? 2x CPUs for gaming = waste of money. Workload specifics is what it always comes back to...

If he REALLY wants to go dual CPU... show him a Tyan Board with 2 or 4 CPU sockets and then show him the price of the Xeons.... he'll get his dual socket board then, though i doubt his parents will be pleased.
 

eunoia

Partition Master
Try to gently explain that the system you built is what people in the know are building today (well, with dual 6850's :D), then build him a system that's 15% more powerful for 3X the price and sell the one you built for him to a non-idiot.

Sometimes nothing can be done, but the thread title is the crux of the question. You did a friend's service and this is the thanks you get. I feel your pain.
 
3DMark and some other synthetic benches. Well it seems he is going to be getting i7 EE with 4 video cards! And he will probably need to up his power supply so everything he had has to go now except for RAM. But I am not building it for him this time around, he is gonna do it himself and I am just going to watch and play on it :D Geez I am still running Athlon XP 2500+ with DDR Memory. It works awesome because I run lucid as my main with a WD Scorpio Black hdd but it sucks in gaming.
 

OriginalJoeCool

Tech Monkey
Mmmm, gratuitous power ... I so want to build an obnoxiously powerful system. I'm just waiting for the right time. :D But 4 video cards! Woah, I never considered that! I was just thinking of 2!
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
It all comes down to a kid with more money than common sense. I know he's your friend and I mean no disrespect but it's best if he leaves it to people who have a basic grasp on hardware.

The fact that this guy wants four video cards proves that he has no business choosing components. The power draw and heat output (depending on the GPU) will be out of this world.

If he insists on flaunting the size of his e-peen, he should go with two GPUs that have two cores each. It's like SLI/Crossfire-ing SLI/Crossfire. 2x2=4. The only GPUs on the market today that have two cores are the 590 (Nvidia) and the 6990 (AMD). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

As for your own rig, you're living in the golden age of hardware my friend! When your wallet allows, a good system can be had for VERY cheap. Just for kicks I priced a full system with keyboard, mouse -and- monitor for under $1000 and that's an AMD quad core with 4GB of DDR3, a 6870 and 2TB Caviar Black hard drive.

-I- would be happy with that setup.
 
I was out of touch with latest and greatest due to school but ya I have been recently following it. My athlon is hooked up to a mATX motherboard I forget the chipset but I think it is a VIA chipset. 2 GB of memory. I was using CRT monitor until I picked up a 17" Dell from school for free and got rid of the CRT. :D lol and the power supply is a 350 Watts old school PC Power and Cooling. Oh and I have PCI version of 8400 GS. 1080p videos run with about 30-35% cpu usage and jitter free. I am not a gamer but I do some 2D stuff in VISIO and probably going to be doing 3D design but nothing too big.
 
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