This machine: Gaming + 3d animation + video-editing

[cyberzomby]

Hello everyone,

for a while now I haven't been able to play even BF2PR because my macbook pro is getting very old and sluggish.

With me having worked full-time for 7 months this year and paying of my school debt, I can finally start thinking about a new pc.

Now as you can see I currently use a macbook pro. For the video-editing and 3d animation I would really love to keep working on Mac os. So I found a website that offers: Hackintosh.

You need certain brands of PC components and with a few hacks, you can get a very stable mac computer out of it. I was thinking of upgrading to a new iMac, but after hitting the limit of that machine at my work, I knew I wanted more bang. So I need to custom build.

I'm starting to read in to the pc building world but I'd like a quick glance from you over a very first rough selection of components. I would love to be able to run ARMA 2 flawlessly at the highest settings. And possibly ARMA 3 when it comes out. Don't forget ROME 2 For years I haven't had a good gaming computer so I want to hit two birds with one stone ^_^

Am I right to think that if a machine is good for gaming you can also use it pretty well for 3d animation?

Here are the components (a rough first draft as I said). I still need to select a case and see what sort of cooling I want. Probably just air-cooled.

Gigabyte Intel Z77 Dual Thunderbolt ATX Motherboard with BT4.0/Wi-Fi
Amazon.com: Gigabyte Intel Z77 Dual Thunderbolt ATX Motherboard with BT4.0/Wi-Fi (GA-Z77X-UP5-TH): Computers & Accessories

Intel Core i7-3770K Quad-Core Processor 3.5 GHz 6 MB Cache
Amazon.com: Intel Core i7-3770K Quad-Core Processor 3.5 GHz 6 MB Cache LGA 1155 - BX80637I73770K: Computers & Accessories

EVGA GeForce GTX680 SuperClocked 2048MB GDDR5
Amazon.com: EVGA GeForce GTX680 SuperClocked 2048MB GDDR5, DVI, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort, 4-way SLI Ready Graphics Card Graphics Cards 02G-P4-2682-KR: Electronics

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1 TB 7200RPM
Amazon.com: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s with NCQ 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Bare Drive ST31000524AS: Electronics

SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB GB SATA 6.0
Amazon.com: SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB GB SATA 6.0 Gb-s2.5-Inch Solid State Drive- SDSSDX-120G-G25: Computers & Accessories

Corsair Vengeance 16 GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz
Amazon.com: Corsair Vengeance 16 GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz PC3 240 Pin DIMM Memory CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10: Computers & Accessories

Corsair Professional Series 650-Watt 80 Plus
Amazon.com: Corsair Professional Series 650-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply compatible with Intel and AMD Platforms - CMPSU-650HX: Electronics

[Pedz]

Might want to go for a higher wattage PSU, possibly 750-850 with the OC'd GPU and ability to OC the processor . (Also will save your electricity bill).

But otherwise, extreme build .

You may also want to think of getting 2 500GB HDD's instead of a single 1TB HDD, as this allows you to use RAID 0 striping, which improves performance of HDD's noticably ** But also lowers reliability, if one drive dies, you loose all data.

Tbh if you wanted great 3D animation ability, you'd need a different kind of GPU, namely either the "FirePro" by AMD or "Quadro" by Nvidia, however these will not run games well, (if at all). But yes generally a good gaming PC will do well at 3D animation and drawing etc...

[cyberzomby]

Excellent! Thanks. Yea I think Cossack told me about those special 3d animation cards. But I'd still like to be able to run awesome games So those are out of the question. Maybe if my machine runs stable with Mac OS and I can get the same one at work I'll try to get one of those special GPU's