Hello all,
My name is Ray, you can also call me Refuge. I've been building computers and small networks since I was young, I have experiance in meeting the specific needs of people with the hardware and keeping things in a budget.
But I'm looking to upgrade my life, I'm starting to save money back weekly for a new rig I plan to build. I plan to run 3/4 monitors, and would love some input as to where I should head with this build. I've never done anything with this kind of scale for pixels, and wanna make sure that I know what to expect to pay for what I want to achieve.
I'm looking to do a 3x1 setup, mostly for multi-tasking, but also for mid/heavy gaming. in the future if I get enough cash setup I would like to plant a 4th monitor ontop the middle for for a diagnostic screen, real time data on resources usage, tempratures, ect. ect.
An idea of the games I play, the catalog is rather simple. WoW, SWTOR, Skyrim, Anno, And Civ. Nothing too intense.
As for usage I would like to be able to swap between gaming on all 3 monitors or just the middle one, realtively on the fly. Closing down to the desktop and starting things back up, or perhaps even less effort is what I am looking for.
I would prefer to play at mid/max settings, the higher the better obviously but I also want to keep the budget realistic.
Probably the most intense use of the system would be WoW on one screen, SWTOR, on a second, and then Netflix on a third. But Usually I'll be doing only one of those while coding, and having Chrome on the third screen for research and such.
What sort of monitors should I be looking at? I want to keep cost down as much as possible, but I would like to get three 20-22 inch, thin bezel 1920x1080 monitors.
What sort of graphics solution would be best for this? I figure SLI will be required, but if there is a single card that would be able to push this I would prefer that personally. Its usually cheaper and then sets me up to get a second for longevity in the future.
Nvidia or ATI? I hear that ATI has more functionality, but Nvidia has better performing drivers.
The games I play really aren't that intense, so I think I would be able to get away with either two mid grade cards, or one top end card, input on this would be appreciated.
If anyone has any links to tutorials, guides, or even just some direction to where I can do some research on the requirements of this many pixels, I would greatly appreciate it.
Estimates on hardware requirements would be great, if you are feeling esspecially kind some theoretical builds would be greatly appreciated.
Opinions on monitors and mounting systems would be VERY helpful as I really don't know much about either of these to be honest.
The key thing here is I'm trying to achieve this for the lowest cost possible, that way I can make it happen sooner rather than later. But I do plan to build on it in the future. Starting is the hard/pricey part. Adding here and there is when things get much easier on the budget.
I thank anyone in advance for any help/time offered on this, and look forward to all responses.
Thanks guys!!!
