Advice for online poker system builder

simpletttte · Post by **simpletttte** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 12:05 am

Hello !

At first sorry for my bad english, i speak french

(switzerland)

i want to build a silent new pc, ONLY for playing online poker (and only that, NO movies, gaming, etc).

I have two 24" Samsung LCD

I'am only sure about two components :
CPU : INTEL E8400 (E8xxx)
SSD : Samsung MLC 64 Go

i need 4go Memory.

So now i new advice for
case / powersupply / CPU cooler/ type of memory / graphic card (need to connect to 2x24"LCD) /motherboard.

Budget is not a problem !

Any advice is welcome.

Ty for your Help !

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 7:09 am

You dont need An E8400 to play online poker.
I suggest the following:
AMD 4850e CPU
Any cheap 780G motherboard
4GB of cheap DDR2 800
Single platter 320GB WD Blue or 500GB WD Green HDD
Corsair VX 450w PSU
ATI 4670 GPU (w/ 2DVI ports)
Mini Ninja passive CPU cooler
Any case
800rpm Slipstream Fan on exhuast

Would cost me about Â£350 in the UK.

You really do not need any more than this. Just because budget is not an issue doesnt mean you need to waste money.

Plekto · Post by **Plekto** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 1:11 pm

Sounds like a perfect Via or Atom with built-in graphics solution.

edh · Post by **edh** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 1:47 pm

I agree that the E8400 is over the top for this requirement. Use one of the E7xxx series instead, then undervolt as far as you can go.

4Gb of RAM? Are you sure? That's going to use more power. A single channel memory setup would be sufficient as bandwidth is not particularly relevant to this situation so just a decent 2Gb stick would be fine.

How does this online poker game work? Is it a client application or a web browser interface?

Graphics card is not an important part of this. Pretty much anything can run dual monitors at 1920x1200. The only thing that rules some onboard graphics out is that they may not support dual monitors. 2D resolution in itself does not require graphics power. People were running that kind of desktop size on CAD workstations for the last decade at much lower clocks. In terms of Video RAM 32Mb would be fine. I would say that the 4670 would actually be excessive for this system and that trying onboard graphics first would be worthwhile. I do however have to question if dual 24" monitors are actually that beneficial for a poker game. For such a system this may add 50% to the power draw.

Unless this game is so incredibly bloated that it actually does require hundreds of gigabytes of disk space, go for a small SSD If you only require an OS and all of the software needed to get your poker game running something like a 16Gb would do.

I would go uATX just because this will be sufficient. Go for a motherboard with decent fan and voltage control options and making it silent will become a lot easier. A G45 based board might be able to give you the required video resolution on board, one through VGA, the other through DVI.

Of course if budget really is no problem then why don't you just build a separate semi-anechoic chamber for your system, then run long cables into the room where you want to use it from. I don't really like any limitless budget proposal as it seems like a large waste of natural resources grabbing everything you can and not putting it to good use.

ACook · Post by **ACook** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:12 pm

Perhaps he'll want to run several poker games at once, requiring a bit more memory than just browsing, so 4GB would be just fine really.

cheapest ati or nvidia card that does dual dvi should do.

second the 4850E AMD, if you go with a seperate gfx you can get any am2 board really.

second the rest of the recommendations

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:46 pm

Umm... well I'm partly guessing here, partly talking from experience, but...

Dual 24" monitor there will be multiple sessions going on. 8? 12 maybe?

From my experience the poker clients aren't written with efficiency in mind. A couple of them tend to hammer the hard-drive quite a bit saving hand histories and so on.

VIA and Atom will get crucified.

4GB of memory using more power? I honestly don't think that's relevant. At all.

So yeah multi-core and 4GB make a lot of sense, as does a decent performing storage.

EDIT: oh and if I were guessing further I'd say that the choice of CPU is dictated by a requirement for hardware virtualisation to support multiple virtual machines, each poker client to run under its own guest.

antivenom · Post by **antivenom** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:06 am

Why would you need a separate system for online poker?

simpletttte · Post by **simpletttte** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:17 am

Ty for all answers :

why separate system ? for many reasons : security (special internet line) and dont want to mix it with torrents, downloads, etc. I have 2 others PC for the family

i use 2x24" bcause i am multitabling, playing 4 to 24 poker tables at the same time.
I'am using special program for tracking opponents and for datamining (Holdem Manager) and my database has 20 millions records (size is ~24GO). I use this program when i am playing (having live statistics on my opponents).

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 2:10 pm

nutball wrote: EDIT: oh and if I were guessing further I'd say that the choice of CPU is dictated by a requirement for hardware virtualisation to support multiple virtual machines, each poker client to run under its own guest.

If you need a VM for every client running, you'll either need a seperate HDD for each VM your planning on running, or get a fast SSD drive.

VM performance is almost directly effected by your storage subsystem performance.

If you want it to stay silent, i'd suggest getting an SSD.

Other than that. Multicore with at least 4gb of memory. any VGA card with 2x DVI outputs.

If however its just a bunch of browser windows, almost any system will work long as it has 2x DVI outputs.

ACook · Post by **ACook** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 2:38 pm

in that case you'd want lots of mem really and fast disks for the db.

on your current system, where you're running your tables now, what are your specs, and how does it feel when working, ie is it responsive, does it do what you want it to do?

or since you're going for a new system, it doesn't do it, at what point does it stop doing what you want it to do, 2,4,8,16,32 tables?

will the software run on a 64bit OS, XP, Vista?

generally what was said earlier still applies, Solo/Designer/P150 - TRUE/HR01/HDT-1283 - any passive card released in the last 2y that has 2xdvi and 512MB - the gigabyte mb's here ppl seem to like, p35, I'm getting ready to build with the GA-P45-UD3R, from what I've read it's a very solid stable board.
Memory isn't my area, I suppose you could actually justify the faster overclocking stuff with tight timings without overclocking it.

Oh, and 1% of your winnings in the first year will have to be donated to spcr.