I've decided to upgrade rather than play below the minimum video requirements for F4. This Imac 27" is from 2011, and sports an i5-3.10 and 16 RAM, but only has a 1 GB video, Radeon HD6070M. It plays FNV and Skyrim on very high settings with tons of mods very well, but obviously that's yesterday. I haven't built a system in years, and I decided to build this one to at least the recommended F4 requirements because of F4 but also because I don't want to have to upgrade next year for anything else, or the year after for that matter .

I've pretty much decided on parts, but things have changed over the last few years, so I have a few questions and concerns.

My main concern is that this mac has awesome graphics, up to 2560x1440. When shopping for monitors I don't see anything approaching that level unless I go 4k, which I found out is beyond what I want to go to. I could really use some advice on the monitor aspect. Are the 1080 monitors a step in the middle or a new animal altogether?

With video cards, just for an example, am I better off getting two of say a GTX 780, or a better class single?

Does adding an SSID help stability or performance?

I mainly play 2-3 games a year, like FNV and Skyrim, ARMA3.

Any advice to an old gamer much appreciated.

I can appreciate your concerns and questions, I'll try my best to help.

A 1080p monitor is 1920x1080, so compared to your 2560x1440 monitor, that's a lot less pixels. However, in my experience having tons more pixels on a relatively small computer screen (relative to a larger tv, for example, cause 27 is pretty dang good) doesn't make a massive difference to most eyes (key word being massive, it does make some difference), but I would recommend seeing if a store near you can let you see the difference so you can experience it in person. Now obviously running a game on 1080 is far less demanding than 1440 or 4k, and the recommended specs would be based off 1080p, only going up from there.

Going with one really beefy video card vs. going with two lesser cards in sli or crossfire is honestly a hard call, and not one for me to make even though I feel I know hardware fairly decently. But there is something to say that two cards working together are more than the sum of its parts, dual card rigs can be as awesome as they can run hot.

I assume you mean a SSD/solid state drive? It certainly helps with your operating system's startup and shutdown times and loading applications which should include games, and it should held with loading times in the game too. As far as stability, nah. To me, stability is more of an issue of the game's files and settings, your RAM/CPU/GPU, and the operating system itself. And I know you haven't asked for advice on specific ones, but let me put in a plug for SSDs...for around $80 USD you can get a pretty good 250 GB one, which is good for the os and games, like this one which I'm using for my upcoming build: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-internal-hard-drive-ct250bx100ssd1

Also, what's your (ballpark) budget, and country?

Also, here's some 2560x1440 monitors on a favorite pc hardware site of mine: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007617&IsNodeId=1&Description=2560x1440&bop=And&Order=RATING&PageSize=30- some seem surprisingly affordable compared to what I was expecting! Haha.

And this might sounds like a crazy question since I don't know iMacs too well and this is highly unlikely, but what is the possibility of using it just as a monitor? Could it work that way? I know Apple products don't tend to be made in such a way that they can be used for much else than their proprietary purpose, so it may not work without its own original hardware...but it's worth considering, right?