Hey so since you guys helped me out with my last pc I thought I should come here. So I need a pc that can run bf3 at low to med settings. My budget is around 1250 dollars usd. I prefer intel and for the build I need win7 and a monitor. Any ideas?
Gaming rig
- Thread starter Muffs
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hey muffinz, I saw your post and whereas I am a complete newbie when it comes to computer building, I thought I would share the setup I purchased last night with you. I truly do not know if it will run bf3, but I assume it should.
COOLER MASTER HAF 922 (The one I went with) OR COOLER MASTER storm scout - both $90 as of now
GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - $130
EVGA Geforce gtx 560 - $185 currently + $10 mail-in rebate
Corsair Enthusiast Series 650 watt psu - $95 currently + $10 mail-in rebate
Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) Quad-core processor - $210
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) RAM - $70 (has a voltage of 1.35v)
Seagate Barracuda 1TB hard drive - $60 currently
ASUS DVD burner/CD rom - $21
HANNspree "21.5 Full HD WideScreen LCD Monitor w/Speakers - $120 currently + $10 off with promo code on page
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit - OEM $100
***I didn't buy a mouse or keyboard since I didnt need either currently but I will link a couple***
Saitek cyborg v5 black USB wired keyboard - $57
Logitech M500 Tilt Wheel USB Corded Laser 1000 dpi Mouse - $34 currently and it's the mouse I've been using for months
The total comes to around $1171. This will be my 1st computer build
and it will certainly be far superior to the Dell dimension garbage my family has been using for the past few years.
The only thing that has me worried is that 1TB hard drive... Alot of reviews are saying it dies after awhile, but my order had already gone through by that point
hopefully everything goes well
COOLER MASTER HAF 922 (The one I went with) OR COOLER MASTER storm scout - both $90 as of now
GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - $130
EVGA Geforce gtx 560 - $185 currently + $10 mail-in rebate
Corsair Enthusiast Series 650 watt psu - $95 currently + $10 mail-in rebate
Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) Quad-core processor - $210
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) RAM - $70 (has a voltage of 1.35v)
Seagate Barracuda 1TB hard drive - $60 currently
ASUS DVD burner/CD rom - $21
HANNspree "21.5 Full HD WideScreen LCD Monitor w/Speakers - $120 currently + $10 off with promo code on page
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit - OEM $100
***I didn't buy a mouse or keyboard since I didnt need either currently but I will link a couple***
Saitek cyborg v5 black USB wired keyboard - $57
Logitech M500 Tilt Wheel USB Corded Laser 1000 dpi Mouse - $34 currently and it's the mouse I've been using for months
The total comes to around $1171. This will be my 1st computer build
and it will certainly be far superior to the Dell dimension garbage my family has been using for the past few years. The only thing that has me worried is that 1TB hard drive... Alot of reviews are saying it dies after awhile, but my order had already gone through by that point
hopefully everything goes wellYes.
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samsung spinpoint f3 1tb is the hdd to beat atm.
Exactly! The low cost, quality, high speeds, reliability and sheer amount of space you get for the price tag means it's easily one of (if not) THE best HDD you can get off the market right now.
Some might ask, "is it the fastest drive?" Maybe not ... it's only an HDD without any solid state technology in it. It's still got moving mechanical parts. But it's also a fraction of the cost-per-gig (if you will) of an SSD.
I think it's nice that -- just citing an example here -- for less than the price of a 120GB Vertex 3, you can get a RAID-5 array (with a quality RAID card included). Imagine 2TB space and double the effective speed of one HDD -- with the safety net of a backup drive -- except you've spent under $200.
Sorry. Fanboying aside, I do own a couple of the 500GB iteration of the SpinPoint series (back when they still made this particular model), and the one I'm sporting now serves me VERY well. I would probably choose it over any other brand or model for the price range you're mentioned, though maybe you could throw an SSD in there too.
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and your access times, and random reads (stuff that actually matters in a hard drive) of said array will be that of a dead cat, while my single SSD is like a gazelle
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why would you ever need that much space for your OS drive...
for RAID5 you need something like 3 drives right? that's 3TB for your OS/programs?!
If you really want safety, you should be making backups to an external drive, unless you really need 100% uptime, i wouldn't really call raid any sort of safety
for RAID5 you need something like 3 drives right? that's 3TB for your OS/programs?!
If you really want safety, you should be making backups to an external drive, unless you really need 100% uptime, i wouldn't really call raid any sort of safety
As I understand it: RAID5 is two drives with double the RPM and one drive for failure in case one drive fails. You are kinda boned if BOTH crap out on you, but that isn't too terribly likely.
I'm not arguing that SSDs are bad -- I really like them, aside from the price -- but for a budget build (which isn't what this necessarily is, at over a grand), it might be easier to rig a RAID5 array.
Admittedly, the rambling up there was kinda pointless -- I was just fanboying over the SpinPoint. lol
I'm not arguing that SSDs are bad -- I really like them, aside from the price -- but for a budget build (which isn't what this necessarily is, at over a grand), it might be easier to rig a RAID5 array.
Admittedly, the rambling up there was kinda pointless -- I was just fanboying over the SpinPoint. lol
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That would be 0+1. For that you would need 2 drives in raid 0, then you create a RAID 1 array between the first array, and a third drive that mirrors the RAID0 array giving you both redundancy and speed. You could theoretically loose any one drive from this array, and not suffer any losses. Assuming you are not writing huge files all day, it should still have the same speed of the RAID0 array.
Raid 5 would be a bit different, and honestly, I cannot explain it very well.
For a boot drive though, it doesn't make sense to build such an array as it would be 2TB in size, which is way more than one would ever want for a boot hard drive. You could partition it, but that would kill your speeds and access times.
In an ideal world, you could have some smaller drive, maybe an SSD, or F4 as your boot and program drive, and then said array as your storage space.
I <3 F3's , but it would not make sense to use them in the method you are proposing, an F4 or SSD would make more sense, and honestly SSDs aren't that expensive, you can find 40GB drives pretty cheap nowadays
Raid 5 would be a bit different, and honestly, I cannot explain it very well.
For a boot drive though, it doesn't make sense to build such an array as it would be 2TB in size, which is way more than one would ever want for a boot hard drive. You could partition it, but that would kill your speeds and access times.
In an ideal world, you could have some smaller drive, maybe an SSD, or F4 as your boot and program drive, and then said array as your storage space.
I <3 F3's , but it would not make sense to use them in the method you are proposing, an F4 or SSD would make more sense, and honestly SSDs aren't that expensive, you can find 40GB drives pretty cheap nowadays
I think shoddy wording on my part caused a misunderstanding. I didn't want to imply that the boot drive should be a RAID0+1 array, but instead that it would be nice to have. I gotta admit though, I wasn't paying attention to the fact that we were discussing boot drives, and I think there was no way to interpret what I said any other way (not to mention I'd thought that that was RAID5, not 0+1...). That was my bad and I apologize for not wording that better. D:
I still stand by the idea that you mentioned; that a smallish, lightning fast SSD makes the best boot drive. An SSD for your boot drive would definitely be achievable for the OP's budget even with the earlier idea of a RAID0+1 (or 5, or what have you!) array, though maybe with F4s instead of F3s as you'd noted?
I still stand by the idea that you mentioned; that a smallish, lightning fast SSD makes the best boot drive. An SSD for your boot drive would definitely be achievable for the OP's budget even with the earlier idea of a RAID0+1 (or 5, or what have you!) array, though maybe with F4s instead of F3s as you'd noted?
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If you were talking about storage drives, then why would an SSD even be in the picture. Price per GB is not going to work out well at all there.....
F4's currently only come in 320GB size, which is kinda why it would only be good for a boot drive.
F4's currently only come in 320GB size, which is kinda why it would only be good for a boot drive.
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hehehhehe
i like the 120gb ssd i just got. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167050 . basically can put on the main games that i play on there, as well the OS
You want the 2500K -- that will give you almost ~1Ghz extra down the road for less than $10 now (unlocked cpu multiplier). I would honestly recommend returning the 2500 for a 2500k if it has already shipped. The regular 2500 w/o the K really isn't overclockable as you don't fsb overclock on this generation. If you do decide to stick with the regular 2500 you shouldn't bother paying for the z68 motherboard.
Patience -- don't just rip into the packaging. Send it back and wait until next week for the right part now. I know it's a huge pita, but it would be worth it to send that i5 2500 back for the i5 2500k. You may not want to overclock now, but in a few years it will be nice to add a cooler and push a button for a lot of extra speed. It's almost mindless to overclock these chips -- it's done through windows now as well. You will thank me later. I am talking a 20% faster cpu for less than $10.
Get this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072
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eh I wont be sending it back for a feature I wont be using
plus the cpu I purchased just went on sale for $15 less than what i paid for (same goes for the OS I bought $20 off), just waiting on newegg to get back to me about website credit or cash back as I was told they would honor purchases with price drops within a week or so. Also, I would rather not take the cpu out of the motherboard >_>
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