Building Gaming Rig on Budget

T

Turmoil

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Mar 5, 2012
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I am building a gaming rig on a budget and I am looking for help to get the best "bang for my buck". I do not have a defined budget, but I would rather not go far beyond $1,000.

Current Specs (Updated March 11th, 11:06 PST)

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New Motherboard (supports SLI)
New Case (for better cooling)
New cooling system
New powersupply (850 watt, free upgrade)
Instead of one large SSD, I now have selected 1 SSD and 1 HDD.


Price: $1427

Case: CoolerMaster HAF 922 Gaming Case - Black (MID TOWER)

CPU: Intel? Core™ i5-2500K Processor (4x 3.30GHz/6MB L3 Cache)

Processor Cooling: Asetek 550LC Liquid CPU Cooling System (Intel) - ARC Dual Silent High Perfornamce Fan Upgrade (Push-Pull Airflow)

Memory: 8 GB [4 GB X2] DDR3-1600 Memory Module G. Skills Rip Jaw X

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6870 - Crossfire Mode

Motherboard: [SLI] Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 -- 3x PCI-E 2.0 x16, Lucid Virtu Technology

Power Supply: 850 Watt - Corsair CMPSU-850AX

Hard Drive: 120 GB ADATA S510 SSD Read: 550MB/s ; Write: 510MB/s

Second Hard Drive: 500 GB HARD DRIVE -- 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s

Optical Drive: 24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD?R/?RW + CD-R/RW Drive

Sound Card: 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
 
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well once again if u could wait a month, you should because no hardware is coming out soon.
 
BRAVO51 said:
well once again if u could wait a month, you should because no hardware is coming out soon.
Click to expand...

Alright, I'm not aware of all of these release dates and what not. By the way, what do you mean by "once again"?
 
lots of threads for suggestions on video cards, nvidia releasing new series in April, mid-end cards anyway
 
It will lower prices thereby saving you money.. That is if you can wait
 
Also, building a computer yourself is not difficult. I definitely had concerns the first time I approached it, but there really isn't much you can do wrong. Follow directions, and make sure you aren't trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. That's about it.
 
a pet rock said:
Also, building a computer yourself is not difficult. I definitely had concerns the first time I approached it, but there really isn't much you can do wrong. Follow directions, and make sure you aren't trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. That's about it.
Click to expand...

Yep, it's really just a jig saw puzzle
 
^Eh you could have gotten an i7 2500k if you
Moved some numbers around like on the ram etc or a 460 and the oc'd it and if Hard
Drives weren't double the price /:
 
And I would like to ask, what is your guys' take on first-time computer builders. I have never even owned a desktop, let alone built one, but I have gained a lot more confidence by the guides I have seen and it seems to be the cheapest way to go. Any experiences you could share?
 
Guides on tech forums (even one on this forum by phobus) and videos on youtube should be more than enough. It really is not that hard. Motherboard is the main board that screws into the case. Put the cpu in its slot (probably before putting mobo in case). Ram goes in its slots. Apply thermal compound to cpu and then put CPU cooler on. Video card plugs into its slot on mobo. Hard drive goes into its slot in the case. DVD drive in its slot in case. Power supply in its slot in case. Plug in power cables to all components. Plug in sata cables from dvd drive and hdd to mobo. Plug in case cables to mobo. Boom. Done.

Waiting is a wise move if you do not need the computer immediately.

As for that build that was posted, not bad. Couple things I would change now. RAM is meh at best. No real world improvement over $40 1600 ram that runs at lower voltage. GPU is overpriced now. CPU is good (I would not have gone for the 2600k as it serves real no purpose, get an ssd instead). HDD is overpriced (I've seen lower prices now for 2tb 7200 hdds).
 
I just built my first computer and it really isn't difficult. Read the manuals that come with the motherboard and everything else. Also the guides posted on sites are helpful.
 
One of the biggest dangers for a first time computer builder is getting bit by the enthusiast bug and realizing your bank account will be in trouble :P

Main question though:
Will you be able to access the internet while you're building the system? Often just googling the question that pops up yields results/ideas...
and of course you can post here with anything that comes up. :biggrin:

CPU
Microcenter has the same CPU but for $179.99 instead of $224.99
Save $45.00 (give or take with shipping)

+CPU cooler: If you're planning on overclocking right out of the gate, makes sense... but if not, you don't necessarily need to get this right now. I use the stock cooler on my i5 2500k as I won't bother overclocking for quite a while.
Save $27.00

RAM
As Huckleberry said, you can be comfortable grabbing 1600 RAM, can't find the chart anymore but the performance difference between 1333 and 1600 was worth it, above that isn't really. Stick with 1.5v RAM, it will run cooler, and give you more headroom if you overclock in the future.
Don't know if you've seen this, and frankly I rarely check anymore, but here is a list of RAM from gigabyte that they guarantee to work with your board:
http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_ga-z68x-ud3h-b3.pdf
Save $25.00

HDD
Are you set on Samsung for your hard drive? Your motherboard can handle a 6gb/s throughput instead of the 3gb/s throughput you have listed.
If you're not set on Samsung, check a few of these out : They have twice the throughput and twice the cache as the one you listed. I'm struggling not to digress into why more cache is good :P onwards...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600003269%20600003483%20600003334%20600003489%20600003340%204017&IsNodeId=1&name=%24100%20-%20%24200&ShowDeactivatedMark=False
Save potentially $45.00

Video Card
You're speccing out the Ti, and essentially paying a premium to go from 336 processor cores to 384 cores... I honestly don't think you would see a worthwhile improvement for that. Going from a 550 (192 cores) to a 560, absolutely! But you can get a gigabyte 560 (if that's your preference) and Save $70.00

***
If you tally up those savings, you could always bank the money if the baby needs a new pair of shoes... but you could indeed get a pretty sweet 120gb+ SSD to install your OS with room to spare for games/whatever.
If you do, have a look at how fast they can read and write when comparing, and go with 6gb/s throughput :thumbup1:

Enjoy man! Hope I didn't throw too much info your way but I love looking at all this stuff. Porn for geeks. :P
 
argh, I live close to a microcenter so I didn't even notice the in-store right in front of my face :) good catch!

Running a 460gtx myself, tend to favor evga, and it does run BF3 on high settings without any problem at all. Never seen a 560 in action so don't know if it's more future proof but down the road, 460 sli gets better results than a 560 so yeah, with you there.

I don't know if the HDD itself would bottleneck a 6gb/s throughput rendering it kind of useless but... if the SSD is at 6gb/s, would it be a perceivable improvement to have the max throughput on the HDD as well if transferring large files?

And also, any thoughts on HDD manufacturer to avoid?

fun stuff :)
 
All the HDD manufacturers are either Western Digital or Seagate. Samsung uses rebranded Seagate drives. I'm not sure who makes the Hitachi drives. They're all the same, so it doesn't really matter.

And as everyone else has mentioned, their are several guides on the internet, and even videos on youtube if you want a watch how it's done instead of in steps.
 
Reylaark said:
argh, I live close to a microcenter so I didn't even notice the in-store right in front of my face :) good catch!

Running a 460gtx myself, tend to favor evga, and it does run BF3 on high settings without any problem at all. Never seen a 560 in action so don't know if it's more future proof but down the road, 460 sli gets better results than a 560 so yeah, with you there.

I don't know if the HDD itself would bottleneck a 6gb/s throughput rendering it kind of useless but... if the SSD is at 6gb/s, would it be a perceivable improvement to have the max throughput on the HDD as well if transferring large files?

And also, any thoughts on HDD manufacturer to avoid?

fun stuff :)
Click to expand...

Again, a gtx 560 is a gtx 460, only overclocked. However, many of the gtx 460s are factory overclocked beyond a standard gtx 560 such as the one I linked to which is currently the cheapest one on newegg. Thus, you are getting gtx 560 performance for a fraction of the cost.

And an ssd CAN take advantage of 6 gb/s, but for a mechanical drive, it makes little to no real world difference.

And I am with phobus on the hdd choice. Just get one that is cheap with a decent warranty.
 
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I found the physical part much easier than installing the operating system, drivers, updates, etc, it still confuses me. Can someone explain how to do this efficiently? I will probably also be building a new system in the next 6 months to a year and will probably make a similar post.
 
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