Building a gaming machine on a budget

**omegaskittle** · 06-09-2010, 10:13 AM

I have been out of the loop of specifics to what mobo/GFX/Ram etc. is better than the other for a few years due to college and all that neat junk. This summer I have decided that spending my money on a new PC would be a good idea since the one I have is getting a little outdated (built back in '06 and RAM has memory leak issues).

I am coming to you guys here because of all of the great advice I have received from the past LWS Tech and even early CD.

Budget: ~$1200

What I'd like:

Case
Motherboard
Ram (At least 4gb and room to upgrade)
Graphics card that can handle current and future games at reasonable settings. (Now games High; Future Medium?)
Processor (I hear the i7's are pretty neat, but again I am a little behind in what is better. Has AMD caught up with Intel?)
Power Supply
Hard Drive ( At least 1TB, with room to upgrade. I was thinking WD Caviar Black 1TB drive)
Some sort of extra Cooling (Not sure if I am comfortable with liquid cooling yet)
DVD RW Drive (1 should be fine)

I can get Win7 from my school for free so I don't need to worry about an OS.

Not sure if I forgot anything from the list. Feel free to add/suggest.

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Phew now that that's over with, if you guys could give me suggestions on future purchases that would be great. I will be getting some new things towards the end of the summer when I have made some more money to spend.

Keyboard
Mouse (Still rocking this MX510 from '03, time to upgrade! Wired Preferred)
Monitor (At least 19 inch)
Headset (These Sennheisers are getting a bit worn out.)

If I get any help from someone it would be ENORMOUSLY appreciated. I will try and think of a gift of some sort for the person who helps the most.

Thanks all!

**thank mr skeltal** · 06-09-2010, 08:54 PM

I recently got a custom computer built by AVAdirect.com:

# THERMALTAKE, Purepower™ 600W Power Supply, 24-pin ATX12V V2.3 EPS12V, Retail

# ASUS, P6T, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000 (O.C.) 12GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3.0 Gb/s RAID 5 /8, HDA, GbLAN, FW /2, ATX, Retail

# INTEL, Core™ i7-930 Quad-Core 2.8GHz, LGA1366, 4.8 GT/s QPI, 8MB L3 Cache, 45nm, 130W, EM64T EIST VT XD, Retail

# CRUCIAL, 6GB (3 x 2GB) Ballistix PC3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz CL8 (8-8-8-24) 1.65V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC

# SAPPHIRE, Radeon™ HD 5770 850MHz, 1GB GDDR5 4800MHz, PCIe x16 CrossFire, DVI /2, DP, HDMI, Retail

# SEAGATE, 1TB Barracuda® 7200.12, SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB cache

# LITE-ON, iHAS124 Black 24x DVD±RW Dual-Layer Burner, SATA, OEM

# MICROSOFT, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition, OEM

I got the cheapest case I could find that was large enough for the video card, and the motherboard isn't anything to write home about but the rest of the specs are pretty decent. IMO it's pretty a pretty sweet rig and can play anything I throw at it on the highest video settings. It set me back about $1300 + shipping and tax. (I also got a huge LCD monitor, I highly recommend that as well, it's worth every penny). You could get a slower i7 processor (or I hear there are some great sweet spots for value with the i5s) and probably come in on your budget, or even less if you get regular old RAM or a slightly cheaper video card - the one I put in mine doesn't really hit that "sweet spot" of performance for price, but I was willing to pay more for the increased performance. There are some $100-$140 Radeon (and nVidia) cards that are very good value in the price-to-performance ratio.

I've read mixed reviews about AVAdirect so I couldn't tell if they are writing false positive reviews, or if competitors were writing false negative reviews, depending on which site I looked at. My personal experience with them was good and I would probably buy from them again. I had to contact their customer support a couple times during the order process via email and they were very responsive, professional and friendly.

edit: since you're looking for a monitor as a future purchase, I would very highly recommend the one I ended up buying: Amazon.com: Samsung P2450H 24-Inch Widescreen Touch of Color LCD Monitor - Rose Black: Electronics@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511pvR-xSGL.@@AMEPARAM@@511pvR-xSGL
The plastic casing at the base and around the screen is a dust magnet for sure, but that's my only complaint. I have to wipe down the edges of the frame every couple days. I especially like that there are multiple kind of inputs accepted - most monitors I shopped only had one or two kinds of inputs.

As for a mouse, I'm still rocking my wireless Logitech G7 laser mouse. I love it, and even being several years old now I only have to swap the usb-charged battery out about every 6 hours of use. It comes with 2 batteries though and swapping it takes just a second so it's no big deal for me. It's very accurate and smooth.

**omegaskittle** · 06-10-2010, 05:07 AM

Thanks Rick! I appreciate the fast response and the helpfulness(?). I will look into AVADirect and the parts you have suggested. More suggestions/recommendations are always appreciated!

**omegaskittle** · 06-10-2010, 06:09 PM

So I put together a little machine on newegg and these are the parts I decided to choose:

COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - $139.98

ASUS P6T SE LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - $209.99

SAPPHIRE 100283L Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - $169.99

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power ... - $109.99

Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - $279.99

Crucial Ballistix Tracer 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory w/ Blue LEDs Model BL3KIT25664TB1608 - $199.99

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - $89.99

LITE-ON CD/DVD Burner - Bulk Black SATA Model iHAS124-04 - OEM - $22.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM - $9.99

ZALMAN 9500A-LED 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - $52.99

TOTAL - $1285.89

If everything looks good to all who view this thread, I will be ordering these all on Saturday(06/12/10)

So if anything looks a bit off, or something might need a change, let me know. Thanks again for the help.

**Harner** · 06-10-2010, 11:37 PM

I built an i7 system as well. Here's my parts thread: My new build - Casual Discourse

You won't be sorry! The only thing I regret is buying and using a SSD as the OS drive. It booted Win7 like it was on roids, but when it came to loading apps, multitasking, and installing it would hang for awhile. Now with my new 7200rpm/32mb cache drive it's like a new pc.

Enjoy.