$700-$800 USD Gaming Desktop

[Azzyquemint]

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
Maximum $800, though if I can shave a few dollars off without significant impact on performance, I would appreciate it.

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
San Francisco, California

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
Motherboard, CPU, RAM, GPU, SSD

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Antec Earthwatts Green EA-430D 430W PSU, 3 years old
Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced - Mid Tower Computer Case w/ 3 stock fans
Sceptre X270W-1080P (27")
Samsung 1 TB Spinpoint 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA, 3 years old
Western Digital Caviar GreenPower 1TB SATA Hard Drive - 16MB (or very similar), 4-5 years old
Keyboard
Mouse
Headphones

6) Will you be overclocking?
No.

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
1920x1080
27"

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
I plan to order all the parts no later than Friday the 11th.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
No specific needs. Just the best I can afford, please. I do not plan to use more than one GPU.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Nope.



ASUS Micro ATX DDR3 2400 FM2 Motherboard A78M-A $68.24
AMD A10-Series APU A10-7850K AD785KXBJABOX $169.97
Kingston Digital 120GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 2.5 with Adapter $54.99
Windows 8.1 System Builder OEM DVD 64-Bit $94.57
Mushkin Enhanced Redline 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) $129.99
HIS IceQ X² Turbo Boost Clock H270XQMT2G2 Radeon R9 270X 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 $189.99

With tax and shipping:
$421.69 from Amazon
$361.51 from Newegg

$783.20


[EDIT]: Forgot to mention I have two 1TB HDDs for storage.

 

[tiraides]

Which (types of) games do you want to play? At what level of visual quality?

How old is the PSU? How hard was it pushed over time?

Could you give us the brand, model, and age of each hard drive?

 

[Azzyquemint]

Which (types of) games do you want to play? At what level of visual quality?

How old is the PSU? How hard was it pushed over time?

Could you give us the brand, model, and age of each hard drive?

I'll play just about any game. I'm looking forward to the PC release of GTA 5. I might get Titanfall, Batman: Arkham Origins, Watchdogs, the newest Battlefield, Divinity: Orginal Sin. Maybe I'll get back into EVE Online. Level of visual quality doesn't really concern me, I'm happy just being able to play a game without framerate issues; I'll turn down visual settings as needed.

The PSU is three years old. Aside from pretty constant use in my current PC it's not been "pushed" hard at all.

One drive is a Western Digital, SATA, 16MB cache, I believe this model if not very similar. It's four or five years old. The other is a Samsung 1 TB Spinpoint 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA, three years old.

 

[Dangman]

Yeah, that's not that great of a setup on account of everything but the video card and OS.

I recommend this setup instead:
$120 - Intel Core i3-4130 CPU
$70 - MSI B85-G41 PC MATE Intel B85 ATX Motherboard
$76 - Kingston HyperX Blu KHX1600C10D3B1/8G 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$200 - PowerColor TurboDuo AXR9 280 3GBD5-T2DHE/OC Radeon R9 280
$115 - Crucial MX100 256GB SSD
$95 - Windows 8.1 64bit
$60 - XFX TS Series XFX TS 550W PSU
----
Total: $801 with CA sales tax rate of 8%.

Key differences:

- Intel CPUs in general have far better CPU gaming performance than AMD CPUs or APUs. IMO, the whole advantage of an AMD APU is completely negated when you add in a discrete video card. So unless your budget is actually $500, not $800, you can afford the faster gaming CPU.
- For most gamers, 8GB of RAM is more than enough. IN addition, since you're going Intel, no need for RAM speeds higher than DDR3 1600.
- $10 more for that R9 280 gets you a 15 to 20% performance increase over that R9 270X. That's a no-brainer right there. I highly recommend buying that card ASAP before others finds out about that fantastic deal.
- That Kingston SSD is not a good choice on account of the bait and switch Kingston is doing that particular SSD line:
http://techreport.com/review/26664/alleged-bait-and-switch-tactics-spur-kingston-pny-ssd-boycott

Hence why I upgraded to the more reputable, larger, and faster Crucial SSD.
- I don't think your current PSU is good enough to handle the increase in power as a result of the R9 280 upgrade. That's why I included the XFX 550W PSU. It's a high quality PSU that should last you through multiple upgrades.

So for about $17 more, you're getting a pretty sizable increase in performance of at least 20% to as high as 30% over that AMD setup.

 

[Azzyquemint]

Yeah, that's not that great of a setup on account of everything but the video card and OS.

I recommend this setup instead:
$120 - Intel Core i3-4130 CPU
$70 - MSI B85-G41 PC MATE Intel B85 ATX Motherboard
$76 - Kingston HyperX Blu KHX1600C10D3B1/8G 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$200 - PowerColor TurboDuo AXR9 280 3GBD5-T2DHE/OC Radeon R9 280
$115 - Crucial MX100 256GB SSD
$95 - Windows 8.1 64bit
$60 - XFX TS Series XFX TS 550W PSU
----
Total: $801 with CA sales tax rate of 8%.

Key differences:

- Intel CPUs in general have far better CPU gaming performance than AMD CPUs or APUs. IMO, the whole advantage of an AMD APU is completely negated when you add in a discrete video card. So unless your budget is actually $500, not $800, you can afford the faster gaming CPU.
- For most gamers, 8GB of RAM is more than enough. IN addition, since you're going Intel, no need for RAM speeds higher than DDR3 1600.
- $10 more for that R9 280 gets you a 15 to 20% performance increase over that R9 270X. That's a no-brainer right there. I highly recommend buying that card ASAP before others finds out about that fantastic deal.
- That Kingston SSD is not a good choice on account of the bait and switch Kingston is doing that particular SSD line:
http://techreport.com/review/26664/alleged-bait-and-switch-tactics-spur-kingston-pny-ssd-boycott

Hence why I upgraded to the more reputable, larger, and faster Crucial SSD.
- I don't think your current PSU is good enough to handle the increase in power as a result of the R9 280 upgrade. That's why I included the XFX 550W PSU. It's a high quality PSU that should last you through multiple upgrades.

So for about $17 more, you're getting a pretty sizable increase in performance of at least 20% to as high as 30% over that AMD setup.

Excellent, thank you very much! Went ahead and ordered all of that. Very psyched!

 

[Dangman]

Good luck with the build!