Budget build!

C

cesium666

Supreme [H]ardness
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Mar 19, 2006
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Friend needs a new PC on a budget and 100% wants to build and not buy. He's on a P3 1ghz so anything is an upgrade heh.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
This will be his sole PC, with an emphasis on gaming
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$500 shipped
3) Where do you live?
Michigan
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
CPU, Mobo, RAM, PSU, HSF, HDD, Monitor
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
4890 + case (I'm selling him mine :p)
6) Will you be overclocking?
Hell yes
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Need an LCD at least 20"
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Within a month
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
Don't care
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?
Yep, Win7 Ultimate 64-bit (yay education discount)


Have a microcenter a few miles away, so been eying their $100 AMD combos that seem to pop up every week or two. But would appreciate a build that does not bank on one of those deals!
 
What case are you selling him?

EDIT: Assuming that the case is good enough:
$233 - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU + GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770 Motherboard combo
$110 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$56 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$120 - Hanns·G HH201HPB Black 20" 5ms HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor
----
Total: $519 shipped.

Try to spare the extra $19. It's well worth it :)
 
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My rocketfish case. Yeah, that looks like an excellent setup, nice.

Random thought. I feel like a quad could be an overkill. If we were to step down to a celeron 3300 or athlon x2 setup and save maybe 75-100 bucks, how badly would performance suffer? Money could go towards a bigger monitor.

With the 4890, 1080p gaming isn/t out of the question.
 
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How about changing the CPU Mobo Combo & the monitor to these

194 - AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz + GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770 Motherboard combo
170 - Hanns·G HH-231HPB Black 23" 5ms HDMI Widescreen

I Would say the bigger monitor will more then make up for the small hit in performance when you consider overall system usefullness
 
A lot of RPG and RTS, with some random FPS thrown in (nothing like crysis or BC2 tho).
 
Which RTS and Which FPS?
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Well pretty much don't downgrade the CPU down anything less than a quad-core at the very least.

Now it really depends on what your friend wants more: performance or larger desktop/viewing/gaming etc.
 
are you giving him your PSU as well? because none of these builds have listed a PSU in them
 
Danny Bui said:
Well pretty much don't downgrade the CPU down anything less than a quad-core at the very least.

Now it really depends on what your friend wants more: performance or larger desktop/viewing/gaming etc.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. Larger monitor >>> Performance.

sdy284 said:
are you giving him your PSU as well? because none of these builds have listed a PSU in them
Click to expand...

Nope, didn't even notice that!

The corsair 650tx fits the bill exactly, and is relatively cheap at 70AR
 
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