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Budget gaming rig

W

wills0r

n00b
Joined
Jun 2, 2011
Messages
5
-- What your budget is (and whether it includes taxes, shipping charges, and/or other costs)

I would like to spend less than $350 including taxes and shipping. I can swing more if need be. Fry's matches internet prices now (or allegedly) so hopefully I can get most of it from them to save shipping costs.

-- Which parts you need within that budget

I will need a processor, a motherboard, ram, a hard drive, and a dvd rom. Oh, and a power supply.

-- What the system is going to be used for

World of Warcraft until Guild wars 2 comes out. I may not even have the PC if GW2 takes a long time to release.

-- All of the components that you already have and/or are planning on reusing

Lian Li PC-60b (lolz), and an xfx 8800 gts. I have all the peripherals required. Also will be dual monitoring a samsung 2233rz and an acer H213H.

-- Which components you are considering getting (list out your components with model numbers/names along with links to the stores you're getting them from)

I'd rather not embarrass myself by posting components that are way off the mark. I am not really caught up with all the latest hardware. I just know how to put things together from several previous builds.

-- The question(s) you have -- or, the reason you made the thread in the first place

Need a PC to tide me over until I build a "sicknasty" gaming system.

Thanks in advance for any advice given. I expect to build the system next month.
 
Some additional questions:
3) Where do you live?
6) Will you be overclocking?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? etc.
 
I think $350 is a reachable target for the parts you listed, but answer those other questions first.
 
First off, thanks very much for the replies.

To answer the questions:

3) Where do you live? I live in Houston, Texas.

6) Will you be overclocking? I hadn't planned on it, unless someone comes up with a plan that would require such. (ie, if i get this proc and overclock it to this speed it will run stable and be better than buying another proc for a higher price)

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Next month.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? etc.

Just the ability to play some slightly dated games is just fine. I won't be SLI/crossfiring until after I pawn this system off to my gf or a friend or something. I don't have any USB 3.0 peripherals that I'm aware of. I also don't even need a big harddrive. I've barely ever used over 150gigs at any point in time. I play Quake Live, WoW at times, Lineage 2 at times, trying to get into the original Guild Wars before the second one comes out. The laptop I'm currently on just doesn't play those games at any sort of decent resolution. Which is 1080, btw.

Thanks again
 
The XFX8800GTS will be a limiting factor, especially at 1080p, but it should get the job done until your put together a full rig. Just be willing to settle on low settings for a lot of the games. Give me a bit to put together a parts list, but I suspect it'll involve a trip to Microcenter.
 
Microcenter - Pick a Bundle:
$130 - AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz + Biostar A770E3 AM3 AMD 770 ATX Motherboard

You can probably get away with the cheaper Phenom II x4 840, but the 965 will be faster.

Newegg:
$35 - G.SKILL Value Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
$51 - Seagate Barracuda ST3500413AS 500GB 7200 RPM and LG DVD±RW SuperMulti Drive
$55 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W
Subtotal (Microcenter + Newegg) - $271
Shipping (Newegg) - $8
Taxes (Microcenter) - $11
Total: $290

This puts you $60 under budget. If you can increase your budget to $450 overall, I would still buy the above parts, but factor in a Radeon 6850 for $160. The 8800GTS is a huge bottleneck for modern games. Even getting a Radeon 5770 for $110 will provide a decent performance boost.

Thinking about it, getting the $98 Phenom II x4 840 bundle from Microcenter and streching the budget to $370 to fit a 5770 in the build sounds like a good compromise. And you'd actually get the $20 back from the GPU's $20 mail in rebate.
 
that mobo isn't the best choice for him, especially since the combo with the HD features a 6GB/s and that mobo only supports 3 GB/s.

In order to get a mobo with 6GB/s and USB3 he needs to but the combo that costs $199.99 vs the $189.99 @ new egg.

The psu is $5 less but has $3 shipping, while it has the same 40 amps 12v rail its not as highly rated(efficiency etc;) as the HCG unit I recommended
 
The PSUs are essentially the same. I agree, the HCG is a tad better for performance.

The motherboard is a non-issue though. That 6 GB/s hard drive isn't going to saturate a 3GB/s bus. And he doesn't have any USB 3 peripherals. If this were going to be more than a stop-gap machine I would agree that those two features would be useful, but as it is tiding him over until he builds
wills0r said:
a "sicknasty" gaming system
Click to expand...
I think the cheaper motherboard is a valid choice. However, OP if you want to add a few future-proofing features to the rig, do consider SATA6 and USB3. SATA6 may come in handy with high end SSDs or future SSDs and USB3 will also come in handy for any external storage devices. But it's your call on if that's worth the extra money.
 
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