Gaming build ~$1,500

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Konway

n00b
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Messages
8
I live near a Micro Center, am a college student and have employee discount at Best Buy (if any of that makes a difference :confused:). I looked through other build threads with similar price ranges but they all had dead links to Newegg combo deals that no longer exist ><

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming, web browsing and some light music production just as a hobby.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
~$1,500 including tax and shipping, although the Best Buy I work at is in DE so there's no sales tax if I buy from there... we can order online then return / re-purchase in-store to use employee discount on "online only" items.
3) Where do you live?
Near Philadelphia
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Everything!
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
I have nothing to reuse.
6) Will you be overclocking?
Probably not, unless it can be done safely without any type of liquid cooling.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Looking for something in the 23" range so I can sit back and watch movies occasionally (PC will be in my bedroom).
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
December / January
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
Nothing specific, maybe something upgrade friendly since I'll probably be using this PC for 3+ years?
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
No, but I'm not factoring that into the $1,500 budget.


I'm a newb when it comes to putting a PC together and I've been out of the loop since my last purchase 4 years ago, but I'll have tons of free time coming up to read / learn and I can always ask some of the Geek Squad nerds at my store for help :p

I'm gonna price check some stuff at the store tomorrow to see if we get any significant discount on the stuff BB carries online, if anything I'm guessing monitors have the biggest markup (AKA biggest discount since we pay cost + 5%). Stuff like processors and video cards probably aren't marked up much at all :(
 
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HardwareGuru said:
How much of an employee discount do you get from Best Buy?
Click to expand...
It's not a set discount, we just pay whatever Best Buy pays + 5% markup.

So on some things we get no discount at all (video game consoles) but on other things our discount can be 40% or more (car audio equipment, Monster cables, video game accessories).
 
I looked up a couple things and it seems like we get ~20% off on some of the stuff (no discount on processor though). And the store is also in Delaware so I wouldn't have to pay tax on anything... I don't know if this monitor is any good but it's $60 off for employees, just one of the ones I wrote down:

$200 w/employee discount LG W2361VG-PF

A random video card I picked was $250 instead of $290 but it's sold out :(

And if I give up the idea of building a computer this pre-built Dell thing is only $950 w/ discount Studio XPS Desktop with Intel® Core™ i7 Processor :p Anyone know how well it'd do?
 
$950? Wow, that's a pretty decent discount off that Dell Studio desktop. That Dell comes with an Nvidia Geforce GTS 240 video card. This video card is on par with a 9800GT video card in terms of performance. But, it will struggle on games running at 1920 x 1080 resoltuions especially if you enable AA and AF. Too bad that Radeon HD 5850 is sold out. It would be a good deal at $250 with your discount. $200 for that LG 23" is not bad considering your buying it locally. You can always exchange it for another model if you see dead pixels or bad backlight bleeding on the monitor.
 
Yeah now that I'm looking into it more that card really is a little dated... and I can't find exactly how many PCI-e slots are in there. The power supply seems a little weak too, would it be tough to upgrade to a more recent video card?

I doubt I'd run games with AA or AF on. I've heard it's not really a big factor if you're running at 1920x1080 but haven't seen it myself :confused:

Edit: Where can I find some good reading about CrossFire? i.e. would it be worth making a system that's CrossFire ready with just 1 card or does it require 2 cards right off the bat?
 
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Konway said:
Yeah now that I'm looking into it more that card really is a little dated... and I can't find exactly how many PCI-e slots are in there. The power supply seems a little weak too, would it be tough to upgrade to a more recent video card?

I doubt I'd run games with AA or AF on. I've heard it's not really a big factor if you're running at 1920x1080 but haven't seen it myself :confused:

Edit: Where can I find some good reading about CrossFire? i.e. would it be worth making a system that's CrossFire ready with just 1 card or does it require 2 cards right off the bat?
Click to expand...

It's only really worth it if you get two cards right off the bat.

There's virtually no info on the PSU AFAIK.
 
Since you work at Best Buy pop open that Dell Studio computer and see what PSU it is running. It's probably running a 350W - 375W
 
Yah, for any high end GPU upgrade, you'll want to upgrade that PSU, most likely. I don't think BB carries a nice selection of PSUs, IIRC. Stick with Corsair and Antec non-Basiq (ie. avoid the Basiq lineup). For a 1080P monitor, you'll probably want at least an HD4890.
 
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