• A Great friend to the HardForum with a great kid that he is trying to get a scholorship to continue his schooling. Please give hime a vote! Only 24 hours left! Thanks.
    If you have an VOTE FOR KEENAN!

Sandy Bridge on a budget

P

Pitbully

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
1,155
So i decided to pull the trigger and upgrade my system this year. I told my wife I'd use our tax refund to do it. Thinking I had plenty of headroom and a couple grand at least, I started shopping around a few weeks ago for components. I actually started picking up some things here and there around Christmas time, but the majority of it came within the last 2 weeks. Well, to make a long story short, the wife informed me we'd be getting a new stove and refrigerator with our taxes and my computer budget shrank drastically overnight it seemed. I finally told her I could upgrade my entire system for under a grand and she OKed it. After putting my wife though nursing school and 2 kids in school at the same time all on less then 60 grand a year, stretching a buck is one thing I know how to do. So I set out to build the most kickass system I could for under 1k. Here's what I came up with.

i-7 2600k - Microcenter facebook sale/coupon $229
Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 Gen 3 - Microcenter sale $139
Corsair H-60 Cooler - Tiger Direct $49
16gb Gskill Ripjaws DDR3 PC12800 - Newegg Christmas sale $68
Saphire 6950 2gb flashed/OC to 6970 - Newegg $239
OCZ petrol 128gb SATA III - Newegg $119
Cooler Master RC-692-KKN2 Case - Newegg $75
2x WD Black 500gb 7200rpm 64mb cache (salavage from old system)
DVD writer/Blue-ray (salvage from old system)
Antec AX750w (salavage from old system)

Grand total - $918

Now i just gotta figure out what to spend my $82 on.....

I cant wait to put it together this weekend!
 
$82 could buy some nice case fans if you need them or a drive bay USB panel/card reader.

Or just scour Steam and pick up some of those games you've been wanting.

:cool:


Ps - you're going to have one hell of a nice system.
 
I'd probably go with dual 6950's or a 6990 or something & drop from 2600k to 2500k....
 
That looks pretty good to me...you already have a 2600 for almost the same price as a 2500 so no sense in dropping down. Maybe another fan for the H60 for push/pull config or go with the H80.....or take the wife out to dinner with what's left!
 
Looks nice but if you are going to overclock the Intel® Core™ i7-2600K you are going to want to get a good 3rd party HSF (heatsink/fan) to go with it. You can pick up a cooler the Cooler Master Hyper 212 + for under $35. Also do you already have an OS? An OEM copy of Windows 7 Home can cost $99.
 
Fixall said:
Make sure you have thermal paste. Great build sir. :)
Click to expand...

The H60 comes with thermal paste already on it.

IntelEnthusiast said:
Looks nice but if you are going to overclock the Intel® Core™ i7-2600K you are going to want to get a good 3rd party HSF (heatsink/fan) to go with it. You can pick up a cooler the Cooler Master Hyper 212 + for under $35. Also do you already have an OS? An OEM copy of Windows 7 Home can cost $99.
Click to expand...

He has the Corsair H60 listed there ;)
 
buy some nice peripheral. like Logitech Performance MX Mouse, or nice keyboard (quiet, or mechanical, backlit).

Afterall, those are the components that you will play with the most. I love building pc. Have fun :D
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
well you have $82 + a few hundred more if ya sell the parts your replacing. That qued core ship alone will fetch ya 100-130 bucks
 
Yea i just sold a q6600 for 105 on ebay so your should fetch you atleast that or more.
 
Unfortunately I think I'll be replacing my G15 keyboard as it took a crap last night. My old Q9550 that has served me faithfully for the last 3 years will be headed to my youngest son's gaming rig. He's been playing on an old Athlon x2 3400+ or something. So the 9550 will be a big step up for him.
 
Pitbully said:
Unfortunately I think I'll be replacing my G15 keyboard as it took a crap last night. My old Q9550 that has served me faithfully for the last 3 years will be headed to my youngest son's gaming rig. He's been playing on an old Athlon x2 3400+ or something. So the 9550 will be a big step up for him.
Click to expand...

X2 3600+ ?
 
Could be a 36 or 3800+, I honestly have no idea until I look at it. Being the kid in the house, (hes 16), he seems to get all the hand-me-downs from everyone. Hes rocking my oldest sons CPU/Motherboard and Monitor and my old case and video card, (8800 GTS). He really doesn't mind much though, consdiering all he really plays is WOW, Minecraft, CS and some League of Legends. He picked up SWTOR this week though, so I suppose I'll have to hunt him up a new video card pretty soon.
 
between ebay an dpaypal think it cost me like 5-6 bucks i also put mine on at a low buy it ow option was in a rush to get some money together for some new video cards
 
I just happened to look up to see what your cpu is selling for on ebay theres alot of them doing $200-$300 in thee past week lowest priced one sold for $149
 
Paragon said:
I'd ditch the water and go with a good air cooler.
Click to expand...

Water v. Air

While air-cooling generally costs less, water-cooling (even closed-loop) still permits taller overclocks; also, in some situations (involving case or motherboard design or a conflict between the two) water-cooling may make more sense than air (HSF-clearance issues with some aftermarket coolers - even the Hyper212+ isn't exactly *small*; the Corsair CL water-cooling systems are designed to take up no more space than a stock HSF due to the plate design).
 
Since I bought an H-60 for my other rig a few months back, I've since moved to Corsairs on all the systems in my house. I'll probably never go back to those giant piece of shit air coolers. I'm pretty sure the last Zalman I bought was like $60 and I just bought a Corsair H-60 for $50 on sale. I slapped a couple after market fans on it in push/pull config and its rocking. I see no reason whatsoever to go back to air IMO.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top