I'm looking to build a gaming pc for the first time and could use the advice of some people who have experience. I'm looking to spend around $500-600.

I have been using this page as a reference of parts around that price but I'm sure based on what I'm looking for someone can improve this a bit.

http://newbcomputerbuild.com/newb-co...ing-pc-builds/

The two biggest things to factor in are that I am definitely looking to get a quad-core processor and as far as the graphics card goes, here's what I'm looking for:

I won't be playing anything too demanding. Some of the games I'll be playing are Shadowrun, Left 4 Dead 2, Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, Primal Carage, The Old Republic, Phantasy Star Online 2, and I would be happy if I could run that "dolphin" game full speed at 720p. You know the one where they "brawl". I don't know if specifying what game I'm talking about is against the rules so I won't. I'm already expecting sarcastic "ecco the dolphin" answers.

Help me out!

I got a kit from tigerdirect for a great price. I prefer AMD over intel mainly because intels chips are over priced and for the same price as a dual core i5k or whatever you can get a quad or an 8 core amd chip. Its better to have more physical cores than less cores with hyperthreading like intel. Make sure the psu is 500w or more if your going to put in a big graphics card. I got the gtx 550ti and i dont regret it, plays almost all games on max except for battlefield 3 but i can get it close. The gt650 is better than the 550ti and only $170.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...rs-_-Spot%2005
Try newegg too.
http://www.newegg.com/Store/MasterCo...=DIY-PC-Combos

Originally Posted by mutantchipmunk I got a kit from tigerdirect for a great price. I prefer AMD over intel mainly because intels chips are over priced and for the same price as a dual core i5k or whatever you can get a quad or an 8 core amd chip. Its better to have more physical cores than less cores with hyperthreading like intel. Make sure the psu is 500w or more if your going to put in a big graphics card. I got the gtx 550ti and i dont regret it, plays almost all games on max except for battlefield 3 but i can get it close. The gt650 is better than the 550ti and only $170. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...rs-_-Spot%2005 Try newegg too. http://www.newegg.com/Store/MasterCo...=DIY-PC-Combos

1. Stay away from barebone kits. 90% of the time, you can source the parts separately for cheaper and more than likely they stick some crappy generic tower case, power supply and bland hard drive. Only a few times have I seen good deals on barebone kits from either tigerdirect or newegg, but they always include 1 or 2 crappy parts that will properly fail within 6 months.

2. There's a number of Intel chips that offer way better value than anything AMD makes right now. This is why the i5 and i7 k series chips have been extremely popular even though we are talking about $200-350 chips for consumers who need that kind of processing power. AMD FX chips can't touch Intel or even AMD's older X4/X6 chips for price, performance or value. AMD's lower end and older X4/X6 chips still offer one of the best bang for buck value cpu's on the market compared to Intel's entry level pentium or i3 chips. I would just skip FX unless you find an insanely good deal.

3. "Its better to have more physical cores than less cores with hyperthreading like intel" Uhhhh what? Stop making hugely wild and generic sayings here man. It all depends on the application and what you requirements are. Even the fast dual core i3 ivy bridge chips with HT is faster in many games than similarly priced AMD quad cores, but you do take a hit on content creation software or newer games that do take advantage of 4 real cores instead of 2 physical and 2 logical.

4. You don't NEED a 500w or better power supply. This is all marketing crap and hype. A good quality 400w power supply is more than enough to handle an i7 3750k with a gtx 680 at stock speeds and still have room to spare.

5. GTX 550 ti is NOT a big graphics card. That is an entry level $100 gaming card.

6. No such thing as a "GT 650". There are only a GTX 650 ($70-100) and a GTX 650 ti ($110-140). The normal 650 is slower than the 550 ti, but the 650 ti is faster, but not by much. You'd have to be smoking crack if you think you'd pay $170 for the 650.

As for the build, the build guide isn't too bad, but this is what I'd base your next build idea on instead:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Patriot Intel Extreme Master, Limited Ed 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($31.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($169.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($25.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On IHAS324-98 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ Outlet PC)

Total: $592.90
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-11 22:32 EST-0500)

You will be hard pressed to find a better configured set of quality parts for this price with Windows.

It sports the tried and true, AMD x4 quad core black edition processor; its about 3 years old now compared to the more recent FX or Intel cpu's, but for $90, it still kicks ass. Even has overclocking potential if you wanted to explore this route. For this build, I didn't. Paired with cpu is a cheap $50 motherboard that will handle itself fairly well, but I'd do like to point out that you can find similar name brand motherboards on sale for $30 or so. Shop around.

The center piece of this build is the graphics card and its hard to mistake it since its the beefy and great value AMD HD 7850 2GB card. It's about as powerful as a GTX 570 for not a lot of money. Granted, you could probably be fine with a $100 HD 7770 or a $130 GTX 650 ti, but this is the next graphics tier over those and will hold its own for years to come. The only way it could get better is if you could find the same gpu for $150 like it was during thanksgiving sales.

Next, I picked the nice and cheap NZXT source 210 case since its on sale for a fantastic price of $30 shipped. Its usually around $40-50 + shipping so this is a decent amount of savings for your build. It's also a much higher quality product than one would usually get at this price point, so buy with confidence. Paired with the case is the nice Corsair 430w V2 that's more than enough to power your 125w AMD cpu and 130w AMD gpu at stock speeds; all in all, your system would barely hit above 300w on full load. You really don't need much more power than this, specially since its $26 for a quality unit (although you can find them on sale for less than 20, but its MSRP is $40-50; at that price, I'd look at the XFX 550w pro or CX500).

Throw in a set of decent 8GB ram modules, a simple and a great value 2TB 7200 hard drive, a cheapo dvd burner and a copy of windows; your set to go.



Now, you could drop the GPU down a tier to save a few bucks and upgrade the motherboard to a better one that supports overclocking, pair that with a higher wattage power supply in the 500-600 (XFX 550w is $46 @ newegg right now) range to support OC as well as the cheap $20 Cooler Master 212+ cpu cooler to give your system the bones to be faster at the expensive slower graphics for a better PC. But its up to you and OC isn't really for everyone. For the average user for a budget gaming box, above list is more than enough power to choke a dolphin...

I would take the OS off of that price and look at your local library for a free or discounted copy. This would put you well under your 500.

Originally Posted by Megazell I would take the OS off of that price and look at your local library for a free or discounted copy. This would put you well under your 500.

Public libraries have free/discount OS software?

Forget the DVD drive no one needs that anymore (unless you have an old computer and can swap that one).

If you only want to play those games you could get away with a $100 card like JBaz said (if you are really looking to keep costs down). You can always upgrade it later, but a little future proofing can't hurt when it comes to the GPU.

I'm not sure you need a 2TB hard drive, I made a build similar to this about two years ago x4, 5770 and the one thing I want to upgrade right now is the HD to an SSD. You might spend a little more and consider this which is part SSD and part HDD:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Moment...ds=momentus+xt

Originally Posted by Matsumoto11756 Public libraries have free/discount OS software?

Yep. NYC, NJ, PA and LA has free data centers with free copies of Linux (various versions), Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 7 on CD/DVD for a few years now.

Some places ask for a donation of no smaller than $0.50.

Advertisement

Register for free to remove this ad

Granted, DVD drive is barely needed anymore these days, but when shit hits the fan, its better to have an optical drive handy to run recovery software or even a full fledged OS for troubleshooting. Sometimes it is just more robust than getting a usb drive to boot properly in some cases. $15 shipped is not a big part of the budget to have to worry about. If OP has a donor optical drive he can pull from another computer, then it's a good idea to save a few bucks.

As far as the 2TB, it may seem excessively large, but in today's world of 8MP cameras and 1080p 30fps video capture abilities on common phones, just personal data can easily bloat and take up space faster than you might expect. Not to mention so many PC games these days are hitting 20-30GB each. You could get away with a 1TB or small capacity hard drive, but price per GB, its hard to say no to 2TB, specially when you can find them on sale for $80 or less. 1TB tends to only save like 10-20 here and a number of 500's are the same price as 1TB.

As far as the Seagate Momentus drives, they are pretty nice for being a hybrid 8GB SSD paired with a normal drive, but at this price point, it's hard to suggest it for such a limited performance increase. It's really meant as a laptop 2.5" drive when you only have space for one drive. For $130ish, its better to grab a 1TB drive for $60-70 and the remaining on a 40-64GB SSD for $40-50.

If you want better drive performance, then just downgrade the GPU to save the $70-80 and then throw in a modern 120GB SATA III SSD like the Samsung 830/840, OCZ Vertex/Agility 3/4 series, or so many other SSD's in the same price range to pair it with the 2TB 7200 drive.

Originally Posted by Megazell Yep. NYC, NJ, PA and LA has free data centers with free copies of Linux (various versions), Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 7 on CD/DVD for a few years now. Some places ask for a donation of no smaller than $0.50.

I am intrigued! Is there any information about this on the internet? I live in PA, but I'm sure the local library doesn't know anything about that.

MjC

Originally Posted by MCalvert1 I am intrigued! Is there any information about this on the internet? I live in PA, but I'm sure the local library doesn't know anything about that. MjC

Yeah, I live in Long Island NY and the only free things out here are the library cards themselves and borrowing books.

Originally Posted by MCalvert1 I am intrigued! Is there any information about this on the internet? I live in PA, but I'm sure the local library doesn't know anything about that. MjC

When the NYC library has a large donation of free software it's usually posted here - http://www.nypl.org/events under giveaways.

Originally Posted by Matsumoto11756 Yeah, I live in Long Island NY and the only free things out here are the library cards themselves and borrowing books.

Long Island sounds like it sucks hard then because in every library in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, Queens and Staten Island there is a section near the desk that has a ton of free stuff from Village Voice, AM NY, Penny Press and other free newspapers and magazines, there is also a bulletin board of free events in the local area and then there is a grey box full of free books to keep (I get a lot of graphic novels TPB this way) with either another bin or in the same bin with discarded CDs/DVDs of software like OS, Office Suites, Jumpstart stuff for kids and sometimes games and/or Music CDs.

Robo - I concur with almost everything JBaz stated. The only possible thing that may be better is if you live near a MicroCenter and can get in on one of their MB / CPU combo deals that they seem to run every month now. You can get the same motherboard for free with the FX4100 for $99.99 or the FX6100 for $110 + tax. Maybe an additional $10 MIR that is needed for that as I do not quire follow what they are saying with that. Works out to free with the combo.

That and get the 7850. I am still hanging onto my 6870....a bit different but still runs great 2 years later.

tl:dr

If you have a MicroCenter store close by you can usually get a discount on motherboards and processors typically $40-50 off depending on the processors deals they have. I usually get all my mobo/cpu/dvd drive and order everything else from other sites.

Originally Posted by JBaz Granted, DVD drive is barely needed anymore these days, but when shit hits the fan, its better to have an optical drive handy to run recovery software or even a full fledged OS for troubleshooting. Sometimes it is just more robust than getting a usb drive to boot properly in some cases. $15 shipped is not a big part of the budget to have to worry about. If OP has a donor optical drive he can pull from another computer, then it's a good idea to save a few bucks.

I would think any modern motherboard he would get would support a usb boot at this point. I have a 1GB usb drive that would have been useless if it wasn't perfect for a boot drive. Sometimes these older and smaller usb disks are better for that. I have recovery tools and a full version of Ubuntu on it in case disaster strikes. I currently have a DVD drive, but it was from my old machine, then again $15 isn't exactly breaking the bank

For people who never built a PC before, I wouldn't hold much faith they know what BIOS is and how to enable usb boot or even format a usb flash drive properly to put recovery tools or an OS on it. Or in any matter, know how to put windows 7/8 install on a usb disk in the first place. Simple to us is rocket science for others.

I'm thinking ahead of issues to where my great aunt wouldn't be able to do. At least she could pop open the "cup holder" and put a "coaster" in, but then again, she would probably call me over for cake... then tell me the problem. I call this caketrapment, but I fall for it every time since its really good cake.... nom nom nom.


Also, NZXT Source 210 case is on sale on newegg right now for $22 shipped after 20% off and $10 MIR.

Originally Posted by JBaz For people who never built a PC before, I wouldn't hold much faith they know what BIOS is and how to enable usb boot or even format a usb flash drive properly to put recovery tools or an OS on it. Or in any matter, know how to put windows 7/8 install on a usb disk in the first place. Simple to us is rocket science for others.

Exactly. I could say the same thing about the people that frequent this forum.

How many people know how to put a Win7 ISO for install on a flash drive and boot it to install?

It's a cake walk for some us, for the rest it would be like brain surgery.

Not exactly on topic but sorta related and funny... In college I had a friend in Computer Science with more money than brains. He spent a crap-ton of money on a new system, over $3000 if I remember correctly (WITHOUT his Fiancee's knowing, as he was supposed to be saving for their wedding). I think it was one of the first 64-bit processors that came out. He got his mobo and CPU in before his case and decided "Hey! I wanna make sure it works!". He could use his old PC's power supply, but there was the issue of the case. He didnt wanna take the whole old motherboard out to put the new one in just for a test, so he just left his new motherboard on the carpet and plugged it in!

Oddly, it didnt go so well! After shorting it out, he sent them back as "DOA" parts and got new ones shipped. You would think at this point he'd be a little more careful with his equipment, but sadly, no. I came back to my dorm one day and my roommate is sitting there with this grin on his face. I'm like "What?". He's like "Soooo, Kevin got his parts in for his PC. But he apparently ordered the wrong size case or something. When I left his room he had just given up trying to HAMMER the case till the motherboard fit, and was looking for his saw!" I wish I could make this shit up.

A few months later I'm at a LAN. He shows up with his PC that is finally together and running. We are all playing some game and he goes to install it and join us. Problem is he spent all this money on his system, but NO COOLING. Just a heatsink on the CPU. His system gets REALLY hot really fast, so he only runs it long enought to install the game, then shuts it down. He'd only run it like 20-30 min at a time so it didnt overheat. There was a CompUSA like 5 minutes away, and he wouldnt go drop $20 on a few fans.

Just thought I'd share that

Originally Posted by Waughoo words

That sounds like something my friend would do...

On topic:
For graphics card you should get AMD. They're way cheaper than Nvidia but Nvidia beats them in performance. But they're still good cards.
I would suggest a 7870 or a 6870 graphics card. They're pretty cheap (around $200). A 6870 is what I'm using and I can play almost every game I own on max settings. Though, if you're willing to spend a little more money you should go for an Nvidia card, like a GTX 670 ($300 - $400) or a GTX 680 ($400 - $500).

Originally Posted by Headhumper For graphics card you should get AMD. They're way cheaper than Nvidia but Nvidia beats them in performance. But they're still good cards. I would suggest a 7870 or a 6870 graphics card. They're pretty cheap (around $200). A 6870 is what I'm using and I can play almost every game I own on max settings. Though, if you're willing to spend a little more money you should go for an Nvidia card, like a GTX 670 ($300 - $400) or a GTX 680 ($400 - $500).

6870 ($140) and 7870 ($215) are not in the same graphical tier/class due to the different price points and performance abilities.

I also wouldn't suggest the 7870 ($215) since its barely 5% faster than the cheaper 7850 ($162) in most games at 1080p on high; although the 7870 does perform better at above 1080p resolutions so unless you plan on playing games on multiple monitors, a high res 1440/1600p monitor, or want the idea of a 'faster' video card (value be damned), then go ahead and spend the premium for the higher end video cards.

Again, if anyone is considering the GTX 670 ($330), one should look at the 7950 ($275) as they are similar in performance.

Long Island sounds like it sucks hard then because in every library in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, Queens and Staten Island there is a section near the desk that has a ton of free stuff from Village Voice, AM NY, Penny Press and other free newspapers and magazines, there is also a bulletin board of free events in the local area and then there is a grey box full of free books to keep (I get a lot of graphic novels TPB this way) with either another bin or in the same bin with discarded CDs/DVDs of software like OS, Office Suites, Jumpstart stuff for kids and sometimes games and/or Music CDs.[/QUOTE]

Yes my friend, long island does suck hard. Taxes (sales and property) are crazy and you still get nothing for free. Went to the library today and when I asked front desk, librarian asked "why would we give away free software?" yes they have a bin of outdated/ratty books but they sell for various prices from .50 up. Like I said before, nothing out here is 'free'.