[quote name='MSI Magus']So I knew for the last two years I needed a new pc, I even asked for help here and almost pulled the trigger once or twice. Last night my 8 year old HD finally conked out, so I am taking that as a sign that it's time to get a new one.
Thing is I am not sure what I want. Traditionally I have spent $1,000-$1,300 and bought a rig from someplace like ecollegepc and then with upgrades stretched it 8 years. Now I am thinking both about building my own and also building something more economical.
The only musts I have is that it run at least Diablo 3 and Borderlands 2. Outside that there isn't anything I am dying to run. So, am I better off buying a cheaper machine and upgrading in a few years or is it smarter to just build the power machine now. Just trying to debate my options and see what economically makes the most sense.[/QUOTE]
Honestly? The
$600 box that I listed on the last page could easily run Diablo 3 and Borderlands 2 on High @ 1080p, no sweat. The biggest downside with building a cheap box like that is that you are getting a 3 year old CPU, paired with the latest graphics card. Is it bad? No, but that setup won't exactly age well to another 8 years if your gaming tastes get more demanding down the road. The CPU will bring down the efficiency of the GPU ability despite being a very good value right now.
It's also hard to say how your computing needs will change in 8 years as well. What new software or games will stress what and how is all guess work here. You never know, PC's could be a thing of the past and we all revert back to a terminal style computing of where our PC's are nothing more than simple display boxes and all of the computational needs (both CPU and GPU) are offloaded to a massive server farm. It's not that far fetched when cloud computing is the new thing, like Amazon EC2, but we'll talk about what is now and real.
I'd say go with the beefiest PC you can budget out right now to give you the best chance of "future-proofing" this system for your expected 8 years stretch. I'd say $1000 would get net you the best value per buck and still be viable down the road with a GPU upgrade here and there.
Here's an idea:
This nets you a modern i5 quad core ivy bridge chip that can handle pretty much anything you can throw at it, giving you a lot of value for the money; it's also very overclocking friendly with it being an unlocked multiplier chip. I matched it up with the extremely good value Asrock Extreme 4 z77 motherboard and the $20 Cooler Master 212+ cpu cooler just in case you do want a little more power with overclocking. Usually I'd recommend the Extreme 3 z77 mobo here since you can find them on sale usually for $100, but its actually back up to $132, making the 4 more sensible idea despite giving you barely a few new features over the 3.
I picked up the cheapest avaliable 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 speed, cas 10, 1.5v, which is going for $65 from Geil on Newegg, to help maximize the amount of RAM you can stuff in the machine while still giving you room to upgrade to 32GB down the road. I do have to note that even 8GB is more than enough for a system down the road, but lets future proof this as much as possible and still have room to grow. I also have to note that the Similar Corsair sets were going for $40 not to long ago, so I'd keep a keen eye out on deals for RAM this holiday season again. I'd suspect the recent sales is the reason why all the similar corsair sets are out of stock otherwise I would have chosen them over Geil.
Next up, I didn't really invest too much though on the storage here since its really up to you on how you want to do this or invest in what. I just picked the good value Seagate 2TB 7200 drive. I left about a $100 wiggle room here if you wanted to throw in a 120GB SSD drive or put that savings into a better graphics card like the HD 7950 3GB or GTX 660 ti. I also have to note that the Seagate 3TB 7200 drive was on sale for the same price two weeks ago and the 3TB is actually the fastest 7200 drive on the market, beating out some of the last generation SSD's in sequential throughput.
Personally, I'd just sport the normal HDD for a while and wait till large capacity SSD's become cheaper. At their rate of price decline in just the last year (512GB SSD was $1000 just 9 months ago, now $300), I wouldn't be surprised to see value branded, large capacity drives to start hitting towards the $.25/GB or cheaper price point. Even though 120GB SSD is a good size for the value right now, if you can 'tough' it out for a 6-12 months without it, you'll most likely net a better value on your system without really loosing that much abilities. SSD's are still considered luxury parts, even if your budget allows for it like yours. Go with the bigger GPU, just my 2 cents.
The HD 7850 2GB is more than enough for anyone I would assume in this price range, but one who likes all the eye candy and better image quality might want to think about upgrading the GPU and future proof for newer games that would take advantage of the performance down the line. Even then, I'd still expect a high end card like the 7950 or 660 to only really last about 4-5 years before it gets bogged down and suffer frame rate issues on games that far in the future. But I'm speculating based on past experiences.
As for case, I used the very basic NZXT Source 210 ATX case since its on sale for $22 shipped that will work very well and still be of good quality. I've built a Xeon workstation rig with a cheap Source case before with good results; if your tastes are minimal and don't want something flashy, just a box, this is a slick deal. However, usually at your budget, I would splurge double or triple that for a better case with more features and room when you pack all of this nice hardware. The $50 HAF 912 or $90 HAF 922 comes to mind first, but if you want a more in depth talk about it, hit up my post about
$40-130 budget cases from a few pages ago.
Power. Another huge, but important topic. I picked the nice XFX 550w 80+ bronze power supply for this rig. It is more than enough power for this rig and even have some head room to do a bit of overclocking on the CPU without reaching 100% load, even then, this unit can handle that easily and then some. For $50, it's not too bad of a deal (cheapest it's been is $45) and beats the value off of most other 500-600 80+ PSU units in this price range, but you can find better deals if you wait. If you plan on no overclocking, then the Corsair CX500 for $40 on newegg is a good buy and saves you $10 (cheapest was $30) or even try to find the Corsair CX430 v2 for under $20 (cheapest was $17). This system at stock speeds wouldn't even hit 300w under full load (77w cpu, 130w gpu, 50w misc), just to bare in mind.
If you want a bit more future proof, then you could try to find a deal on a 650-800w mid/high level PSU from any of the name brands in the $60-100+ price range to give you the option of both adding a 2nd GPU and overclocking headroom down the road. The usual suspects to look at are Antec, Corsair, Coolermaster, Seasonic, Silverstone, OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, XFX and Thermaltake; just to name a few.
Lastly, I threw in the Asus Blu-Ray writer into the mix. You could just easily get away with a dvd burner or scrap one up from your current old rig to save money, but lets say you want to watch and write Blu-ray material, this is the cheapest solution and works pretty well.
[quote name='jk555']What do you guys think of this build?
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Pro4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Microcenter) *bundle
Case: Zalman Z9 ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Microcenter)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 520W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($63.99 @ Microcenter)
Total: $343.96
I already have a XFX HD7850 and 8GB of RAM. Haven't decided on storage yet, but I don't think I can afford an SSD big enough for the games I want to keep installed. How does a Seagate Barracuda compare to a WD Caviar Black?[/QUOTE]
If you got a microcenter nearby, definitely pull the trigger on the i5 & mobo bundle deal. However, I'd maybe see if you can upgrade that Pro4 to the Extreme3 or 4 for not much more if all possible. Pretty sure I saw the Extreme3 for $79.99 with the savings.
As for the case, I would probably look at the cheaper
NZXT Source 210 for $22 shipped (promo EMCJHJF73 & $10 AR) @ newegg over the Zalman; shit I'd would rather get the
Source 220 for $40 @ amazon.
Power supply, as I said in the huge above post to the other guy, is a huge topic. While the Antec HCG series PSU to be of high quality, their price/performance value isn't very good and at that price, you could find a
SeaSonic G series 550w 80+ Gold rated power supply for cheaper when on sale ($55 3 weeks ago). I'd look at the cheaper
XFX 550w for $50 as it's comparable to Antec in terms of quality and performance, although it lacks the modular feature, but you are paying a premium for this.
And lets face it, you would be putting this into a cheap, windowless case so cable management isn't going to be a huge factor, nor will the idea of "better air flow with less cables" really warrants the price premium on this budget. If you were building a bigger computer with multiple fans, gpu's, hard drives, and so on, then modular would be a good feature to get, but when you are putting only a few things in, you're really not saving that much 'clutter' in the box, and the extra cables are easily tucked away on the bottom of the case to where it won't impact airflow at all.
Even the $40
Corsair CX500 V2 would be another solution to save a few bucks on this build.
[quote name='chibilaharl']Thermaltake a good PSU? there is a 700w one at newegg[/QUOTE]
Thermaltake makes some good products, most of their PSU line up offer great value and good performance. I was getting excited when you mentioned this until I realized this is the TR2-700 instead of the award winning and popular TR2-700P. Common mistake.
The
Thermaltake TR2 700w that is on sale at newegg for $40 is actually a 650w and only runs around 72-75% efficient. Their marketing of product lines are also very confusing for normal customers since this is the
TR2 stardard line (or the very basic) and not the better value line of
TR2 Bronze (TR-700 vs the really good TR-700P). The TR2 standard line also shares the same name of the older PSU models from a few years ago that were just terrible, but I'd say those basic older units were flukes as everything they make are solid.
I wouldn't have any hesitation with using the TR2-700 standard, but I wouldn't exactly put much faith in its ability to provide me with stable, clean power at 700w, nor expect it to handle the stresses of a hot environment. Hard to tell since this unit has been updated recently with very little in depth reviews on its performance (and I wouldn't expect any in depth reviews since most enthusiasts wouldn't waste their time testing a generic unit like this). I'd expect a PSU like this would be paired well in cheapo barebones kits or entry level "gaming" pre-built PC's just for the caption "it has 700 watts!!!" when all they are powering would be a 6450... but I'd treat this as a 500w unit.
If you want something cheap, the TR2-700 will work; its a decent value (cheapest it's been is $33), but I'd say invest in a proper 80+ certified PSU that is known to give you the clean wattage, stability and efficiency you expect while having quality components. I'd grab a good 500w 80+ over this for the same price, like the
Corsair CX500 for $40 or the
XFX 550w for $50 if you can't wait for better deals.
[quote name='j-cart']I am a fan of the Seasonic PSUs.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151119
Unless you plan to SLI and overclock, this guy will be more than enough to power a gaming rig[/QUOTE]
Great PSU, terrible price. It was $55 3 weeks ago. Loads of other options at the $90 price point to choose from before this unit.
Thanks a ton for all the help man, its greatly appreciated!
