Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question
Solved

Budget gaming build for around $700 Canadian

Tags:
  • Gaming
  • Build
  • Systems
Last response: in Systems
Share
February 10, 2014 12:04:13 PM

I posted earlier about a rig and got a good answer, but I didn't realize that I had used the American pcpartpicker instead of the Canadian one so the price of the one I was going to get went over $900.

I have put together this one and would like the opinions of some other more computer savvy people. http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/2QQSF

More about : budget gaming build 700 canadian

a b 4 Gaming
February 10, 2014 12:13:27 PM

Not a bad build, pretty balanced. I do have a few comments though:
1. Are you planning to soon get another stick of 8GB RAM? Because Dual Channel memory is much faster than on a single stick, and if you plan to stick with 8GB, which is plenty for gaming, then you should get 2 sticks of 4, it's much better.

Also, do you plan to run two GTX 660's in SLI in the future? If so, it might be a good idea to plan ahead and get a 700W power supply now, just to be safe. You might even be good with a 600W unit, but it may be a good idea to get 650 just to be safe, but only if you want to SLI another 660 in the future.

Also, that motherboard is not a good option with an FX-8XXX CPU if you even plan to upgrade to one of those or any type of overclocking unless it is very small and you have superb cooling, because it has a 4+1 power phase design and what seems to be bad VRM cooling. This really shouldn't matter on your CPU with no-small OC, but just something to keep in mind.
m
0
l
February 10, 2014 12:27:34 PM

apcs13 said:
Not a bad build, pretty balanced. I do have a few comments though:
1. Are you planning to soon get another stick of 8GB RAM? Because Dual Channel memory is much faster than on a single stick, and if you plan to stick with 8GB, which is plenty for gaming, then you should get 2 sticks of 4, it's much better.

Also, do you plan to run two GTX 660's in SLI in the future? If so, it might be a good idea to plan ahead and get a 700W power supply now, just to be safe. You might even be good with a 600W unit, but it may be a good idea to get 650 just to be safe, but only if you want to SLI another 660 in the future.

Also, that motherboard is not a good option with an FX-8XXX CPU if you even plan to upgrade to one of those or any type of overclocking unless it is very small and you have superb cooling, because it has a 4+1 power phase design and what seems to be bad VRM cooling. This really shouldn't matter on your CPU with no-small OC, but just something to keep in mind.


Thanks! I took you advice and switched to 2x4Gbs ram and went with G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600.

As for the graphics card, I really don't know. I chose one that seemed like it would run my games decent and was less than $250. When it comes to this kind of stuff I really don't know much about what I'm doing, which is why I'm asking here.

What would you suggest motherboard wise? Like I said I'm pretty computer illiterate when it comes to hardware. I appreciate your help and suggestions so far :) 
m
0
l
Related resources
a b 4 Gaming
February 10, 2014 12:55:24 PM

JJusa said:
apcs13 said:
Not a bad build, pretty balanced. I do have a few comments though:
1. Are you planning to soon get another stick of 8GB RAM? Because Dual Channel memory is much faster than on a single stick, and if you plan to stick with 8GB, which is plenty for gaming, then you should get 2 sticks of 4, it's much better.

Also, do you plan to run two GTX 660's in SLI in the future? If so, it might be a good idea to plan ahead and get a 700W power supply now, just to be safe. You might even be good with a 600W unit, but it may be a good idea to get 650 just to be safe, but only if you want to SLI another 660 in the future.

Also, that motherboard is not a good option with an FX-8XXX CPU if you even plan to upgrade to one of those or any type of overclocking unless it is very small and you have superb cooling, because it has a 4+1 power phase design and what seems to be bad VRM cooling. This really shouldn't matter on your CPU with no-small OC, but just something to keep in mind.


Thanks! I took you advice and switched to 2x4Gbs ram and went with G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600.

As for the graphics card, I really don't know. I chose one that seemed like it would run my games decent and was less than $250. When it comes to this kind of stuff I really don't know much about what I'm doing, which is why I'm asking here.

What would you suggest motherboard wise? Like I said I'm pretty computer illiterate when it comes to hardware. I appreciate your help and suggestions so far :) 


Good, I'm glad I could help so far!

For under $250 the 660 is probably the best option at this point. What I mean with the SLI comment is if you buy another 660 in the future, you can put it into your motherboard and use it to get higher framerates, roughly double your current ones unless you run into CPU bottlenecking or poor SLI optimization. This is usually cheaper and more powerful than going out and buying a newer single video card, but comes with drawbacks. Usually people say to buy a more powerful single card over SLI, but if you already have one then SLI makes obvious sense unless it is a really old card.

One reason it is important to know this is partly due to the motherboard. I have the Asus M5A97 R2.0 board which works pretty well and I can even overclock my FX-6350 pretty high with it with a decent cooler (Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus), to 4.4 GHz on stock voltages, and could go safely as far as 4.6 GHz or more if I wanted to up the vcore voltage. If you only want to get single video cards in the future this would be a good board for you around $89.

However, if getting another 660 and using SLI down the road sounds like something you would like to do, you can't get the M5A97 R2.0, because it doesn't support SLI.

This is why I need to know if you want to use SLI later.
m
0
l
February 10, 2014 1:36:28 PM

apcs13 said:
One reason it is important to know this is partly due to the motherboard. I have the Asus M5A97 R2.0 board which works pretty well and I can even overclock my FX-6350 pretty high with it with a decent cooler (Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus), to 4.4 GHz on stock voltages, and could go safely as far as 4.6 GHz or more if I wanted to up the vcore voltage. If you only want to get single video cards in the future this would be a good board for you around $89.

However, if getting another 660 and using SLI down the road sounds like something you would like to do, you can't get the M5A97 R2.0, because it doesn't support SLI.

This is why I need to know if you want to use SLI later.


I think I would like to use SLI down the road.
m
0
l

Best solution

a b 4 Gaming
February 10, 2014 5:22:05 PM

Hm, okay, if you want SLI and a good quality board then this might be of interest:
It's the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3, link: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-ga...
Share
!