pcBuild $800-$1000 Need advice

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Nedal Ghamrawi

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Oct 11, 2014
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Hello names ned. I will be building my first gaming PC at the end of the month.

I don't want to sound stupid but I'm very new to PC gaming and have always wanted to get into it.

So I will just dive on in. I'm looking for a gaming PC that I can edit audio and video as I am doing a podcast as well I will be recording gameplay.

I really need a list of parts that fit my needs. From top to bottom.

Like I said before I will be gaming on it frequently I will be picking up the new dragon age and would like the game to look as intended (if possible in the budget) I will be play counter strike and some older games like jade empire and the original dragons age.

I'm very new at all of this. Please don't rip me a new one. I want a PC that can edit video and audio and record both with ease. But I want to have a smooth gaming experience with it.

Any help you guys could provide would be greatly appreciated I'm just looking to know what parts I need and a simple explanation of them. I don't have an OS but I will be buying either windows 7-64bit or windows 8-64bit.
I do already have a monitor mouse and keyboard.

Again thanks guys for any help you can give me.
 
Solution
Darkbreeze
Ok, if you just wanted to game, I could get this down by about a hundred bucks going with an i5 instead of an i7. Maybe down by 130.00 with a really cheap case. But since you want to be able to render video, edit audio (Which I'm assuming means you may be working with very large RAW audio files) and recording video and gameplay, this is about as good as it's going to get within that budget. A GTX 970 would be a better choice, but it doesn't fit the budget as it's about 100 bucks more than the 280x.

Gaming is all about the GPU. Rendering, video encoding and audio are all about the CPU. Since you want to do both it's a tougher sell. You can do all of it with the i5, but the performance separation will be pretty noticeable. I'll show you...
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Ok, if you just wanted to game, I could get this down by about a hundred bucks going with an i5 instead of an i7. Maybe down by 130.00 with a really cheap case. But since you want to be able to render video, edit audio (Which I'm assuming means you may be working with very large RAW audio files) and recording video and gameplay, this is about as good as it's going to get within that budget. A GTX 970 would be a better choice, but it doesn't fit the budget as it's about 100 bucks more than the 280x.

Gaming is all about the GPU. Rendering, video encoding and audio are all about the CPU. Since you want to do both it's a tougher sell. You can do all of it with the i5, but the performance separation will be pretty noticeable. I'll show you three options and you can choose what works for you.



i7 build (Emphasis on rendering with the CPU)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($319.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($137.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($73.80 @ Newegg)
Storage: Intel 530 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($72.00 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 280X 3GB Tri-X Video Card ($239.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1032.72
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-12 04:05 EDT-0400


i5 (With GTX 970)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($209.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($137.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($73.80 @ Newegg)
Storage: Intel 530 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($72.00 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB ACX Video Card ($329.98 @ NCIX US)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1012.71
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-12 04:10 EDT-0400



i5 (With R9 290)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($209.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($137.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($73.80 @ Newegg)
Storage: Intel 530 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($72.00 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X Video Card ($295.38 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $978.11
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-12 04:11 EDT-0400
 
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Solution
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Nedal Ghamrawi

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Wow nice! I like the second build for 1012 it seems I'm assuming is more in he middle for what I wanted. I really appreciated it if it's not to much is there a good site that shows me how to put the PC together and what tools I would need. Again much thanks been a great help.
 
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Nedal Ghamrawi

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Also if I just did a gaming build would I still be able to edit audio and video Atleast in a small capacity(explain some here if you could). Also the audio is much more important than the video as I will just upload to YouTube most of the time with little to no editing On videos.
 
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mdocod

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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($248.98 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer i11 74.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($23.97 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PERFORMANCE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($142.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: OCZ ARC 100 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 280 3GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($186.00 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($70.35 @ Amazon)
Total: $977.25
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-12 07:52 EDT-0400
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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If you wanted a mainly gaming rig, the middle one would be good for that or here is a slightly revised build that's probably not quite as nice but is a little cheaper. I changed to a cheaper but still decent Cougar case, dropped the SSD, you can always get one later if you need to save on the initial investment. I also went with the H97 ASUS motherboard to shave a few more bucks off.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($209.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus H97-PLUS ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($109.89 @ NCIX US)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($73.80 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB ACX Video Card ($329.98 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cougar Archon ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $892.61
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-12 13:43 EDT-0400

 
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mdocod

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There are many different valid build philosophies. My build philosophy is to get all of the ideal essentials for a great user experience out of the way first, and then use whatever remaining budget is available to pick as much GPU as is possible. This philosophy stems from an understanding that gaming performance is not dictated by the GPU unless you live in a fixed-visual-quality-settings benchmark. Since you are a human who is not stuck inside some article on the internet, you have the freedom to inversely adjust visual quality and FPS to suit your tastes. Once we pull out heads out of the bench-marking cloud, there is no difference in FPS performance between a $200 GPU and a $400 GPU, only visual quality. A ~$200 GPU at 1080P will produce about the same FPS as a ~$400 GPU at 1440P. Both can easily run most games at the 60hz refresh limits imposed by most monitors.

For what you have described wanting to do with this machine, I believe you will appreciate having the 16GB RAM, E3 Xeon, and big SSD more than having the bigger GPU. I could be wrong, but that has never happened before, so I doubt it. ;)
 
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