[New System Build] $650 gaming build

That is not a good motherboard choice for eventual crossfire. It has " 2 (green @ x16 mode, orange @ x4 mode)"
Go with a different 790GX or 790x motherboard. Other then that a good solid build. Personally i like the Gigabyte 790X board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138130
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128387

*edit* corrected wrong link

Thanks for the feedback.

I checked out the boards you suggested and have a couple of questions.

The BIOSTAR board has "PCI Express 2.0 x16 1 PCI Express x1 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x1."
To be able to crossfire, shouldn't you have (2) PCI-E 2.0?

The GIGABYTE board has (2) PCI-E x8. Is that enough bandwidth to crossfire?

Yep. I'm a noob.


Again, thanks!

I would go with the gigabyte 790x, and yes, 2 in x8 mode will get the job done.

The stealthxstream psu is decent, but not that well suited for gaming pc's, you could try the modxstream or gamexstream series instead.

At your intended resolution, it would be great if you could get 2 of those 4770's for crossfire, that depends on your budget though.

Thanks for the quick and helpful replies.


For 1920x1080, is it better to get (2) 4770s or (1) 4870?

You need to take into account future upgrades - if you want to further upgrade your machine later on, 1 4870 would be a better card to buy even if 2 4770s outperform it now (you can get another 4870 eventually).

I'd also get a different PSU; something by Corsair, SeaSonic, or Silverstone.

I would still rather get the 2 4770's, its their efficiency that does it for me. And they scale so well that 2 4870's wouldn't be that big a jump, especially when you look at the price and power consumption difference. I don't think you would need more power than 2 4770's anyways.

Thanks for the great replies!

I agree that AM2+ is not dead, yet. I personally am going AM3 to take advantage of future upgradability options. DDR2 will eventually become more expensive as less becomes available and demand rises because people upgrade their older computers with more memory; DDR3 will be come cheaper as supply rises because it will be the new standard.

Also, assuming the next gen AMD socket is backwards compatible just like now (AM3 working in AM2+) then I'll have the option of upgrading to the next gen CPU without having to replace my mobo. Otherwise, if I go AM2+ and DDR2 now and want to upgrade my CPU in the future, more than likely I will have to replace the mobo, memory, and CPU. Or, once again assuming the next gen CPU will be backwards compatible, I'll only have to upgrade my CPU and maybe add some more DDR3 memory (which at that point will be cheaper than DDR2). Its only about $10 difference between a Gigabyte AM2+ mobo and a Gigabyte AM3 mobo, and about $25 between DDR2 1066 d DDR3 1600 memory (comparing sale prices). For me, that extra $35 i spend now will save me lots of cash in the future considering I will already have DDR3 memory and won't have to spend $50 on new memory, and (hopefully) save me ~$130 by not having to buy a new mobo.