$1000 dollar gaming pc

[esaglik]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: July - August 2010

BUDGET RANGE: $1000 upper limit at the very most of $1050

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: gaming, cad, music recording, video recording, listening to music then the rest of the usual msn word firefox ect.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: Monitor, keyboard, mouse

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: anywhere, wherever its cheapest.

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Great Britain, Middlands

PARTS PREFERENCES: I know i want an amd phenomii X4 965 BE processor and an ATI 5770 GPU with a coolermaster HAF 932 case to put it all in. (7.1 audio would be nice but 5.1 should be plenty)

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe
SLI OR CROSSFIRE: yes in the future for sure as ill be running three 22" monitors off it

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I don't need the top of the line, brand new stuff. I just need affordable parts. i want as a minimum of 4GB of ram preferably in DDR3, around 1333 or 1600 Mhz

I need you guys ive already taken the money for my screens out of the budget just so you know, this is litterally the base, i have my keyboard and mouse already so its litterally just the box

 

[esaglik]

i forgot to mention i also need a wireless card, a/b/g/n any will do, just whatever, preferably g/n (as in both cuz i currently have a g router but am nagging dad to get an N)

 

[esaglik]

ohh and also that i dont need an os or speakers. for those who are curious to know i have a copy of windows 7 still and a Inspire T7900

 

[MadAdmiral]

I notice you're in the UK, but listing prices in USD. You realize that the prices over there are going to be significantly different? Regardless, I'm listing the parts I would look for. Prices may vary.

CPU/HSF: X4 955 and Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus $189. The 955 and 965 are basically the same, but the 955 is cheaper.
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4 $125 after rebate
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 2x2 GB 1600 mhz CAS Latency 7 $115
GPU: HD 5850 $300. The 5770 is weak for both your budget and resolution.
HDD: Seagate 7200.12 500 GB $55
PSU: Antec Earthwatts 750W $85 after rebate
Case/Optical: Coolermaster 690 and cheap SATA DVD burner $82 after rebate

Total: $951. A wireless card costs $25-30. A sound card wasn't included because they're a waste of money.

 

[esaglik]

yeh i know most of the user base is american so i thought id just convert the £700 i have to play with roughly. let me try all that together and see how it works out, I have exactly £1000 pounds to spend, but have taken three hundred off as i found 22" screens at a native resolution as mentioned aboufe for £100 each. i want to run eyefinity so i just took that off the budget for the tower, and the case as specified above, it may be overkill but i wanna get the coolermaster haf 932 for definate. thanks a lot for your speedy reply.

 

[MadAdmiral]

You don't have the budget to run an Eyefinity setup for gaming. That's simply because you really need a 5970 (maybe a 5870 Eyefinity 6 version) to get good framerates at those resolutions. I would just grab a single 1080p monitor (usually about $180 over here) and spend the rest on the tower.

The HAF 922 isn't needed until you step up to the 5870. It is a great case though.

 

[esaglik]

im leaving room for upgradeability, theres a good chance ill add a second card asap anyway, so ill be running two 5850's in X-fire, surely that would have enough juice?

 

[esaglik]

and btw, the most serious my gaming gets is lfs, wow and mabye counterstrike, dragon age origins, and im not the kinda gamer who wants everything pixel perfect, i wouldent mind turning down the setting until i get the second card, if u look at my current specs for pc youll see how crap a system im using lol.

 

[esaglik]

heres what ive got so far:
Item Name Price
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-790XTA-UD4 £115.20
CPU AMD Phenom II X4 955 £109.24
CPU Cooler COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus £18.58
Graphics Radeon HD 5850 £180.14
RAM G.Skill 4Gb DDR3 1600 (2x2Gb) Ripjaws Dual-Chan Kit £90.42
HDD Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB X2 in raid 0 £73.90
DVD Sony Optiarc X2 £18.82
Case Coolermaster HAF 932 £116.21
Screens AOC F22 X3 £300.00
PSU Antec EarthWatts 750 - power supply - 750 Watt £74.09
Wireless card Intel WiFi Link 5300 £25.16
Fan Controller NZXT Sentry 2 £21.67
Total £1,143.43
can u see anything wrong with this?

 

[MadAdmiral]

If you upped the tower's budget to 900 pounds, you'd likely be getting the HD 5970, which is already two 5850s in Crossfire (at stock speeds). The card is actually two 5870s on one card. After that, you could just add the other monitors as you get some more money.

That said, even with the games you play, I'd shy way from Eyefinity for now. Yes, it's cool, but it's so expensive to do well.

 

[MadAdmiral]

There's a bit of waste in that build.

First, the HAF 932 is complete overkill. The 922 is a heck of a lot cheaper and almost as big. Even the 922 is overkill for 5850s, even in Crossfire, so I certainly wouldn't get the 932.

Second, RAID 0 is a bad idea. You get a slight speed increase, but double the chances of losing everything to a minor error. I would get either a single 500 GB or a single 1 TB drive.

 

[esaglik]

thanks for the advice, ill go for a single 1tb hdd and downgrade to the 922 case, lemme see how the budget looks then.

 

[esaglik]

im down to 1079, im wondering now if i should buy the hd 5970 and then get the second/third screens later.

 

[esaglik]

your opinion?

 

[MadAdmiral]

Judging by the prices, I don't think that's possible now. The 5970 is $700 over here (about 460 pounds), which translates to a price increase of 280 pounds. So even if you drop the two monitors, you're spending 1,159.

 

[esaglik]

wait i just realised how stupid that was, theres no way in hell i can afford a 5970, its about 500 pounds!

 

[esaglik]

yeh, i just worked it out. ill just do what i origionally intended, ill just buy the things mentioned and then add the second gpu when i get a spare 180 later on, mabye in sort of october 2010 for my birthday or something.

 

[coldsleep]

Just a thought in favor of getting 1 bigger graphics card now (5850 or 5870)...last I checked, Eyefinity is not supported in CrossFire (yet).

EDIT: Fixed the typo. Thanks, MadAdmiral. And it looks like you're correct, I appear to be completely wrong about CrossFire & Eyefinity. So just completely ignore me.

The ATI Catalyst™ 9.12 hotfix release provides ATI CrossFireX™ support on Eyefinity configurations, allowing users to take advantage of their additional GPUs for increased gaming performance when driving high resolution Eyefinity display groups.

Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series, and ATI Radeon™ HD 5600 Series.

 

[MadAdmiral]

I thought that was fixed with the last driver. Or did I just imagine that?

And coldsleep means the 5870...

 

[esaglik]

well im not gonna be getting the system till late july if not even mid august time, so im sure by then ati will work it out?

 

[MadAdmiral]

I thought that was just a problem at the very start of the 5xxx series. Good to know I didn't just miss that.

 

[esaglik]

is that still the case then? cuz either im stupid or i am missing something, will adding a second card work?

 

[coldsleep]

ATI indicates that Eyefinity works with CrossFire. There appear to still be individuals having problems getting it to work, but it sounds like that's either due to the specific game or something about their setup.

 

[esaglik]

well thats all sorted then? thanks for your help, especially to mad ill be sure to stick a pic up when its all together and some bench mark test results. you helped me shave off a whopping 200 pounds with loosing minimal cpu performance and acctually gaining gpu performance! so really thanks a lot one last question, will that 750 w psu be enough for a second 5850 with everything else listed?

 

[MadAdmiral]

The only components you really need to worry about for Crossfire are the board (two PCIe 2.0 slots running at 8x/8x or higher) and the PSU (enough wattage and connectors for two GPUs). Everything else is unaffected by the dual cards.

The PSU is large enough. You can run dual 5850s on a 650W unit, but you usually need adaptors for the additional PCIe connectors. 750W will give you plenty of room for adding parts and overclocking.