[Solved] Light Gaming / Heavy Multitasking System

Hey guys,

Long time lurker, first time poster!

I have built systems in the past, so I consider myself an enthusiast (probably 'tinkerer' at best) but not that I'm ready to drop a decent chunk of money I don't want to just pick up a bunch of parts and throw them together.

I am a gamer, but I play mostly console games. On PC I'll occasionally play "America's Army", "Mount & Blade", and "Counterstrike Source". I am a technical consultant and use my computer to death during working hours. On a typical workday I'm running Flash/Photoshop/Fireworks CS5, Visual Studio, Sonar, Acrobat Pro, local WAMP stack, FTP server, etc. I also am starting to do more video editing and video game design, so I need something that can crunch video/audio well.

As a starting point I found a combo on newegg that interests me: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.568961

Any input would be welcome and thanks in advance!

You'd probably be able to get a similar build together for $200.

I've heard the lower the Cas Latency of the RAM, the better if you're editing video. It should help cut down render times (going off of what people have told me, I'm about to buy the parts for my first build).

Speaking of my build, I picked out the parts with some gaming and a lot of video editing in mind, so I'll just post what I'm thinking about getting, with a few modifications for you.

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz
ASUS M4A88T-V EVO/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 Cas Latency 7
COOLER MASTER HAF 912 Spacious mid ATX case with good airflow and easy cable management
CD and DVD drive reads and writes DVD's and CD's for under $20
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Cooler Master RR-B10-212P-G1 Hyper 212 Plus 775/1156/1366/AMD/AM2/AM3 Universal Direct Contact Heat-Pipe 120mm Fan CPU Cooler-keep your $230 CPU cool
HIS IceQ H567Q1GD Radeon HD 5670 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 $70 with MIR, and should handle all of your games at good speeds (I'm not exactly sure, the benchmarks are always in terms of Crysis DiRT 2 etc, not in terms of CSS and the other games I've never heard of)
[url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139018][/url]

Hopefully you find this helpful. I leave you to choose your keyboard, mouse, and monitor, because I might think 20'' is enough while you want a 24'' monitor etc.

Thanks for the input.

Did you mean I should probably be able to get a similar build together for "$200 less"?

Also, I would like this system to be fairly future proof (I'd like to be able to upgrade periodically) so I guess MOBO is pretty important in that sense, right?

After reading a few reviews it seems like the 1090T is a great processor for what I'm trying to do and I'm developing a bit of a man crush on it.

Ah, I gotcha...I think.

You could always spend a little extra and get a more efficient PSU like the one listed below. I don't know much about the Corsair PSU but Corsair is very reliable, 750W is very nice for crossfire, 80+Bronze is a nice addition, 1,606 five star reviews on Newegg, and 60A on the 12V rail is quite nice as well.

Seasonic X750 80+Gold

Ok, taking your advice into account and hoping to cannibalize my old rig (case, HD for file storage) I created a wishlist. I decided to go with the ASUS M4A89TD MOBO because it's open-box and from what I've read on here is a good pairing with the 1090T CPU. I also decided to snag a SSD for my OS and apps and use my old HD for file storage.

Am I missing anything?

http://www.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=13173451

sorry, I may have linked it wrong.

See if this works for you: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=13173451

Thanks again for all your help.

Yes, I will. Good call on the wrist strap, I'll pick one of those up as well.

Thanks for all the help man, I feel a lot better about all of this now than I would have just picking components.

For that kinda money, I'd be doing an Intel based system. This one is $1623

Case - $90 - Coolermaster HAF-922 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811119197
Case Fans - Later - CM Red 200 mm http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835103072
PSU - $110 - XFX Black Edition 850 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817207001
MoBo - $240 - ASUS P8P67 Deluxe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131679
CPU - $330 - Intel Core i5-2600K http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115070
Cooler - $40 - Scythe SCMG 2100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835185142
TIM - $5 - Shin Etsu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835150080
RAM - $70 - 2 x 2GB Mushkin CAS 7 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820226103
GFX - $350 - GTX 570 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130593
GFX - Later - Same
HD - $70 - Samsung F3 1TB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822152185
SSD - $199 - OCZ Vertex 2 2.5" 120GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227551
DVD Writer - $19 - ASUS 24X DVD Writer http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827135204
OS - $100 - Win 7-64 Home OEM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6832116754

Ya can knock $105 or so off by dropping to the 2500k

Ya can knock off up to $100 w/ other versions of the Asus P8P67

CAS 9 RAM would save another $20

And skipping the SSD would knock off another $200

All the above gets you below the $1200 mark

That looks like a great build as well. I only ended up spending $960 and I think I'm going to have a good build for what I'm trying to do.