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Tom's Hardware > Forum > Systems > New Build > [Solved] Looking for a cheap gaming rig to expand on later

[Solved] Looking for a cheap gaming rig to expand on later

Forum Systems : New Build [Solved] Looking for a cheap gaming rig to expand on later

Hey all! Been lurking for a few months now deciding on parts for a gaming rig. Sadly since my g72gx took a crap on me i'm building it sooner (and cheaper until i can afford upgrades). Currently I just wanna be able to play Shogun 2 smoothly and if I can get away with that on a cheaper processor and upgrade later that would be awesome.

Budget: ~~$500-$690 plus or minus $20~~ $1,000 or under
Build: gaming (Total war:shogun 2 is a must run smooth game on high :ange: )
To Expand to: antec lan boy air case
Solid State HD
SLI or Crossfire
More RAM if build req
cpu at 3.2ghz+ w/o OC'n

AMD INTEL NVIDIA ATI? Well, beggars cant be choosers

Message edited by aznthunderj on 03-18-2011 at 03:03:10 AM

Reply to aznthunderj

amd athlon II x4 and mATX mobo, could go Phenom II x2 and try to core unlock
amd HD 6970, or if you are ballsy you can go 6950 and try to bios hack
4gb DDR3

good place to start at least

------------------------------ Phenom II x4 965BE, PowerColor HD5770 crossfire, 8gb DDR3 Corsair XMS3, Antec Nine Hundred Two, Seagate Barracuda 7200 500GB, ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 790GX, Antec EarthWatts EA750 750W

Reply to mdsiu

Sounds good, I've also looked at aznshinobi's builds over a few times now and I like his build as well. I just struggle because I've always been a Intel user so amd is uncharted waters. I always read amd is great for a budget but Intel is great for power, feel free to tell me otherwise.

Call me a micro manager, but I'll read over parts for a build for hours and hours on end.

Reply to aznthunderj

you sound like me. little too analytical. Once I find a part, I always search "___ vs ____" and end up on a never ending trail of research.

What resolution you wanting to run shogun 2 at on high while maintaining smooth frames? If you starting from scratch you're definitely going to have issues somewhere with only $700.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to DrKalashnikov

Not just because of that demand but because you are also wanting to build something you can expand on later...

Reply to DrKalashnikov

DrKalashnikov wrote :

I'd have to agree, I dont like throwing my money at anything without knowing every thing possible. If at all possible 1440X900 or higher, also I've been able to raise the price for this build to help provide flexability.

Reply to aznthunderj

I think this may also help, the budget build I was shooting for was as fallows

MSI NF980-G65 AM3 NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition Deneb 3.5GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDZ970FBGMBOX

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

EVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL

The price of the card is the most expensive part, which makes me feel the processors is cheap and may take a crap on me. Which is why I also had my eye on a

Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80601960

Everything here is flexible but hopefully you have a feel of the power I eventually wanna get up to. For the video card if you have same price or cheaper alternitives that would be great thanks =]

Message edited by aznthunderj on 03-18-2011 at 03:30:47 AM

Reply to aznthunderj

I saw you were looking at the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series SNVP325-S2B 64GB SSD $130 with read/write speeds of 230MBs / 180MBs.
At that price point we can find a couple faster Sand Force 1200 SSDs with read/write speeds of 285MBs / 275MBs
OCZ Vertex 2 2VTX60G 2 60GB SSD $127
Mushkin Enhanced Callisto Deluxe MKNSSDCL60GB-DX 60GB SSD $135

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Reply to WR2

Best answer

for the money I would def go with a low end Sandy Bridge based build, bc in the end am3 is a good bang for your buck, but for a little more cash the p67 platform is vastly superior, often even with the low end cpus

if you have not already check out this article about Sandy Bridge and how it stacks up against a 955, etc:

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2833.html

if I were building new right now not already had an am3 motherboard than I would be running a i5-2500k at stock instead of my 955 at 4.0ghz any day, shoot even the SB i3 is sometimes faster, am3 by no means is a bad platform, and generally great for value, but right now I feel there is more value in the p67 platform, but again just my 2 cents..

also, Cartmans build is decent but personally I would say the GPU is a little much matched up with the CPU, for a 6970 I would at least have a high clocked 955 or higher, no doubt you can run the 6970 with an athlon II x4 but those are my thoughts, I would maybe just go with the better cpu/motherboard now and maybe like a gtx 560 which will no doubt meet your basic needs for now and then later down the road, sell the gtx 560 and buy a monster gpu...

bottom line is that if you have a grand to spend you can no doubt accomplish an i5-2500k based build imo

Message edited by jjb8675309 on 03-19-2011 at 10:06:05 PM

Reply to jjb8675309

WR2 wrote :

Awesome thanks! OCZ looks fine to me as it'll primarily be used for my ofp. I plan on setting up a raid0 config with 2 Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Do you know of any good raid set up guides and a recommended raid controller?

Reply to aznthunderj

@jjb8675309

Thanks I did actually move to that sandy i5 with this build that I lurked on.

Reply to aznthunderj

nice, I have the same XFX psu and it is excellent

Reply to jjb8675309

Best answer selected by aznthunderj.

Reply to aznthunderj

when are you getting your build together? let me know how it goes

Reply to jjb8675309

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