First time build, budget of 900-1000$

[elysio]

Hello,
I am deciding between a amd or intel computer, ibuypower or home built, amd-ati or nVidia computer.

Approximate Purchase Date: Unknown

Budget Range: 900$

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Web surfing

Parts Not Required: none

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg.ca, ncix.com canada

Country of Origin: canada

Parts Preferences: Amd for graphics, but open to nvidia

Overclocking: maybe, depends on games

SLI or Crossfire: maybe in the future

Monitor Resolution: full hd (1080p)

Additional Comments: I have always experimented with macs so gaming PCs are new to me, but I know how to build one. Do cables come with the motherboard or do I buy the seperatly?



so here are all the games i'll play:

Age of empires 3
Mount & balde warband
Rise of nations
civ. 5
minecraft (server host possible)
napoleon total war (and future total war games)
other new RTS games
league of legends
sims 3

and what i've been looking at:

case: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133094

motherboard: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131705

GPU: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908

PSU: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817339025

CPU: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072

RAM: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226040

HDD: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148764

monitor: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824262011

DVD: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106289

OS: windows 7 home premium 64

 

[BohleyK]

I was in the same boat when I decided going PC for the first time. I went with home built and am glad I did. You can get a great PC from prebuilt manufacturers like ibuypower or cyberpower but its going to cost you more. You also lose out on the expereince of building your machine which is half the fun. You will save money building it yourself and its only going to benefit you to build it yourself. Then you will know exactly whats going on inside your computer and how to troubleshoot in the future.

There really is no reason to go AMD unless you are on a tight budget. Intel will crush anything AMD has to offer. Even AMD's six cores are about the same as 1155 quads from Intel. That's how far behind the tech is on AMD. If you decide to go Intel you should invest in a Z68 but since you are on a budget of ~1K you can grab a P67 if you wish to invest more on a GPU.

Grab an i5-2500K processor since you will just be gaming and doing everyday stuff on your machine. There are other variants of the i5 but they are locked and can't or will be much harder to overclock. Core i7's are for technical work which you most likely aren't into and won't be worth the investment especially on your budget.

RAM is RAM really and its going pretty cheap nowadays. You can grab 8GB of RAM if you want since its going as much as 4GB of RAM last year. 4GB will do the job but since its so cheap now you mine as well grab an 8GB pack.

GPU is entirely a personal choice. Some people stick with NVIDIA their entire lives while others claim AMD is the way to go. It really doesn't matter as they both do the same job. NVIDIA has more technologies which you can benefit from but its going to cost you $30 more the same performance an AMD card will give you. Also in my experience AMD/ATI cards run much cooler, have less power demands, and can run 3 monitors on one card while NVIDIA needs 2 cards running SLI to run multiple monitors.

Make a list on Newegg or whatever site you like and we can help you out with it. Its best to pick the parts yourself and have someone on here edit it a bit. Otherwise you just grab parts other people tell you and thats not really the best way to go about it.

 

[browsingtheworld]

Those are heavily CPU dependent games and any Intel SB i core processor will be faster than any AMD processor. The i5-2400/i5-2500K would be great choices depending on if you want to overclock and will destroy any AMD setup as suggested above. You really don't need to overclock at all in games with these processors.

If you can afford to spend this much on a PC 8GB of RAM is a no brainer (6GB would be tri-channel for LGA1366).

I prefer nvidia cards. They usually draw more power (at load) but run cooler. AMD CCC is just bad.

By the way you can get an i7-2600 and hackintosh it. That was obliterate your Mac.

 

[Why_Me]

Hello,
I am deciding between a amd or intel computer, ibuypower or home built, amd-ati or nVidia computer.

Basically, I don't know what the f**k to choose.

If i'm in canada, does iBuypower have taxes and all that, custom charges etc?

so here are all the games i'll play:

Age of empires 3
Mount & balde warband
Rise of nations
civ. 5
minecraft (server host possible)
napoleon total war (and future total war games)
other new RTS games
league of legends
sims 3

Question: what is a good system for this? I looked at a lot of websites, forums, etc but never found anything relevant.

If I go with intel:

P67 or X68
i5 or i7
1st gen or 2nd gen
amd or nvidia GPU

if I go with AMD:

4 or 6 core
phenom or athlon
amd or nvidia GPU

no parts preferance, need everything possible(incl. displays, keyboard, etc)

for the ram: 4, 6 or 8gb?

Just so you know: I will upgrade every year a few parts if necessary

please help me as I am on a mac and thus unable to play games( it's for video editing)

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261222-31-build-advice <----- Please "copy & paste that on here and fill it out.

 

[elysio]

made a list, edited the first message

 

[jackspeed]

you want 2 sticks of ram because you are not running in triple channel.
I would suggest http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231426