New Build - i5 2600k...and thats about how far I got...please help me

Okay so I haven't built a computer in six years and i'm trying to get caught up on whats new and available and moderately affordable.

I want to build (or use a site like cyberpowerpc) to get a good pc for Battlefield 3. My budget is about, preferably sub $1,200 US dollars. I have no idea what type or level of power supply I need, I have no idea what type of mobo I should get...

Could some kind soul out here on the forums put together a build for me on cyberpowerpc (or any other better customization site your aware of)?

What I do want: core i5 2600k processor, I definitely want at least 8gb of ram, and at least a 1tb standard hard drive. A dx 11 video card.

What I DONT want: A solid state drive, two hard drives (ones enough), two disc drives (one is enough), a blu ray drive.


Thanks in advance everyone, i'm scared to death to put a rig together by myself.

Just to clear this up, your talking about the i7 2600k, right? Not the i5 2500k?

Sorry, my mistake. I'm referring to the i5 2500k.

I don't want to use one of their pre-builds because I feel that they overdue stuff just to bump the price up.

Thanks for the replies so far. In regards to the i5 2500k. I have seen on many reviews of this cpu that it performs nearly at the i7 levels for games. What processor would you recommend?

The 220 mobi isn't necessary. Get a 130 mobi and use the 90for a better gpu.

why would you do that? the reason people go premade is so if their computer blows up, they can go to support get it fixed. cyberpower and ibuypower have none.

get a digital storm or alienware

The reason I would go with somewhere like Cyberpowerpc is because I can get a computer built by them for almost the same price as it would be for me to purchase, ship, and assemble the whole thing piece by piece.

Also, Digital Storm seems really nice but I put together their ODE computer (which goes for $1200) on Cyberpower for about 900. I'm just really not sure what to do. I don't have the skill or time to build my computer myself.

cyberpower is notorious for its bad support. don't be lured by the price...

why are you so scared of building your own PC? discharge yourself, make sure the mobo standoffs are in the right places, and test the socket latch before you put on the CPU. if you do those steps, there's nothing that can go too badly ...

But then again, I don't really know if Cyberpower is reliable or if they are fairly priced.

Someone told me recently that I should wait because Nvidia has new cards coming out very soon that should drop the price of existing cards significantly.

Not sure if this is true since I can't seem to find any info about a release date for their new cards, etc.

I dont know much about Cyberpower but I haven't heard very good things about them from what I can tell.

And the thing with waiting for new NVIDIA cards is that there's always going to be new cards coming out. The thing is if you keep waiting and waiting you'll have a Pentium 4 running on a LAN with all X79s and all the latest hardware while the players are yelling at you to get off the server. Just go for it and if you have to upgrade, upgrade.

This is what I'd recommend for a setup (I assume you'll reuse the monitor, keyboard and mouse correct?). And if you don't want to build one you could always buy the parts and have someone who knows how to build do it for you :

Case: Corsair Carbide 400R - $99.99
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer MKII 950 Watt - $129.99
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3H - $189.99
CPU: 3.30 GHz Intel Core i5-2500K - $219.99
RAM: 8GB Kingston Hyper X Blu PC 1600MHz 1.5V DDR3 Dual Channel - $54.99
HD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM - $54.99
Optical: Pioneer BDR-206 - $99.99
Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus - $24.99
Video: EVGA GeForce GTX 560TI 1GB - $229.99
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit - $99.99

Total: $1229

Again thanks for the awesome replies everyone.

I think you've convinced me to build it myself. The only thing that I will do is to add up the parts you have listed and see if I can match those on Cyberpower and see how much it is.

If it is the same price wouldn't it just make sense to have them build it?

However you have encouraged me to not be afraid to build it myself and thats what i'll probably end up doing.

Thanks again.