$500-600 gaming build

[reinhart_x]

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Approximate Purchase Date: Within a week

Budget Range: $500-600 Before Rebates

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming

Parts Not Required: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, OS, HD

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg, amazon, microcenter, ncix, really anywhere reputable

Country: USA

Parts Preferences: Doesn't really matter

Overclocking: Yes, eventually

SLI or Crossfire: No

Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080

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Hey there, I'm looking to build a gaming PC in the next week or so, just needed a nice recommendation from you fine people.

CPU: After looking over many various topics it seems it would be foolish to not get the i5 2500k + z68 if I wanna game (I do) and especially if I have a Micro Center around with them in stock (yay me). I'm a bang for the buck kinda guy so this seems totally worth it as it's not really any more expensive than a 955+mobo or something for the amount of improved performance. So yeah, I guess that settles that.

Mobo: Whichever one you guys recommend, cheaper is probably best. When it comes to overclocking I mean, I'll do it eventually but if I don't really need to OC heavily for gaming right now I'll probably just hold off on the Hyper 212 if I can and I probably don't need a bunch of fancy mobo features.

So at Micro Center one of the cheaper mobos and the i5 brings me to $245 after tax. Sweet!

DVD Drive: The Samsung that's $16 right now

RAM: just a nice 8GB set around $30 will do, whatever fits/goes best with the build.

Case: I'm assuming a $40-50-60 will be perfect, anything should be fine, just recommend it

Let's see, we're at approx $350 and still have the GPU and PSU to go. I have no clue where to go with these to, so have at thee. I've been playing on a 7600GT AGP for years so anything new will be like sweet, sweet candy to me. I just wanna play at high settings (maxing things out certainly doesn't hurt though ) without any performance suffering, I don't need the very very best things on the market, but I'm done playing 3 year old games on low/med settings and still not getting the fps to enjoy the game.

Thanks.

 

[manu 11]

go for the microcenter cobo deal, 245$
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL 44$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231428
Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 60$
cORSAIR Builder Series CX600 V2 600W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply 57$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028

GIGABYTE GV-N560UD-1G GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125401 220$

total: 626$

 

[reinhart_x]

Thanks, Manu!

So what about the mobo, does it matter which one I pick from microcenter?

Also, is the gap between the 6870 and the 560 Ti enough that I should pay the extra 50 bucks for it?

 

[manu 11]

you are not sli/xfire interested write, chose an ASRock Z68 PRO3 would be optimal for your use.
As for the 560ti, yes, there is a very little performance difference between 560ti and 6870, the thing is that you can overclock this card to 950-1ghz easily and can reach gtx 570 performance levels.
6870 is not as nice oc'er as 560ti is.