3rd Build

[BlazingNova]

This has been a year!. I built two systems already, and yet I'm still unsure what to do. First my own, then my cousin's, now my best friends.Overwhelmed by my build's performance, be wants one too, with 1000$ to spend, but well his requirements are a little different.


Besides for being a "Gaming-only" build, there's not much it's gonna be doing.

As usual.

Approximate Purchase Date: Near New Years\January

Budget Range: 1000$ or about 50k INR

System Usage from Most to Least Important: GAMING

Parts Not Required: Need everything!. Dont need a set of speakers.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: http://deltapage.com/

Country: India

Parts Preferences: No preference

Overclocking: Yes

SLI or Crossfire: No

Monitor Resolution: Need one.

Additional Comments: An upgrade path would be nice.

 

[Raiddinn]

Start here

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-cpu-ssd,3027.html

Look up those parts and see if you can get your hands on them for about where your price range is. If you can't then let us know.

Information about upgrade options should be contained in the link as well.

 

[BlazingNova]

Well, heres what I have.

Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 955BE - 118$

RAM: Kingston HyperX Blu (2 x 4GB) 8GB 1333Mhz - 62$

Mobo: Asus M5A97 - 125$

PSU: Corsair GX550 - 79$

Case: CoolerMaster 310 - 32$

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB 7200RPM. - 142$

Total = 542$ without GPU,OS,Monitor. Reusing DVD drive.

 

[Raiddinn]

How old is the DVD drive? If it is an IDE drive (ribbon cable, probably gray) then it could potentially cause the computer to take 5 or 10 minutes longer to boot up. The drives are cheap, if it is old I would suggest you don't reuse it. New ones are like $15.

Why did you choose this motherboard? You could cut the price in half with a good micro board and still fit 2x 4GB RAM and 1x Video card in it. That extra $60 will buy a lot more video card or a lot better case.

You should be able to get Windows 7 for like $100, or even $65 if you have access to a student email account. Figure that in.

A good monitor will probably run you about $200. See what you can get from Viewsonic for that. For now I will assume you can get something from that brand that is an acceptable size for about that much.

That leaves about $200 for a video card, I will call it $150 so you can get a better case. For about $150 you can get a 6850 or 6870 or so which should do well even on new games.

Look into those things and come back with comments if any.

 

[BlazingNova]

UEFI BIOS

Or If you really think it's not worth it, maybe I could lean towards this one.

Asus - M4N68T-M LE V2 48$

Unfortunately, I saw the ribbon cable. :/

Um Windows discount with a student email?. Wthell is that?

Do you think its better to wait for the HD7000 GPU's?. He's got a crappy 7300 GT he can hold on to till then I guess.

 

[Raiddinn]

I have an M4N68T-M v2 (non LE) and it works just fine. I haven't had any problems with it at all.

If there is a ribbon cable on the DVD, I would highly suggest you just find $15 or $20 in the budget for a DVD player made in 2011.

Microsoft aims to have a high penetration in the student OS market so they will want to continue using MSFT products into adulthood hopefully. Apple also fights hard for this market for the same reasons.

That competition helps students.

The buyer doesn't even really have to still be going to the school actively, they just have to still be able to check the student email and click a link in it and they get the OS for 1/3 of the regular cost.

As far as waiting for new video cards, I probably wouldn't want to wait 3 or 4 more months for the new cards (I bought a new graphics card myself recently too, without waiting for 7000s), but it really depends on how much the person wants to wait.

They could have much better gaming while they wait and slightly worse gaming over the long term or sucky gaming now and slightly better gaming later than they would have if they bought the card now. It really just depends on what they want to tolerate.

Life is short. They may not make it till the 7000s come out through some great tragedy. The gains by waiting aren't that huge, I would just say pull the trigger now.

 

[BlazingNova]

Meh. Can't seem to find that student section on the purchase. :/

 

[Raiddinn]

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/en_US/pd/productID.216644200

One of the first few links that comes up when I internet search for "Windows 7 Student Upgrade"

The thing is, though, that this works even if you aren't upgrading. You can full install off the same CD on a completely clean drive with it. Sometimes it has problems registering if you do this, but if so you can just upgrade the fresh install by installing it a second time on top of itself and it will always register the second time.