phamhlam

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I am helping a friend build his first computer and I want advice to see if this is the best bang for my buck. He might be gaming and he needs to have wi-fi. Here is the list I came up with.


Component & Price with Rebates
ASUS P8Z68-M $117.99
i3-2120 $129.99
ASUS DVD $18.99
Fractal 3000 $69.99
Corsair A70 $24.99
Rosewill RNX-N300X $24.99
XFX 550W $54.99
Crucial m4 $162.14
XFX 6870 $149.49
Dell E2311H $179.99
G.Skill Ripjaws $40.00
Logitech Mk520 Keyboard/Mice $47.94

Total: $1,021.49

I included the price on a monitor and keyboard.

Dell produce higher quality monitor so I think he would perfer that over a cheap HD monitor.

Would a Corsair A70 cooler keep the CPU cooler then stock and would that lead to longer reliability?

My goal is to stay under $1000 or as close. Let me know where I can cut cost.
 
Overall a good build. The temps won't affect your reliability unless you're overclocking (which the i3 doesn't do well/at all), so the stock cooler will be good enough if your case airflow is set up properly.


I absolutely love my P2411H panel. Never buying anything else again.
 
In general your shouldn't have many dust issues (if at all). I've never cleaned my PC and there's no dust in the case nor a significant amount on the fans.

The Hyper 212+ is so cheap it's worth it over the stock cooler any way. It's a good cooler if you ever upgrade that PC to an OCable chip too.
 
I have the Dell 2311H. I bought it for photo editing and web browsing. The pictures look great, and I do play movies on it too. Also, excellent considering the price. Blacks aren't the best but I got this monitor over a year ago. With discounts it's a great buy.

However, it does have an 8ms response time, which is slow for gaming. If you want to use your monitor for gaming I'd suggest a 5ms or even better a 2ms monitor. I'm gonna buy another monitor for gaming. There are some decent 23" monitors at around $200usd.
 


The quad core won't add a ton to gaming except in rare instances (i.e. Skyrim) but even then you'll still be limited by your GPU. My limit in Skyrim is still my 560Ti - it performs the same on Ultra with an i3-2120 or i5-2500K.

Just suggesting where your money is best spent. I've seen a number of rigs with really high-end CPUs (2600Ks) and 6850/6870s in them...
 

phamhlam

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Aug 24, 2011
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Are you sure? I would love to cut cost and not have to spend an extra $50-60 on a quad core. I guess I will stick with the i3-2120.