$1000 Budget Gaming Build

Satchembe

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Mar 12, 2012
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I have been researching for quite a while now, and I have decided to build my first PC. I will be building it for gaming, music library, and school work. I want to play World of Warcraft and Civ 5 (mostly play these games) on ultra settings without many issues. I also want to have disk room for a large music library; I plan on upgrading my system with an ssd for OS and programs plus a second HDD for RAID 1 (i lost an entire album of family photos and 1.5TB of music a couple years ago, I am a redundancy freak) but this won't be for a little while. I also have decided to wait until Ivy Bridge, the new GTX 600/700 series, and possibly to see some hard drive prices normalize as much as possible, so this theoretical build is just to see if I am on the right track. I have given myself a $1000 budget, give or take $100-200 for some wiggle room.

CPU:

i5-2500K --- http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0354589 --- $179.99

CPU Cooler:

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065 --- $33.99

Case:

Cooler Master Storm Scout Mid-Tower --- http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0308296 --- $69.99 (after rebate)

Power Supply:

OCZ ZT 650W 80Plus - Bronze --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341051 --- $84.99 (after rebate)

Motherboard:

ASRock Extreme4 Gen3 Z68 --- http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0373373 --- $184.99

GPU:

Sapphire Radeon 6870 1GB --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102948 --- $159.99 (after rebate)

RAM:

Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 1600 DDR3 --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233144 --- $44.99

HDD:

Western Digital Caviar Green 750GB SATA 6 --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136950 --- $99.99

Optical Drive:

ASUS 24x DVD Burner --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204 --- $21.99

Monitor:

Acer 20" LED Widescreen 5ms --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009317&cm_sp=Cat_Monitors-_-Best_Sellers-_-24-009-317 --- $89.99


All of these component prices do not incled shipping costs -------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL ---------$970.90




Will this setup play World of Warcraft and Civ 5 on the highest settings, what FPS should I expect from them? Thanks!
 
Solution


Newegg has a price alert via Email on items you choose to be alerted on. That should come in handy instead of always checking. :)

kcsmacker

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Oct 12, 2011
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Personally I would rather see you use a TX series corsair for the PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139020
This one is Cheaper too.

For the motherboard you can get step down from that to the extreme 3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271
if you wanted to save some money there. ( unless the 4 had features you wanted)

I would say ride out the Harddrive prices. I Personally just built my gf a computer and gave her an old 7200 HDD until prices drop. It will still be atleast a few months until prices drop to where I want. That 6870 is amazing for the price, as is the i5 from microcenter is at a great price. I understand you want to wait for Ivy Bridge however.( is what im doing)

Enjoy the new computer and I am glad to hear you are waiting for Ivy Bridge. Sucks to build a computer with high HDD prices, However If you really want to invest for all your music

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136891

This 2 tb Green is 130. not BAD but not great on price.

 

hotthree

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Dec 19, 2011
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In my honest opinion. I do not think your budget of $1000 will hold up if your waiting for IVY / Nvidia.

For your setup,

Save money and downgrade the mobo to a cheaper version. $180 is mid to high range. You can afford to drop to about $130-140 w/o losing many features at all.

Get a new psu. Do not go with Ocz, stay with antec xfx corsair. All of them have a good 600-650watt psu that is much better quality for similar prices.

Case Recommendation - Check your video card length before buying the case. My friend got this case and had problems with a 6950 length. Something to keep in mind.

Also be prepared to add another $300-$400 if your waiting for kepler/7800 series and plan to wait till end of march. (150-200 for gpu alone - 150 for ivy i would imagine maybe more)

Most people that went with SB will be holding out until haswell, because many feel the gains won't be worth the upgrade. Not telling you to go SB but if it were me i'd just settle for SB and overclock it to 4.2-4.5 and save the saved money for a new gpu/bigger monitor which will max anything up to 1900x1080 or 1200.
 

EzioAs

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I prefer seasonic, corsair or antec. Xfx is also pretty good but definitly not OCZ, agree with you there.

For OP: Most cases by corsair supports long graphics card and has great cable management and ventilation although most of them are probably too expensive for a $1k build. Try having a look at bitfenix raider or shinobi

shinobi: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=60585&vpn=BFC%2DSNB%2D150%2DKKW1%2DRP&manufacture=BitFenix&promoid=1360

raider: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=65970&vpn=BFC-RDR-300-KKN1-RP&manufacture=BitFenix&promoid=1215
 

aRodr1guez

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Feb 15, 2012
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Theirs no point in waiting for Ivy Bridge or Kepler for what you plan on using this build for. Ivy bridge will not show better performance when it comes to gaming. Your choice of CPU and GPU are perfect for the games you plan to play except I'd change the CPU to a non-k i5 if you don't plan to overclock and you won't need the after market cooler either the stock fan will do just fine. Change your choice of PSU it's not a recommended brand. seasonic, antec, corsair, xfx are all reliable brands.

I think you should go with this HDD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152245&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-RSSDailyDeals-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=4176827&SID=frq9w3skui1e

Wait till the price drops to $80 again it just recently went back up but you can't go wrong with a drive that big for $80.
 

Satchembe

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Mar 12, 2012
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I think part of my post might have been misinterpreted. I am not waiting for IB and the new NVIDIA series in order to buy them, I am merely going to wait for their release to see how it might shake up the market and thus effect the current build components I have selected. I have heard that IB won't affect the price of SB CPU's but I have heard that GTX 600/700 might make GTX 500 series cheaper.....in that case I was considering getting a good GTX 560 ti (if the price changed a bit of course) instead of the 6780 I currently have on paper. Overall though, thanks for the advice, especially about the power supply brand I selected. I just think it would be foolish for me to do my first build only months before two big launches happen. I have waited this long, I can last another couple months. Thanks again! Most helpful!
 

Satchembe

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Some articles and economists have speculated that HDD prices won't come back down until 2013 (maybe longer). Western Digital and the lot have not started to crank out more HDD's in South East Asia yet, still repairing and ramping up their damaged factories. I don't think I can wait that long.
 

aRodr1guez

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Just saying you won't see any performance boost in game waiting for Ivy Bridge and for the games you play you don't really need a high end card. But if you feel the need to wait then that's fine to. Good luck. Be sure to close the thread if your done.
 

aRodr1guez

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That's true but this drive is always changing prices. About 2 to 3 days ago it was $80 and it's not the first time. That's why allot of people have been recommending it.
 

Satchembe

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I have shopped around for other motherboards, one of the features that I would like to have pertains to SATA 6. In the future I would like to put my OS and frequently used programs (games, photoshop, various smaller applications) and then put two HDD's in a RAID 1 config.......so I was thinking that I would like to have at least 3 SATA 6 connectors. Most of the lower tiered motherboards only have 2 x SATA 6 which would force me to move the RAID 1 HDD's to SATA 3. Would this matter because most of the storage is going to be used for my music library. Basically, could you shine some light on whether SATA 6 for that purpose even matters...?
 

Satchembe

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Well in that case, I will definitely keep an eye out for prices in that range. I haven't been looking at the HDD's above 1TB, just assumed they would be outrageously priced. Thanks!
 

aRodr1guez

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If your just going to be using it for storage honestly for that purpose IMHO no it doesn't matter.
 

aRodr1guez

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Newegg has a price alert via Email on items you choose to be alerted on. That should come in handy instead of always checking. :)
 
Solution

Satchembe

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Mar 12, 2012
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That was really helpful, thanks a ton!
 

Satchembe

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SOME REVISIONS:

HDD:

Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136892 --- $114.99

Power Supply:

Corsair Enthusiast Series 650W 80Plus-Bronze --- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139020 --- $79.99 (after rebate)

Motherboard:

GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 --- www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128502 --- $114.99



Total --- $910.90