Need help on a new Budget Gaming Rig

crazychen

April 22, 2012 11:46:42 PM

Approximate Purchase Date: May 15, 2012 (Will be buying parts bit by bit throughout this month, hoping to have it finished by May 15th for Diablo 3)

Budget Range: Preferably under $750 After Rebates

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming (Diablo 3, BF3, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2), Coding and back-end web development, Internet, Movies

Parts Not Required: Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Speakers, OS

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Any

Country: USA (NYC area)

Parts Preferences: Due to some of the controllers I use (Mad Catz PS3 Fightstick) I would like a motherboard that uses intel chipsets as well as a quad core intel cpu

Overclocking: No

SLI or Crossfire: No

Monitor Resolution: 1920x1200, I'd Like to be able to play games at pretty high settings on 1920x1200 resolution

Additional Comments:
1) For the video card, I'd like one that has enough power to play video games on high settings (does not have to be highest settings), while still being relatively quiet.
2) I'm not too picky on the looks of the case, but I would like one that has lots of slots for additional fans as all my computers seem to have a overheating issue. If it looks cool to boot that'd be awesome too.
3) If it is possible in my budget I'd like to have a small SSD drive just for the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate), however I would prefer a 500gb 7200 rpm drive over a small SSD if my budget only allows for one

Thank you very much for reading, any suggestions for parts would be great to help me get started

Thanks samuelspark

Quote:

64GB SSD, 7850, i5

More about : budget gaming rig

| E-mail me updates
| Report abuse

samuelspark

April 22, 2012 11:55:56 PM

i5 quad core and an ssd does not compute. You will sacrifice a lot of graphics power.

| Report abuse

boiler1990

April 23, 2012 12:39:11 AM

On that budget, you're looking at dual core i3 and at most a 560Ti. I use both for gaming and can run anything on high with AA/AAF set to x8/x8.

As samuelspark said, the quad core + SSD will burn up a lot of money without improving your performance whatsoever. There's no reason for either of them.

| Report abuse

samuelspark

April 23, 2012 1:26:02 AM

64GB SSD, 7850, i5

| Report abuse

Simsmzzms

April 23, 2012 1:32:56 AM

Can anyone tell me if this build looks like it'll be able to run most new games on high setting without many frame-rate hitches:

Motherboard-----ASUS M5A97 AMD 9 Series
CPU------AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (3.4 ghz not overclocked)
RAM------Patriot 4GB DDR3 (1333 Mhz)(2-3 sticks)
Video Card-----Radeon HD 6870 Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5( Crossfire in the Future)
Hard Drive-----Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB
Optical Drive-----Sony Optiarc 24x DVDRW Drive
Case-----Cooler Master RC-430-KWN1 Elite 430
PCU-----Coolmax Cl-600B (600w)

Thanks to anyone who reads this, considers its contents and puts any effort whatsoever into finding a truthful answer!

| Report abuse

crazychen

April 23, 2012 1:36:47 AM

thanks for the answers guys, I think I'll just forget about the SSD, however I do want a quad core for testing reasons since I already have a few duo cores and single core systems. Are there any cheaper i5 or i7 quad cores? I can spend a extra $100 or so on top of my budget for a quad core

I did some research around the forums and I think the GTX 560 Ti is a great fit for me

Would 16gb of ram be enough for gaming? and does 1866/1600 mhz ram make much of a difference over 1333?

Any recommendations for a motherboard with a intel chipset under/around 150?

| Report abuse

samuelspark

April 23, 2012 1:38:05 AM

Simsmzzms said:

Can anyone tell me if this build looks like it'll be able to run most new games on high setting without many frame-rate hitches:

Motherboard-----ASUS M5A97 AMD 9 Series
CPU------AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (3.4 ghz not overclocked)
RAM------Patriot 4GB DDR3 (1333 Mhz)(2-3 sticks)
Video Card-----Radeon HD 6870 Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5( Crossfire in the Future)
Hard Drive-----Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB
Optical Drive-----Sony Optiarc 24x DVDRW Drive
Case-----Cooler Master RC-430-KWN1 Elite 430
PCU-----Coolmax Cl-600B (600w)

Thanks to anyone who reads this, considers its contents and puts any effort whatsoever into finding a truthful answer!

What are you doing in this post?

On another note, I would say to go for a Intel Pentium instead and a better PSU. Go start a new thread and send me the link.

| Report abuse

samuelspark

April 23, 2012 1:39:42 AM

crazychen said:

thanks for the answers guys, I think I'll just forget about the SSD, however I do want a quad core for testing reasons since I already have a few duo cores and single core systems. Are there any cheaper i5 or i7 quad cores? I can spend a extra $100 or so on top of my budget for a quad core

I did some research around the forums and I think the GTX 560 Ti is a great fit for me

Would 16gb of ram be enough for gaming? and does 1866/1600 mhz ram make much of a difference over 1333?

Any recommendations for a motherboard with a intel chipset under/around 150?

4GB is more than enough for gaming. 0.o 16GB is overkill. Check the build I posted up top. I'm a miracle maker. Maybe except the motherboard with only supports SATA2. Change it to any SATA3 motherboard and you're set to go.

| Report abuse

crazychen

April 23, 2012 1:47:53 AM

samuelspark said:

64GB SSD, 7850, i5

samuelspark said:

4GB is more than enough for gaming. 0.o 16GB is overkill. Check the build I posted up top. I'm a miracle maker. Maybe except the motherboard with only supports SATA2. Change it to any SATA3 motherboard and you're set to go.

Yea I just saw this and wow, thanks a lot! this is pretty perfect for me
quick question, how much of a difference does the 7850 make over the 6850? I just saw that newegg has the 6850 for $135

| Report abuse

hwangchan

April 23, 2012 1:48:55 AM

crazychen said:

Would 16gb of ram be enough for gaming? and does 1866/1600 mhz ram make much of a difference over 1333?

16 Gb is too much, your wasting money on anything over 6 on gaming, currently. So the normal recommendation is 8. Nice write up on it here on toms a few months ago. Basically, current games don't utilize more than 2GB, some games will do ~4, and system utilizes ~2 totaling 6.

Right now Games are on a video or CPU bottleneck, and it wont be till the next gen games that try to ease the burden by utilizing more ram, id guesstimate another 1-4 years, and 8 GB will likely be the target point, as that's what most current mainstream gaming systems utilize.

IMO the only reason to go higher is if you are running rendering software or some other professional type or specific program that can utilize it.

*edit: thought i saw an article stating RAM freq > 1333 is currently useless due to mb bottlenecks, but it may have been an april fools post..

| Report abuse

samuelspark

April 23, 2012 1:53:00 AM

7850 is more like something in between 6950 and 6970 or GTX 560 Ti and GTX 570.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7870-revi...

| Report abuse

boiler1990

April 23, 2012 2:05:46 AM

I feel like that 430W PSU won't survive

| Report abuse

samuelspark

April 23, 2012 2:09:10 AM

boiler1990 said:

I feel like that 430W PSU won't survive

Tom's used it with an OC'd Phenom II and a 6870. I think it'll do OK. Intel's chips use less power, and 7850 is pretty power efficient.

I calculated it with a PSU calculator and only got 317w at 90% load. Should be fine.