How's my selection so far?

Everything looks fine except the PSU don't get that one get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... or if you can't afford it get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... you don't want to skimp on PSU trust me other than that everything looks great bud

I definitely agree with the changes that bigcyco1 suggested with the power supply. The Thermaltake one that you have listed would probably do fine, but these days there's really no reason not to get something that is 80-Plus certified. As far as the optical drive, staying away from Blu-ray will really hep keep costs down, which'll leave you with around $70-80 for a graphics card.

Okay guys I updated my list. Any more suggestions?

Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... $50

Power Supply - http://amzn.to/tJh6G2 $30

Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... $65

CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... $109

Memory - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... $43

Video Card - http://amzn.to/w4oBTB - $108

Storage - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... $70

DVD thing - http://amzn.to/skDoFQ - $18

Thermaltake and Coolermaster are not brands I recommend at all. Not all their models are crap but more are than are not.

If you want quality stick with Corsair, Seasonic, PC Power and Cooling, XFX, Silverstone, Enermax, OCZ and Antec. You can find one of these in the same price range as a junk model of other brands.


For a gaming computer AMD is a bad idea. They can not compete at any price point with Intel. I suggest you read this.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-o...


This also is worth reading. The FX processors overclocked to 4.5Ghz can only at best tie an i3 2100 in gaming. They actually lose in quite a few of these benchmarks. Not to mention the extra power and heat and money spent on the aftermarket cooling you will need to overclock them at all.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-a...

Also that is OLD DDR3. To run 1.65v at DDR3 1333 speeds means it's very old first gen stuff. You are better off with cooler running 1.5v stuff. For $6 more get this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Honestly, I would drop down to the Phenom II X4 955, a difference of just 200 MHz, which is almost unnoticeable, and spend that extra $20 bucks or so elsewhere, such as a Cooler Master Hyper-212 CPU cooler.

Ditch that off brand hard drive as well. This is one of the best you can buy, it's $10 more.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...


Hard drive failure rates showing the F3 is among the best drives.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/components-ret...

Personally, the drive that I would go with would be this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Since external drives are nothing more than 2.5" or 3.5" bare drives with fancy plastic cases that use a small PCB to convert SATA data to USB, you can easily pull the drive out of the case and use it in a desktop system. It is certainly more money than the ones previously mentioned, but it definitely wins the dollar-per-gigabyte award.

Ok this ^ comes out to just about $500.

For almost the same money.

DVD/CD $17

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Case $50

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Hard drive. $80

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Graphics card. $125 - $30 mail in rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Power supply. $45 - $10 mail in rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

RAM. $32

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Motherboard. $60

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

CPU. $125

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...


Total of $534.92 - $40 mail in rebates. So $494.93 total. Hard to beat that for the money.

For $10 more change the 4GB of RAM to this 8GB of RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I agree with anort3, that's about as much performance as you could get for less than $500. Barely less, but still  

Because people are saying that Intel is better for gaming, I changed to this. I'm not going to change anymore, unless someone says something is crap and I NEED to change.

Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... $50

Power Supply - http://amzn.to/tJh6G2 $30

Motherboard -http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=66933&vpn=GA-H61M-DS2&... $54

CPU - http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=59192&vpn=BX80623I3212... $122

Memory - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...(Desktop%20Memory)-_-Corsair-_-20145251&AID=10440897&PID=3938566&SID= $22

Video Card - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... - $120

Storage - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... $70

DVD thing - http://amzn.to/skDoFQ - $18

Best answer selected by Clp.