How much do you spend????????

[jay2577]

I was just wondering what people spend on their computers and if they think more of the GPU, HDD/SSD or CPU when they spend.
My components are

AMD FX-4 4100 Black Edition @ 4.2ghz £77

Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 Socket AM3+ 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard £50.07

G.Skill 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz RipjawsX Memory £29.74

MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 £149.99

OCZ 120GB Agility 3 SSD £65.99

Antec 520W High Current Gamer PSU £55.24

Coolermaster Elite 430 All Black Interior Mid Tower Case with Side Window £39.47

LiteOn iHAS124 SATA DVD Write Optical Drive £14.20

Lamptron FC6 5.25" Bay Fan Controller £29.99

4 Cooler Master 12cm Sickleflow Blue LED System Case Fans £23.04

LED backlit keyboard £19.99

Xenta Wireless Mouse with Tiny USB Receiver £6.99

LG IPS234V-PN - 23" LED LCD HDMI IPS Monitor £112.99

A total of £674.70

I am very happy with my computer for what i paid for it.I didn't have more money to spend on it just yet so i got what i could afford.I know an intel system would of been quicker but i'm playing crysis 2 at the moment in 1920x1080 with the texture pack and dx11 in ultra and it seems smooth. Also total war shogun 2 on max settings smooth.

What have you guys spent on yours and what do you spend the most on?

Please don't tell me i should of gone intel and start a fanboy war which seems to start here quite a bit.AMD and INTEL are both welcome in this thread as long as we all get along and respect each others choices on what we buy

 

[FinneousPJ]

Yeah, your build is pretty good, and that price range I feel offers the best value.

I spent a lot more on mine but I game less and work more so I wanted an i7.

 

[jay2577]

I forgot my windows OS which is


Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium w/SP1 64 bit £77.49

This takes me total to £752.19

 

[jay2577]

Gaming is my main reason for my rig as well as basic internet/e mail.
Your system looks nice FinneousPJ. Any benefit with 12gb of ram over 8gb? Ram is so cheap at the moment i could add another 8gb if it would benefit

 

[wr6133]

Please dont take offence but for a gaming box I think you spent badly

You could have saved a tenner and peformed better with a Phenom II

When you're buying a low end graphics card you shouldn't be getting SSD's, fan controllers, expensive LED fans, fancy keyboards....... all that stuff does nothing for gaming performance or prolonging the rigs life, it was cash that could have got you a better graphics card. All those extra trimmings are what you add once the actual performance driving factors are up there.

Just my 20 pence on the subject anyway

 

[jay2577]

The phenom 2 was £89.99 at the time of buying and my FX 4100 was £77. I might upgrade to an 8 core piledriver if they are any good at some point.
As for my graphics card for me it isn't a low end card and i think it's awesome for what i paid for it.The SSD is the best upgrade i've bought in ages and i don't regret it at all.
As for the extra trimmings i like them and the fan controller was important to keep my system quiet as the fans were noisy when i first built it.
I also build systems for other people and they seem to like it that my computer looks nice and it encourages them to buy extra bits.
Like i said i am happy with my computer and just wondered what other people spend and why they spend what they do

 

[jay2577]

I thought this might be a good thread. Anyone else have an input on what they like/can afford to spend on their systems?

 

[FinneousPJ]

Gaming is my main reason for my rig as well as basic internet/e mail.
Your system looks nice FinneousPJ. Any benefit with 12gb of ram over 8gb? Ram is so cheap at the moment i could add another 8gb if it would benefit

Thanks. My CPU has a 3-channel memory controller which is why I went for 3x4GB.

Please dont take offence but for a gaming box I think you spent badly

You could have saved a tenner and peformed better with a Phenom II

When you're buying a low end graphics card you shouldn't be getting SSD's, fan controllers, expensive LED fans, fancy keyboards....... all that stuff does nothing for gaming performance or prolonging the rigs life, it was cash that could have got you a better graphics card. All those extra trimmings are what you add once the actual performance driving factors are up there.

Just my 20 pence on the subject anyway

I kind of agree but on the other hand you could as well turn it the other way round - all those extra trimmings as you say will last over a number of system upgrades.

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

I will tell you what I tell customers who come in my shops in the UK for a GAMING machine for us to build for them....

We say...for a GAMING machine , you NEED to spend 50% of your total budget on the GRAPHICS CARD....

Which was what wr6133 was trying to tell you above...

And yes yours IS a low end card.... we sell cards at over £1000...yours is now sold for around £130...

All the best Brett

 

[FinneousPJ]

The 7850 isn't a low end card. What is the nVidia 610 then for example? Not a card at all? :lol:

 

[mindless728]

Prices are what I paid at the time:

$170 - AMD FX-8120
$30 - Cooler Master Hyper 212+
$150 - Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
$200 - 32GB (4x8GB) G.Skill Ares DDR3-1333
$30 - EVGA GeForce 210
$410 - Visiontek Radeon HD7970 (Reference Card)
$190 - Corsair AX850
$30 - Intel EXPI9301CT Gigabit NIC
$260 - LSI 9211-8i (in IT mode)
$140 - 4 x Hitachi 2TB (got them for a steal)
$220 - 2 x Western Digital 640GB
$90 - OCZ Vertex LE 50GB
$50 - Lite-On Bluray Combo Drive
$60 - Cooler Master Centurion 590
$125 - Icy Dock 4in3 Hot Swap Bay
$170 - Asus 23.5" 1080p monitor
$140 - Ducky DK9008G2 MX-Blue Mechanical Keyboard
$80 - Logitech G9x
$80 - Logitech G35

Total: ~$2600
Though a lot of this was accumulated over time

If you are wondering what this system is for, it is a VMware ESXi 5.0u1 host using VMDirectPath I/O for the GPU
VMs always on:
Windows Server 2008 R2 - DHCP/DNS/NAT server - 1 vCPU 2GB ram
Ubuntu 12.04 - Linux Development System - 2vCPU 4GB ram
Open Indiana b151 - iSCSI server - 2vCPU 8GB ram - LSI 9211-8i passthrough
Windows 7 x64 Professional - Windows Gaming - 4vCPU 8GB ram - HD7970 USB 3.0 passthrough

 

[jay2577]

People seem to be missing the point of this thread. I am happy with my machine and i don't want to hear what i should have got from people.Respect my choices on my build like i respect other peoples please.
Brett my card was £149.99 on sale from £169.99 and not £130, maybe your thinking of the 1 gb version on sale.This is not a low end card to ME but some people with more money than me might think so. I bet their are people on this forum with Nvidia 550 ti's and AMD 6670's which are happy with them.
I wanted to know how much money people spend on their computers and the reasons they buy the components they do.

 

[jay2577]

Wow nice system mindless728. Thank you for sticking with the topic
It's nice to see what systems people have. May i ask why you have a geforce 210 as well as the 7970 graphics card. Is it for nvidia physics?

 

[gumbi]

i think thats a fairly specced build but still quite expensive for what it is a budget gaming rig

now my total for any new gaming rig is £1000 and incremental upgrades over the course of its life i never spend more than £250 on a component

this was my first build 6 years ago and apart from the case and fan controller and motherboard sound card its all been replaced

asus commando e6300@ 3.1 ghz 2gig ocz gold 320 gig hd 8800 gts 640 ( upgraded to a 260 gtx ) xfi akasa eclispe case 650 watt antec neo

at the time that was best bang for buck system and it has done me tremendously well


Upgrades it now runs a e8500 @ 4.56 ghz air thermaltake Frio heatsink 8 gig of ocz pc 9600 memory x 1tb F3s x2 64 gig 830s in raid 0 antec 750w neo and last but not least gigabyte 660ti superclocked

i did have a 2500k 560gtx system but hardly used it because was in the bedroom so wen i was offered £80 more than i paid i took it as an opportunity to revive this old rig and make it last until haswell comes out next year

now from a day to day perspective this old rig feels as fast as my 2500k only times i can actually see a difference is bench marks tbh i wasnt that amazed wen i put this 660ti i could really see much difference going from a 260 gtx some games like batman and bf3 i could see some different effects etc

anyway enuf of my prattling on moral of the story is spend as much as you can for a solid foundation and with small upgrade ever 3 years a pc will last a long time

 

[jay2577]

That's a very nice overclock on your e8500 cpu gumbi. I would be interested to know the temps on your cpu

 

[gumbi]

ahh temps can be quite high 76 degress i really dont bother about them to much i just set my fans for temp targets and wen its at load i cant hear the fans screaming away the killing im doing on bf3 drowns them out

im from a pro overcloking background so things like noise etc just dont really bother me yeah this oc was just set recently after i had left it at 3.8 ghz for ages just wanted to see what this old girl could handle on air asus commando best motherboard ive ever purchased

 

[SteveH3671]

I'd say a 2:1 GPU:CPU ratio is about right nowadays with the GPU usually being the limiting factor on most games, so good balanced build Jay.

Although mine is somewhat outdated I paid (a while ago) £130 for a 6850 and £67 for an X3-460 so about the same ratio as you.

Dunno who would think a 7850 is a low-end card, it's a solid mid-range card, hell my 6850 was a good midrange card a year ago, and it sucks comp]ared to a 7850!

 

[joeh_87]

Hi

I will tell you what I tell customers who come in my shops in the UK for a GAMING machine for us to build for them....

We say...for a GAMING machine , you NEED to spend 50% of your total budget on the GRAPHICS CARD....

Which was what wr6133 was trying to tell you above...

And yes yours IS a low end card.... we sell cards at over £1000...yours is now sold for around £130...

All the best Brett

load of rubbish

a 7850 at current is NOT a low end card.

Ok my system is overclocked but when I can get similar scores to my friends I7 2600k/580(all stock) in 3Dmark 11 I wouldn't call it low end. compared to the price difference of both of our systems.

My CPU £59 - Phenom II x4 965 @ 4ghz my GPU £150 7850 2gb @ 1100/1300 (benchmarking) there's £209 costs less than ONE 580.

 

[jay2577]

£59 for your cpu was a very good price joeh_87.I hope you like gaming on your machine as much as i do mine. I think the 7850 is awesome and price is always a deciding factor for me and i guess many others without unlimited funds.

SteveH3671 the 6850 is still a solid card and it's what i had before my 7850. I've sold it to a friend who had a Nvidia 8800gs 384mb (also an old one of mine) and he's enjoying deus ex human revolution at max on directx 11 and he's enjoying it a lot.
Low, mid and high end cards are a matter of perspective for most of us.

 

[Quaddro]

a 7850 at current is NOT a low end card.

well, there's nothing wrong with bret said..
if you compare with gtx690 or powercolor 7990, 7850 IS a low end card...

well..this is my build..
x6 1090T oc to 4ghz $160
biostar ta990fxe $120
corsair vegeance 1600 8gb $60
3 harddrive $100
2 optical drive $32
Seasonic PSU SS750-AT $85
Handmade case $0
Sapphire 5850 $150
3xLG 1753ws 17'inch (well, at least this is eyefinity.. )

Serve all of my computing needs..
All around machine..watching movie..doing my work and sometimes light gaming..

 

[wr6133]

load of rubbish

a 7850 at current is NOT a low end card.

Ok my system is overclocked but when I can get similar scores to my friends I7 2600k/580(all stock) in 3Dmark 11 I wouldn't call it low end. compared to the price difference of both of our systems.

My CPU £59 - Phenom II x4 965 @ 4ghz my GPU £150 7850 2gb @ 1100/1300 (benchmarking) there's £209 costs less than ONE 580.

It's at best low mid but my point remains spending on hardware should be a priority for a gaming machine, flashing lights and the like come after you can say your GPU and CPU are high end. The OP spent over £120 on cosmetics and an SSD then settled on that GPU and CPU, he could have stepped up a tier on both and ignored cosmetics/load speeds in favour of higher FPS figures...... that would be a gaming machine. As to the OP building rigs for people his customers must be a little clueless as if I saw a cheap case full of flashing bling but packed with low-mid end hardware I would not even credit the seller with the time of day.

TLDR - Gaming machines focus on getting the best FPS you can

If this thread is about flashing e-peens, rather than discussing how a gaming machine should be built, as my sig says

INTEL - i5 3570K | GTX670 | Gbyte Z77X-UD3H | 16GB Corsair Vengence LP 1600MHz | 120GB OCZ Agility 3 | x2 1TB HDD's | CM212 EVO Push/Pull

AMD - Phenom II X6 1600T | X2 GTX 550ti SLi | Gbyte 990XA-UD3 | 16GB DDR3 | 120GB OCZ Agility 3 | x2 500GB HDD's |

GTX670 was originally in the AMD when I built the Intel I tossed in 2 old 550ti's I had about the place in the AMD.

CPU's cost me

AMD - £90 (a while ago)
Intel - £160

GPU's

670 - £275
550ti's - One cost me £85 way back, the other was free after upgrading a clients machine.

The Intel lives in a HAF X (£120) with alot of lighting (Around £70-ish), the AMD was relegated to a Xigmatek Pantheon

Don't see much need to list the prices of every other part

 

[joeh_87]

£59 for your cpu was a very good price joeh_87.I hope you like gaming on your machine as much as i do mine. I think the 7850 is awesome and price is always a deciding factor for me and i guess many others without unlimited funds.

SteveH3671 the 6850 is still a solid card and it's what i had before my 7850. I've sold it to a friend who had a Nvidia 8800gs 384mb (also an old one of mine) and he's enjoying deus ex human revolution at max on directx 11 and he's enjoying it a lot.
Low, mid and high end cards are a matter of perspective for most of us.

I do i was surprised at how much of a performance gain I got from going from an Athlon II X4 640 3ghz(bought 2 years ago for more than the Phenom >_<) to the Phenom II x4 965, Esp in BF3/WoW

After i upgraded my 5770 to 7850 I was disappointed at my overall GPU usage in games so as soon as OCUK had the this week only offer on the Phenom i took it right a way

and yes Quaddro ofc when you compare it to those cards. they are both Dual GPu's ofc a 7850 will not compete and price factor to count IF i had £1000 to spare on ONE part I would, but then I would have to force myself to buy a 120hz monitor to take advantage of the 100+fps i'd be getting lol, It's an expensive hobby sometimes we have to draw the line at what we can spend!

 

[jaguarskx]

Not much of a hardcore gamer. I spend moneyt where I see fit. I generally buy a more power CPU compared to a GPU since I encode videos a little more often than I play games. So when Haswell comes out I will likely buy an i5 "k" model, and I just might continue to use my Radeon HD 5850.

In terms of the most money I have ever spent on components....

NEC LCD2690WUXi 25.5" LCD monitor = $1,300
Planar PX2611w 25.5" LCD monitor = $800
Silverstone crown cw02 HTPC case = $375
Intel Q9450 = $340
Radeon HD 5850 = $280

 

[jay2577]

The Radeon HD 5850 is still a very respectable card jaguarskx and i bet you can play at high detail settings on most games. That's a LOT of money on monitors.

I know you think i spent money on cosmetics rather than power wr6133 but my old case was broken and the fans do a job(only led because they were cheap) and the fan controller was something i needed to quiet the fans down because sometimes i leave it on downloading while i sleep. The SSD is something i wish i had gotten sooner because of total war shogun 2 loading times so i won't regret that. You do have a nice system with your 3750k and your nvidia 670 gtx. I bet you can max out any game with it

 

[mohit9206]

yours is a solid build OP. should last you a good while. i too made myself a budget gaming pc recently and it serves me perfectly so far. my budget was low so had to cut corners.
pentium G630
hd7750
H61 mobo gigabyte
8gb ddr3 1333mhz
coolermaster 350 watts
a generic brand case
runs all my games smoothly at 1440*900.
and i dont consider the 7750 as a low end card either. its a solid card at upto 1600*900 res with near max settings.
for a low budget pc i dont consider buying an ssd, or custom cpu cooler, fancy keyboard/mouse , fancy mobo ,overkill psu etc as essential.
just stick to the basics