~$800 build

[DWillyEfect]

I've never built a PC before but I've watched several videos and see no reason why I can't.

Here is what I have so far:

Fractal Design Core 3000- $50
MSI R7870 Twin FROZR- $260
i3 3220 3.3GHz- $130
ASRock Extreme 4- $135(With free 8GB 1600MHz GSkill RAM at Newegg)
LEPA 650w Power Supply-$70
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner- $20
Windows 7 Home Premium OEM- $100

Comes out to about $765.

What I want out of this is a system that will play recent popular games(BF3...etc) that will be somewhat futureproof and hopefully I can add another GPU in at a later time if needed.

This is all on Newegg, but I can get the Windows 7 for $90 on Amazon, plus I could get close to $20 in gift cards from the Bing Rewards Program, I could wipe close to $30 off that price. I could also get a Topower 650w PSU for $50 on Amazon. PSU is a big concern for me, I have no idea which ones are good and which ones are awful. I really don't want to pay more than $70 for a 650w PSU though.

Any help, ideas, or insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[hunterpostit88]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/h17S

 

[DWillyEfect]

How does the 2GB 560 compare to the 7870?

 

[blazorthon]

The 7870 is about as good as 560 2GB SLI, maybe better when overclocking is considered. A single 560 2GB can't come close. If you can't fit an i5 into your budget without sacrificing your graphics capability so much, then you should go with an AMD CPU if you want faster graphics. Overclocking an AMD CPU will get you more performance than an i3 offers if you do it properly, although the higher performance at lower price comes at the sacrifice of power efficiency.

 

[blazorthon]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/h17S

There is a reason for why OCZ PSUs are not considered great. They aren't great. A PSU from Corsair, Antec, Seasonic, PCP&P, or XFX would be much better.

 

[Kamen_BG]

Hi i made a build for you.
It's priced at 799$ and it's nothing like the PC's people have built in this thread.
It does not sacrifice CPU or GPU performance.
It's build from the best bang 4 buck parts.Including the amazing OCZ EliteXStream 800 which is better than any PSU in it's price range.Or even triple it's price range.
And i don't understand the hate towards OCZ PSU's.They're just as good as the ones from Corsair or Antec.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($27.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ECS P67H2-A ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($36.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: HIS Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card ($199.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Xigmatek ASGARD PRO (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: OCZ 800W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($24.98 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS224-06 DVD/CD Writer ($18.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) ($90.63 @ Amazon)
Total: $799.53
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-09-10 00:27 EDT-0400)

 

[DWillyEfect]

The 7870 is about as good as 560 2GB SLI, maybe better when overclocking is considered. A single 560 2GB can't come close. If you can't fit an i5 into your budget without sacrificing your graphics capability so much, then you should go with an AMD CPU if you want faster graphics. Overclocking an AMD CPU will get you more performance than an i3 offers if you do it properly, although the higher performance at lower price comes at the sacrifice of power efficiency.

If I did an AMD build, I kind of want to wait for Piledriver, I have this sneaking suspicion that the A10 5800k is going to be a solid CPU.

 

[dudewitbow]

If I did an AMD build, I kind of want to wait for Piledriver, I have this sneaking suspicion that the A10 5800k is going to be a solid CPU.

, if you were going to build a pc with piledriver, you would use piledriver FX (fX-8320/8350, not the A10 Trinity)

 

[blazorthon]

If I did an AMD build, I kind of want to wait for Piledriver, I have this sneaking suspicion that the A10 5800k is going to be a solid CPU.

Like dudewitbow said, you'd be using an FX CPU that has Piledriver. The A10s don't have any L3 cache and that's a performance inhibitor for a high end CPU. Those !0s will probably be some pretty good CPUs, but they wouldn't be better than the Bulldozer and especially not the Piledriver FX CPUs.

 

[blazorthon]

Hi i made a build for you.
It's priced at 799$ and it's nothing like the PC's people have built in this thread.
It does not sacrifice CPU or GPU performance.
It's build from the best bang 4 buck parts.Including the amazing OCZ EliteXStream 800 which is better than any PSU in it's price range.Or even triple it's price range.
And i don't understand the hate towards OCZ PSU's.They're just as good as the ones from Corsair or Antec.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($27.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ECS P67H2-A ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($36.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: HIS Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card ($199.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Xigmatek ASGARD PRO (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: OCZ 800W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($24.98 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS224-06 DVD/CD Writer ($18.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) ($90.63 @ Amazon)
Total: $799.53
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-09-10 00:27 EDT-0400)

OCZ's PSUs are nowhere near as good as Antec and Corsair. They're far less reliable.

 

[jtenorj]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/h4Bb

With a little overclocking, this will make sure you don't bottleneck in current games and
allow you to upgrade to FX8350(if overall performance and price are good). You can also
add another card later for pcie v.2 x16/x8 crossfire, but it's better to just get a faster card.

SSDs have several game related benefits, one of which is loading levels faster. If you can
get onto a map faster than your opponents, it can give you and your team a competitive
edge in BF3. Since latency is at least 3ms on a desktop spinner and this ssd can do 20k
4k random read iops, it is theoretically up to 180x faster than a HDD. Of course sequential
reads are much faster on a sata 6gbps ssd like this than on an hdd as well.

Newegg customer reviews are very positive for this xfx 7870 double dissipation card. One
reviewer even runs BF3 at 3x1080p. You can of course oc while keeping cool and quiet. I
suggest you read those reviews(not too many, won't take u long). Only 9.5in long too. It
has a lifetime warranty that may include OCing and transfer on resale.

The haf 912 has front and rear 12cm fans, removable bottom and front dust filters, cable
management, 2 hdd bays(rotate or remove top bay to fit extra long video cards), lets you
install back-bracketed tower coolers w/o removing the mobo, 9.1in width supports tall
coolers, multiple options for alternate/additonal fans, hdd to ssd conversion to allow for
several extra SSDs if you want, and a movable 2.5in ssd bay to allow for longer PSUs.

This 550w xfx psu has 44A on the +12v rail(528w), 1 pcie 6+2 pin and 1 6pin, 6 molex,
9 sata, 20+4pin mobo and 8pin eps12v/4+4atx12v connectors, solid state caps, a 5yr
warranty, ball bearing fan(a little noiser than sleeve bearing but longer life) and is
recommended by jonnyguru.com(pals of hardwaresecrets.com who know how to
properly review a power supply).

The dvd burner comes with a sata cable and software since the mobo only comes with
2 sata cables and both the HDD and SSD don't include them.

Here is a page on extremetech with a preview of fx8350(note it vs i7k quads and the
phenom II x4 980BE vs i52300 in the graphs):

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/135388-amd-cpu-bonanza-trinity-desktop-prices-intels-counter-and-the-piledriver-fx-8350s-performance

View this as well(the whole article is good, as are gpu reviews there for the past year)

http://techreport.com/review/23246/inside-the-second-gaming-performance-with-today-cpus/8

This is the last page of an article on techreport comparing 99th percentile frame times in
ms to fps versus cost on current and older CPUs(note the 980BE vs the i5 655k aka socket
1155 i3 and i5 760 aka i5 2300). The 965BE is below 100 bucks and can be overclocked to
980BE levels on the stock cooler with perhaps a minor voltage bump. It should easily hit
4ghz+ on a hyper 212 cooler with a little more voltage.

Do hurry. Prices only last through today and tomorrow on the cpu and ram respectively.

Oh yeah, If you can't trust both professional reviews and newegg customer reviews
about the sad quality of ocz PSUs, who can you trust? I checked newegg customer
reviews for all of these parts, and some are recommended by major sites as well.

Edit: That 200 dollar HD7870 on newegg is out of stock and has been for days.

 

[blazorthon]

Excellent post, jtenorj. However, there is one minor disagreement with it and one worry with it that I have.

The Agility 3 has highly variable performance. It's a minor issues IMO because as an SSD, it will pretty much always be better than a hard drive, but Agility 3, being one of OCZ's SandForce SSDs, is also one of the least reliable SSDs. It shouldn't fail anyway, being the least reliable, it is still fairly reliable, but I'd go for a different model IMO. However, I can not argue with its price.

For the money, Agility 3 offers something that is often hard to come by with anything else except maybe Mushkin Chronos/Chronos Delux SSDs and the occasional sale on Vertex 3 models. However, I would much prefer an SSD with a Marvell controller (Vertex 4, Plextor, Crucial M4 although it's kinda slow for a Marvell SSD) or a Samsung SSD (Samsung 830). However, again, this is a minor issue and is depends highly on where prices are and also opinion. The 128GB Vertex 4 and Samsung 830 were at $100 last I checked (I'll check again to see if their prices have changed) and if they're still around there, I'd pay a little extra for more capacity, reliability, and performance.

The worry is the motherboard with overclocking. Keep in mind that with overclocking to Phenom II 980 and up speeds (3.7GHz to a little over 4GHz), the Phenom II CPUs have TDPs over 140W. Some cheaper AMD motherboards don't handle this well. Your choice looks like it can do the trick, but I'm not personally familiar with it and maybe it can't.

However, with that in mind, your post is still great.

The HAF 912 is one of the best cases around, especially for the price. XFX PSUs are extremely high quality and at least some of them are made by Seasonic, the company that I'm convinced is the best in the PSU business. XFX's video cards and Seagate's hard drives aren't my favorites, but they're generally good, although XFX has had a few bad cards (even recently, such as the XFX Radeon 7950 Ghost).

 

[jtenorj]

Thanks for the input on my suggestions, blazorthon. I considered a crucial M4 for the
extra8 gigs, faster iops and better reviews(write speed not that important for an ssd
that will most likely be getting data from a much slower hdd, optical drive or internet connection).

It'd put the build 15 bucks over the OP's budget of ~800, and maybe they don't wanna
spend much more than 800 total(whether before or after rebates). I'd think that if
performance out of the box is undesirable, maybe a firmware update might make for
notable improvements. The OP can drop the ssd entirely and save a lot that can be put
toward a better gpu if they want to(775 b4 rebates, 735 after. -7870, + 7950).

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/h5dI

This is the same as my previous build, but it drops both the ocz agility 3 and xfx hd7870
and adds an xfx 7950 double d. Total is 803.46 after 50 bucks worth of mail in rebates. It's a little lower cost b4 rebates and a little higher final cost after. If the xfx 7950 gets heavily
overclocked, it should beat hd7970 and game at 3x1080p on high with little trouble.

The pcpartpicker specs for 965BE are wrong. The C2 stepping 955BE and 965 BE had
140w TDPs, but current C3 stepping 965/BEs as well as 970BE, 975BE and 980BE have
a tdp of 125w. If anything, I bet 965BE runs lower than that by default. One newegg
reviewer got a 140w 965 to 3.8 stable on the stock cooler with this mobo.

Edit: my original build swapping agility 3 for m4 is 815.58 after 40 in MIRs

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/h4vu