- Sep 24, 2012
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I've only become a member recently, but I've been watching the forums for many months now and I often see people looking to build a computer with a set budget. I've been thinking about starting up a daily recommendation project so that instead of people having to address everything on a thread by thread basis, maybe we can knock off many of the threads and instead have recommendations already available at a variety of budget points for a variety of uses for people to look at. Sure, some people might still need their own thread because we can't really account for everything, but I figured that maybe doing something like this might be more helpful. It might take a while, but this project might catch on and a lot of people would be able to come to one of these threads instead of make their own and possibly take several hours or even several days and weeks to get their builds ready in other threads with many forum goers helping them along.
Basically, I thought that I might try to make a more or less one-stop thread for people looking to make new builds, but are unsure about what components to go with. Well, whether it succeeds or fails, here it is. Any suggestions for changes within any builds here and the way in which these system building threads of mine are organized would be greatly appreciated. http://pcpartpicker.com plays a huge role in this, but my methodology was also influenced by an active Tom's member with the screen name Why_Me because his or her style seemed quite effective, especially given the amount of information given out by it and the responses of several OPs from threads that Why_Me has participated in.
Before I start, since pcpartpicker accounts for mail-in rebates and shipping, I felt that unlike the Tom's SBMs, I should include these, especially given that this is intended to be a daily-updated recommendation list where changes in deals and such should be accounted for often enough with different recommendations when the old ones lose a promo of some sort and their prices raise beyond the budgets.
This is how I'll organize each part recommendation:
Part type (CPU, graphics, motherboard, you get the point)
Model (with a little caption about this model in parenthesis)
Price (including MIRs, shipping, and promo codes) and the online retailer that is selling it at this price
pcpartpicker link to unit
Information about why this part is recommended for the job and some relevant strengths/weaknesses of the part.
All right then, I'll start my build recommendations for the $500 gaming budget (not including operating system, monitor, nor other peripherals).
$500 gaming build with AMD CPU
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ijMG
CPU
AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition (quad-core @3.2GHz, 125W)
$84.99 with HARDOCPX919B promo code at Newegg
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-hdz955fbgmbox
A good quad-core CPU at stock that can be used to play pretty much any game in most situations. Overclocking can improve performance significantly enough to get a strong lead over the Intel LGA 1155 i3s, but it generally won't be able to match the Intel LGA 1155 i5s in gaming performance even when they're at stock. The CPU/NB frequency can also be overclocked and this with CPU frequency overclocking might let it catch some of the Intel LGA 1155 i5s when they're not overclocked. It is much more power hungry than Intel's models, but the price is difficult to argue with and with overclocking, it can put the much more power-efficient i3s and Pentiums to shame in performance even if not in power efficiency.
CPU cooler
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (76.8 CFM, Sleeve Bearing, single 120mm fan)
$19.99 at NCIX US
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rrb10212pg1
This is one of the best bang for your buck CPU coolers available. It offers decent cooling for moderate overclocking at a very low price. It's also not too loud and has support for adding a second 120mm fan for even better cooling in a push/pull configuration.
Motherboard
ASRock 770iCafe ATX (AM3, 140W CPU support)
$54.99 plus $7.56 shipping at Newegg
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-770icafe
I'd prefer a better, newer board, but this board has the necessities and a price that's better than it should be for such a board as this. It doesn't have SATA 6Gb/s, but that's not overly important and it does have DDR3-1600 support for four modules totaling 16GiB of RAM in dual-channel, GbE support, six SATA 3Gb/s ports with RAID 0/1/10/JBOD support, decent overclocking support for such a cheap board, and really, it should do the job nicely. It also supports AM3+ FX and Opteron CPUs, although the BIOS that it ships with might not be up-to-date enough (BIOS version P1.90 supports the retail FX Bulldozer CPUs and BIOS version P2.0 includes support for Bulldozer OEM AM3+ FX CPUs and AM3+ Opteron CPUs), so it has decent future-proofing too so long as SATA 6Gb/s and USB3.0 aren't deal-breakers for you.
System RAM
Mushkin Silverline 996946 (2x2GiB, DDR3-1600, CAS9, 1.5V, low-profile heat spreaders)
$20.99 at NCIX US
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/mushkin-memory-996946
4GiB of dual-channel DDR3-1600 Cas9 memory with low-profile heat spreaders that keep the RAM ICs decently cooled without blocking large CPU coolers such as the Hyper 212 Plus. Mushkin is a good brand and the price is good. 4GiB should be plenty for a $500 gaming build, although it would probably greatly hinder multi-tasking during gaming.
Storage
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB WD5000AAKX (7.2KRPM, 16MiB cache, 3.5")
$60.96 at NCIX US
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd5000aakx
Every computer needs a hard drive and Western Digital makes some of the fastest and most reliable consumer hard drives available today. Caviar Blue is Western Digital's mainstream 7.2KRPM family and this $500 model is a good example of that. This model provides enough capacity, decent performance for a hard drive, decent reliability, and a price that is very difficult to beat without sacrificing on quality.
Graphics card(s)
Asus Radeon HD7850-DC2-2GD5 (PCIe 3.0, DX11, 870MHz GPU/1210MHz VRAM)
$177.99 after MIR at Newegg
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-hd7850dc22gd5
The Radeon 7850 has excellent 1080p gaming performance at stock and is also one of the most overclocking-friendly graphics cards available with 35-45% overclocks on the GPU and 20-30% overclocks on the memory being extremely common. This particular model is one of the best from Asus and comes with an excellent cooler, although its factory overclock is very minor. With overclocking, this card can handle even 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 very well in even most of the most intensive of today's games.
Computer Case
Apex Vortex 3620 (ATX Mid Tower, two 120mm fans, top-mounted PSU)
$34.99 at Super Biiz
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/apex-case-vortex3620
This case is easily worth almost twice this price. With both a 120mm intake fan and a 120mm rear exhaust fan, cooling is pretty much covered for a lower end build such as this while having room to grow. Some people might complain about having a case that still mounts the PSU on the top instead of the bottom, but really, this is about building a budget build, not a high-end build where the larger budget can support such luxuries. This case will be a case for a moderate CPU and a moderate graphics card; it's easily more than enough for this.
Power Supply Unit
Corsair Builder CX430 V2 CMPSU-430CXV2 (430W, +12V 28amps, 80 PLUS Certified)
$24.99 after MIR at Newegg
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-power-supply-cmpsu430cxv2
This power supply should be plenty for this build even if you overclock the CPU and graphics card well. It's 80+ Certified, so it's fairly efficient at 20% to 80% load, but it's not nearly a record breaker for efficiency. Corsair is one of the most reliable brands for PSUs and this unit does the job at the right price.
Optical Disk Drive
Lite-On iHAS124-04 (DVD/CD writer and reader)
$15.99 at SuperBiiz
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/lite-on-optical-drive-ihas124-04
Well, it's the cheapest optical disk drive that pcpartpicker could find, so it is the optical disk drive that I chose for this build. A lot of people don't use these anymore, so maybe you don't want one and not using it will drop this build's price below $490.
Later on, I'll extend it to have two recommendations per budget, one with Intel CPU and one with AMD CPU. At this budget, AMD is the superior choice, so I started off this project with an AMD CPU-based build at this budget. I'll reach for other budgets and more variety in the recommended builds per budget as I move forward with this. If anyone has anything to add, change, or other recommendations for this build or the project as a whole, then please feel free to say something. Given that deals/promotions can have short time periods, this build might shoot over $500 within even the next few days, so it'll be outdated pretty quickly, but I'll try to update this daily. I'm not sure if I should make a new thread each time or edit this thread each day. I'm leaning towards the latter. Any opinions on this would also be appreciated.
I won't be able to respond until tomorrow morning because I'm going to sleep right now, but I'll try to address any and all responses without missing any tomorrow.
Basically, I thought that I might try to make a more or less one-stop thread for people looking to make new builds, but are unsure about what components to go with. Well, whether it succeeds or fails, here it is. Any suggestions for changes within any builds here and the way in which these system building threads of mine are organized would be greatly appreciated. http://pcpartpicker.com plays a huge role in this, but my methodology was also influenced by an active Tom's member with the screen name Why_Me because his or her style seemed quite effective, especially given the amount of information given out by it and the responses of several OPs from threads that Why_Me has participated in.
Before I start, since pcpartpicker accounts for mail-in rebates and shipping, I felt that unlike the Tom's SBMs, I should include these, especially given that this is intended to be a daily-updated recommendation list where changes in deals and such should be accounted for often enough with different recommendations when the old ones lose a promo of some sort and their prices raise beyond the budgets.
This is how I'll organize each part recommendation:
Part type (CPU, graphics, motherboard, you get the point)
Model (with a little caption about this model in parenthesis)
Price (including MIRs, shipping, and promo codes) and the online retailer that is selling it at this price
pcpartpicker link to unit
Information about why this part is recommended for the job and some relevant strengths/weaknesses of the part.
All right then, I'll start my build recommendations for the $500 gaming budget (not including operating system, monitor, nor other peripherals).
$500 gaming build with AMD CPU
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ijMG
CPU
AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition (quad-core @3.2GHz, 125W)
$84.99 with HARDOCPX919B promo code at Newegg
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-hdz955fbgmbox
A good quad-core CPU at stock that can be used to play pretty much any game in most situations. Overclocking can improve performance significantly enough to get a strong lead over the Intel LGA 1155 i3s, but it generally won't be able to match the Intel LGA 1155 i5s in gaming performance even when they're at stock. The CPU/NB frequency can also be overclocked and this with CPU frequency overclocking might let it catch some of the Intel LGA 1155 i5s when they're not overclocked. It is much more power hungry than Intel's models, but the price is difficult to argue with and with overclocking, it can put the much more power-efficient i3s and Pentiums to shame in performance even if not in power efficiency.
CPU cooler
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (76.8 CFM, Sleeve Bearing, single 120mm fan)
$19.99 at NCIX US
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rrb10212pg1
This is one of the best bang for your buck CPU coolers available. It offers decent cooling for moderate overclocking at a very low price. It's also not too loud and has support for adding a second 120mm fan for even better cooling in a push/pull configuration.
Motherboard
ASRock 770iCafe ATX (AM3, 140W CPU support)
$54.99 plus $7.56 shipping at Newegg
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-770icafe
I'd prefer a better, newer board, but this board has the necessities and a price that's better than it should be for such a board as this. It doesn't have SATA 6Gb/s, but that's not overly important and it does have DDR3-1600 support for four modules totaling 16GiB of RAM in dual-channel, GbE support, six SATA 3Gb/s ports with RAID 0/1/10/JBOD support, decent overclocking support for such a cheap board, and really, it should do the job nicely. It also supports AM3+ FX and Opteron CPUs, although the BIOS that it ships with might not be up-to-date enough (BIOS version P1.90 supports the retail FX Bulldozer CPUs and BIOS version P2.0 includes support for Bulldozer OEM AM3+ FX CPUs and AM3+ Opteron CPUs), so it has decent future-proofing too so long as SATA 6Gb/s and USB3.0 aren't deal-breakers for you.
System RAM
Mushkin Silverline 996946 (2x2GiB, DDR3-1600, CAS9, 1.5V, low-profile heat spreaders)
$20.99 at NCIX US
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/mushkin-memory-996946
4GiB of dual-channel DDR3-1600 Cas9 memory with low-profile heat spreaders that keep the RAM ICs decently cooled without blocking large CPU coolers such as the Hyper 212 Plus. Mushkin is a good brand and the price is good. 4GiB should be plenty for a $500 gaming build, although it would probably greatly hinder multi-tasking during gaming.
Storage
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB WD5000AAKX (7.2KRPM, 16MiB cache, 3.5")
$60.96 at NCIX US
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd5000aakx
Every computer needs a hard drive and Western Digital makes some of the fastest and most reliable consumer hard drives available today. Caviar Blue is Western Digital's mainstream 7.2KRPM family and this $500 model is a good example of that. This model provides enough capacity, decent performance for a hard drive, decent reliability, and a price that is very difficult to beat without sacrificing on quality.
Graphics card(s)
Asus Radeon HD7850-DC2-2GD5 (PCIe 3.0, DX11, 870MHz GPU/1210MHz VRAM)
$177.99 after MIR at Newegg
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-hd7850dc22gd5
The Radeon 7850 has excellent 1080p gaming performance at stock and is also one of the most overclocking-friendly graphics cards available with 35-45% overclocks on the GPU and 20-30% overclocks on the memory being extremely common. This particular model is one of the best from Asus and comes with an excellent cooler, although its factory overclock is very minor. With overclocking, this card can handle even 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 very well in even most of the most intensive of today's games.
Computer Case
Apex Vortex 3620 (ATX Mid Tower, two 120mm fans, top-mounted PSU)
$34.99 at Super Biiz
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/apex-case-vortex3620
This case is easily worth almost twice this price. With both a 120mm intake fan and a 120mm rear exhaust fan, cooling is pretty much covered for a lower end build such as this while having room to grow. Some people might complain about having a case that still mounts the PSU on the top instead of the bottom, but really, this is about building a budget build, not a high-end build where the larger budget can support such luxuries. This case will be a case for a moderate CPU and a moderate graphics card; it's easily more than enough for this.
Power Supply Unit
Corsair Builder CX430 V2 CMPSU-430CXV2 (430W, +12V 28amps, 80 PLUS Certified)
$24.99 after MIR at Newegg
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-power-supply-cmpsu430cxv2
This power supply should be plenty for this build even if you overclock the CPU and graphics card well. It's 80+ Certified, so it's fairly efficient at 20% to 80% load, but it's not nearly a record breaker for efficiency. Corsair is one of the most reliable brands for PSUs and this unit does the job at the right price.
Optical Disk Drive
Lite-On iHAS124-04 (DVD/CD writer and reader)
$15.99 at SuperBiiz
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/lite-on-optical-drive-ihas124-04
Well, it's the cheapest optical disk drive that pcpartpicker could find, so it is the optical disk drive that I chose for this build. A lot of people don't use these anymore, so maybe you don't want one and not using it will drop this build's price below $490.
Later on, I'll extend it to have two recommendations per budget, one with Intel CPU and one with AMD CPU. At this budget, AMD is the superior choice, so I started off this project with an AMD CPU-based build at this budget. I'll reach for other budgets and more variety in the recommended builds per budget as I move forward with this. If anyone has anything to add, change, or other recommendations for this build or the project as a whole, then please feel free to say something. Given that deals/promotions can have short time periods, this build might shoot over $500 within even the next few days, so it'll be outdated pretty quickly, but I'll try to update this daily. I'm not sure if I should make a new thread each time or edit this thread each day. I'm leaning towards the latter. Any opinions on this would also be appreciated.
I won't be able to respond until tomorrow morning because I'm going to sleep right now, but I'll try to address any and all responses without missing any tomorrow.
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