$500-$750 Compact, Quiet, Gaming Workstation

[ridire123]

Approximate Purchase Date: ASAP

Budget Range: $500-750 After Rebates; Before Shipping

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Primarily software development (capable of running a large IDE such as IDEA or Eclipse), R development (statistical computing, some data mining), Gaming (modern FPS, such as CoD, BF3, TF2, etc)

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: 120 GB OCZ Agility SSD (2.5"), 120 GB Generic HDD (2.5")

Do you need to buy OS: No

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Open to anything. I do have a MicroCenter in my city, so I can purchase in store deals.

Location: Denver, CO, USA

Parts Preferences: No preference, whatever is the best bang-for-the-buck

Overclocking: Maybe

SLI or Crossfire: No

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080 dual monitor setup (only using one monitor for games, though)

Additional Comments: Two most important factors to me are QUIET (this is in a bedroom) and COMPACT (the bedroom is very small). Ideally it would fit under one of a monitor riser.

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Replacing a dying laptop that was never very fast to begin with.

 

[scorpinock2]

Looked at tiger direct and made a small list to start from, only thing is that you want it in a small form factor case but that wont happen if you want gaming as most small form factors want a flex atx power supply and that will not power the components you want. Basically the list is 675 before tax and everything, lemme copy and paste the parts and take a look and see.

PARTS:

U12-41570 ::Ultra XBlaster Mid-Tower V2 Case - ATX, MicroATX, USB 2.0, Audio, 6x 3.5" Bays, 4x 5.25" Bays, 7x PCI Slots, Lifetime Warranty with Registration(11.5 lbs)

C283-2086 ::Cooler Master RS700-PCAAE3-US eXtreme Power Plus 700-Watt Power Supply - ATX, 700W, 120mm Fan(3.45 lbs)

YYD2-01GP31464KR ::EVGA 01G-P3-1464-KR GeForce GTX 560 SE 1GB Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0 x16, 192-bit, Dual DVI, Mini HDMI, DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1(2 lbs)

YYS2-4584859 ::Kingston KHX1600C9D3B1K2/4GX HyperX Blu Desktop Memory Kit - 4GB PC3-12800 (2 x 2GB), DDR3-1600MHz, 9-9-9-27 CAS Latency(0.25 lbs)

S23-1092 ::SilenX Effizio EFZ-100HA1 CPU Cooler - Multi-Socket, 100mm Fan, 2000RPM, 8~24 dBA, Aluminum & Copper(1.55 lbs)

L12-1312 OEM ::Lite-On IHAS124-04 Internal DVD Writer - DVD+R 24X, DVD-R 24X, DVD+RW 8X, DVD-RW 6X, DVD+R DL 8X, SATA (OEM)(1.55 lbs)

69-2500K ::Intel Core i5-2500K BX80623I52500 Unlocked Processor - Quad Core, 6MB L3 Cache, 1MB L2 Cache, 3.30 GHz (3.70 GHz Max Turbo), Socket H2 (LGA1155), 95W, Fan, Retail(0.9 lbs)

M452-8426 ::MSI H77MA-G43 Intel 7 Series Motherboard - Micro ATX, Socket H2 (LGA1155), Intel H77 Express, 1600MHz DDR3, SATA III (6Gb/s), RAID, 8-CH Audio, Gigabit LAN, USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0, SLI/CrossFireX Ready(2.3 lbs)

Look up all those parts and see how they are (remember to exclude the weight when part searching.

 

[jmsellars1]

Here's something that will be tiny and extremely quiet. Won't blow you away in performance terms but if you don't mind medium settings etc. it should be OK.

AMD A10-5700
2x4GB Corsair Vengeance LP 1600Mhz
ASRock FM2A75M-ITX
(Storage devices you have already)
COOLER MASTER GeminII M4
Antec ISK300-150

You're looking at around $400 for that. You could also add a single slot low profile HD 6670 to improve performance further. The PSU should just about handle it.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1038499163