Can you shave a $100 off my build?

ballerslife

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My build is $850, and the max budget is $770. Here is my system:

CPU: Intel Core i5-3350P 3.1 GHz ($179.99)

MOBO: MSI LGA1155 Intel H77 ($81.99)

VIDEO CARD: PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 XT 2GB Video Card ($239.99)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ($47.98)

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($73.52)

CASE: Thermaltake VL80001W2Z ATX Mid Tower Case ($37.38)

POWER SUPPLY: XFX 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($74.99)

OPTICAL DRIVE: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($19.98)

MONITOR: Acer G215HVBbd 60Hz 21.5" Monitor ($99.99)

I only need a 750GB HDD.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Gt17
 
Solution
It's really hard to shave off $100 without losing too much performance. I was only able to shave off about $30. You'll probably have to grab an AMD cpu or cut down to a 7850/7870. This is all I got.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3350P 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($179.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI H77MA-G43 Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($82.55 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($69.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer...
It's really hard to shave off $100 without losing too much performance. I was only able to shave off about $30. You'll probably have to grab an AMD cpu or cut down to a 7850/7870. This is all I got.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3350P 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($179.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI H77MA-G43 Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($82.55 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($69.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($19.98 @ Outlet PC)
Monitor: Acer G215HVBbd 60Hz 21.5" Monitor ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Kingston 2x4gb RAM ($36.99)
Other: WD Cavier Blue 1tb ($67.99)
Other: PowerCooler 7870 XT ($229.99)
Total: $817.45
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-02-27 21:15 EST-0500)
 
Solution

seriousgamer

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Sep 26, 2012
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i5 3470

$149.99

http://www.microcenter.com/product/400664/Core_i5_3470_32GHz_LGA_1155_Boxed_Processor

If you want to save more, look into AMD CPU/Motherboard Combos at Microcenter.

Comparing them to Newegg, the AMD CPU+Motherboard are cheaper than the CPU alone on newegg

1tb HDD
$59.99

http://www.microcenter.com/product/400847/1TB_7,200_RPM_SATA_60Gb-s_35_Internal_Hard_Drive_DT01ACA100_-_OEM

LG Optical Drive $15.99
http://www.microcenter.com/product/407512/24x_Super_Multi_Internal_SATA_DVD%C2%B1RW_DL_Drive_-_Bare_Drive

 

seriousgamer

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If you act fast you can get this superior GHZ Edition 7870 for $229.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-125-418&nm_mc=EMC-GD022713&cm_mmc=EMC-
GD022713-_-index-_-Item-_-14-125-418

+ Bioshock and Tombraider free
 

No...The 7870 XT is the same price with a lot better performance. No 7870 can compare to it. The powercooler also comes with a bioshock and tombraider.
 

I forgot to cut down the mobo. http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-h77m This should be just as good as the msi one. Also, finding a monitor on sale at 1080p wouldn't help much, I barely see any monitors under $100 with 1080p. It'll be easier to just keep an eye on prices and if there's a good sale on a different part not listed on your build but decent enough for your build, buy it. Prices change all the time.
 

willard

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One possibility is to drop the optical drive. If you've got another computer handy and an 8GB+ flash drive, you don't really need it. I just recently added one to my computer, been without for 18 months and haven't really cared. The two times per year I need to stick a DVD in my computer, I just ripped it to an ISO first on my laptop, then image the jump drive.

You'd think this would be a huge hassle, but it's really not. In fact, installing things from a flash drive is much, much faster than doing it from a disc, maybe even after adding in the time to rip and image the flash drive. Installs can be heavy on random access, which optical media is awful at, but solid state storage like flash drives are great at, while ripping is purely sequential and optical discs really shine here.
 

seriousgamer

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I didn't want to make another thread for this but here's what I don't understand.

Flash drives are "SSD" but when I transfer files from my external hard drive - or internal hard drive onto them the transfer speed is about 10mb/s.

If they are SSDs shouldn't they transfer at much higher speeds like around 200mb/s

Thank You :)
 

willard

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Sure thing, it's simple enough to explain without derailing the thread I think.

Flash drives are "SSD"
This is the problem. They use solid state storage, and the same type that's in an SSD, but they are not SSDs. Critically, an SSD has a powerful internal controller which allows it to parallelize access across many channels, while your SD card has a single channel and couldn't do that even if it did have the controller. So, the SSD is basically the aggregate performance of a whole bunch of flash drives acting as a single storage unit. Think of it as super RAID-0 on a single drive. Side note, this is also why SSDs perform so much better when you can keep the "queue depth" deep, because then they can take advantage of this massive parallelism.

In addition, you connect an SSD via a SATA port, which allows very low latency and high bandwidth. Flash drives pretty much exclusively use USB, which is much higher latency and lower throughput. In fact, the throughput of USB 2.0 is only a piddly 35 MB/s, so even if your flash drive were as fast as an SSD, you'd be limited to 35 MB/s transfer speeds unless you connected it to a USB 3.0 port. Not sure what the bandwidth of a typical card reader for an SD card would be, but I would be surprised to see bandwidth that was even approaching an SSD, since no SD card needs that much bandwidth.