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$1000.00 Budget
It's been soooooooo long since I updated my computer...it's time.
I have a 1000.00 budget....with that money what kind of powerful machine can I expect to build. I would also need a new case. If you could link to parts that would be great as well.
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made - Groucho Marx
Comments
I will give it a go and link some parts for ya. This comes out to $1000.90 before $60 in mail in rebates.
case- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119196
Optical drive- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151256
GPU- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202010
PSU- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182263
Memory - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231314
Mobo- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157297
cpu- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504
OS- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986
cpu cooler- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099
SSD- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147188
total - $1000.90, then $60 MIR
That does not include a regular HDD storage drive, only the 120g SSD. IMO thats something you can add later if you even need it. Or add one now and with the rebates would still fit your $1k budget roughly.
This is assuming you can put it together yourself and wont have to pay someone to do it out of your budget.
Its worth mentioning thats an Intel I 5 build.
You could go with an AMD build and stretch that budget a bit further. A bigger SSD, a HDD included, or a better GPU, ect.
Personally I would go with the Intel build and add a HDD later or stretch the budget a bit and add one now. If you include the $60 in rebates in the budget then adding a HDD would end up costing you around $1100 ( roughly ) before the rebates and $1040 after.
Depends on how you view the rebates I suppose.
$1000 I'd center around an i5 as well. JD's build is roughly what I would pick out as well.
Thank you for this. How powerfull would you say this machine is. Do you think it could run any game now or in the near future on max settings with high frame rates?
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made - Groucho Marx
You will need a better GPU to run everything at max settings with 60fps.
The 7870 will let you run many things at max and everything on high. I have one and play TSW, GW2, FC3, BL2, heavily modded Skyrim, and others. All on High - max settings.
For full max settings in DX11 you need to grab a 7970 on the AMD side or a 670 maybe ? on nvidia. But that will double the price of your gpu. Not worth it to skimp on other stuff in a $1k build . If you had say a $1200-1300 budget then I would say get the 7970.
For $1k that will be a nice computer. If you want top of the line then up the budget a bit I would say.
The relatively weaker points on that build are a lower end motherboard (not appropriate for much of an overclock) and not very much storage capacity. But if you want to improve on either of those, you'd have to give up something else, such as by getting a lower end video card to make room in the budget. So it's all a matter of trade-offs, and that's a pretty good build if you agree with the trade-offs chosen.
You don't need a 7970
A 7950 will play everything max at 1080p likes of metro, rage, farcry 3, planetside 2, skyrim with all the hd mods etc..
I agree, or go with the 570GTX and save $30 (I prefer Nvidia over ATI though so I'm a bit biased)
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-N570GTX-TWIN-FROZR-PCI-Express/dp/B008809SUM%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJM4UVF4RQCUWVBQA%26tag%3Dcpubenchmark-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB008809SUM
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
One quick tweak: you can get exactly the same CPU and motherboard in a combo deal:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1177311
That's slower than the Radeon HD 7870 in jdnewell's build, a lot more expensive, and an old architecture that will put out a ton of heat for no good reason.
Here is that previous build just taking into consideration other vendors than newegg. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/y6DE
I prefer pcpartpicker entirely because of hot swapping options, not to mention the comparisons between vendors.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
You could probably use jimdandys suggestion and see if you can fit a storage HDD in that build on partpicker. After the rebates that will be a really decent desktop for the money.
You cant do extreme OCing on that mobo, but you should be able to get a decent overclock if thats your wish.
Something like this http://pcpartpicker.com/p/y7sD
Less than $1k after rebates, with a decent 1 tb storage drive.
For 1000$ an FX-8350 system makes sense if you are cool with overclocking and using Windows 8 instead of 7
Intel Core i5-3570K 230$
ECS X77H2-A3 v1.2 80$ +7$ This brand new ECS line looks to be very good
Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 50$
SAMSUNG DVD Burner 15$
Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W 60$
Mushkin Enhanced Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 80$
Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit (Full Version) - OEM 99$
XIGMATEK Gaia SD1283 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler 21$ Extra fan for heatsink 10$
ADATA XPG 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) 115$
MSI R7850 PE 2GD5/OC Radeon HD 7850 2GB 220$ +8
Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound 10$
Total 1005$ including shipping
Notes
No need for an expensive case, all it does is sit under a desk.
Might as well get Win8 it's rock solid now and better than Win7
The SSD JDNewell listed is slow compared to this one
Trust me it's worth 35$ for CL7 DDR3 1600.
The MSI PE is better than the Sapphire one by a fair margin.
Best way to apply Thermal grease is to assure both processor and heatsink are COMPLETELY flat with a NEW razor blade then apply a VERY thin film to both surfaces. Use 2000 grit sandpaper on a flat surface taking EXTREME care with the processor AFTER verifying that it works. At your own risk since it voids warranty.
Mix and match as you see fit though. IMO this would be a pretty nice build.
Pay attention to case and fan airflow ensuring that it works properly.
And the last bit of advice is TAKE YOUR TIME!!!
ECS has long been a cheap junk motherboard brand. You're also paying for an overclockable processor, and then getting a motherboard that will completely disable overclocking the CPU.
I'd get a better power supply than that. It's not terrible, but it's not that good, either. Actually, with a promo code, the 750 W version of the power supply jdnewell linked is cheaper than the 650 W version if you weren't going to do the rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182264
Paying $80 for 8 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 is ridiculous. Even if you did want extra high end memory for no discernable reason (the only good performance reason to get extra fast memory in a consumer system is if you're using integrated graphics), you can get much better specs for much cheaper:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231518
In addition to being $17 cheaper than what you linked, it's rated at a much higher clock speed and better latencies on three of the four timings--including a lot better on CAS latency--while only being slightly worse on row precharge. But there's no good reason for the original poster to pay $63 for 8 GB of system memory, either.
Paying $21 for a heatsink, then $10 for an extra fan for it and $10 for different thermal compound is really doing it wrong. If you want to spend $41 on a CPU heatsink and accessories, try a better base heatsink that costs around $40.
Even if you wanted to recommend a SandForce SSD rather than a Samsung one, why not a cheaper one with the same amount of NAND flash?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239045
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231613
The capacity difference is just a question of whether RAISE is enabled for reliability reasons. While I don't have hard reliability data, I do think it's revealing that few SandForce SSD vendors are offering to disable RAISE for you.
And why are you advocating paying more for a slower video card? Even an overclocked Radeon HD 7850 is going to be markedly slower than a stock Radeon HD 7870, unless you go for an enormous and not particularly safe overclock. Even if you're scared off by the poor user ratings, just pick a different 7870 for about the same price tag:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161404
yea I agree in general with ECS but their new line brings it on par with the top tier.
Read this Review of their latest 1155 offering. I had to translate since it's in Indonesian.
But in the past I would never reccomend ECS. They seem to be making a decent product. I might even switch from Asrock to ECS as my budget go to brand.
THe Xigmatek Gaia with 1 fan is a very good heatsink. Adding 1 fan for 10$ puts it on par with much more expensive ones.
Never underestimate good thermal paste. That is a top tier product that comes with enough paste for many many years.
If I raise my ram timings to CL9 it is noticably less snappy when browsing. IMO it's worth it.
The HyperX SSD is a better deal ^^ But the Gskill one is slower.
The 7850PE is actually faster than a stock 7870. and has voltage control. Look at the benchmarks with OC 7850 vs 7870. It caps the bandwidth. And for some reason the 7870's cant clock that high. I actually have this card and would reccomend it over a 7870.
I've been a long time ATI/AMD fan, but I when I see the difference in some games first-hand I must fold and admit when Nvidia performs better.
For SOME games (and mainly those I play) Nvidia cards perform MUCH better than AMD. Battlefield 3 is one of them, also War Thunder, which I currently play.
You can see the difference in this anandtech.com benchmark - here I selected AMD 7870 and Nvidia GTX 660 (which I own and I'm very happy with), but you can select many other cards and compare them before you make your purchase:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=660
NEW IDEAS that can refresh the STALE state of MMORPGs
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made - Groucho Marx
So ECS motherboards had been hit and miss--and mostly miss--for years, then you found one positive review of an ECS motherboard on some obscure site that isn't even in English. And so you recommend buying a different ECS motherboard entirely?The important thing about thermal paste is that you use it. Which particular thermal paste you use amounts to basically a rounding error in cooling performance, unless you manage to track down something that is unusually bad.
The two SSDs that I linked are basically the same thing. It's entirely possible that the biggest difference between them is the packaging they come in.
A stock Radeon HD 7870 has 20 GCN CUs clocked at 1000 MHz. The overclocked 7850 you linked has 16 GCN CUs clocked at 950 MHz. The 7850 isn't going to be competitive with a stock 7870 unless the 7870 is outright defective.
1600 MHz CAS 7 means a latency of 8.75 ns. 2133 MHz CAS 9 means a latency of 8.44 ns. Lower latency is better, of course. But you recommend paying an extra $17 for the former?
The difference you notice is probably just a placebo effect, anyway. At 1600 MHz, the difference between CAS 7 and CAS 9 is 2.5 ns, or around 5% of the latency to check system memory. If you go out of your way to create some weird corner case where you read one byte from system memory at a time scattered all over the place, never read anything from CPU cache, and are only limited by memory latency, the largest possible performance difference is about 5%. Considering that most reads are probably going to come from CPU cache and you're commonly going to read more data at once, even a difference of 1% would be rare in real-world programs.
I will just have to respectfully disagree with some of your choices. We all have different opinions and I respect yours even tho I would go a different route.The parts I suggested are what " I " would do. May not be perfect in every aspect but overall for his budget its a very solid system that will do every thing he wants it to do and more.
Personally I would go with the link I posted from pcpartpicker.com.
It includes an SSD and an HDD for just over $1k before rebates and less than $1k after.
Ultimately it is up to the OP to choose of course. I just offered my opinion and what I personally would go with.
I wish him well with whatever he chooses
Motherboards - most important bit to get right quality wise stick with good brands like gigabyte, asus and Intel.
Xigmaletec - yeah they make good coolers and stuff, one of the better mid range brands.
Gpu - if you shop around you can get 7950 for just over $300, well worth it, blows everything current games wise away and clocks like a bastard if you want to fit a cooler and step it up in a few years time (you really don't need to clock one now) best pixel per buck on the market (well except some low end gaming cards)
Cpu - you really don't need anything better than a 2500k or 6350fx, the only reason to go 3570k or a new i7 is if you have non gaming heavy cpu needs or you want more lifetime out of your (more expensive) ivy bridge motherboard
Psu - dont cut corners on this get a quality supply from likes of corsair or coolermaster. I would rather have a quality 550w supply than a cheap 750w supply.
Ram speed - really you won't see more than 1fps difference between 1866 it 1600
7870 - yeah it does clock badly for an AMD card, but you don't really need to clock it for anything this year.
Ssd - they are nice for quick boots and faster load times in some (but not all) games, but you can manage without one if you have a quality hard disk.
Most of your stuff I don't disagree with.
The difference between an i5 2500k and an i5 3570k - you make the assumption that the 2500k is a lot less expensive. It's not.
2500k: $219 US
3570k: $229 US
Why wouldn't you pay $10 extra dollars for 10-15% stock out of the box performance increase? And often times you can find the CPU slightly discounted or in a combo deal...
The fX 6300 would be the next step down:
FX 6300: $139 US
That also uses a slightly less expensive motherboard (maybe $20-$30 US on average for a feature-comparable motherboard) For a net savings of around $125 total for the system. It gives great performance on stuff that can scale to 6 cores (of which, there isn't much), but for stuff that needs per-core performance, it still suffers far behind the Intel. I wouldn't consider the 8-core, because the price versus performance isn't there (+$50-$70): the per-core performance isn't worth paying for an extra 2 cores that aren't hardly going to get used anyway, but the price/value of a 6 over the 4 is nice right now (about +$10).
Given a budget and the choice to go with either processor, I wouldn't consider the 2500k at all.
I always start with an Intel with a Z77 for my baseline choice, and try to pair it with the best GPU I can. If I can't make an i5 work with at least a 7770/650Ti level graphics card, then I consider dropping to the FX-6300, and reallocating that saved money into the graphics.
Very rarely will I drop the K-edition and go to a base CPU and H77-series motherboard, most customers don't want to overclock, but for an extra $25-$40 it's better to have the option available (a couple of years down the road) when it can give them a "free" speed boost when they need it most (and at worse just have to upgrade the heatsink to get a moderate over clock), than not have the option at all and be looking at new motherboard+new CPU as the only options availble to get some increased performance. The savings at that point is there, on a budget, but not terribly significant compared to the tradeoff.
If you could save $125 by going with a FX6300 and MB and then put that into a 7950 gpu, wouldn't that be money better spent? I have read that the 6300 is about 25% slower than the I5 on a per core basis, but is that 25% that big of a detriment? I am not saying that an I5 is not worth it, but if on a limited budget wouldn't the best GPU you can afford carry you further than the best CPU? I guess its more of a question of longevity, but it seems the cpu is becoming less of a factor in gaming. Do any of you think that anything will come along in the next few years (game wise) that will need that extra 25% of cpu power to be playable?
Just some questions that came to mind after reading through the builds in this thread. I guess it really depends on what else you do besides gaming ( modeling, video work, graphic design ect.).
An FX-6300 is slower than a Core i5-3570K on a per-core basis, but makes up for it by having more cores. Or at least, if your program scales well to six cores, it roughly matches the 3570K.
A game that needs more CPU power than four Piledriver cores would offer but doesn't scale well to six cores is a badly-coded game. So it's really just a question of whether you like to play badly-coded games. You'd certainly rather have the option than not, but it's a question of priorities.
Ah! but in my badly coded game would I be better served by an I5 and a 7870, or a FX6300 and a 7950? Would it be a wash?