Help with gaming rig

I've got a friend that asked me for help building a gaming PC. I'll end up building it, but I'm pretty far out of the 'what's the best bang for the buck' conversation and am turning to you guys for some help.

I'm just looking to build a new PC for $1000 - $1500 range. Obviously mostly for gaming. Not worried about peripherals... I know what I want for those.

Ultimately looking for 2 HDDs (one 10k RPM with a good cache and one larger for storage (500+GB). A good chunk of RAM, and nice solid MB/GPU that's compliant with the latest DX stuff because I want to have the 64-bit Win 7. Hoping for a good sound card too, that at the very least supports 5.1 (want to have speakers running out of it as well as my headphone/mic).

In today's market, $1,000-$1,500 at newegg will get you a beast of a machine. I guess the question is how much of that do you want to spend and how beastly do you want the computer to be.
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For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.

Heres a pretty honkin' computer for $1,400. No case in that list because I don't know what his tastes are when it comes to that. It will last years. Best Graphics processor you can buy, quad-core 8 thread i7 processor. 4GB of memory. Xonar 7.1 sound card. Lotsa' goodies and a mobo with good OC'ing potential if he's into that.

Buy Me

(make sure your newegg cart is empty before clicking on that.)

PS> That IS a beast of a computer. You can spend $6-800 and get a darn good gaming computer. Its his call how much he wants to spend.
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For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.

Thanks Shinare. I appreciate the info/help.
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I7 2600K
EVGA 980ti FTW
16gigs
SSD
3x Dell U2412 Monitors

only 4GB of memory?! wth?

ATI....common man...you can do far better than that....

and i would recommend the 920 core I7 it is a hellova bang for the buck proc.....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202
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Core I7 4790K @ 4.7 Ghz
Corsair H115i AiO 280mm Water Cooler
EVGA GTX 1080 TI

At $280 it's not a bang for the buck cpu. However you can easily find the 920 for $199.99 at Microcenter or other places when they do specials. THEN it's definitely worth the money hands down.

The main problem with that build is that the mobo/cpu combo are about $20 shy of a full blown 1366 i7 build with better power.
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Failure is just success rounded down.

Here's my bid for the list of parts. Granted all I changed was the mobo/cpu/ram but you get more power for sure for the same price.

https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=15523548
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Failure is just success rounded down.

I'm not sure what mobo/cpu/ram you chose because I cant seem to get newegg to show me using that link. But, just to defend my mobo and cpu pics, it has more powerful Turbo Boost capabilities, and lower idle power consumption than the Core i7-920, AND costs almost the same and works with cheaper motherboards and memory kits. If you look at the added features of that motherboard I picked, I think you will agree that the multiple PCIe slots, beefier cooling, firewire, dual gigE, and added support for nvidia SLI all at a cheap price is hard to pass up. AND, I'm not sure how much memory LC thinks a person needs, but I'm rockin away with 4GB of RAM just fine in my gamer box. Now my workstation has more, but thats because I use VirtualBox to run multiple virtual PC's concurrently all the time.


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For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.

It came out to $80 more expensive, which would be entirely nullified if you wait to find the i7 920 at it's very regular $200 price point. It gives you much higher memory bandwidth, which is granted somewhat moot for awhile but what the 920 really shines with is it's inherent overclocking potential.

D0 or C0 stepping both hit 3.6ghz on air pretty much guaranteed even on the stock cooler being prime95 stable. Mine did 4.2ghz prime95 stable on the stock cooler for over 6 hours before I killed it and with my TRUE120 it will hit 4.5ghz.

As far as the mobo is concerned, it's an X58 board that's proven to be reliable against an 1156 board with SLI capabilities. The X58 is not a tri-SLI board but it does have the same two x16 slots, two x1 slots, an extra x4 slot which is great for RAID cards, and the same two PCI slots. So really the difference is how much headroom you want for the future which the X58 certainly has more of.
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Failure is just success rounded down.

Also take into account that the 920 supposedly can overclock like a a fat kid on cocaine....and its still a bargain considering I paid 380 for my dinky Q9550 core 2 Quad....
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Core I7 4790K @ 4.7 Ghz
Corsair H115i AiO 280mm Water Cooler
EVGA GTX 1080 TI

Shinare wrote: at newegg

you have a better suggestion?
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Core I7 4790K @ 4.7 Ghz
Corsair H115i AiO 280mm Water Cooler
EVGA GTX 1080 TI

Goahed Makemyda will sell it to you. He hates newegg. Because buying from newegg drives business away from local businesses.
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Blargle Flarg Bergah Merg

Shinare wrote: AND, I'm not sure how much memory LC thinks a person needs, but I'm rockin away with 4GB of RAM just fine in my gamer box.

LightningCrash wrote:

Shinare wrote: AND, I'm not sure how much memory LC thinks a person needs, but I'm rockin away with 4GB of RAM just fine in my gamer box.

The guy said "A good chunk of RAM", I wouldn't call 4GB a good chunk.
Of course DRAM prices have doubled lately, so I wouldn't blame someone for only getting 4GB at the moment...

Just for a reference point, here's a HTPC I mocked up for a friend of mine's entertainment center. Its a cool 'n quiet beastie that only costs $733.23 shipped and then take another -$50 in rebates (so, less than HALF the cost of that first one). Can play pretty much any PC game on it at HDTV res and play BluRays as well.

HTPC PC
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For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.

Last edited by Shinare on Wed Oct 14, 2009 12:12 pm; edited 2 times in total

Shinare wrote: I love you man.

Yah, its insane. The rumors have been around a while now that DDR2 was coming up to DDR3 price parity soon. Guess they were true.
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For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.

Shinare wrote: Yah, its insane. The rumors have been around a while now that DDR2 was coming up to DDR3 price parity soon. Guess they were true.