March 25, 201115 yr Basically I'm trying to build a decent gaming pc on a budget of about 600-800, I don't plan on doing max resolutions or anything on this, everything will be low / midrange resolution wise. I currently have this build picked out, can you guys pick it apart and tell me what I should change or swap out for something else? Cpu/Mobo: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=59549&vpn=870A-G54%20%26%20640&manufacture=Bundle%20Deals&promoid=1302 Psu: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=30037&vpn=EA650&manufacture=Antec&promoid=1302 Dvd drive: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=46576&vpn=GH24NS50&manufacture=LG%20Electronics&promoid=1302 Ram: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=57947&vpn=F3%2D10666CL9D%2D4GBXL&manufacture=G%2ESkill&promoid=1302 Gpu: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=55194&vpn=HD583XZAFC&manufacture=XFX&promoid=1302 HD: http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=50895&vpn=WD1002FAEX&manufacture=Western%20Digital%20WD&promoid=1302 Case, I need to find one with a side panel hopefully, there current one has a side window and I would like to keep the cases similar so if you know of a nice one with a side window can you suggest it? Edit: Case: http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=54194 So this works out to $600 ish if you take away my pricing for "handling fee" If someones making me wake up early to wait for a package they can pay me for it
March 25, 201115 yr My only suggestion is an SSD as a boot drive, then another larger data drive such as the 1 TB you linked. I boot from a 60 GB SSD that holds my OS (Win7), my important production software (GIMP, Photoshop, etc.), and one or two games (Starcraft II at the moment). Everything else goes on a secondary drive, including less often used software.
March 26, 201115 yr I have to agree with Rajahal. One of the biggest "bang for the buck" things you can do on a gaming system is get the SSD. I am am running an older version one Vertex 120GB (all updated) and what a difference it does make. Just a little tweaking in Win7 and you are off to the races. Unless you want to wait a bit and try and find a deal on a Sandy Bridge combo, you look good. Might be a while before those really start to come down though. Shawn
March 26, 201115 yr imho SSD is a luxury, if you buy a small one you will be forever uninstalling and reinstalling games, if you use it for the boot and install games onto a second conventional HDD then it the performance boost for gaming is pretty negligible. 2x120gb in RAID0 isn't a bad option but still most games are coming in at 5-10gb each these days (25gb+ for World of Warcfraft!) so you are still going to run out of space fast.
March 26, 201115 yr Definately yes, using an SSD is a luxury. But, well worth the speed boost. And like you said, even with a 120GB drive, I still have to do some balancing between what I want on my SSD and what is one my other, conventional drives. One thing I do is run a RAID 0 array in conjunction with the SSD to get that balancing between performance and space needed for installs. My pagefile, temp dir and Internet Temp files are all on the RAID 0 array to also help aliviate the space crunch on the SSD drive. Until I get one of those OCZ Z-Drive's with 1TB, it will always be a back and forth battle. Shawn
March 26, 201115 yr Still probably better off spending the extra cash on something else if you are on a budget for gaming, is the point I failed to make
March 26, 201115 yr Author The thing is I'm building this for a customer who wants basically the best bang for his buck, yes a SSD will give a major improvement but you gotta look at it from how he see's it. He doesn't see the extra 10 second faster boot times, he sees the extra 20 games he'll be able to add to it, so the black drive is perfect for the job, I'm even thinking of talking him into a 2TB Black drive just cause he'll get more space out of that. I did try and do a cheap sandy bridge build but the cheapest I could do was a dual core at $830 so it wasn't really worth it
March 27, 201115 yr Ya, in that case, be better off upgrading the Video card as much as possible. Are you going 32 bit or 64 bit? If going 64, add in a bit more RAM.
March 28, 201115 yr He may not care about faster boot times, but he may care about his games loading faster...
March 28, 201115 yr I'd opt for a better gaming video card. The 5830 seems to be pretty bottom of the barrel. He may be better off with a higher-end model of the tier below like a 5770. You should check out various game benchmarks reviews before you build something that barely outdoes integrated video. If he can scrape the money, look to the next-gen models like the 6850/6870.
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