Good budgetish gaming rig?

Hey guys, I have been looking seriously into building my own gaming rig and moving my gaming over to that from my SXPS and was wondering what your thoughts on this build are. I have been through it with multiple people and have done research and spent countless hours trying to figure out what the best pieces for my needs are and after many trials and errors this is what I have come up with. RAM and an HDD are discluded as I already have those components.



Will this run games maxed now and into the future or am I better off going with a different graphics card?

Thanks!

 

----> Desktop Review

 

I'm aware of that website I just know that people here frequent both and or have knowledge of either.

 

My comments before this thread is closed (desktop question). Great and inexpensive configuration. Smart move on a good quality power supply. With AM3 it gives you expansion options down the road. Except your motherboard says "AM2/AM2+" and your CPU says AM3.

 

AM3 is backwards compatible with AM2 and AM2+

 

So you can use an AM2 CPU with an AM3 motherboard or an AM3 CPU with an AM2 motherboard or both? If that's the case, then Intel could use a lesson or two.

 

Only the processor is backwards compatible so AM3 to an AM2 or AM2+ motherboard not the other way around.

 

Are you forgetting an OS or do you have an extra copy of windows lying around?

 

Microsoft would like to know the answer to this, too.

 

Seemed obvious enough to me.

 

I like your pick of the processor.

I would go with a much smaller PSU though. For a single card and a dual core, 500W will more than suffice. Mainly, you want 25-30A on the 12V rail.

 

Honestly, I'd recommend that you go for a Phenom II 940 or something. It's going to be much better for when in future a lot of applications will use a quad core. But I like your pick of the GPU. Absolute bargain at the moment.

DesktopReview is the forum to go to if you are talking about desktops.

 

Forget DTR, sorry but it really is kind of useless..

Good choices, but as said the PS may be a bit of overkill, I know my system maxed out uses 250ish watts, 150 of that coming from the i7, so you shouldn't use anything near that.

The PS is important though, I urge you to try and get a Corsair PS, theirs are top notch. Just get one with a lower total load and you will be set.

 

Alright I'm currently looking at other PSU's, as advised from another forum I will be paying the extra $10 for the AMD Phenom II X3 720 Triple Core CPU.

 

Meh, you'll get faster overclocks with the X2 550 vs the X3 720. A extra core may well be nice, but considering your needs, I'd save your $10 and go with a faster clock speed.

 

For the money, AMD is the way to go (unless you're looking to spend $120+ on a Core2Duo and the premium for a motherboard to go with it) in that price range, as is AMD/ATI for the videocard. The 4870 is an excellent card.

The one thing I'd suggest taking a look at, and potentially saving you some cash would be the Power Supply. PC Power and Cooling, while not as good as they once were, are still an incredible solution and can be had for a bit less than that Thermaltake PSU. With the money you save, maybe you can be bumped into GTX 260/275 territory?

 

Also, in terms of CPU cores - more and more games are making use of 3-4 cores, versus 2, and in some cases (Supreme Commander being the most obvious) you'll actually find yourself wishing you had more cores. If you intend to keep the system (and not upgrade the CPU for a year or two) I'd strongly suggest considering a processor with more than two cores. You'll probably end up regretting it if you don't.

Just consider yourself lucky - 1k unit pricing for quads for us laptop users starts at about $650 for a 2.2Ghz Core2Quad, if I recall. Talk about barrier to entry!

 

Graphics cards will still be the prominent bottleneck for the most common resolutions for the forseeable future. I see more cores providing a negligible difference in the next two years.

+1 for the Corsair HX520W

 

Faster cores definately are, today, the better idea versus more cores, but at the same time we're entering that area where more cores are being used. Look at Supreme Commander, a game largely considered to have been ahead of it's time and "the game of tomorrow" if you will - if you have anything less than dual core it's unplayable, and unless you have a very highly clocked dual core the game literally slows itself down as the action ramps up, making tri or quad core essentially necessary to enjoy that game.

If you don't play Supreme Commander, or other RTS games or if you simply can't see yourself playing brand-new games then I agree that dual core is the way to go.

If you want longevity then I'm going to have to say that you really kinda want more cores.

 

Supreme commander is one of the few games that benefit from multiple cores. But the simple fact is games will always be GPU heavy, CPU MultiThread light.

Cases like Supreme Commander are the exception rather than the norm.