Buying New Gaming PC, Looking for Opinions

[Aergis]

Or you could buy mine...

[tullock]

It would certainly beat the hell out of the cyberpower ones he has been listing. Better processer, better motherboard, better video card. And without knowing what kind of ram and psu you used, i can still say with confidence that they couldnt be worse than what comes in the cyberpower ones

[Lightbeard]

Also, building a pc is not hard. Any friends that know how?

None that I know of unless they have a Batcave where they do it

[Lightbeard]

Or you could buy mine...

Was it one you built a while back?

[Aergis]

Yeah, probably a bit over a year ago. I upgraded to the new Intel Sandy Bridge when they came out early this year, and since it wouldn't fit on the AMD motherboard socket I had to get new board, and decided to switch to Nvidia for CUDA rendering etc so I ended up with a whole new computer instead of just upgrading a piece or two.

Now the other one is sitting in my garage and I always intended to do something with it but now I dunno what. I guess just sell it.

[gibborim]

I'm sure Aergis is a reputable pre-built PC seller.

[Klaudandus]

I need help too

I'm not really familiar with AMD processors, having worked all my life with Intels, up to and including i3s and i5s at work, but I want to buy/build a new rig and was thinking of this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productco ... terCombo=1

What would you favor?

[Talaii]

I need help too

I'm not really familiar with AMD processors, having worked all my life with Intels, up to and including i3s and i5s at work, but I want to buy/build a new rig and was thinking of this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productco ... terCombo=1

What would you favor?

If you're really trying to save money, getting a cheap Phenom X4 or something might be worth it. Bulldozers (FX-XXXX) are generally worse than equivalently-priced intel chips, and only really pull their weight in heavily threaded applications - ie, not games. In general, sandy bridge is amazing - very strong single-threaded performance, lower power consumption than the AMD processors, and lots of overclocking headroom if you get a 2500k or 2600k - and very reasonably priced, so it's hard to avoid recommending it.

Note that option #2 requires a video card, it won't function without one. Option #4 has integrated graphics, but don't expect to game on it. Option #3 has integrated graphics that aren't completely useless, but if you're playing a lot of games (and not on an extremely low budget) a decent discrete card is much, much better.

I would aim for either:
- i5 2300/2400, H67 motherboard, radeon 6850 (low budget) + RAM/HDD/Case/PSU
- i5 2500k, P67 or Z68 motherboard, Radeon 6950 or Geforce 560Ti (the Ti is important, there's also a plain 560 that's worse) + RAM/HDD/case/PSU (more expensive, better performance)

I had a quick look through the newegg bundles, and there's a couple of 2500k + mobo + ram/HDD/case/PSU combos (these, just add a decentish CPU cooler (Coolermaster Hyper 212+ or 212 Evo, the evo is newer and slightly better) and a video card and you're good to go.

Of course, this all assumes you are gaming - if you're not gaming, the Phenom X6s are a decent lower-end choice, though it's still hard not to recommend Sandy Bridge. Main difference is you don't need much video horsepower if you're not gaming.

[Klaudandus]

the CPU Cooler is with the assumption of overclocking, right?

And well, the only game I actually play is WoW, or I'd not be here =P

Also, I want to keep everything under $650... if it's under $600, even better.

[Talaii]

the CPU Cooler is with the assumption of overclocking, right?

And well, the only game I actually play is WoW, or I'd not be here =P

Also, I want to keep everything under $650... if it's under $600, even better.

Right. Get the cheapest phenom x4 bundle you can then, and buy the best video card you can afford. Putting wow on a SSD makes a big difference in loading times, but I doubt you can squeeze it into that budget.

[Klaudandus]

the CPU Cooler is with the assumption of overclocking, right?

And well, the only game I actually play is WoW, or I'd not be here =P

Also, I want to keep everything under $650... if it's under $600, even better.

Right. Get the cheapest phenom x4 bundle you can then, and buy the best video card you can afford. Putting wow on a SSD makes a big difference in loading times, but I doubt you can squeeze it into that budget.

Was thinking of this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBund ... mbo.759542

I have a 19" Widescreen so its not like I'm gonna be running at 1980x1080 (1400x900 max)

[Talaii]

Was thinking of this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBund ... mbo.759542

I have a 19" Widescreen so its not like I'm gonna be running at 1980x1080 (1400x900 max)

No idea how good (read: reliable) the Cougar power supplies are, we don't get them over here. It's 80+ certified at least, so it shouldn't be complete junk.

Apart from (possibly) that, it should run WoW fine at whatever - wow isn't exactly a system-intensive game now. A 6850 should actually run most games at 1920x1080 anyway, you'd just have to drop AA/AF a bit, and maybe drop some of the detail levels on the more demanding games. Since almost everything is a console port anyway, most games will just run smoothly whatever you do (or run terribly whatever you do, if it's ported badly).

[Klaudandus]

Was thinking of this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBund ... mbo.759542

I have a 19" Widescreen so its not like I'm gonna be running at 1980x1080 (1400x900 max)

No idea how good (read: reliable) the Cougar power supplies are, we don't get them over here. It's 80+ certified at least, so it shouldn't be complete junk.

Apart from (possibly) that, it should run WoW fine at whatever - wow isn't exactly a system-intensive game now. A 6850 should actually run most games at 1920x1080 anyway, you'd just have to drop AA/AF a bit, and maybe drop some of the detail levels on the more demanding games. Since almost everything is a console port anyway, most games will just run smoothly whatever you do (or run terribly whatever you do, if it's ported badly).

WoW is the only game I play on a pc, seriously... and I was about to drop money on that system until I realized the hard drive that comes bundled is a piece of shit, literally. And no, its' not the size of it, but it's reliability. It seems it either arrives DoA or dies within 60 days...

For the record, I tend to only use Samsung and Hitachis on the rigs I've built over the years. I had a fileserver that I ran for almost 7 years, and I stopped using it because the motherboard and the PSU died on me, but the hard drives are still functional. I got emergency SATA and IDE enclosures to rescue data out of hard drives and all hard drives still work to this day. In fact, I repurposed an old P3 motherboard and loaded them up and got my fileserver up and running again before just shutting it down completely due to getting a new 2TB external drive and move all the data into that instead.