~$500 FPS Build

[fcguy]

Gooooood Evening OCCrs. I've come back to the sight to seek wisdom and opinion.

 

My girlfriends Dad asked me to build him a PC that will play FPS's. Now his monitor is unfortuantly in storage in another city but it's a 22 inch-ish widescreen so take your stab at native resolution. That's all I'm starting with.

 

So my main goals were (in approximate order): Stay near $500 budget. Build something that will easily accept upgrades (especially when good deals are found in this forum's classified!). Provide the best FPS gaming experience given the aforementioned budget. Build something STABLE. Intel ... sorry but fanboy.

 

So far this is my bill of materials. Before mail in rebates I'm sitting at $576.91 in the new egg shopping cart (this includes a promo code discount AND shipping). After mail in rebates I'm down to $546.91. Below is a list of parts and some of my logic behind the choices.

 

I got my direction from this article

 

 

I chose this motherboard because it has many features that are decently new to the market and therefore might last a little longer before becoming obsolete. For example sata 6gb/s, USB 3.0, PCI-e 3.0, A second PCI-e 2.0 (although at a disappointing x4 rate) and 1155 socket that can accept plenty of great CPU offerings. It's price is in line with the budget of course. I was shooting for a board that could take two video cards in SLi should he or I ever run across a deal on two used cards that would, for the price, outperform a new or even used single card. I sorta gave up on this goal but still ended up with the half butt X16 @x4 extra slot.

 

I chose this processor, honestly, because I saw mention of it's line in the article mentioned above. It seems like it's up to the task and is a lot cheaper than moving into i3s, much less i5s. But that's the nice thing about the board. If he wants more processing power later he can go out and grab a new processor and slap it in.

 

I chose this memory for the same reasons as the processor. The reviews seem good enough and this is an area that seems safe enough to keep the budget down.

 

I chose this video card as it emulates the one in the article but is cheaper. The reviews on it seem to suggest I wont be sacrificing anything to going lower on the cost scale here.

 

I chose this power supply as it partially modular, over 500 watts, decent reviews, and good price. The LED in the fan can be turned off ... bigger plus than most people realize

 

I chose this hard drive for the reviews and size. I don't forsee him needing a lot of drive space. It was harder to find the low price, decent stats, good reviews combination in hard drives than any other category in my opinion.

 

I chose this case as it offers good reviews, a clear side for the wow factor on delivery, a bottom mount PSU to resist tip over a bit better, and a painted interior. Price was just a tad higher for what I shot for but I think it's worth the 12-17 bucks I went over for it.

 

I chose this optical drive as it has light scribe. Two bucks more than something that seemed identical but had less warranty.

 

And of course the obligatory OS. I see no need for the higher end windows 7 offerings.

 

 

Price breakdown

 

MOBO 59.99

CPU 52.99

MEM 21.99

VGA 159.99

PSU 39.99

HD 69.99

CASE 46.99

DVD 24.99

OS 99.99

 

SHIP 14.22

 

DISC -10.50

 

Cash 576.91

 

Rebates -40.00

 

Total outlay 536.91

 

 

So lets here it! Where do you think I went wrong. Heck, also tell me where I went right!

[SpikeSoprano]

All your links just go to a general new egg page so it's pretty hard to see what you want to buy.<IMG class=bbc_emoticon alt= src="http://forums.overclockersclub.com/public/style_emoticons/default/whistling.gif">

[Stonerboy779]

reckon you could spring for this 7850 instead of the 560

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150617

 

After rebate you only spend an extra $20 and come away with a much better gpu and a copy of Deus Ex

[Tjj226_Angel]

You are not going to like this, but you might really want to consider going AMD for this. If you go with an APU, you can get a low end AMD GPU to use hybrid crossfire and get good performance out of the chip AND GPU performance while keeping the cost low.

 

You could also wait for Trinity to come out and use that with hybrid graphics. The issue is that your CPU is wayyyy to underpowered to run some of the FPS titles on the market. BF3 needs 4 cores to get good performance, and I am sure that even with the GTX 560 you will have very low minimum frames per second. With the APU and especially Trinity, you will basically be able to compensate CPU performance with GPU performance.

[fcguy]

All your links just go to a general new egg page so it's pretty hard to see what you want to buy.<IMG class=bbc_emoticon alt= src="http://forums.overclockersclub.com/public/style_emoticons/default/whistling.gif">

 

The links seem to work for other posters. Not sure what is holding you up from seeing the specific items. When I get a bit more time to post I'll get together the BOM using item numbers.

 

I'm thinking I might try the Celeron first despite the comment about going AMD. If the processor is keeping FPS below 20 during maximum demand then I will have tried as best I could and inform him of a need to go i3 or i5. He's only going to be pushing one display at what it probably less than 1920x1080.

 

As for the $50 jump on the video card would it really be worth going pretty far over budget? How much would performance really increase with the CPU bottle neck? Wouldn't $50 extra be better spent on a better cpu?

 

Keep the comments coming!

[Waco]

I'd avoid the APU route - even with hybrid crossfire you aren't going to get good performance at all in games.

 

I'd probably try to dial back the GPU a little to get a low end i3 dual w/ hyperthreading or a low end quad. Might be worth looking at budget AMD boards with a Phenom 2 quad as well.

[Shurman292]

FWIW, I'm selling a GTX 470 in this thread if you would like to take a look. It would actually be a decent card to put in this system, since it would be more powerful than the 560 but cost a little less.

 

Otherwise, I think it is a good setup. I am just concerned the processor is not up to snuff, especially since BF3 uses around 50% of my quad-core i7 at 3.9 ghz.

[fcguy]

I'd avoid the APU route - even with hybrid crossfire you aren't going to get good performance at all in games.

 

I'd probably try to dial back the GPU a little to get a low end i3 dual w/ hyperthreading or a low end quad. Might be worth looking at budget AMD boards with a Phenom 2 quad as well.

 

 

Have a video card/cpu combo recommendation that would retain the same price point (or near it) for the pair?

 

Also, go Tigers!

[Waco]

Give me a bit...I'm benching for reviews tonight.

[SpikeSoprano]

The links seem to work for other posters. Not sure what is holding you up from seeing the specific items. When I get a bit more time to post I'll get together the BOM using item numbers.

 

Sorry ,your links were fine, for some reason I get redirected to new egg.ca, went on google and they were fine.

I tend to agree with other post that mabey a phenom 2 setup is the way to go. They are cheap and very fast cpus.

[Fogel]

I would start scouring the Market Place at places like this, eBay and Craig's List.

 

I don't see any way of building a PC using new parts that will meet this budget. If you could find a free copy of Windows, we could get it to work but even then it would still be a pretty weak machine for today's FPS games. I see a couple areas to cut price a bit, but the savings is too small that its not even worth mentioning. The CPU you picked is even cheaper than AMD's offerings and the motherboard you picked is mATX ...you already went bargin bin.

 

My vote is for a used PC or scrap for used parts.

[VaporX]

The ideal solution would be to build around a Core i3 with a 7850, that would give the best budget option for performance.