Buying a Gaming PC, First time in years

[dcaser7]

1. Used for Gaming purposes (BF3, Dota2, Natural Selection2, etc)
2. Budget of $720-800
3. Buying from Newegg.com / Microcenter (Down the street) / Amazon.com
4. Intel / ATI / nVidia
5. No Parts, building from scratch.
7. I do not plan on overclocking
8. Not 100% Sure. 1920x1080
9. I plan to purchase it during November 2012.

I also need a monitor. $100 range.
Thank you for your help.

[DominionSeraph]

So is this $820-900 including monitor?

Also, do you need an OS?

And there's no point in us getting into specifics until you're ready to buy. Come back then.

[superjim]

Check out the recent mid-range gaming build here on AT: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6229/m...buyers-guide/2

If I was building, I wouldn't stray far from that since I agree with most of it. Probably go with a full ATX Z77 board and a ~500W modular power supply. Everything else is spot-on.

[dmoney1980]

since you're near a MicroCenter, you could pick up an i5 3570k cpu and pair it up with a motherboard with a $40 discount. since you don't plan on overclocking, pick up an ASrock z77 pro 3 for for $55 with the combo discount. While you're there, take a look at their hard drive selection to see what you can find. I prefer to buy hard drives at local shops in case it's DOA, i dont need to delay my build while waiting for a replacement

So that's $225 for CPU / Motherboard

Video card- I recommend a Radeon 7850 / 7870, be on the lookout in the hot deals section here.

Power supply - same as above. look around for good deals and stick with quality brands like Corsair, Antec, XFX, Seasonic, and Silverstone. A good 450 to 500w unit should cover you. $40 - $60 depending on the deal, sometimes less if there's a rebate

RAM- Corsair, Samsung, GSkill, Kingston, and Crucial are all good brands. Pick up a 8GB kit (2x4) of DDR3 1600. Look around for deals typically at or under $39

Case- completely up to you but I wouldn't spend more than $60 on a build like this.
take a look at this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811146075

Storage- how much storage do you need? Do you have a lot of movies/ music files?

[mfenn]

Originally Posted by dmoney1980

since you're near a MicroCenter, you could pick up an i5 3570k cpu and pair it up with a motherboard with a $40 discount. since you don't plan on overclocking, pick up an ASrock z77 pro 3 for for $55 with the combo discount. While you're there, take a look at their hard drive selection to see what you can find. I prefer to buy hard drives at local shops in case it's DOA, i dont need to delay my build while waiting for a replacement

So that's $225 for CPU / Motherboard

Video card- I recommend a Radeon 7850 / 7870, be on the lookout in the hot deals section here.

Power supply - same as above. look around for good deals and stick with quality brands like Corsair, Antec, XFX, Seasonic, and Silverstone. A good 450 to 500w unit should cover you. $40 - $60 depending on the deal, sometimes less if there's a rebate

RAM- Corsair, Samsung, GSkill, Kingston, and Crucial are all good brands. Pick up a 8GB kit (2x4) of DDR3 1600. Look around for deals typically at or under $39

Case- completely up to you but I wouldn't spend more than $60 on a build like this.
take a look at this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811146075

Storage- how much storage do you need? Do you have a lot of movies/ music files?

This is a good general outline, but we need to know the answers to Dominion's first two questions. $200 either way makes a big difference at this budget.

[dcaser7]

I do need an OS. I can get Windows 7 from a neighbor or friend so that is taken care of. I believe I will be spending about $140-160 on a monitor as well.

I will definitely be using the medium build as a reference to my build, thank you for that link. I also don't have that many songs/movies which I will be downloading. Most likely will stream music/movies or use my laptop to download music.

I appreciate the help and if you have any suggestions on a monitor that would also be helpful.

[dmoney1980]

yes, you can walk in and ask a rep for the intel CPU/ motherboard combo. the core i5 3570k and the ASrock z77 extreme 4 is the best you can get for the money.

[dcaser7]

Ok. I went to cyberpowerpc.com to 'build' the computer which you and superjim's link told me about. The total came to $988. I'm guessing that cyberpower is a little over priced compared to newegg and microcenter? That also leads into my next question is they kept asking me which kind of cooling fans I wanted for the computer and for individual parts like liquid coolant items. This may be a stupid question but are the fans are built into the parts like the gfx card and other parts of the PC? Will I need to purchase any sort of fans/coolants?

EDIT: I also just went to cyberpower for fun to see the total price.

[dcaser7]

Computer:
CPU - i5 3570k cpu
Motherboard - ASrock z77 pro 3 - $225

Videocard - Radeon 7850 / 7870 - $185
CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 500W ATX12V
v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply - $39.99

Kingston HyperX XMP Blu Red Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory Model KHX16C9B1RK2/8X - $39.99 (If cheaper at Microcenter buy there or get ONLINE)

NZXT Source 210 S210-001 Black “Aluminum Brush / Plastic” ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $39.99 (ONLINE)
Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with Transfer Kit - $109

OS - ?

This is what I've come up with. Total $639 not including OS

[dmoney1980]

That's a good build

[mfenn]

Originally Posted by dmoney1980

That's a good build

Agree. Add a 1TB HDD like the one in my midrange builder's guide if you need more than 128GB of total storage.

[dcaser7]

I'm really not going to be needing 128GB, but definitely thanks for the heads up. I'm happy with this build.