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Anything to wait for in the next month or so?

S

Shyatic

Platinum Member
I'm waiting on my tax returns which I assume I'll have mid Feb, and from that will take ~$800-1000 to build an entirely new PC, and donate my existing i5 SB to my wife along with decent graphics card for her gaming PC (She recently got into Counterstrike!).

Am I okay to bite the bullet, or are there any upcoming processors that are worth waiting for in the next month or so? What is the current best bang for the buck in these areas, and is it likely to change in the next month?

CPU
Motherboard (I don't plan on overclocking initially, but would like the option to be there)
Water Cooler (yeah, why not?)
Graphics Card
SSD
RAM

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. Gaming
2. What YOUR budget is. $800-1000 (but happy to be less!)
3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from. - USA (newegg/amazon preferred)
5. IF YOU have a brand preference. None. Best bang for the buck.
6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are. Existing peripherals and case. Just need the innards.
7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds. Default to start, OC later on.
8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using? 1920
9. WHEN do you plan to build it? Mid February

Appreciate any guidance; it's a gaming PC and will be built as such. I have all the peripherals already. And I play Counterstrike which plays FINE on my existing PC, so I don't need a top of the line machine (hell, if I can get all of that cheaper than $800 I'm good with that!).
 
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Shyatic said:
And I play Counterstrike which plays FINE on my existing PC, so I don't need a top of the line machine
Click to expand...
What are the full specs of your existing i5 SB? Are you aiming to duplicate its performance, rather than get the best current performance in your price range?

Right now the best bang-for-buck seems to be the R9 290 or 290X. Unless it forces you into buying a more expensive power supply. Don't know when the 300-series comes out, but I doubt it's that soon.

Generally, for an $800-1000 PC, take [thread=2192841]Mfenn's build[/thread], drop the case, and potentially switch to one of the above video cards.

Oh, and a water cooler is probably pointlessly expensive unless you want to do heavy-duty overclocking. Just get a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo.
 
Ken g6 said:
Generally, for an $800-1000 PC, take [thread=2192841]Mfenn's build[/thread], drop the case, and potentially switch to one of the above video cards.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup: At the ~$1000 USD mark, you are above where the (yet to be released) GTX 960 would slot in. So I don't know of anything imminent to be concerned about.

That being said, builds these days don't need months of research. You can go from cash in hand to having a good spec with parts ordered in less than 24 hours.
 
Thanks all -- this is helpful. Any reason why the i5 would be more preferential than the i7? And yeah, I'll probably spring for a top-end video card but we'll see when the time comes. I already have a good PSU, I'll buy another for my wife's PC.
 
Shyatic said:
Thanks all -- this is helpful. Any reason why the i5 would be more preferential than the i7? And yeah, I'll probably spring for a top-end video card but we'll see when the time comes. I already have a good PSU, I'll buy another for my wife's PC.
Click to expand...

The i5 is preferred because $800-1000 is a decent budget, but it's not a "go all out budget" Saving $100 on the CPU lets you put it somewhere else that has a larger impact, specifically the GPU.
 
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