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Building 2 budget gaming rigs

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Xero77

Junior Member
Hey all,
I'm looking to build 2 new gaming rigs for my wife and I - primarily to be ready for Diablo 3 when it comes out, but if I can also get her interested in WoW or some other MMO then all the bettter!

Anyway, we're looking to keep the cost down as we're not going to be hardcore gaming or using these machines for much else. My machine is old enough that the only things I'll salvage from it are the case, power supply and DVD, and she's got a laptop so no help on parts there. After looking through the Sept build guide stickied above this is what I'm considering - any thoughts on trimming costs is appreciated!

As for other details - I'm in the US (Chicago), and will be building these before the end of the year for sure. (If I can get the cost low enough I can probably get the wife to let me loose on building them sooner!) I'm not super comfortable with overclocking so I'd prefer to leave it alone, but if it'll help me get a lot more bang for my buck I'm willing to give it a try.

CPU Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor

Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-EP43-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard

RAM Mushkin 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

GPU EVGA 512-P3-N975-AR GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16

Power Supply below

Case Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply

HD Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

DVD SAMSUNG Black 22X DVD+R 22X DVD-R 16X DVD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD±R DVD Burner

CPU Cooling ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm

O/S Vista 32 Home Basic

I'm listing the case/powersupply and DVD since I'll need those of one of the two machines. Any thoughts on if/where I can trim some cost?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give!
 
If your not overclocking you can skip the CPU cooling and just get a retail cpu and use the retail box cooler.
I'd suggest a 4850 over the 9800GT (not much cost difference and a bit more bang for your buck)
this board Asus P5Q SE/R would save you a bit after rebate and I tend to prefer Asus over Gigabyte plus it has ICH10R over just ICH10
Your other choices look ok for the most part, but a budget would be helpful (ie how much per machine are you trying to spend)
 
The Radeon 4850 is a fair suggestion, though either card will serve you quite well. Overall, you made great choices. For what it's worth, the E5200 CPU does overclock quite well if you decide to stretch it in the future.

Skip the 3rd party cooler to shave another dollar, and just get the Retail Box for the CPU. The E5200 is very low-heat.
 
Sounds good, thanks for the feedback. I'll take a look at that MB and GPU. Good to know about the cooler being unneeded.

My budget is probably ~$600-650 per machine, though lower is definitely preferred as long as it'll perform reasonably well.

Also, it turns out a friend of mine has an extra 500w PSU laying around that I can have, so I need a decent, inexpensive tower. Any recommendations?
 
If you're playing mostly MMOs and not high-end FPS games, get yourself the ATI Radeon HD 4670. Check out AnandTech's review on it, it's a great and fairly inexpensive card (like $70 IIRC).
 
He said it needs to be future proof - I must disagree with skimping on the GPU! I'd hate to run any game from 2009-2010 on a cheapo.
 
Future proofing is a nonsense, especially on a low-mid budget. As mentioned above most current MMORPGs are more taxing on the CPU; look at WoW for instance. It's not "skimping" if it'll more than exceed his current needs, that's as "future proofed" as you can expect.
 
Would the 4850 need a more powerful PSU? I was looking at the Sonata case myself, I'm using an older one right now and I still love it.

 
well I'd be tempted to sneak a better GPU into my machine and go a little cheaper on my wife's... I'd love to pick up Fallout 3 for the PC instead of the 360.

I think I may put a 4670 in my wife's computer and stick with the 4850 in mine.
 
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