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Custom Gaming PC help needed

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Well, most of that build is pretty rock-bottom. 🙁 It does help that you don't plan to overclock. Given that, and that you have no SSD, there's no reason not to switch the motherboard to:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157255

Savings: $60

So much for the easy savings. If you significantly downgrade your processor...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.695608

That's about $90 more. Total savings: $150

At this point, there's not much left to attack but your video card. The cheapest 6950 I can find is $210 AR:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125385

That's about $35 more. Total savings: $185 Loss: 1 dirt-y game. 😛

If you can scrounge up a keyboard and a mouse, that ought to get you to $200. But that processor change is a big performance hit.

Alternatively:
Here's a better processor, but it costs $50 or so more than the i3 above.

And here's a GPU that costs $55 less.
 
Ken g6 said:
Well, most of that build is pretty rock-bottom. 🙁 It does help that you don't plan to overclock. Given that, and that you have no SSD, there's no reason not to switch the motherboard to:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157255

Savings: $60

So much for the easy savings. If you significantly downgrade your processor...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.695608

That's about $90 more. Total savings: $150

At this point, there's not much left to attack but your video card. The cheapest 6950 I can find is $210 AR:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125385

That's about $35 more. Total savings: $185 Loss: 1 dirt-y game. 😛

If you can scrounge up a keyboard and a mouse, that ought to get you to $200. But that processor change is a big performance hit.

Alternatively:
Here's a better processor, but it costs $50 or so more than the i3 above.

And here's a GPU that costs $55 less.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the reply.

I'm not sure I can bring myself to do most of that... but I might have to bite the bullet, I guess.

The motherboard seems doable, but I'm not sure if it's worth it, seeing as how I'm getting Windows 7 OEM, so any possibility of upgrading the motherboard down the line would require re-purchasing 7, wouldn't it?
 
afs189 said:
The motherboard seems doable, but I'm not sure if it's worth it, seeing as how I'm getting Windows 7 OEM, so any possibility of upgrading the motherboard down the line would require re-purchasing 7, wouldn't it?
Click to expand...
True. I was just thinking, what would you miss not getting a higher-end board? Then it hit me: USB 3.0!

So I did another search, and I came up with this $60 AR board.

Edit: You can overclock with this chipset too! (If you get a chip that can overclock.)
 
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Ken g6 said:
True. I was just thinking, what would you miss not getting a higher-end board? Then it hit me: USB 3.0!

So I did another search, and I came up with this $60 AR board.

Edit: You can overclock with this chipset too! (If you get a chip that can overclock.)
Click to expand...

A lot of this will help me quite a bit, but I'm again wondering about the MB.

I can't really upgrade the RAM on this one from 8 gigs, can I? Though, I'm not sure that I'll need any more than 8gb of RAM anytime soon.

And, just checking, the 2500/K will work with this one, yes?
 
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afs189 said:
A lot of this will help me quite a bit, but I'm again wondering about the MB.

I can't really upgrade the RAM on this one from 8 gigs, can I? Though, I'm not sure that I'll need any more than 8gb of RAM anytime soon.

And, just checking, the 2500/K will work with this one, yes?
Click to expand...

I agree with Ken that your choices are pretty good values as it is. If the main goal is to preserve gaming performance, I would definitely consider the i3 + H61M setup. You won't be able to upgrade beyond 8GB (without 8GB DIMMs), but honestly I don't think that that will be a problem within the CPUs useful lifetime.
 
afs189 said:
I'm slightly confused on drivers...

As I understand it, I only need drivers for the motherboard and graphics card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102945

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157251

The graphics card driver page (http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/downloads/?pid=1235&psn=0006&lid=1&os=6) seems pretty straight forward, but I'm not sure if I need all the drivers listed on the mb page (http://www.asrock.com/MB/download.asp?Model=Z68 Pro3&o=Win764)
Click to expand...

Honestly, the GPU drivers are all you really need unless there is a particular feature that you want from the mobo drivers and/or something isn't working right.
 
afs189 said:
What exactly should I expect if something doesn't work right?
Click to expand...

You should expect problems such as a particular feature, controlled by a particular driver, not working properly. E.g. RAID or integrated audio or network controller. Or you could expect instability or BSOD in which case it may or may not be due to the motherboard. If it is due to the motherboard and it is possible to fix it, it's more likely to be fixed with a BIOS update than driver update.

I agree with mfenn that in the vast majority of cases, you only need to install drivers for PCI/PCI-E expansion cards, most commonly that means video drivers.
 
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You also might want to update your SSD firmware (for example, update to version 0009 if you have a Crucial m4 SSD).
 
mfenn said:
Honestly, the GPU drivers are all you really need unless there is a particular feature that you want from the mobo drivers and/or something isn't working right.
Click to expand...


So, what exactly do I have to download from that site? (There's quite a few things. A bit confusing)
 
Here's the link to the Catalyst driver page. Just download the main Catalyst Software Suite and you should be good to go.
 
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