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FPS Gaming Build for $1250

B

benjaminbojko

Junior Member
First of all: Thanks to everyone in this forum! I've been quietly lurking around for the last few weeks and reading up to find suitable components for my first custom build in eight years. I really respect everyone's insight here and would love to get some of your opinions on what I came up with.

This is what I'm looking for:

  • Use: FPS Gaming at 1080p (mostly BF3)
  • Budget: $1250
  • Shop: Preferably all components from Newegg
  • OC: Some casual OC'ing
  • Brands: No brand preference, but would like to stick with silent components
  • When: End of February

These are the components I currently have selected (I already have peripherals and got RAM+SSD on sale ahead of time):


Total: $1195

Overall I feel fairly good about the components, but I'm not quite sure on the GPU.

I know I might be opening a can of worms with this, but (given my budget and that I want to buy soon) do you guys think the 7950 is overkill at the moment or is it an appropriate investment?

Thanks for any advice and input!
 
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Being a good lurker myself, I bet the advice will be

1) stock cooler is fine for mild OC'ing
2) Can spend half that amount on a quality PSU
3) performance bump for BF3 at that resolution probably not worth the $200 extra from a 6950.
 
grohl said:
Being a good lurker myself, I bet the advice will be

1) stock cooler is fine for mild OC'ing
2) Can spend half that amount on a quality PSU
3) performance bump for BF3 at that resolution probably not worth the $200 extra from a 6950.
Click to expand...

Good points.

1.) Do you know anything about the noise-level of the stock cooler, especially in a closed case like the Fractal R3? I mostly wanted to go for a silent setup and wouldn't mind spending the extra $35.
2.) Oops, I put the wrong price down for the PSU, it's actually $90 instead of $125.
3.) Yeah -- that's really the big question, but I do want to be able to max out on games in 2012 (looking at GTA, Bioshock, etc)
 
Hate to break it to you, but that is a long way from a silent PC. Do you mean quiet? It will be pretty quiet for a high-end gaming machine, but it won't be anywhere near silent. The parts themselves look fine, though I would personally ditch the modular PSU and get a Neo Eco 620C to save a little money.
 
Thanks for the PSU tip, glad to save some cash on equally good components. I'm not expecting this build to be completely silent, but I do want to keep it as quiet as possible with air cooling without compromising performance. Some humming in idle and more audible fan-noise while gaming is OK since I'll be using headphones. That's basically why I went for the Sapphire 7950 and the Fractal R3.
 
benjaminbojko said:
Any advice on where I should be saving, tweakboy?
Click to expand...
I think he's referring to the GPU.

You could get a HD 6950 2GB for around 250. The MSI Twin Frozr units are pretty good if you can't find the Asus one with the triple slot cooler. You can unlock the missing shaders (at least on the Asus card) and do some overclocking to get performance very near to a HD 6970, which will basically max out any games coming in 2012 at 1080p. I'm running the Asus edition of 6950 2GB at 1920x1200 without any problems.

You could save more depending on whether or not you have access to a Micro Center: 2500k is only 179.99 there (in-store only though).
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0354589
 
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benjaminbojko said:
Good points.
3.) Yeah -- that's really the big question, but I do want to be able to max out on games in 2012 (looking at GTA, Bioshock, etc)
Click to expand...

There's no guarantee that the 6950 won't do that or that the 7950 will. If you get the 6950 for $250 though, you can always spend another $250 for a second one if you feel that you need additional performance or quite often price you'd get for selling your 6950 + the $230 you saved will get you an even better performing card once you need to upgrade it.
 
Yeah that makes a lot of sense and I'm starting to second guess the 7950. I think it would really just be an emotional passion-purchase vs rationale. The last time I built a PC I got a last-gen mid-range GPU and was a little disappointed, that's why I wanted to make sure that I won't have to compromise in quality to get normal framerates.

In the end, +/- $200 does make a difference, but won't change the world for me on the long run. Crossfire is definitely not an option for me though -- I don't want to deal with any potential power, heat, noise and microstuttering issues.

Selling the 6950 and upgrading afterwards (and maybe benefit from next-gen nvidia competition price-drops?) does sound more tempting.

Bottom line: I would lean more towards the 6950 after your guys' comments.

General_Kenobi: So you'd recommend the Asus DC II over the MSI Twin Frozr II because it's unlockable? What do you think of its noise-/heat-levels? Unfortunately I don't have a MicroCenter close to me re: 2500k for $180.
 
Yeah after looking at the prices of the Asus and MSI the Sapphire sounds really good! I'll go with that and order tomorrow! Here's the build so far:


Total = $935
 
Since I'm saving on the GPU and my external 500gb drive just crashed (yay!), does anybody have suggestions for a quiet secondary internal 1TB HDD? It'll only store media so I'm not too worried about speed.
 
Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but...

I'm pretty sure all 7200rpm and lower HDD's are quiet when working properly, and I can also assume that a Fractal R3 case will have the proper mounts to keep them quiet.

One thing I can't help but think about, no matter how quiet you try to make the rest of the PC, the GPU will always be the loudest part when playing a game like BF3....

Or are you really only concerned with noise at idle/browsing and not too concerned when the system is being taxed by BF3?

I have a near-silent PC (walk in the room and you have no idea whether it's on or not), however when I play BF3 it gets LOUD (XFX HD6850) purely from the GPU's fan spinning up... I set up a custom profile in MSI Afterburner, but it's still 10x louder than the second part of my system...
 
You pretty much summed it up for me right there, GoStumpy 🙂 I'm more concerned about idle noise/when watching movies. When I start playing games I'll be wearing headphones and expecting some decent fan noise from the GPU –*no illusions here.
 
benjaminbojko said:
General_Kenobi: So you'd recommend the Asus DC II over the MSI Twin Frozr II because it's unlockable? What do you think of its noise-/heat-levels? Unfortunately I don't have a MicroCenter close to me re: 2500k for $180.
Click to expand...
I'd recommend it over the Twin Frozr II, because it's capable of cooling the card very quietly under load if you tweak the fan settings. I just pointed out that the Asus cards are unlockable because I know it for sure, I'm not sure about the other brands. That Sapphire card you picked is reportedly unlockable though.
 
benjaminbojko said:
Yeah after looking at the prices of the Asus and MSI the Sapphire sounds really good! I'll go with that and order tomorrow! Here's the build so far:


Total = $935
Click to expand...

Parts list looks good!

benjaminbojko said:
Since I'm saving on the GPU and my external 500gb drive just crashed (yay!), does anybody have suggestions for a quiet secondary internal 1TB HDD? It'll only store media so I'm not too worried about speed.
Click to expand...

Caviar Greens are fairly quiet and relatively affordable. Like GoStumpy said however, you probably shouldn't be too concerned about the HDD noise given the other components in the system. Personally, I think that it is worth it to jump to a 7200RPM drive like this single-platter Barracuda in case you want to install some games on it (which you probably will).
 
Woo, everything has been ordered! Can't wait to put everything together. Thank you guys so much for your help; gotta love this forum.
 
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