Girl gamer building a gaming pc. HELP ME!

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jaqie

Platinum Member
Apr 6, 2008
2,471
1
0
check out the ocz agility 3, really stable and the IOPS are insanely good for the price. Great boot drive.
 

Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
2,650
4
81
I suggested to someone yesterday with a similar budget to make some minor mods to mfenn's midrange build:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2192841

If you cut the SSD, and swap the 7970 for a 7870 LE, that gets you from 1k USD to 760 USD. The 7870 LE should be great for gaming at 1920x1080.

That said, sleepingforest's build gets you the somewhat more powerful 7950 which comes bundled with games that you def wanted. For your budget, I think sleepingforest's build looks solid.
 

val4281

Junior Member
Apr 25, 2013
13
0
0
Must be proven with pics :)

I'll go with what others are saying. IMO you should get an i5 and a 7850. If you want to upgrade the gpu in a year, that's much easier than the mobo & cpu. If you want something in between, then you could look for the 7870 LE, which is more like a gimped 7950 than a 7870.

I just looked at your resolution. Unless you have a 120Hz monitor, then an overclocked 7850 is probably a good match for that. Then, when the next round of video cards come out, you can upgrade if you want. A 7850 is pretty much guaranteed to hit 1050 MHz on the core, which should put it on par with 7870 performance.

Edit: If I say "7870" I mean the 7870 GHz edition (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202024)

I don't plan on upgrading for at least 5 years or so, I don't play very often so I doubt I'll keep the system up to date
 
Nov 26, 2005
15,189
401
126
I think you could build a nice 2500K system for around that money. But hardcore would be 120Hz monitor, cherry MX switches, 1000hz polling mouse, etc.
 

val4281

Junior Member
Apr 25, 2013
13
0
0
alright so i have read through a lot of these and have come up with another build of sorts:

AMD FX-6300 FX-Series Six-Core Processor Edition, Black AM3 FD6300WMHKBOX: $135.34 (although I am debating on whether or not i should pick the i5 3570K instead)

GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard: $80

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLS2KIT4G3D1609DS1S00: $57.99

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 3.5" SATA3 Desktop Hard Drive: $69.98

PowerColor AX7850 2GBD5-DH Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card: $154.99
(or I might go on the HD 7950)

Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus - Mid Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 and X-Dock (RC-431P-KWN2): $39.99

and for a psu i don't know how many watts i might need
 

jaqie

Platinum Member
Apr 6, 2008
2,471
1
0
alright so i have read through a lot of these and have come up with another build of sorts:

AMD FX-6300 FX-Series Six-Core Processor Edition, Black AM3 FD6300WMHKBOX: $135.34 (although I am debating on whether or not i should pick the i5 3570K instead)

GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard: $80

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLS2KIT4G3D1609DS1S00: $57.99

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 3.5" SATA3 Desktop Hard Drive: $69.98

PowerColor AX7850 2GBD5-DH Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card: $154.99
(or I might go on the HD 7950)

Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus - Mid Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 and X-Dock (RC-431P-KWN2): $39.99

and for a psu i don't know how many watts i might need

that looks good mostly but you really need to get a good psu, the cheap ones can and often do fry equipment and give horrible errors which are impossible to track down. jonnyguru and many other sites online can give you a database of the good ones, but suffice it to say that there are a few brands you can definitely trust. Check out the power supplies section of this forum for more info.

As I said before you really should consider an i5. that 6 core cpu isn't a full 6 core, it's really more of a 3 full core and 3 half-core, and the difference is noticeable in some apps and games. No AMD cpu is as many fully functional cores as it says, they are all half. The thing they are all missing is half of their floating point processing units. People argue all day and night about this, but the short of it is that amd's cpus aren't as fully functional per core as they were before the fx series, and that is something to consider when deciding on a CPU. I personally upgraded into all new parts for my main pc with the 990fxa mobo you had chosen, and a 6 core thuban, the last amd cpu to have full cores for all of them, this was two years ago I upgraded.
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
5
71
www.mfenn.com
As I said before you really should consider an i5. that 6 core cpu isn't a full 6 core, it's really more of a 3 full core and 3 half-core, and the difference is noticeable in some apps and games. No AMD cpu is as many fully functional cores as it says, they are all half. The thing they are all missing is half of their floating point processing units. People argue all day and night about this, but the short of it is that amd's cpus aren't as fully functional per core as they were before the fx series, and that is something to consider when deciding on a CPU. I personally upgraded into all new parts for my main pc with the 990fxa mobo you had chosen, and a 6 core thuban, the last amd cpu to have full cores for all of them, this was two years ago I upgraded.

Good point that most people don't realize. Go go marketing!
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
5
71
www.mfenn.com
alright so i have read through a lot of these and have come up with another build of sorts:

AMD FX-6300 FX-Series Six-Core Processor Edition, Black AM3 FD6300WMHKBOX: $135.34 (although I am debating on whether or not i should pick the i5 3570K instead)

GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard: $80

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLS2KIT4G3D1609DS1S00: $57.99

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 3.5" SATA3 Desktop Hard Drive: $69.98

PowerColor AX7850 2GBD5-DH Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card: $154.99
(or I might go on the HD 7950)

Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus - Mid Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 and X-Dock (RC-431P-KWN2): $39.99

and for a psu i don't know how many watts i might need

A reasonable 500W PSU like the CX500 is plenty for a 7950.
 

Sleepingforest

Platinum Member
Nov 18, 2012
2,375
0
76
I have a Seagate barracuda 500gb with 16mb cache and it is slow and my boot time is crud

Have you tried defrag and ensuring your frequently used programs and OS are on the earlier partitions? Have you tried disabling some of the programs that boot with the OS?
 

mnewsham

Lifer
Oct 2, 2010
14,539
428
136
I have a Seagate barracuda 500gb with 16mb cache and it is slow and my boot time is crud

5400rpm 7200rpm? PATA, SATA? Model number (to determine how many platters it is).

All of these can be hardware factors, let alone that you may be inadvertently be using a wrong setting or not defragging or something similar.
 

mj79

Member
Apr 26, 2013
49
0
0
alright so i have read through a lot of these and have come up with another build of sorts:

AMD FX-6300 FX-Series Six-Core Processor Edition, Black AM3 FD6300WMHKBOX: $135.34 (although I am debating on whether or not i should pick the i5 3570K instead)

GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard: $80

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLS2KIT4G3D1609DS1S00: $57.99

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 3.5" SATA3 Desktop Hard Drive: $69.98

PowerColor AX7850 2GBD5-DH Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card: $154.99
(or I might go on the HD 7950)


Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus - Mid Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 and X-Dock (RC-431P-KWN2): $39.99

and for a psu i don't know how many watts i might need



Im pretty green to all this, But I just thought Id mention, I was looking at those 3 cards 7850, 7870, and 7950 and the 7850 was least impressive on all the reviews and benches Ive seen , and was told its worth the extra $40 or so to just go with the 7870


ON that note, is there any noticeable difference between the 256bit memory bus on the 7870 and the 356 on the 7950 for just everyday usage?
 

mnewsham

Lifer
Oct 2, 2010
14,539
428
136
ON that note, is there any noticeable difference between the 256bit memory bus on the 7870 and the 356 on the 7950 for just everyday usage?

if by every day usage you mean desktop usage like web browsing, movies, some music. Then no, you wont notice a difference. If however you are talking about gaming then yes, there will be a good FPS increase.
 

mj79

Member
Apr 26, 2013
49
0
0
if by every day usage you mean desktop usage like web browsing, movies, some music. Then no, you wont notice a difference. If however you are talking about gaming then yes, there will be a good FPS increase.

Got it, Thanks!