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Need recommendations on new gaming PC ~$800

Proprioceptive

Proprioceptive

Golden Member
My brother's laptop just crapped out on him and he's looking to replace it with a desktop. He doesn't want to spend any more than $800. He plans on doing some gaming on it, but nothing crazy hardcore. He will NOT be OCing. He'll be buying through Newegg, Amazon... whichever has better prices. He is going to need pretty much everything except a mouse and a keyboard. He wants a decent monitor about 20-24 inches. He'll be buying everything and I'm going to build it for him. I just don't have a lot of time to do the research in compatibility and what's the best bang for the buck at the moment. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

OH yeah... he doesn't really need anything more than a 1TB HD, blu-ray drive is optional unless the cost difference is really negligible. No SSD necessary. No SLI or whatever they call it nowadays. Just a single card would be fine. No huge cases. I have an Antec 100 and he says that's about as big as he wants it.

And he wants to run Windows 7. He needs to buy this.
 
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Huh, you're sort of in the middle of nowhere, so I guess you don't want to drive four hours to the Kansas City Micro Center for parts?

So, that's effectively a $600 build, plus monitor and OS. That's fairly low for a gaming computer.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($184.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D2V Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($49.79 @ Newegg)
Memory: Kingston 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.91 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 270X 2GB Vapor-X Video Card ($169.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.98 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: Acer G236HLBbd 60Hz 23.0" Monitor ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $807.59
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-05 21:03 EDT-0400

I decided to work up from my $500 build rather than work down from Mfenn's $1000 build.
 
You're awesome! And I actually live in St Louis now so I have a MicroCenter nearby. I've got a few days to finalize this, so if anyone else has any input, bring it on. Thanks again!
 
Proprioceptive said:
You're awesome! And I actually live in St Louis now so I have a MicroCenter nearby. I've got a few days to finalize this, so if anyone else has any input, bring it on. Thanks again!
Click to expand...

If you have a microcenter, use it! Also, don't get an 8-series board with a Haswell Refresh CPU. It might not work without a BIOS update.
 
You should definitely take advantage of the MC CPU + mobo combo since that's available. The i5 4690K + ASRock H97M Pro4 combo should come to $240. It doesn't really save you any money over Ken's build (actually costs $5 more), but it does get you a faster CPU and a nicer, guaranteed compatible board.
 
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