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New PC for Gaming and light office work

Z

Zerhyn

Senior member
So I have mostly taken advice from mfenn’s post and a few others asking for advice. But I am just slightly hesitant in case I am missing something. It would be nice if this computer could get me through roughly the next 4-5 years with minor tweaks. I realize toward the end things will get iffy.

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Gaming
-Skyrim, Civilization, StarCraft etc…
It would be nice to enjoy some of the neat Skyrim mods that increase the graphics of the game.

Light office work.
-Microsoft Office
-Inkscape/Adobe Illustrator (mostly small stuff)
-Lightroom
-GIMP

Copying Music CDs
-I occasionally still buy music CDs and usually just rip them to FLAC. Any CD drive better than another for this?

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread.
~$1,000

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
USA and mostly likely all from Newegg. I live in OR, so no sales tax.

4. IF YOU have a brand preference.
-Nope

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.

-An old 20 inch UltraSharp Dell Monitor and a 32 inch 1080p Samsung. I plan on getting a new monitor in the future. Just not right now. I most likely won’t go above a 24 inch but also may go for a 27 inch.
-Samsung 330 120 GB SSD
-I will buy more storage in the near future. I am looking at having an SSD as my main hard drive with two mirrored hard drives backing up my data (mostly pictures). All my actual work data is backed up in the office.
-Asus Xonar DG
- I have a copy of Windows 7.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
-I will likely attempt overclocking. But I would probably be fine at stock speeds.

8. What resolution will you be using?

MIN: 1920 x 1200
MAX: 2560 x 1440
Will the GTX 670 give me some room to play in the future? I currently have a 5 year old MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD OC (barely has DX 10 support) that appears to be treating me fairly well still.

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
-Now, or if it is better to wait a little bit, I can do that.

Here is my current plan:
Hard Drive
Samsung 830 128 GB
$0

Processor
Intel Core i5-3570K
$230

Graphics Card
GIGABYTE GV-N670OC-2GD GeForce GTX 670
$399

Motherboard
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155
$125
-I chose the more expensive version of the ASRock because I will likely utilize its greater connectivity than the ASRock Z77 Pro3.

Power Supply
Silencer Mk II 750W
$85

CD/DVD
ASUS 24X DVD Burner
$19

Case
Antec Three Hundred Two
~$55 AR

Memory
SAMSUNG 8GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
$49

Heatsink
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 EVO
$35

Thanks!

Total: ~1,034

$20 coupon to Newegg. This would be good for a webcam!
 
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Oh, anyone have any recommendations for a webcam? It doesn't have to fit within the budget. But I keep forgetting that I should get one. I would like to not have to break out my laptop every time I want to video chat.
 
Three things I'd change:

1. 120GB isn't enough disk space, I'd get a 1TB HDD for storage. Also Samsung 330 doesn't exist, do you mean Intel 330 or Samsung 830?

2. $100 is too much for a Bronze 650W unit. Silencer MK II 750W 80+ Silver for $70 AR AP. Excellent Seasonic build with 7-year warranty. Or if you prefer modularity over efficiency, OCZ ZT750W is a nice unit for $80 AR.

3. I'd also get 1600MHz RAM at that budget.
 
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lehtv said:
Three things I'd change:

1. 120GB isn't enough disk space, I'd get a 1TB HDD for storage. Also Samsung 330 doesn't exist, do you mean Intel 330 or Samsung 830?

2. $100 is too much for a Bronze 650W unit. Silencer MK II 750W 80+ Silver for $70 AR AP. Excellent Seasonic build with 7-year warranty. Or if you prefer modularity over efficiency, OCZ ZT750W is a nice unit for $80 AR.

3. I'd also get 1600MHz RAM at that budget.
Click to expand...

1. I meant Samsung 830. Thank you. I know it isn't enough. I additional hard drives right now. I'll likely grab a pair of 1 or 2 TB drives in the near future.

2. I switch out Power Supply to the Seasonic.

3. I switched out the Gskill over to the Samsung 8 GB that mfenn suggests in his post. For some reason the memory is the most confusing part of the whole building your computer process, for me that is.
 
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Oh. Newegg is having a sale on monitors. A Dell UltraSharp U2711 IPS-Panel Black 27" is $750.

Hmmm...

I have always been conflicted whether or not to go for a 24" or 27" monitor for my home desktop. I guess one of the main issues would be over time as games require more power to push them to higher resolutions. The GTX 670 won't be effective for as long using a high resolution monitor. But a lower resolution monitor could be kept up at high graphics settings as games become more demanding. Not sure if that is appropriate logic though.
 
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I would stick to 1080p on your budget. It's not a low resolution by any means, anything higher makes a limited difference in the enjoyability of a game. Generally I recommend 2560x1440 only for $2000 builds...
 
lehtv said:
I would stick to 1080p on your budget. It's not a low resolution by any means, anything higher makes a limited difference in the enjoyability of a game. Generally I recommend 2560x1440 only for $2000 builds...
Click to expand...

Thank you for being a voice of reason. It is a little too easy to get carried away.
 
While IPS panels are quite nice, they aren't really necessary for gaming monitors unless you've got excess cash to burn on a fully beefed up rig. And a single GTX 670 isn't enough for maxed out gaming at 2560x1440/1600. You need an SLI configuration of some sort for that kind of resolution (or Crossfire).
 
I like the IPS monitors because I like to do a small amount of photo editing in Lightroom. Of course, to really get the most out of the IPS panel I would also have to calibrate it. So I can stay satisfied with what I have at the moment.
 
Zerhyn said:
Oh. Newegg is having a sale on monitors. A Dell UltraSharp U2711 IPS-Panel Black 27" is $750.
Click to expand...

Someone made this suggestion to me and I scoffed at first..but I just took advantage of the NewEgg deal..can't wait. I'll post my results once it's all assembled and running.
 
I've been waiting too..I'm sure they'll restock come tomorrow or friday..amazon has it, but for $25 more.
 
the EVGA is a great card but is in the middle for GTX 670 cards...the Asus is a great alternative and is the recommended card by Maximum PC...FWIW
 
Zerhyn said:
I wonder how the EVGA GTX 670 or the EVGA GTX 670 FTW model compares.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't bother with any of the EVGA cards because they all use blower style coolers. There seems to be a bit of a run on dual-fan GTX 670's, but NCIX has the ASUS one in stock for $430.

Also, what in particular about the Z77 Extreme4 did you like over the Z77 Pro3?
 
I chose it because of the 4 x SATA 6Gb/s and the 4 x USB 3.0. I tend to get a little connect happy. So the more options I have the better.

I plan on eventually getting two SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drives and one of the SATA 6 Gb/s will be taken up by the Samsung 830 (SATAIII...same thing right?). I can't forsee using all of the USB 3.0 slots, but on my current setup I seem to be running out of USB slots in general.

The ASUS board you suggest is the GTX670-DC2-2GD5 unclocked version. The GTX670-DC2T-2GD5 overclock version seems to be overpriced and out of stock everywhere. Way too many different versions of everything.
 
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Thank you for the help everyone. I went ahead and purchased everything. The total came out to be $1081.21. Then after a $35 for promotional credit and $35 for MIR the total was $1011.21. I ended up getting the ASUS GeForce GTX 670-DC2-2GD5 on Amazon from Tiger Direct for 429.99 + $7 shipping. I probably overpaid for it but that is OK. I like the idea of a card with a little extra cooling will hopefully make it less likely to burn out over the years.

Again thank you for the advice!
 
Congrats! And once you get it a up and running and kicking ass in a game, you won't are a bit that you paid just a lil more. It's about enjoying yourself at that point.
 
Zerhyn said:
I chose it because of the 4 x SATA 6Gb/s and the 4 x USB 3.0. I tend to get a little connect happy. So the more options I have the better.

I plan on eventually getting two SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drives and one of the SATA 6 Gb/s will be taken up by the Samsung 830 (SATAIII...same thing right?). I can't forsee using all of the USB 3.0 slots, but on my current setup I seem to be running out of USB slots in general.
Click to expand...

The SSD is really the only thing that needs a SATA 6Gb/s port. The HDDs, even though they are technically SATA 6Gb/s capable, can in no way, shape, or form actually approach the limitations of SATA 3Gb/s.

As for USB 3.0, I guess my response to that is that would you really have more than 4 USB 3.0 devices (remember than the Three Hundred Two has USB 3.0 front ports, so the Pro3 can do 4 devices)? That's a lot of external hard drives or SSDs.

Anyway, it's not a big deal, I'm sure you will like the parts that you got! 🙂 Let us know how the build goes.
 
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