Wanting to build a badass gaming pc any pointers?

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drew666

Member
I have a $550 budget and i have a 2 tb external hard drive an the cd/dvd burner... what should i buy to b able to play skyrim, sims 3, and star wars the old republic?
 
Is your external HDD one where you cal pull the drive and use it as internal? If not, you are going to be really limited in gaming with it because of the wait time. (assuming you are not using eSATA or USB3, maybe Firewire 800).

Also, do you have an operating system, monitor, keyboard and mouse? And speakers or headphones to use (same 1/8" that you use on everything else)? If not, you simply are not going to be gaming at all on the system.
 
I have a westing house 2 tb usb3 external harddrive, i also have the mouse, keyboard, windows 7 ultamate and a 26 inch flatscreen hp 1080p monitor.... i was wanting pointers on a new case, cpu, mobo, internal hard drive, graphics card, and assorted fans really
 
Total: $525 excluding shipping and a 92mm exhaust fan (I'd recommend a Fractal Design 92mm, but the PSU is designed to be the exhaust)

This is what I would build with your budget. Should be a quiet, capable and compact PC.

I know the case is cheap, but I am currently using it with an Intel Q6600 overclocked to 3GHz, an AMD HD 6870 and a normal (non-modular) Corsair CX500 in a secondary PC.
The case is quite small, but cleverly engineered. It's designed in a way that saves a lot of room, without being an inconvenience.
 
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Definitely go for the 7850 if you can afford it.

Also, if you can afford it, get the AMD FX-4300 and an AM3+ board. It's a quad-core which is pretty cheap but has good performance and is a great overclocker. I'd choose it over the Pentium.
 
daisymtc said:
Personally would get Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H for the same price.
With HDD, since OP already has external HDD, he probably can get away with 120GB SSD.
Kingston RAM seems slightly expensive...
Also, it may worth spending extra to go for 7850 if he can afford slightly more.
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I have nothing against Gigabyte, but I don't have much experience with them (although the few I've had were great). I have, however, a lot of experience with ASUS (pretty much always use them) and have never recieved DOA mobos. That said, the Gigabyte board is just as good.
I actually have 15x GA-G31M-S2L and 15x Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 that all still works to this day. But that's about it.
I have several PCs. The one I use atm uses the exact HDD I recommended. I also have an external 1TB HDD, but I wouldn't store any games on it. I'm not sure how well it would work with USB3 (Mine's USB2), but I wouldn't recommend it anyway. And 120GB is not enough for games too, not if you ask me at least. Have a 240GB SSD RAID array in another PC, wouldn't fit my games.
I started out aiming for the 7850, but it was like $50 more if I recall correctly (did the build before work, now I'm home and tired) and it would blow the budget.
Also, I just prefer Kingston RAM tbh. Never had any problems with them, still have DDR1 HyperX modules that work. Samsung makes good RAM too, though.

spirit said:
Definitely go for the 7850 if you can afford it.

Also, if you can afford it, get the AMD FX-4300 and an AM3+ board. It's a quad-core which is pretty cheap but has good performance and is a great overclocker. I'd choose it over the Pentium.
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I agree with you, spirit. But the FX-4300 costs $130, $50 more than the Pentium. So you would have to buy a motherboard for $25-50 if you weren't going to blow the budget.
 
You could try and get an older AMD Phenom II X4 for cheap I guess (not sure how much they cost these days), but the Pentium should be OK anyway.
 
I did some testing, and the Celeron G540 (2.5GHz) is just as good as a Core 2 Duo E7200 overclocked to 3.2GHz, and they are not bad. They are very good at price/performance.
 
The Phenom II x4 would be fine until you get into games that really need a lot of CPU power. I had one at 3.8 till I noticed a bottleneck in BF3.

If you can get a PII x4 and an AM3+ board or the Celeron G540 and a board that would compliment a unlocked Sandy/Ivy CPU later that would be best. I understand this is a tight budget.

If there is a Microcenter nearby they have all of the FX series on sale. They either have $50 off the motherboard or it's free with CPU purchase.
 
Barebones kits from Tiger Direct are good if you're just building a basic machine. However for a gaming machine they're generally a bad idea as the cases are cheap at best. PSU's unreliable at best for gaming cards, and generally just low end.
 
salvage-this said:
If there is a Microcenter nearby they have all of the FX series on sale. They either have $50 off the motherboard or it's free with CPU purchase.
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If Microcenter is doable:
FX 6300 + free board
2x4GB RAM
$65 for 64GB SSD or hdd and use the external as an external. If you can put the external in the case, you could get a better board and use discs for backup till you can get another drive.
$60 for ps.
OD.
$40-50 for case.
Leaves enough for 7850.
 
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