Sorry for the length of this post, but I broke it up so that a quick skim could suffice. I wanted to make everything as clear as possible though so that my purpose was understood.
EDIT: A piece-by-piece construction over the next month+ would work. If there are any parts that are a steal to buy right now I want to get them, if there are any pre-built PC's that are a steal, the same. But otherwise I can wait a bit for some better prices on certain parts.
Info/What I want:
I've spent the last two days perusing forum after forum and countless webpages in the attempt to get the best deal possible during this Black Friday (and possibly Cyber Monday) sale period.
After becoming repeatedly frusterated at the plethora of computer parts available, I decided that it was time to ask directly for help.
I have a laptop, but want to take advantage of the sales right now to go for a desktop that has longevity; future-proofing is a must, thus being able to upgrade individual parts is what swayed me.
I would like to game. When I have a few hours downtime and want to take a break from dorm-mates I'd like to be able to sit down and play games like Portal 2, Assassin's Creed Rev., Metro 2033, and Skyrim at high settings (1080p if possible as well), and wish for something that 3-4 years down the road can 720p most games at high or medium/high (assuming that it's possible...). Metro 2033 is kind of the benchmark I'm looking at, as it's quite intensive graphically. Online gaming will not happen, so silky-smooth 60 FPS will only be a cherry on the cake; 30-40 FPS is fine for me, so long as it can be expected from the more intense games.
I've mainly been using Tom's Hardware forums and this: http://gamingrig.blogspot.com/ website for reference.
The Build:
Processor: The i5-2500k seems to be heavily recommended right now, so I figured I would want to build a PC around it. Overclocking is not something that I want to do, but I've seen it recommended to go with an overclockable processor as a hedge against becoming outdated, giving the option to overclock later even if I do not plan to do so now.
If there's another chip I should consider, I'm all ears. But, this seems to be the popular choice right now. Unfortunately it's sold out on newegg, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072 . And that was quite the price.
Graphics Card: The HD 6950 and GTX 560 Ti seem to be highly recommended, but I'm wondering if I could get away with a slightly older and cheaper card. This is one of the reasons I felt it wise to ask on a forum, as I'm quite the PC noob when it comes to how they physically work, and so if there's a great deal to be had with an older card, hell yes. Also, those two cards come in an abundance of models by different manufacturers, and I haven't the slightest clue as to whose I should pick.
RAM: Dual-Channeling is popular, and seems to give great performance. The 8Gb (4Gb x2) 1600MHz Corsair Vengeance are massively cheap right now on Amazon, at $56 http://preview.tinyurl.com/bsr8qeu . I've read a lot about matching RAM speed to motherboard, and how the processor speed can be different, and blah-blah-blah, but I'm still confused, so help would be greatly appreciated. This though, seems to be a good choice, but again, that's purely based off of the "Bang for Buck" blog recommendation.
Motherboard: Good god, this is where everything became much too tough to deal with. I was literally up until 5AM last night (or rather, today) trying to find the "right" motherboard to match the above parts, parts which I'm not even 100% sure about. I am so lost on this one. I'm assuming that if I can get all the other parts finalized, then I could get a really solid recommendation for a motherboard that would best fit the build, but I on my own simply cannot figure it out.
Hard Drive: 7200 RPM, looking for 1Tb if possible. Is RAID worth it?
Disk Drives: Cheap and Generic.
Operating System: I have a spare copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.
Power Unit: Another thing that I'm quite unsure of. I just need a solid recommendation that fits my prospective build.
Case: I just looked on Amazon, and the case that I was looking at, http://preview.tinyurl.com/c8oqhl4 , now lost its $60 buck price point. Damn. The reviews were good, it looked decent, and the cooling was said to be great (very important to me as I've had my last computer burn out due to poor ventilation, and do not want to ever repeat that mistake). But, any case that is cheapish, sturdy, and has good cooling would do.
Additional Cooling: http://preview.tinyurl.com/7y4agph was recommended on the blog. I'm not sure if I need it with a case with good cooling, but I'm hoping that members of this forum could help on that.
Additional Protection: Aside from a surge protector, is there anything else I should be looking for?
That seems to be it...
Final Thoughts:
The wildly changing deals have been rather distressing, as good deals fall of the map on a daily basis, making me regret the careful consideration that I've been trying to employ. I would very much like to have a better idea of which PC components to get with the help of this forum, but I would also like to hear what everything thinks about waiting a bit for the prices to fall.
Prices of course will always drop, so no matter what waiting for an additional 6 months would have saved a person some coin. What got me though was all the great deals going on now, like the $200 i5-2500k processor that I missed out on, and I felt like buying now would have cost as much as buying in a few months. Maybe I'm wrong on this; probably. Are there any future sales or cheap time-frames that I should know about? Is Cyber Monday going to offer anywhere near the same deals as Black Friday? And granted, the BF sales were only decent.
If the consensus is for me to wait a few months, are there any parts that are so cheap right now that they're worth buying. The Corsair RAM seems extremely cheap, but again, I'm a layman when it comes to PC components.
Also, I was looking at http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/ and some of their deals look extremely good, perhaps even cheaper than buying individual components. Has anyone found some great pre-built Desktop deals that I could still get in on? Naturally, my inclination is for the cheaper route of putting one together, but some companies can lower their prices due to bulk, so if they can beat the price...
Finally, thank you to anyone who reads and responds. This is quite the investment, and I have the funds to do it, but I want to be sure I'm optimizing everything and getting the best price/performance ratio possible while still sticking around the $900 range.
Your help is instrumental to this, and I greatly appreciate any and all feedback.
EDIT: A piece-by-piece construction over the next month+ would work. If there are any parts that are a steal to buy right now I want to get them, if there are any pre-built PC's that are a steal, the same. But otherwise I can wait a bit for some better prices on certain parts.
Info/What I want:
I've spent the last two days perusing forum after forum and countless webpages in the attempt to get the best deal possible during this Black Friday (and possibly Cyber Monday) sale period.
After becoming repeatedly frusterated at the plethora of computer parts available, I decided that it was time to ask directly for help.
I have a laptop, but want to take advantage of the sales right now to go for a desktop that has longevity; future-proofing is a must, thus being able to upgrade individual parts is what swayed me.
I would like to game. When I have a few hours downtime and want to take a break from dorm-mates I'd like to be able to sit down and play games like Portal 2, Assassin's Creed Rev., Metro 2033, and Skyrim at high settings (1080p if possible as well), and wish for something that 3-4 years down the road can 720p most games at high or medium/high (assuming that it's possible...). Metro 2033 is kind of the benchmark I'm looking at, as it's quite intensive graphically. Online gaming will not happen, so silky-smooth 60 FPS will only be a cherry on the cake; 30-40 FPS is fine for me, so long as it can be expected from the more intense games.
I've mainly been using Tom's Hardware forums and this: http://gamingrig.blogspot.com/ website for reference.
The Build:
Processor: The i5-2500k seems to be heavily recommended right now, so I figured I would want to build a PC around it. Overclocking is not something that I want to do, but I've seen it recommended to go with an overclockable processor as a hedge against becoming outdated, giving the option to overclock later even if I do not plan to do so now.
If there's another chip I should consider, I'm all ears. But, this seems to be the popular choice right now. Unfortunately it's sold out on newegg, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072 . And that was quite the price.
Graphics Card: The HD 6950 and GTX 560 Ti seem to be highly recommended, but I'm wondering if I could get away with a slightly older and cheaper card. This is one of the reasons I felt it wise to ask on a forum, as I'm quite the PC noob when it comes to how they physically work, and so if there's a great deal to be had with an older card, hell yes. Also, those two cards come in an abundance of models by different manufacturers, and I haven't the slightest clue as to whose I should pick.
RAM: Dual-Channeling is popular, and seems to give great performance. The 8Gb (4Gb x2) 1600MHz Corsair Vengeance are massively cheap right now on Amazon, at $56 http://preview.tinyurl.com/bsr8qeu . I've read a lot about matching RAM speed to motherboard, and how the processor speed can be different, and blah-blah-blah, but I'm still confused, so help would be greatly appreciated. This though, seems to be a good choice, but again, that's purely based off of the "Bang for Buck" blog recommendation.
Motherboard: Good god, this is where everything became much too tough to deal with. I was literally up until 5AM last night (or rather, today) trying to find the "right" motherboard to match the above parts, parts which I'm not even 100% sure about. I am so lost on this one. I'm assuming that if I can get all the other parts finalized, then I could get a really solid recommendation for a motherboard that would best fit the build, but I on my own simply cannot figure it out.
Hard Drive: 7200 RPM, looking for 1Tb if possible. Is RAID worth it?
Disk Drives: Cheap and Generic.
Operating System: I have a spare copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.
Power Unit: Another thing that I'm quite unsure of. I just need a solid recommendation that fits my prospective build.
Case: I just looked on Amazon, and the case that I was looking at, http://preview.tinyurl.com/c8oqhl4 , now lost its $60 buck price point. Damn. The reviews were good, it looked decent, and the cooling was said to be great (very important to me as I've had my last computer burn out due to poor ventilation, and do not want to ever repeat that mistake). But, any case that is cheapish, sturdy, and has good cooling would do.
Additional Cooling: http://preview.tinyurl.com/7y4agph was recommended on the blog. I'm not sure if I need it with a case with good cooling, but I'm hoping that members of this forum could help on that.
Additional Protection: Aside from a surge protector, is there anything else I should be looking for?
That seems to be it...
Final Thoughts:
The wildly changing deals have been rather distressing, as good deals fall of the map on a daily basis, making me regret the careful consideration that I've been trying to employ. I would very much like to have a better idea of which PC components to get with the help of this forum, but I would also like to hear what everything thinks about waiting a bit for the prices to fall.
Prices of course will always drop, so no matter what waiting for an additional 6 months would have saved a person some coin. What got me though was all the great deals going on now, like the $200 i5-2500k processor that I missed out on, and I felt like buying now would have cost as much as buying in a few months. Maybe I'm wrong on this; probably. Are there any future sales or cheap time-frames that I should know about? Is Cyber Monday going to offer anywhere near the same deals as Black Friday? And granted, the BF sales were only decent.
If the consensus is for me to wait a few months, are there any parts that are so cheap right now that they're worth buying. The Corsair RAM seems extremely cheap, but again, I'm a layman when it comes to PC components.
Also, I was looking at http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/ and some of their deals look extremely good, perhaps even cheaper than buying individual components. Has anyone found some great pre-built Desktop deals that I could still get in on? Naturally, my inclination is for the cheaper route of putting one together, but some companies can lower their prices due to bulk, so if they can beat the price...
Finally, thank you to anyone who reads and responds. This is quite the investment, and I have the funds to do it, but I want to be sure I'm optimizing everything and getting the best price/performance ratio possible while still sticking around the $900 range.
Your help is instrumental to this, and I greatly appreciate any and all feedback.
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