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Zeppelin5083
 Advanced Member
Joined: 6/08/10
“Suits are full of joy. They're the sartorial equivalent of a baby's smile.” |
I'm a bit foggy on the new hardware out there, and was wondering what your opinion was!
If you had a budget for $2500 to build your own computer, what parts would you go for and why? I want to keep updated because I may need to at least upgrade mine in the near future.
Thanks!
Edit: I only need a computer. My monitor/keyboard/mouse/speakers is all good! |
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10/05/11 10:05:04 AM#2
This time around I didnt build my latest comp so I took the advice of a friend and went to this site to have it built. Though you may not want to buy through them at lest it will give you a good idea whats out there and for price ranges. hope this helps! http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/
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10/05/11 2:06:47 PM#3
As far as computers go these days, $2500 is close to unlimited budget, at least if you are discounting peripherals and monitors. The performance difference between a box that costs about $1500 and $2500 will be minor to say the least. Now if you throw in a good monitor and peripherals, then $2500 starts to become less unlimited and starts to actually force you to make some decisions. As far as the box goes, with equipment out right now, my ideal would be Heatsink - I do my own custom liquid cooling here using mostly Koolance parts as a hobby. If I were going air cooling I'd probably look at a Noctua vertical heat pipe model, or maybe even a Corsair H series (H80 or so). Asus P67 WS Revolution motherboard - I like Asus and have had good luck with them, which is the only reason I chose the brand to be honest. The WS Revolution has dual x16 bandwidth slots should I want to SLI/CF later on (although I do not plan to, and on a more limited budget would probably go with a less expensive motherboard and forego that option). It's also a decent over clocker without much effort. Corsair AX750 or Seasonic X750 - basically the same power supply (the AX750 is actually a Seasonic X-760, but I couldn't find any listed on Newegg). Modular, good regulation, good build quality - a bit pricey. Large enough to run pretty well any CPU and GPU together with moderately aggressive over clocks, but not so big as to affect efficiency. Won't SLI/CF the bigger cards though. Crucial M4 128G SSD - I like SSDs. I like Crucial. 128G is enough for OS and whatever games I happen to be playing at the time. OCZ Vertex 3 is a alternate consideration here as well. 1T WD Caviar Black - Just something big and moderately fast for a data drive. Black edition because money isn't a huge object here, and anything running off this drive will still perform pretty well. ATI 6970 - I have one of these currently, it performs very well. I am running a reference Sapphire with a water block, but even stock it wasn't bad at all. An nVidia 570GTX would be nearly equivalent, but a 580GTX can perform better under some games (although lately many games seem to be seeing roughly equal performance between the 6970 and 580 rather than the 570). Really between these 3 cards, it's mostly a matter of availability and preference - with a $2500 budget any of them are within the price range. I still wouldn't consider SLI/CF, mostly because it's a huge pain in the ass dealing with the driver profiles and bugs/quirks. Factory over clocks and aftermarket coolers are all you are really considering with these, and both of those can be adjusted later on to suit your needs anyway. Monitor - I like 24" size myself, I think 27" is just a bit too large for me to be sitting at a desk in front of, but not everyone agrees with that. I love the Apple Display, but admit it has a lot of shortcomings when dealing with a PC. Something like a Dell U2410 (24") or U2711 (27") would work. There are other options too, I just picked a couple off the top of my head here. Kingston HyperX 8G PC1600 - I like Kingston's lifetime warranty, I like the way HyperX DIMMS look with their heatsink. PC1600 is fast enough for any over clock I would do. 8G is more than enough for gaming with. Lian Li PC9 (or equivalent), or Corsair Obsidian series case - I love Lian Li aluminum cases, but I've had my eye on the Corsairs as well for a while now. Really the only decision is to go mid or full tower - either one would work with this build, but a full tower is going to be more accessible (for things like SLI/CF, or liquid cooling options). Any old SATA DVD burner that matches the case color - don't have to be picky here. Mouse/Keyboard - I like Logitech G5 (and haven't found anything to really replace it yet that I like as much), and keyboards I'm less picky about, but really it's up to every individual to find something that feels good for him/her. Sound - I use an old Home Theatre receiver with bookshelf speakers currently on the sound card that comes on the motherboard, and that's good enough for me. If I were buying new, I'd probably stick with the Klipsch computer speakers, I think they sound pretty good, are decently priced, and I don't have any need for an external sound card, but if you were doing audio processing or are a real audiophile you may want to consider that. APC 1300-1500VA UPS with voltage regulation - because I like to protect my equipment, and I live in California where the power gets crappy. I never put together a computer build without a UPS to go with it. And that, I think, is pretty much an entire computer. Probably adds up to around $2k, but I didn't price everything out. Don't forget a good chair to sit in and a desk to put it all on - A comfortable chair and solid desk make a world of difference if you don't already have one. |
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10/05/11 3:22:21 PM#4
Wait to build your PC until the end of the year or January 2012. New harware coming out. BD looks promising and hopefully so will the 7xxx Series GPUs
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10/05/11 3:24:33 PM#5
It's awfully hard to justify $2500 on a gaming computer unless you're going for a 3+ monitor Eyefinity setup. Unless you have some special needs, you should probably be looking at about $1500 excluding peripherals. |
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10/05/11 3:29:14 PM#6
Originally posted by Quizzical I have eyefinity and will never go back. Multiple monitors is a win because if you dont like to play over the 3 monitors in eyefinity (as i usually dont) i use my middle screen for games, one screen to monitor my computers temps, clocks, volts, etc etc, and the last for whatever such as internet, music, blah blah. Very usefull to have multi monitors so you dont need to minimize and search through everything. PLUS when you get a 3 monitor mount (like i do aswell) it looks sick and you got yourself a real life battle station.
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10/05/11 3:56:30 PM#7
Sure, multiple monitors are great. But they have been for a long time, albeit not for Eyefinity. My plan is that my next computer will have 5 monitors: three 1920x1080 e-IPS DisplayPort monitors in portrait mode for a 3240x1920 combined resolution, plus two 1280x1024 monitors (which I have now) off to the sides. And also either Haswell or a 22 nm successor to Zambezi/Komodo, either Maxwell or a 20-22 nm card of whatever AMD has out then with ~4 GB of video memory, a ~240 GB SSD, a high end 80 PLUS gold power supply, ~16 GB of system memory, and other goodies. Coming in 2013 if I'm lucky, or 2014 if I'm not. Well, that is what I'd buy on a $2500 budget, which is about what I expect to spend. And when I expect to spend it, as some of those products don't exist yet, while others are still too expensive. |
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10/06/11 8:21:05 AM#8
Originally posted by Zeppelin5083 step 1. find out what parts you ACTUALLY need:D what is your existing machine? what are the make and model of the parts you have in it? if you have quality compoents in your existing machine, you may not need to replace them on the new build. for example, do you have a good monitor already? or do you need a new/better monitor? it's unlikely you'll need an optical drive unless you are upgrading to blueray for some reason. if you have a half way decent hard drive right now, then you can use that as storage and just pick up a SSD as your OS/game drive. etc... there are alot of things you may or may not need depending on what you are already using... if you are already using a high quality gaming mouse... no point upgrading. |
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10/06/11 8:23:46 AM#9
Check out Tom's Hardware site and look at the latest $1500.00 gaming build, always a good build for the money.
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10/06/11 8:24:32 AM#10
Originally posted by Quizzical hahahaha dont forget that extra window air conditioning unit for your computer room:D 5 monitors gets pretty warm in the summer:) |
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10/07/11 12:03:43 AM#11
I made a canvas using an AMD system. An AMD system will be cheaper to put together then an Intel setup. It comes to a total of $665. I have built a few systems using this CPU/Motherboard combo, and they work well. This is just a quick starting point to give you an idea for parts. You can find cheaper alternatives. You just have to look around at various vendors, and see what they have. Sites like Techbargins, slickdeals, and fatwallet can help find deals on parts.
CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz $130 Mobo - ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 $140 $119 after rebate Memory - G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB $30 Power Supply - Antec High Current Gamer Series HCG-750 750W $100 Hard Drive - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB $60 CD/DVD Drive - ASUS24X DVD Burner $21 Video Card - HIS H679F1GD Radeon HD 6790 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 $134 Case - COOLER MASTER Elite 430 RC-430-KWN1 $50 |
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Zeppelin5083
Advanced Member
Joined: 6/08/10
“Suits are full of joy. They're the sartorial equivalent of a baby's smile.” |
You guys are awesome! I really appreciate the help! |
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Tibbz
 Novice Member
Joined: 7/05/07
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in a group" |
10/11/11 4:25:19 PM#13
Originally posted by moranleah That is a good mainstream build, though I would opt for a 6850 over the 6790 if you can spare the extra few bucks |
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10/17/11 3:23:08 AM#14
STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA CASE + 2 FRONT USB |
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10/17/11 2:01:14 PM#15
This is what i would build if i had $2500....
Corsair 800D Full-Tower Case Sapphire 6990 GPU Corsair AX1200 PSU G.Skill RipJaws X 2133 8Gigs RAM ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 Mobo Intel i7 2600K CPU Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler Crucial M4 256Gigs SSD
~$2500 and changed shipped to my house from newegg.
Give me another +500 and make everything liquid cooled. This is COMPLETELY overkill and took me about 10minutes to make, but if i were to blow $2500 on a computer, this is what i would do... just because i could lol.
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