Hardware only.

If you had a $1,000.00, plus or minus, what desktop would you build?

1.  Use it mostly for games and surfing.  Mostly games.

2.  Prefer value over big cost with small performance increase.

3.  Reasonable stability, not afraid to overclock.

4.  Already have storage hard drives, could go for SSD if in budget and SSD has reasonable history of not failing.

5.  No rebates, unless it's something like $100 dollars for one item.

6.  Prefer Newegg.

7.  Prefer smallish case.

Thanks for helpin me out!  Hope you have much fun in picking the parts as I do in building.  Also, please make comments if you think with the current prices, 1k is not a good price point, or maybe I'll get much better value going lower with less performance.

I have not access to reply at work, so thanks in advance.

Do you need new peripherals (monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, surge protector), or do you already have them from a previous computer?

And I'd assume that you need a new OS license, too, since you can't legally reuse that from an old computer.  Or do you have the academic discount version or some such?

Don't know if this helps you considering you're at work but

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.867712

IS a nice combo deal for today only, i understand the PSU is good and the Case is good at the $60-70 price tag from some video reviews.

I assume the psu would be efficient considering the you have a 1k budget. I'll add a build someone else helped me put together in a bit.

Originally posted by Aori

Don't know if this helps you considering you're at work but

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.867712

IS a nice combo deal for today only, i understand the PSU is good and the Case is good at the $60-70 price tag from some video reviews.

I assume the psu would be efficient considering the you have a 1k budget. I'll add a build someone else helped me put together in a bit.

That's a nice find.  If the original poster sees this before the shell shocker deal is over (currently it's $105 for the combo deal), I'd grab it and then fill in the rest of the build around it later.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Do you need new peripherals (monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, surge protector), or do you already have them from a previous computer?

And I'd assume that you need a new OS license, too, since you can't legally reuse that from an old computer.  Or do you have the academic discount version or some such?

I'm still on XP I bought retail...I can't reuse that?

No peripherals needed.

And thanks, I'll look into the combo.

EDIT:  Just ordered the combo.  Only concerns are that the PSU has a single rail, and if I remember back, dual rails provide more stable power...and i figure on my budget I can get a decent video card...is 550w good enough.

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Originally posted by bansan

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Originally posted by Quizzical
Do you need new peripherals (monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, surge protector), or do you already have them from a previous computer?
And I'd assume that you need a new OS license, too, since you can't legally reuse that from an old computer.  Or do you have the academic discount version or some such?

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I'm still on XP I bought retail...I can't reuse that?
No peripherals needed.
And thanks, I'll look into the combo.

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If it's the full retail (of any Windows version), yes it can be reused; however, you should consider upgrading to Win7, or even just downloading the Public Preview of Win8 (for free, at least until it releases officially).

OEM editions (and if it came pre-installed on a computer, it's an 99% certain to be an OEM) cannot be reused, and "Upgrade" editions are bound by the license that they upgraded from. Vista can only be reused once, all other Windows full retails have no limitations (hence why you don't want to use an Upgrade license from a Vista source).

Not a bad combo, you can buy the case seperately and a much much bigger power supply for the same price. If you are not a tech or do not know a good tech, do not use oem versions of any OS. They are a one time use and do not come with any support at all from windows, thats what makes them oem. The builder is the support, I use oem a lot when building for people (thats the real money maker -) )

All prices including shipping and before rebates:

Case/power supply combo deal from above:  $105

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.867712&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-RSSDailyDeals-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=4176333&SID=1g448mg8z8s43

Processor:  $205 after promo code

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072

Motherboard:  $128 before a $20 rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128488

Suitable for a moderate overclock (loosely, 4.2 GHz or whatever you can get at stock voltage, whichever is greater), but if you want to go for 5 GHz and see if you can fry something, I'd get a motherboard with more power delivery components.

Memory:  $45

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231544

SSD:  $125

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226236

Processor cooler:  $30

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065

Optical drive:  $18

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136236

Operating system:  $100

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986

Because you do want Windows 7.  Or at least you should.

Video card:  or $205 with promo code before a $25 rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162074

Total:  $961 before $45 in rebates

Note that the promo code on the video card ends April 3, so you have about a day to grab it.  If you don't get it before then, then don't get it at all, as for $20 more, it's not a very good deal anymore.

There's also a promo code on the processor that ends April 4.  If you miss the promo code, then you still get the same processor, but just pay $15 more for it.

Originally posted by Fuggly

Not a bad combo, you can buy the case seperately and a much much bigger power supply for the same price. If you are not a tech or do not know a good tech, do not use oem versions of any OS. They are a one time use and do not come with any support at all from windows, thats what makes them oem. The builder is the support, I use oem a lot when building for people (thats the real money maker -) )

With the combo deal, you're effectively paying $60 for the power supply.  That's postively a steal for that high end of a power supply.  You can get a higher nominal wattage for $60, sure.  But better voltage regulation, ripple suppression, transient overshoot, quality components, and energy efficiency for $60?  Can you get better on any one of those for $60, even with a smaller wattage?  Maybe you could find something with better ripple suppression for $60, like a lower wattage unit based on the Seasonic S12II platform, but that would be worse at everything else except possibly build quality.

Originally posted by Quizzical

All prices including shipping and before rebates:

Memory:  $45

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231544

Video card:  or $205 with promo code before a $25 rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162074

Memory, what's the difference between what you picked this this : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231314

The one you linked has a customer rating of 34% in the 1 and 2s.

Video card, is that fermi?  I thought that was one of their worst, over-heating line of chips...

Don't know what the hubbub is about win7.  Does the same thing except has higher hardware requirements.

Originally posted by bansan

Originally posted by Quizzical

All prices including shipping and before rebates:

Memory:  $45

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231544

Video card:  or $205 with promo code before a $25 rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162074

Don't know what the hubbub is about win7.  Does the same thing except has higher hardware requirements.

Windows 7 allows you to utilize DX11 (assuming you have a DX11 capable GPU) and the OS is still being supported by Microsoft, unlike XP, which had support dropped a while back (if I'm not mistaken). I'd also imagine its quite a bit more secure as well.

Originally posted by bansan

Originally posted by Quizzical

All prices including shipping and before rebates:

Memory:  $45

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231544

Video card:  or $205 with promo code before a $25 rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162074

Memory, what's the difference between what you picked this this : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231314

The one you linked has a customer rating of 34% in the 1 and 2s.

Video card, is that fermi?  I thought that was one of their worst, over-heating line of chips...

Don't know what the hubbub is about win7.  Does the same thing except has higher hardware requirements.

The difference in memory is basically a different heatspreader and $2.  You should note that it's only two bad ratings out of six total, and the two bad ratings are precisely the two that come from people who didn't buy the product.  If the ratings scare you, you can buy what you linked and at worst, it's a waste of $2.

The video card is the Fermi architecture.  The horrible overheating problems weren't the entire architecture; they were just the reference GeForce GTX 470, 480, and 590 cards.  The architecture does have rather bad performance per watt, but that leaves the question of how much you should care about that.  If you get a case and power supply that can handle the extra power consumption, then it won't cause overheating of your system, but will warm up the room a bit and lead to slightly higher electricity bills.

I nearly linked this card for you instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150561

That's a little slower than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti and also cheaper, but it will use a lot less power.  Alternatively, you could try this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102986

That's a little faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti and also more expensive.  It will also use a lot less power (and less than the 6870 even), so it's nice if performance per watt is a big deal to you.  It will also push you slightly over budget.

Originally posted by bansan

Don't know what the hubbub is about win7.  Does the same thing except has higher hardware requirements.

There are a lot of little advantages to Windows 7 over XP.  For starters, when Windows XP was written, security really wasn't a priority.  The priority was finally having a consumer OS that doesn't constantly crash.  Microsoft succeeded in making it stable, but XP is far more likely to run into malware problems than Windows 7.

Windows XP was never meant for multi-core processors, so it doesn't handle them very well.  When XP launched in 2001, it was expected that the way to increase processor performance in the future would be the same as it had been for decades:  keep using a single core processor, and make that core faster.  Even if multi-core processors did eventually come, Microsoft reasonably expected that XP would be replaced by then.  So XP doesn't handle multi-core processors very well.  Microsoft didn't go back and completely redo how XP handles thread scheduling (which is very low level stuff) to accommodate processors that have released in the last few years; that's what Windows 7 is for.

Windows XP doesn't even know what an SSD is.  SSDs weren't even on the radar as a possibility when XP launched, and didn't even become a serious option until not long before Windows 7 arrived.  So XP doesn't handle SSDs properly, and you'll have to adjust some settings manually to get an SSD to work properly at all.  Windows 7 knows what to do with an SSD and will make it work much better than XP, without you having to constantly tinker with things.

Windows XP doesn't support any version of DirectX later than 9.0c.  Windows 7 supports DirectX 11, and might plausibly get upgraded to 11.1.  (Vista got upgraded to DX 11 in 2009.)  So even if you get a modern, DirectX 11 video card on an XP system, all DX 10 and 11 features will be hard-disabled in all games you play, because the OS doesn't support them.

Windows XP is 32-bit unless you got the late 64-bit professional version that hardly anyone ever used.  That means you're capped at 4 GB of memory in total, and the amount you can use for system memory will be less than that.  Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit can use 16 GB, which is plenty enough for the foreseeable future.  On the off chance that that isn't enough, the professional edition can use 192 GB.  (For comparison, I don't know of any way to get more than 64 GB of physical system memory into a single-core consumer motherboard.)

There are probably a lot of other advantages to Windows 7 that I don't know off hand, and some of them might be pretty subtle.  But if you're getting a new gaming computer today, you want Windows 7, not XP.  Or at least you should.

The higher system requirements aren't a problem for a modern gaming computer.  They were a problem for people who were trying to run Vista on a low end computer in 2007.  But the computer you're getting is drastically faster than a low end computer from 2007.

I think I will go for the ATI 7850.  I did list a +/- 1k budget.  And I am in Oregon after all, so power consumption is a factor, socially.

Think I should wait for a Kepler equivalent though?

Thanks both for the Windows 7 information.

Originally posted by bansan

I think I will go for the ATI 7850.  I did list a +/- 1k budget.  And I am in Oregon after all, so power consumption is a factor, socially.

Think I should wait for a Kepler equivalent though?

Thanks both for the Windows 7 information.

I wouldn't wait for Kepler unless you have a strong preference for Nvidia or were merely thinking that you'd like to upgrade sometime and don't really care whether it's today or six months from now.  It's likely that the launch of Kepler will only mean that instead of a Radeon HD 7850, you can get an Nvidia card about as good as a Radeon HD 7850 and for about the same price.

Originally posted by Quizzical

I nearly linked this card for you instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150561

At that price I might buy a 2nd 6870 and xfire them up!

How big a power supply would one need to do such a thing?

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by Quizzical

I nearly linked this card for you instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150561

At that price I might buy a 2nd 6870 and xfire them up!

How big a power supply would one need to do such a thing?

A good quality 650 W power supply should be adequate for two 6870s.  You'll also need proper motherboard support (if you're wired at PCI Express 2.0 x16/x4, I wouldn't try it, even though it nominally supports CrossFire) and a case that can handle the increased heat output.  Speaking of which, what power supply, case, and motherboard do you have?

I've picked the parts, thanks everyone.

On the SSD, obviously you put the OS on it to help load times...if I have room I want the games on that drive too right, or does it matter?

Originally posted by bansan

I've picked the parts, thanks everyone.

On the SSD, obviously you put the OS on it to help load times...if I have room I want the games on that drive too right, or does it matter?

Put your most played games on the SSD or if space is an issue then find the ones were you hate the load times the most.

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Originally posted by Aori

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Originally posted by bansan
I've picked the parts, thanks everyone.
On the SSD, obviously you put the OS on it to help load times...if I have room I want the games on that drive too right, or does it matter?

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Put your most played games on the SSD or if space is an issue then find the ones were you hate the load times the most.

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Exactly. Depending on what games you play, ssd can make a big difference in loading times. For games that don't have a whole lot of loading into and out of zones, just put them on your bigger hd.