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Building a $1K Gaming Rig
Timmus writes "Firingsquad has posted an article on building a cutting-edge PC for gaming. The author manages to build an Athlon 64 3500+ rig with GeForce 7800 GT graphics and 1GB of RAM for $1,000. In the end they run benchmarks of the budget PC against a high-end FX-57 system to see how they compare. Surprisingly, the budget PC performs pretty close to the flagship system!" From the article: "Quite often we get emails asking which component(s) are 'the best' or, 'I have [x] amount of money to spend for my next upgrade, what do you think I should get?' It's impossible for us to answer these types of questions for you, simply because only you know what your needs are. Only you know how you use your computer, every person out there is different, even among gamers."
And people are complaining about the high prices of the XBOX 360...
They should do this type of report every 3months, if not the information and prices get dated very quickly. I was suprised at what kind of system you can get with 1k these days.
$1k is the BUDGET system? I'll keep playing world of warcraft at 800x600.
I loved my Kyro 2 for the fact that a 50 dollar card at the time gave better peformance than a 60 dollar ATI or Nvidia. SIS, Matrox, ATI and Nvidia; is that really all? What other great graphics companies no longer exist? I can't think of any at the moment.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Well this is just EARTH SHAKING news, Zonk! Fine, fine FINE editing! Wonder what other gems you have lined up for us today!
Come on, everybody play. Winner gets modded down!
- Gamespot says Xbox 360 developers say graphics "good."
- 1up.com says Female spotted playing game.
- Sony.com says competitors "no good."
- 1up.com asks if Nintendo is dying?
- 1up.com opens wallet, throws money at Zonk.
- 1up.com asks if Nintendo is dying?
- Sony.com says competitors "no good."
I'd rank the PSU just slightly ahead of the case, but behind memory and hard disk drive in order of importance.
I don't agree with that. The PSU is one of the most important components, in my experience. Then again, no one should really be buying crap quality HW in the first place.
Since when is a $1k PC a "Budget System?"
I bought a mac for $1200, I could have had similar raw performance for like $300.
... but in a previous /. story about a 360 bundle costing $1200, one poster made the comment that you couldn't build an average computer with eleven games for the same price. I proved him wrong. In the above link I also used a good PSU, which this story's author neglected. Please don't mod this post up; I'm not looking for karma.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I must also agree with you. Almost a year ago I built my first 'from scratch' system. I took some advice from the guy at the store I was getting my parts from and he said the PSU that came with my case would be much more than adequate. After a few months and some hardware intensive games, I was always getting random crashes and lock-ups. I could never figure it out until I read a post on the Far-Cry forums about a guy having similar problems to me. It turned out he had a junk PSU. This persuaded me to take a look into the performance of my PSU. Lo and behold, as soon as I started playing any games, the voltage levels were going up and down like pogo sticks.
The moral of the story is that no matter what anyone says, budget PSUs are useless. Now I wouldn't get a new system without spending at least $100CDN on a decent PSU.
Which can be found here.
While they don't do benchmarks, it's updated every month and includes 3 different PCs designed for different people's needs. For people who complained that $1k is too much, they've managed to spend $500 on their cheapest PC (if you don't count a monitor, which firing squad doesn't include in their system). The $500 PC will also run WoW, San Andreas, HL2 just fine as well.
If you thought $1k was too much to spend on a box, definitely check it out (the updated every month thing is also very nice).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
copy/paste from newegg
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Granted not the beast that 1k machine is, but for the slightly more down to earth gamer, this really isn't a bad rig. May want to up the ram a bit for games like FEAR, however. Granted you'll also need a monitor and keyboard/mouse, but you'd need to buy that much for a console too, so meh.
This guy apparently hasn't had long term experience with building gaming machines, or he would have put the PSU way up on the list. A good 450W+ Enermax would be my choice. Yes you can go with CAS 2.5 ram without sacrificing tons of performance, but really where you should think about cutting costs is on the graphics card. A 6600GT PCI-X would be a much better idea to keep in budget than some offbrand economy PSU that might end up frying some of your more expensive components. I would definitely put the graphics card's priority lower, since you could always upgrade with another 6600GT since that board supports SLI. I would rather spend $1100 though and get the best of both worlds. A good case is also a big foundation for a gaming rig. If you're like me, you'll probably be playing games for at least 5 or 6 hours at a time and that generates a LOT of heat. A good case is essential in keeping those pricey components healthy. I agree with his CPU/Mobo combo though, that's a great buy for the money. I am not a maxtor hard drive fan, but I hear they've come a long way since I last had my experience with them. Overall his rig isn't that bad of a plan, but no way I would buy a $50 case.
I liked that card too. It was cool, because some websites would misspell it "Kryo II," and I could tell people the card was named after me.
I think there are many people out there feeling they need to buy the most expensive equipment to get the best performance.
The Athlon FX and most expensive ATI and nVidia cards sucker these people in thinking a great gaming system costs $3000+.
For $1000 US, that would be a high end system for me. I was looking to build a system for under $1000 CDN. And the Geforce 7800 or ATI x850 does not fit into that equation, or are even necessary, along with the AMD FX chips.
The AMD 3800+ 64 is more then adequate for high end gaming and even high end business applications like software development. And you should be able to find nVidia 68xx cards or ATI sub-x800 card that will play Doom 3 or HL2 at repectable framerates at high resolutions (heck, I am getting decent performance out of my Geforce 4400 card). The CAS rating on memory have little effect on gaming performance, it has always been on the order of less then 10% and more around 2 - 5%. The RAM makers are trying to flog the idea that expensive RAM = better game performance, which isn't the case.
All this guy did was build a highly respectable gaming system, one that will be more then adequate for those people with more brains then money.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I have had excellent results with seasonic power supplies. They are built like a tank and have up to 80% efficiency, which will pay for the power supply in less than a year if your computer is usually on. Seasonic is also recommende by silent computing for an inaudible 21 dB noise level - prolly one of the quietest fan cooled power supplies out there.
..........FULL STOP.
That's a hell of a lot of money for a computer when a new dell or emachine can be had for $300. The newest part in my computer is 4 years old (geforce 4) and I have yet to find a game that won't run acceptably.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I find it funny how some people complain about the $1000 price tag on a moderate PC. These are the same people who seem to overlook a lot of the important, but subtle, details. To illustrate my point, let's compare the subtle differences between a budget PC and an XBox 360 (or any consoles within the last 5 years) that people tend to overlook.
.45 while drive at 70mph on a winding cliff-side road, and at the end of the day, to post on slashdot? No. Can a PC do that? Yes...except for the part about shooting the bird. The bottom line is, if you're going to spend another $600 on a PC that can do...what a PC does...on top of a console for those features, you might as well have spent that $1000 to begin with to get a "budget" gaming PC.
1. Warrantee. That's right, you get a 30-day warrantee on your XBox 360 based on the date of the receipt. On the other hand, you get a 1-3 year warantee on your (retail, which, in most cases costs $10 more, if at all) PC parts. To top that off, if you don't register until your hardware is broken, you can prolong that with an additional year or two in most cases (maybe this part is the same with the consoles...but I don't suggest doing it...yeah...).
2. Sure, some of you may think that your first XBox is still live and kicking after 3 years and that these consoles are made with the best parts possible. Well, tell that to your friend who just got 9 dead pixels on his brand spanking new PSP. So, if your console ever dies, well, tough luck. Get a new one. On the other hand, with your PC you can just slap in a new off-the-shelf part and go. (I know, I know, some of you might be scrounging up ebay for those half-dead consoles in hopes of getting a replacement part...but that's, well, that.)
3. Upgrades. One has to realize that a lot of these prices for PCs represent a WHOLE new PC. But do you really need that new, but does exactly the same, optical drive (remember, PC optical drives don't wear out nearly as fast, since you most likely installed those games onto your hard drives)? Or that new sound card? How about that hard drive? Within consecutive upgrades, most likely not.
4. More upgrades. Within a year after the console's introduction (consoles have 4-year cycles, usually), you'll probably be able to pick up a "budget" video card and CPU that outperforms the console's graphics card and CPU, respectively, for $100 each. And for the next 3 years, you'll have a rig that does more FPS than on the best days of said console.
5. Performance. People always say that their games work great on XBox and PC users always complain about low framerates. Well, guess what? These are actually two separate issues. If you're playing console, you're most likely playing at something close to, or less than, 720x480 resolution. This is almost the same as 640x480 on a PC. When's the last time that you saw a person even using his/her desktop at that resolution (ok, ok, there must be a truckload of them...but they're most likely not gamers)? Let's just see how well the XBox 360 will run at 1080i, which is interlaced (which you can achieve with your 24" Dell LCDs, people)! As for the rest of the PC gaming crowd, I think we've been enjoying our games at at least 800x600 for quite a long time now.
6. Usability. Can a console allow you type documents, edit pictures, compress (your own) videos, pir8 games (ok, maybe they can do this part), hack into CIA mainframes, shoot a flying bird with a
So, is PC gaming dying? Yes, if you keep on listening to the drivel all these console marketing people are saying. Are PCs more versatile, more powerful, more dependable, cheaper (amortized) overall, and make you look more like a OMGPWNZ0RZ geek than a pop-culture going-with-the-fad who-likes-to-call-themselves-gamers-but-aren't person? Definitely. Am I a PC gamer who hates the crap re-iterations that EA keeps putting out on consoles? You can bet your ass off that I am.
you don't need a "boutique" psu.
an antec or other mid-range 400+watt ps is more than enough. i know, i've used it in several systems i've built.
if it costs less than 80 bucks, it's not worth putting in a computer you care about. you can still use the cheaper ones for junk computers and where the power draw is low.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Cheap PSU's will also fry a good Motherboard. Your PSU is very important. If it's broke....the rest of your components are rendered useless.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
Handles dual SATA and GF6800 fine here.
You want a good name with good components, not just something that's expensive. Lots of places put black paint and go-faster stripes on Tawainese shit and sell it for lot$.
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Sharky Extreme has created guides like this for several years. They used to update each one monthly, but have since switched to updating each one every four months (staggering the extreme, mid-range, and value).
They also give options between AMD and Intel and among video card manufacturers, as well as advice when shopping (e.g. check the dead pixel policy for LCDs).
I don't always agree with them (for intstance, I would spend the extra $10-$20 to get CAS 2.5 memory instead of the CAS 3 value select memory, even if it only runs at CAS-3 until/unless you have 2 chips) but in general they give pretty good buying guides.
I've been doing this for years, guys. Its called research. You look at what you want, "stuff to blow up cool". Then, you find out what blows stuff up cool. You go back a half a step or so where you're not being gouged by bleeding-edge prices, but the performance difference is close to negligable "Look! I only get 150fps instead of 190fps in ut2004 with everything turned on!".
I build ALL my gaming rigs for $1,000 or so. And they all rock. You just need to know where your bottlenecks are, and what you can do to fix them in a price-conscious way.
I also build servers using this. Never, ever, ever buy bleeding-edge. You're only getting screwed. In six months it'll be commodity hardware anyways.