Mad Cow
Welshers and Dawdlers Beware!
I am in need of building a nice rig on somewhat of a budget. I am not setting an amount, per se, but am looking for the best bang for the buck. After looking over the reviews, I am set on going Intel, though the argument could be made to go AMD II X4 940.
I already have my case (Thermaltake Armour), good PSU (Antec 700W modular still in box) and opticals (DVD writer, etc.). I also have a relatively new GPU in the GTX 260 and will stay with that for now, though I will look at possible upgrades at the end for future reference (read when Battlefield: Bad Company 2 comes out). I also have a 1 TB HDD unused to date, but will be looking at a SSD for OS and most-used games. This build is going to happen in the next few weeks, so if nothing else will serve as a nice notepad for my links.
So with that,
So what I am looking for here:
CPU (and cooler)
Motherboard
RAM
HDD
For CPU, it all comes down to i5 or i7. Socket 1156 or Socket 1366. If you look at the reviews, it is easy to see that the i5 is a monster. Sure, it does not have hyper-threading and limits any Crossfire to 8X vs 16X, but that is not too much of a concern for me. Also, the overclocking on the i5 is insane, reaching over 4 GHz from the 2.66 starting point on air. That alone sends it to about 25% higher performance than a stock i7 920.
That said, looking for the best bang for the buck, I am going with the Intel i5-750 for $200. It saves $80-90 over a i7 920 and will save a LOT more than that in the motherboard and RAM, since we can do dual-channel vs triple-channel. Total savings is probably close to $250 all things considered. I know how to overclock and consider the $250 a nice gift from the OC gods to even this rig up with a lot more expensive setups.
For a cooler, I will need an aftermarket cooler. The Artic Cooler Freezer 7 for $34 shipped is a classic and a performer. It is not akin to installing the Leaning Tower of Pisa on your motherboard, either, which is nice. I will easily be able to hit 3.6 on that bad boy, which is great.
Motherboard, here is the question. You figure that mobos for this CPU will go from $90 to $200, with some great performers around $130-150. That said, I am in love with the ASRock P55 Extreme board for $140 shipped. It supports quad SLI or Crossfire, has 3 PCIe slots for GPUs, etc. Tons of features for not too much cash. Good value.
RAM - Well I know going into this that I either have to go 2X2 or 4X2 with the dual channel, but that is OK. 4 GB of DDR3 dual is around $80, so I could easily double up later when it drops further. There are tons of ways to go here, so I am just picking the highest rated 2X2 set at the 'Egg - GSkill 4 GB set for $86 shipped.
I will be back to add my SDD thoughts and see if anyone has any input. I am sitting at $460 for the guts, which is not bad at all for the power this bad boy will have.
I already have my case (Thermaltake Armour), good PSU (Antec 700W modular still in box) and opticals (DVD writer, etc.). I also have a relatively new GPU in the GTX 260 and will stay with that for now, though I will look at possible upgrades at the end for future reference (read when Battlefield: Bad Company 2 comes out). I also have a 1 TB HDD unused to date, but will be looking at a SSD for OS and most-used games. This build is going to happen in the next few weeks, so if nothing else will serve as a nice notepad for my links.
So with that,
So what I am looking for here:
CPU (and cooler)
Motherboard
RAM
HDD
For CPU, it all comes down to i5 or i7. Socket 1156 or Socket 1366. If you look at the reviews, it is easy to see that the i5 is a monster. Sure, it does not have hyper-threading and limits any Crossfire to 8X vs 16X, but that is not too much of a concern for me. Also, the overclocking on the i5 is insane, reaching over 4 GHz from the 2.66 starting point on air. That alone sends it to about 25% higher performance than a stock i7 920.
That said, looking for the best bang for the buck, I am going with the Intel i5-750 for $200. It saves $80-90 over a i7 920 and will save a LOT more than that in the motherboard and RAM, since we can do dual-channel vs triple-channel. Total savings is probably close to $250 all things considered. I know how to overclock and consider the $250 a nice gift from the OC gods to even this rig up with a lot more expensive setups.
For a cooler, I will need an aftermarket cooler. The Artic Cooler Freezer 7 for $34 shipped is a classic and a performer. It is not akin to installing the Leaning Tower of Pisa on your motherboard, either, which is nice. I will easily be able to hit 3.6 on that bad boy, which is great.
Motherboard, here is the question. You figure that mobos for this CPU will go from $90 to $200, with some great performers around $130-150. That said, I am in love with the ASRock P55 Extreme board for $140 shipped. It supports quad SLI or Crossfire, has 3 PCIe slots for GPUs, etc. Tons of features for not too much cash. Good value.
RAM - Well I know going into this that I either have to go 2X2 or 4X2 with the dual channel, but that is OK. 4 GB of DDR3 dual is around $80, so I could easily double up later when it drops further. There are tons of ways to go here, so I am just picking the highest rated 2X2 set at the 'Egg - GSkill 4 GB set for $86 shipped.
I will be back to add my SDD thoughts and see if anyone has any input. I am sitting at $460 for the guts, which is not bad at all for the power this bad boy will have.
Last edited by a moderator:
I am up in the air about the SSD. A good 640 GB WD Black HDD can boot up pretty darn fast as well and only costs $75 vs the $230+ investment of an SSD.
. Shopping for toys without having to spend the $. Thanks, MC, for sharing!
:X 
. She's been playing FFXI (or whatever is the latest) on an Dell E1500 laptop on close to minimum settings which has been fine for her. She's recently tried playing Aion and it doens't run too well on her lappy. I'd like to build her a budget rig that'll run Aion with no problems (as well as multi tasking applications she uses for work - she uses Visio, Outlook, and some other memory hogging apps) .
peeps on yet today I guess.
