$1300 Gaming Desktop

[Bwelch]

wat dis?

http://imgur.com/X4GUIl.jpg

oh dis!

http://imgur.com/xxLk4l.jpg

Okay, lets begin! Butter knife? Check. Screw Driver? Check.

http://imgur.com/hkYT1l.jpg
http://imgur.com/oR3jXl.jpg

At this point I figured I was done. If I had known what the fuck I was doing, I'd realize that the CPU, Hard Drive, DVD Burner have no power and even the memory is in the wrong spot!

http://imgur.com/s0tCGl.jpg
http://imgur.com/n9EyPl.jpg

Here I did some wire management the best I could, lol. I even got rid of one power cable after moving the DVD drive further down, and fixed a fan that wasn't running (They hid the fan power cable on the other side case! Those sneaky sons-of-bitches!)

http://imgur.com/mGtPrl.jpg

Finished ;D

http://imgur.com/6ZJJ8l.jpg

Final Fantasy XIV Benchmark

http://imgur.com/6rLCc.png

http://imgur.com/rZ4ZLl.jpg

I haven't done any oveclocking, but of course I will in the future. I have no idea where to start.

Thanks to all of you who helped me gather the right parts; especially Knyghtmayre! <3 ;D

[levish]

change out that heatsink if you plan on overclocking

[Oreth]

Was the case easy to work with?

Are you happy with those benchmark scores i would of thought they would have been higher?

[Oreth]

If your overclocking the CPU get yourself the Corsair H50 i hear its a really nice cooler!

[Bwelch]

I did expect higher scores in the FFXIV Benchmark, but it ran perfectly on high settings in my opinion.

I love the case, but there are a couple fan cables that are hard to get to, and the LED fan lights aren't enough to light the entire case. Other than those minor gripes, the case is completely worth the $80!

Corsair H50

Noted. :o

[Mithroy]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.433330

OCZ 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model OCZ3F1600LV6GK

+

EVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Price After Mail-In Rebate(s): $429.98

Saves you $30 and gets you 1600 MHz ram instead of 1333.


Edit:Could save a bit more if you're not dead-set on an EVGA 470.
http://i32.tinypic.com/2hmlq54.jpg
$1126.79 after MIRs, that looks about the best I can do with keeping the same models that you have. (Swapped out 6gb/s HDD with 3gb/s since I'm almost positive there actually is no difference with current technology as nothing short of an SSD is going to hit 3gb/s?)

Took the advise here and tried to buy this set and had a banking issue that ended up voiding my transaction. Trying to rebuy it now but not getting all the combos anymore. Any suggestions for alternative sets that are just as good for about same price here ish? Or better options with newer combos that came out? I'm new to this and am hopeless when shopping for combos myself

[Knyghtmayre]

Took the advise here and tried to buy this set and had a banking issue that ended up voiding my transaction. Trying to rebuy it now but not getting all the combos anymore. Any suggestions for alternative sets that are just as good for about same price here ish? Or better options with newer combos that came out? I'm new to this and am hopeless when shopping for combos myself

http://i26.tinypic.com/2mfm3ig.jpg
Comes out to $1079.75 after MIRs, which is about $40 cheaper than the other build. It does seem like Newegg wiped almost all of their available combos away now. Did the best I could with what I could find. Compared to the quoted build, you get some slightly faster and better memory and you lose SATA3 support on the motherboard. If the SATA3 is a big deal to you (it shouldn't be for now but for future's sake I guess) then you can upgrade the board to THIS ONE and your total would be $1119.75. Also take note of the promo codes, as both of those expire TOMORROW.

[Deftscythe]

Resurrecting this thread for my own purposes, as I'm building a new gaming pc with a similar budget.

I've been looking at motherboards and I'm wondering how many PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots I want to have.

[Knyghtmayre]

Depends entirely on what you want to do. If you only want a single GPU, then you only need 1x PCI Express 2.0 x16 lane. If you want to Crossfire/SLI then you'll need at least 2x PCI Express 2.0 (x8 or x16 preferably) slots.

[Deftscythe]

Well, I'm not planning on going with 2 gpu right off the bat, but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot in terms of later upgrades.

[Shadowrunner]

Anyone going with the i7-930 and is relatively close to a microcenter, I strongly suggest trying to bundle away from the CPU and just get the CPU from there. you're saving ~90, which for all the searching i could do beat out most other deals.

[Torn]

I'm also planning on building a similar priced PC and was wondering if I could get some opinions on my current selection...
http://secure.newegg.ca/WishList/Pub...umber=13677745

Am I missing anything? Anything I should change? Wouldn't mind if it was a tad cheaper without losing to much performance.

[Deftscythe]

After Shadowrunner's tip about the $200 I7-930, I'm thinking about getting that with this motherboard. Thoughts?

And if that's a terrible choice, before you lambaste me I want to confess that this is my first time building my own PC and a lot of my hardware knowledge is way out of date.

[Shadowrunner]

After Shadowrunner's tip about the $200 I7-930, I'm thinking about getting that with this motherboard. Thoughts?

And if that's a terrible choice, before you lambaste me I want to confess that this is my first time building my own PC and a lot of my hardware knowledge is way out of date.

Are you going for a small PC build size-wise? For a Micro ATX, it looks fine. With the size of graphics cards these days though...

I'm no expert, however . If the only addition you plan on making is the graphics it'll do fine.

However, one other thing is.. if you did plan on doing SLI/Crossfire down the road.. I don't see where/if the Mobo supports it

[Jojimbo]

That MB has two PCI-E slots so it should support dual card setup. Other than that it got good reviews when it came out (it's about a year old I think).

[Deftscythe]

Oy, I didn't realize what micro ATX meant when I picked that out. Seems like smaller mobo wouldn't be wise if I want to crossfire/SLI in the future.