Gaming PC Build Advice

[CMvan46]

Hi guys I'm thinking about building a gaming PC that will also be used heavily for Autodesk's AutoCAD program. I'm looking at something like a $1000 budget with everything included, including monitor and operating system. I don't need the keyboard and mouse as I have a wireless mouse already and wired keyboards are $10 and I'll look into getting a wireless one later on.

I'd go a $100-200 over budget if it meant some sort of future proofing at all. I'd like the PC to be good for gaming for a few years and to have it as something I can upgrade constantly so I can avoid having to buy the whole set all over again. I'm looking at building something like this in hopefully a few months time but could be as late as next summer depending on if a snowboard trip happens this winter. I am entirely open to going the AMD route and the only thing I'm really set on is a 20inch+ 1080p monitor and 8 gb of RAM.


My Newegg list isn't working right but I had a build at one point. I am wondering what you guys think about going the Intel vs AMD route. I see you can get a 6 core 3 ghz+ AMD processor cheaper than the 2500k but is it worth it? I also don't know a heck of a lot about motherboards. For the graphics card I'm not sure if the better route is Nvidia or ATI but anyway any help here would be awesome so I can start looking myself as well.
Thanks for looking and helping me out.

 

[Submerged]

After Christmas, there is a newer AMD processor coming out soon-ish (IIRC).

However, the current feeling is that Intel is the way to go, processor wise.

For graphics card, I will be assuming you would prefer a AMD 6990/6890 range. Maybe the 6770 range. There's also the Nvidia 570/580/590 range as well.

Will you be thinking of Crossfire (AMD) or SLI (Nvidia)? (both are ways to have two graphics card working in tandem)

Would you prefer to have an SSD or just sticking with Hard Drives? Currently, HDD prices are pretty steep due to the flooding in Thailand. May be best to wait for some time on that.

8 GB should be enough for your 64 bit OS and the AutoCAD program.

1080p monitor? Could just get a 24 inch and make it 1920x1200. Or higher. 24 inch monitors are now relatively cheap and are better quality than they're ever been, for around 250 quid.

These are my thoughts at the moment.

 

[LeftyWright69]

What a crack up finding your thread because it sounds like I could have written it. I’m in exactly the same spot being an Autocad jocky and novice movie editor / gamer.

Here is my pick list for a uber full size tower PC

Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 Full Tower Case- VN300M1W2N $150

MSI Z68A-GD80 (B3) $242 (mother board)

Intel Core i7-2600K Processor $315

Corsair Hydro Series H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler $94

Corsair Vengeance Blue 16 GB DDR3 SDRAM Dual Channel Memory Kit $90 (ram)

LG Electronics WH12LS30 12X Blu-ray SATA Writer Drive $85

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Superclocked 2048 MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 $250 (video card)

ANTEC 650W PSU $95 (power supply)

WD 750gig HD $85

Windows 7 64bit OS $125


I bought the OS, video card, HDD, and PSU already so the I didn’t feel the whole financial impact at one time since I was over my 1k budget but I couldn’t help myself. I did get close to $1,500 though.

Red = Already Purchesed

 

[Submerged]

... Why do you want a BluRay drive?

 

[LeftyWright69]

... Why do you want a BluRay drive?

I thought that the BlueRay format was the highest storage capacity format for using the disk for just backing up stuff as well as making HD movies

I was thinking that since I haven't purchased most of the stuff yet any suggestions would be great 👍

 

[Icarus25]

LOL @ that case. Whatever floats your boat, man, but there are plenty of cases that look better and cool better than that thing for $150. The HAF 932 and Antec 1200 say hello.

To the OP: There isn't much that can be said if you're not planning on building until Spring. Things are definitely going to change between now and March with new video cards in the works and updated processors. Video card choice is also going to come down to what games you play as you tend to see one pull ahead of the other in certain games.

 

[CMvan46]

I was going to ask about hdd prices right now. I didn't realize that's why. I'd like to go 1 tb in size as the amount of work my girlfriend will have saved on there for drafting is going to be nuts and I need all my games of course

I should have been more clear on the monitor. I want full hd is all I meant by that. Newegg has a couple 22 inch 1080p monitors (ASUS I believe) for $120 which I thought was awesome.

Recommendations on the graphics card would be appreciated. Sorry I just saw the question about what games? Well I'd love to play BF3 at ultra settings if possible but I'm not sure what that would take? That's more or less the benchmark at the moment isn't it?

What is the new Amd processor all about? Same cost range as what is out now?


Oh and leftywright is there a reason your going with the i7? The I5 2500k is nearly $100 cheaper.

 

[bevo]

The i5 2500k would be great for gaming, you won't get any benefit going with the i7 in games, but you might with autocad.
If you want to run BF3 on ultra settings a gtx 570 will do it, and you would probably average around 45fps with very few drops below 30. If your wanting 60fps you would need to go sli and run 2 cards. I've got 2 gtx 570s and they even drop below 60fps once in awhile running Vsync. I probably average around 70 though with them with every graphics setting there is maxed out. People will probably tell you, you don't need a 570 to run ultra with BF3. Really though that is the minimum card you will need to run it. Other cards would probably run some pretty high settings with HOBOA, or AA turned down, but if you do that your no longer running ultra. If your on a budget fo look for a used MSI gtx 570 twin frozr III, or just a reference msi GTX 570. You could get an MSI reference 570 for around 225 used$.

 

[CMvan46]

Are used graphic cards okay to go with? I don't know I'd trust used anything else except the case and ram really.

 

[bevo]

MSI has a 3 year warrenty on all their graphics cards and it goes by the cards serial number. That way the card never has to be registered or anything. If something goes wrong you just contact them, send the card back and they take care of it. The 570s haven't even been out for a year, so if you bought one that was made with the very first batch made you would still have 2 years left on the warrenty.

EVGA has a lifetime warrenty on all of theirs, but I think they have to be registered, so the original buyer would have to do any warrenty work you needed done. If you buy used from a good forum then and off of a trusted user then this shouldn't be a problem. I bought both of my 570 twin frozr IIIs off of someone online without any worries of something being wrong, because I know MSI will return them without a problem.

 

[Sharky.]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2z2G

Boom, done. Simple.

Although that might be a bit too much over budget and the price doesn't include OS, monitor, optical drive or case - I think trying to fit everything inside 1k means you'd have to skimp on the graphics card at least, by going with a 560Ti instead of a 570 (560Ti is still a good card though). The Thailand floods pushing up the price of mechanical hard drives also increases the price of the build, but unless you can make do with a 60GB SSD you can't do much about that.

 

[CMvan46]

Little over

I only need 8 gb of ram for the foreseeable future I'd think which is $45 less, samsung 1 tb drive at Newegg is $30 less, I don't know I need an i7? I could save $100 and go with the i5 2500k sandy bridge. That's nearly $200. When I get back to my computer tonight I'll rebuild what i found this morning which included everything for $1100 including monitor and OS. Then you guys can pick it apart and tell me how many issues it will have.

I know for sure I can do $1000 budget by early spring next year and if I get some help from my girlfriend with a few things I'm sure she'd throw in a couple hundred especially if I can justify the extra cost as a positive for AutoCAD which is going to be her job in the very near future.

Realistically if I built a computer in this price range can I get 2 or 3 years out of with good performance? And when it starts to out date how many parts can I reuse so I don't have to spend another $1000 for a whole new computer?

 

[Sharky.]

The 2600K would be better for you seeing as you'll be doing a 'heavy' amount of AutoCAD - the i5 2500K is no slouch, but if you want the absolute best performance/render times etc in AutoCAD short of getting a 3960X then the 2600K is your best choice.

 

[Submerged]

I thought that the BlueRay format was the highest storage capacity format for using the disk for just backing up stuff as well as making HD movies

I was thinking that since I haven't purchased most of the stuff yet any suggestions would be great 👍

I realise that the BluRay device does have the higher capacity for backing up and making HD movies. Its just that nowadays, most people do not use CD/DVD or BluRays to back up as they often use a networked hard drive to do this job. Of course, you may have wanted to use it for watching films on the Bluray device.

It was just a question aimed to get some answers and ideas what you wanted from the device and computer in the first place.

 

[CMvan46]

The 2600K would be better for you seeing as you'll be doing a 'heavy' amount of AutoCAD - the i5 2500K is no slouch, but if you want the absolute best performance/render times etc in AutoCAD short of getting a 3960X then the 2600K is your best choice.

Ok. Would going with a cheaper motherboard and graphics card bottleneck that cpu?



http://www.Newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.759913

Thoughts on that combo? That's only $760 after rebates and then plus the rest of the stuff would come to $1000-1100 before tax which is fine. I see its only 4gb ram but that's easy enough to sell on craigslist and pick up 8gb.

That plus Dvd drive for $50, new ram $45, Os at $79, and monitor at $125 (maybe more)?

 

[Sharky.]

Pre-built = avoid

 

[Submerged]

Reason why Sharky wants you to avoid pre-built, is that you don't know how the products has been handled once they were being built up.

Also, when you do build your system together, it makes it more about yourself. With pre-built systems, you don't know how things were attached in the first place so you can take them off again!

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

I'm looking at something like a $1000 budget with everything included, including monitor and operating system.

US dollars?

I came up with this for ~ $1000 without a monitor or hard-drive. I did it just to get an estimate. You should wait until about 2 weeks before building to get something set. AMD is planning to release new cards in the 1st quarter next year.

In the meantime you could probably look to find a good deal on a hard drive. The prices for those shouldn't come down anytime soon.

 

[CMvan46]

It's not prebuult is it? It's the parts in a combo package which gives you a $100 off the cost of those parts. You build it yourself. I found it in the DIY section on Newegg.

Roaddog I do like that bundle. Definitely in range there I think. Has nobody suggested an Amd build for a reason? Is Intel the way to go right now?

 

[nick09]

Autocad will benefit from a higher clocked Quad core or even the new 6 cores Intel has released(They are very costly through) or AMD's quad, six, or eight core as long as the program makes use of the cores. Though you can easily settle down with an i5-2500K($215), 8GB of memory($45 easily), a single graphics card(If you are looking at playing full HD then it'd be around $200-$300), and a good monitor.

 

[Sharky.]

I thought it was pre-built at first glance - turns out it isn't, but it's still not terribly great value. RJ's build there would be better value in terms of the performance to price ratio; the GTX560 is what really lets that Newegg combo down.

Intel's current CPUs are better than AMD's, which is why you won't see anybody here who knows their stuff suggesting an AM3-based system (except possibly the 1090/1100T)

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

I thought it was pre-built at first glance - turns out it isn't, but it's still not terribly great value. RJ's build there would be better value in terms of the performance to price ratio; the GTX560 is what really lets that Newegg combo down.

That and the power supply is a bit mediocre.

Currently I believe Intel has AMD covered on prices and efficiency for pretty much everything except a couple niche markets.

Looking at autodesk's site and some other places, autocad is for the most part single-threaded. So I would say don't consider AMD unless their next processors somehow get out of their slump.

 

[Submerged]

And we would only really suggest the AMD 1090/1100 range if you were quite limited in your budget and it was the best thing for the budget only (processor and motherboard combined was cheaper than the Intel variants and possible upgrade paths).

Its not that AMD is bad, it is just for this level of demanding AutoCAD, it would be advisable to go the Intel way for the time being due to performance. AM3+ motherboards are often cheaper than Intel motherboards and can leave you an upgrade path. However, the newer processors that AMD are doing doesn't use the AM3+ sockets any more so this is why we wouldn't recommend AMD for now (in case you were wondering to use the 1100T and jump to Bulldozer/Piledriver processors in the future).

Apparently Bulldozer are actually really good when the software is coded to use more than four cores and can work through them incredibly quickly. It is just whether your program will be coded to take advantage of that. Games, will not be coded to take advantage of that for quite some time.

 

[CMvan46]

Wow okay well thanks guys.

Sorry Sharky I didn't notice that was a 560 with nothing after it. I think for the cost effectiveness I'd like to go with the i5 2500K Sandy Bridge. The cost of that plus motherboard is just far easier to get under budget than the i7. I guess this does depend if something better comes along before then but as you just described to me a 6 core processor really isn't needed for anything I'm using it for so the quad core is easily enough for a while.

So along with harddrives is there anything else I could safely pick up now or soon that wouldn't jeprodize anything coming out in the near future? I'm going to the states for Black Friday and with the cyber monday I'll keep an eye out for a 1 tb+ HDD. But case, power supply, fans all safe as well to grab for a steal?

 

[Seismica]

Sorry Sharky I didn't notice that was a 560 with nothing after it. I think for the cost effectiveness I'd like to go with the i5 2500K Sandy Bridge. The cost of that plus motherboard is just far easier to get under budget than the i7. I guess this does depend if something better comes along before then but as you just described to me a 6 core processor really isn't needed for anything I'm using it for so the quad core is easily enough for a while.

The i5 2500k is very close to the i7 2600k in all aspects. They're almost the same except the 2600k is clocked 100 Mhz faster and has hyperthreading enabled. If you feel the cost is too high to justify it, you can settle for the i5 2500k as it will do the same job. Besides, the 2700k is out so if you had the cash that would be the processor of choice. The Intel processors have greater single core efficiency and productivity than AMD processors. Even when you take advantage of the 6 or 8 cores in the AMD processors, they are still behind in some areas. The fact they lack support beyond 4 cores in most applications means Intel are the better option.

Also, make sure the case is wide enough if you're getting an aftermarket CPU cooler And make sure it can fit the graphics card, sometimes the Hard Drive rack/bays can get in the way, A friend of mine had to saw through his to fit his Graphics card in

 

[CMvan46]

Ok is there a rule of thumb on how big a case should be inside?

 

[nick09]

You'd want 6-8" of room from the motherboard to the case's side panel for ample room for large cpu coolers and wide graphics cards. Also look for at least 12" of length room for the graphics cards you are looking at.

 

[Seismica]

Ok is there a rule of thumb on how big a case should be inside?

Generally you won't have any problems, most cases are approximately the same size due to the form factor they take. But generally, the bigger the case the better as it means better cooling and airflow, more and bigger fans. I couldn't fit my side fan in because of my cooler, but then again I only spent £35 on my case.

It's something you should keep in mind only if going for a large aftermarket cooler or a high end graphics card (So think GTX 580/HD 6970 or above and you should be looking at dimensions. My 6850 barely has room in my case). If you're spending $100 or more on a case you shouldn't have any problems, but it doesn't hurt to check, it's a lot less hassle than having to return it for a bigger one if you have problems. The friend I mentioned has a case only as large as my Antec 100, but he had a Radeon HD 6990

 

[Saidur_Ali]

Soon as you are building it in a few months time, forget about the 2500k and 5XX series Nvidia or 6XXX series ATI/AMD, and get all the next-gen parts coming out around January-March time which should get you an Intel system at a minimum of 20% faster at the same price while running cooler and using less power. Also HDD prices should be lower than the prices currently by then. Also make sure to get a LED backlit monitor with an IPS panel for AutoCAD or a VA or TN panel if you need a quicker response time for gaming.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Also HDD prices should be lower than the prices currently by then.

Doubtful

All told, the loss in shipments throughout the industry will result in a dearth of both desktop and mobile hard disk drives for computers—a period of lack that will last throughout the final quarter of the year and extend well until the next year, IHS believes. The shortages will arise from the loss of manufacturer capability, as well as from scarcity in various components such as HDD disk media and substrates, HDD motors and HDD suspensions—all vital parts of the HDD ecosystem.