Hey out there, first time building and before I even go out and buy parts, on a pretty tight budget ($400-500 USD). I wanted to know how this build might be for gaming before I go out to buy parts, and see if anyone has better suggestions.
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 750K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card
I'd wait a week or so for the Kaveri to hit shelves and buy the best one they have for $180... that way you don't waste money on a subpar GPU and if you wanted better performance later, you'll be on the FM2 mobo, so you could upgrade to the Steamroller CPUs or crossfire the APU to a GPU... that'll still leave you with comparable money to build around it...
The Kaveri A10 7850K APU includes a 4-core Steamroller (CPU architecture) processor and GPU based off the Hawaii (GPU architechture) chip model... obviously it isn't going to give top end performance but I saw a demo of BF4 on the 7850k running 1080p on medium settings @ 30fps... not bad...
Steamroller is the next line of processors from AMD... so if, down the line, you wanted to replace the CPU and GPU, you could get a current model... and if you just wanted better graphics you could get a GPU that is compatible with the APU and "crossfire" them, which refers to runnign two GPUs at the same time...
You've got the right idea, but you've allocated your money in the wrong way. No need to get a chassis that expensive.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2yucy
Base total is less than the top end of your 4500 budget. With discounts it is approximately $460. I've given you an A75 chipset motherboard for 6gb sata and USB3.0. There's a higher amount of storage. The 7850 and 760k should allow you to play most games on high settings 1080p with a good framerate.
You only need 4GB of RAM for gaming. You can add more RAM later.
That thing about the case was definitely a "what was I thinking" moment there...
I took your suggestions, but 1TB sounds a bit much for this (and the fact that I plan on upgrading to SSD sometime in the distant future if it gets cheaper), so I decided to reallocate that towards RAM.
Here's the new list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2yuUr
320GB not enough for a gaming system, It's going to fill up quicker than you think. the price to performance is better if you go with a 1TB drive. And i don't see prices of SSD's falling anytime soon. Any particular reason you went with that RAM? there are lower cost 8gb available.
There's no real particular reason for choosing that one, if there's another set of 2x4GB at 1600 MHz that's cheaper please let me know. As for the HD, maybe the SSD prices won't fall anytime soon, but I still feel 1TB is a bit overkill. It's a rig for casual gaming, so I'm not expecting to fill it full, though you may be right about 320GB not being enough...
I've got 9 games, a fairly large music collection, CS6, Mastercam, Solidworks, and Windows with minor utilities and it'd fill up your HDD with a few GB to spare...
This is the breakdown of why i think 320GB is too small. First off Hard drives start dropping in performance once you have less than 15% space available so that drops space down to 272GB. Factor in 30GB for the OS and future updates, 50-100GB Music depends on your collection, say 10GB for Video/Programs. and we haven't even gotten to games. I'm consider myselft a casual gamer. On my steam account i have 12 games installed and the steam folder is already 40GB, Add that up and your looking at 130-180GB So lets see 272 GB - 150 GB(middle value) leaves you with 122GB, Which is going to fill up quick due to fact newer games are going require more space.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2yNb0 Here's a build with the cheaper memory plus i have a 500GB HD and 1TB HD. listed Not saying you should get both just did it so you can see the price side by side.
Well, glad you guys filled me in on the HDD. And a couple of you are saying to go 2GB on the the video card... I currently put a 2 GB video card in on the parts list, but is that 1GB more really worth it over what I had originally?
Here's the current parts list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2yONU
2gb is better than 1gb when talking about same/similar card. 1gb 7850 will outperform a 2gb 650 because the 650 is a step down from the 7850 (i'm talking stock factory settings because I know you can OC a 650 to outperform the 7850). whether the 1GB is worth the extra money comes down preference and what type of games you're playing.