My dad asked me to make him a computer, so this is going to be for my dad and younger(18,16,13) siblings he asked for something so they can do casual day to day activity, which to be honest, could probably be handled by a malfunctioning raspberry pi ,I want to get them into PC gaming so they dont make me buy the next 26 remakes of Call of duty. So i want something with a decent amount of power. I'll probably download a few free-to play/cheap steam games before i finally hand the Computer over to them. (As im writing this Borderlands 2 is 13.59 on steam,on to the cart it goes). So I would definitely appreciate some tips/recommendations as far as the parts go.
P.S. My Budget is about $650 at the checkout (before Mail in rebates)
P.P.S. This is going to be out in the family room so he did ask that the case look nice. Otherwise id get something plainer and put that money elsewhere.
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YvQl
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YvQl/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YvQl/benchmarks/
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock 970DE3/U3S3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($75.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($68.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: A-Data Premier Pro SP600 64GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($67.19 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card ($99.99 @ Microcenter)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (Black/Orange) ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($19.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NS95 DVD/CD Writer ($17.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $565.09
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-20 00:51 EDT-0400)
to be honest, if you want a decent every day computer.... lenovo has a line of laptops with A6 / A8 apu's + a dedicated or integrated gpu as well. all of these are powerful. about 2 years ago i picked up a z575, for about 500 bucks. it can play skyrim on high @ 1366x768 and it cost me 500 dollars.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312433
that low price for that much performance!
First I'm probably going to change the title to Budget Gaming PC and edit the post.
Honestly I would much rather have a PC over a laptop for a couple of reasons:
I'm pretty likely to start out with a slight budget build, and then just start upgrading for them as I see fit (as far as upgrading a laptop I think you could take out the ram modules in my old laptop without voiding the manufacturers warranty, anything else....)
Gaming-(personal opinion here) I like it way better on a PC than I do on a laptop, even if i hook up my mouse and keyboard to my laptop it really just doesnt feel the same, and I want them to get into PC Gaming and maybe even building their own rigs. Plus all these new consoles are coming out and if they ask me for the 17th remake of Call of duty for christmas I'm going to smack a bitch. Namely them.
I really want to actualy build something as opposed to take them to best buy and listen to somebody sell them a macbook pro. Trust me if they end up buying something they'll go straight to the apple store the first chance they get.... I just want build another rig.
If they buy something it breaks they'll want to take it to geek squad...seriously there are three laptops in the house that dont work and i'm not allowed to take them apart to recover what's in the harddrives because they want to take the laptops to best buy.
Honestly I'm trying to get my family to step out of their comfort zone and show them they can build, fix, and (for my sake) *hopefully* eventually troubleshoot their own computer....I really want to stop seeing half the screen filled with toolbars.
I already have most of the peripherals and an extra activation code for windows 7.... ( I know linux is free, but i've tried to get them to use ubuntu,kubuntu and a couple of other flavors but they cant seem to get past the learning curve.)
i'm assuming from what you say that the people who will be using this computer are not all that great with computers (sorry if i misread, you probably don't care but i've been yelled at before) that said having multiple drives can be annoying to deal with, as most everything wants to go on the boot drive, and if they aren't much good at file managment you're probably going to get a call after a week becuase the computer is out of memory, even though it has an empty terabyte drive not being used
maybe this wont be a problem for you, but i might consider a caching drive, a single ~200gb drive, or just a hard-disk
i've dealt with people who aren't great with computers (including my mom who was supposidly a programer (yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either)) and i swear i've explained simple things 50 times yet it doesn't take, and sometimes they choose "you're an idiot, i know what i'm doing", and then ask me to fix what they screwed up
hopefully i didn't trail off too much there
Its a well balanced set up there all tho i'd drop the ssd and upgrade the hd 7770 to a hd 7850 or a 650ti boost.(if you upgrade to one of these drop a 500w corsair psu in there)
The only thing that needs changeing is your ram Phenom chips take up to 1333Mhz ram (you can oc the ram to 1600Mhz but any higher than that starts giveing problems)
(The fastest supported memory is DDR2-1066 and DDR3-1333)
A10 APU, with an asrock board, the asrock boards support crazy fast ram, something needed for APUs.
That's actually a really good point, especially since that money can go to a better gpu
I'd actually rather not get integrated graphics, just because if i want to get a better card id rather just buy the card as opposed to changing the mobo, cpu, gpu and all that other stuff.
Ahh that explains why my RAM is at 1600 mhz even though the modules are for 1866 (I have the same CPU and RAM Modules.).
Ok so how is this, since i got rid of the SSD i went ahead and skipped the 650 ti and went to the GTX 660; and I tried to make up for the lower speed by also lowering the latency.
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YwoO
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YwoO/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YwoO/benchmarks/
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock 970DE3/U3S3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($75.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($77.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($67.19 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 2GB Video Card ($187.99 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (Black/Orange) ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NS95 DVD/CD Writer ($17.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $632.10
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-20 01:52 EDT-0400)
I would go with this..
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YwNW
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YwNW/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YwNW/benchmarks/
CPU: AMD FX-6350 3.9GHz 6-Core Processor ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($63.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Kingston Blu Red Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($48.96 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($67.19 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 XT 2GB Video Card ($199.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Rosewill ARMOR-EVO ATX Full Tower Case ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 600W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $640.10
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-20 02:58 EDT-0400)
it's a bit over budget but it should be awesome ( in my opinion) http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Yyv0
$210 for a hd 7850? and a bulldozer chip?
f*** I keep picking wrong parts!
I changed it to the right build! http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Yyv0
The cheapest Power color 7870 is at $230, and the case is at 84.99,so its a bit over budget for me.
Ok so I think that i'm going to go with a slightly altered version of of sethyboi1234's build, I think these are my final choices;
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YICA
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YICA/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/YICA/benchmarks/
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($94.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($64.88 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($76.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 1GB Video Card ($146.09 @ NCIX US)
Wireless Network Adapter: Rosewill RNX-N250PCe 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($23.39 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (Black/Orange) ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NS95 DVD/CD Writer ($17.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $629.28
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-20 22:05 EDT-0400)