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Old 2012-02-13, 22:08   Link #9
Spectacular_Insanity
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*Graphic Designer
 
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Right behind you.
Age: 35
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaden View Post
About the budget: do you need a monitor, speakers and peripherals like keyboard/mouse? If not you should be able to get a beastly machine.

About the chipset:

For the best value (well, depends what deal you can find), AMD Socket AM3 motherboard with AMD Phenom II X2 560 processor. Their latest AM3+ socket has been a bit disappointing, can't really recommend it over what Intel offers.

Intel chipset has more options with better performance.
For the motherboard, you want LGA 1155, H67 for value, P67 being necessary if you want to overclock.
For the processor, I'd suggest i3 2120 for a decent dual core, or i5 2500k for a beastly unlocked quad core. Anything beyond that wouldn't add much, and upcoming tech this year will of course be on a new chipset.

Sound card is unnecessary, as motherboards will have it integrated. Unless you want higher grade amplification, more channels, or whatever...I don't really know about sound.

As for the GPU, single-card setups offer all the power you need. There's quite a lot of choice on this market. My pick would be HD 6770 for value, or 560ti for performance.
Many companies manufacture those, I can't tell the differences. Would just get the cheapest one.

For RAM, 4gb DDR3 1333mhz is becoming the standard.

DVD drive: whatever, man, it's just for installing some stuff. These days you can almost get by with just memory sticks and the internet.

SATA hard drves are pretty much the only choice these days, are they not? 7200RPM is the standard for desktop spindle drives.

Oh, and you need a power supply. I got this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371035
The new ones from Antec are quite reputable, but again there's a lot of choice. 450-500W should easily power whatever setup you'll have.
Ah, I almost forgot about the power supply. That would have been embarrassing to get all the other parts and not be able to plug them in.

I already have a basic laser mouse and keyboard. I'm probably going to get a 19" monitor. To be honest, I'm not all that concerned with that, since monitors are simple and straightforward compared to all the other components.

Thanks for your other suggestions, I'll be looking at them sometime this week.



Now that your guys mentioned a soundcard, I probably won't need one. Assuming it supports the basic game drivers, it's not a huge concern, but I wanted to know if it was necessary, or if I should just stick with the default ones. I'll probably just stick with the default ones, as I can't see myself being able to justify a different soundcard when I'm not doing anything like audio software editing.

I knew going into this my books were kind of outdated, though admittedly I read the oldest one first, since it was the shortest and most simplified. The others are newer, but a bit more... involved. But as I said I got no idea what I'm doing.

But thank you everyone for your hardware suggestions. I truly appreciate it, since now I have an idea what to look for, especially for motherboards. You would not believe how lost I was feeling when I look at all those shop-online websites with dozens of different brands and type variations.
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