Noob building a gaming pc, need help

[mnewsham]

I'll stick with amd

feel free, i dont give a damn either way, but dont tell people it's the same when it clearly isn't

 

[T_Yamamoto]

feel free, i dont give a damn either way, but dont tell people it's the same when it clearly isn't

Preach.

 

[Cerb]

6300 performs same as i5 with more cores.

After significant overclocking, and the cost at the outlet could very well more than make up for the cost difference, over time.

But, I can find an i5-3570K w/ Z77 for $304, or a FX-6300 w/ 970 for $207. With a best-case base HW budget of $700+s&h (it always grows a little bit, though ), and worst-case of $600 incl. s&h, the i5 is an awfully tight fit for gaming--possibly an impossible fit--where a decent video card will be useful, too.

I'm all over the FX-6300, because it saves $97, sticking to stock cooling, from the prices I've seen. It also tends to either match or beat the i3-3240 (except for RTS and MMORPG, pretty much), and has good prospects as more heavily multithreaded games come out. It also can overclock, unlike the i3, and with an aftermarket cooler ($30 Hyper212+?), still ends up $67 cheaper than the i5.

The FX-8350, OTOH, really just doesn't make much sense. The games it's faster on are, and will remain, few and far between, and it's a power hog, which not only affects total costs, but also how much any given system can be overclocked on the cheap, and how reliable that system will be over time (the 95W FX-6300, FI, has 30W of overclocking room more or less built in, when paired with a board supporting the 125W CPUs ). It has its use cases, but it's not a very good value as a general-purpose and gaming CPU, for $175+.

Now, I'm deep down in the U.S. So, if anyone knows of a Canadian deal, like the common ones we in the U.S. have on Newegg combos, or from Microcenter, that take a ton off the CPU cost, and include good parts, that you might have picked without the sale, then an i5-3570K (or 2500K, for that matter) could very well be doable.

 

[guskline]

Hi this is my first time building a pc and i really needed some help, Ive spent a few weeks researching how to build gaming PC's and adequate parts and here is what ive come up with so far:

Eight core amd FX-8350 processor: $189.15

ASUS M5A99X EVO R2.0 AM3+ AMD 990X SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS or GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard : $139.99

Corsair Vengeance Blue 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory (CML4GX3M2A1600C9B): $39.99

MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card N660 TF 2GD5/OC: $204.99

WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache - WD10EZEX: $72.37

I dont want anything too hardcore just something that can run pretty much any game i throw at it.

My budget for the rig is $700 not including any fans or case or that kind of stuff.

I plan to spend $50 max for the budget and help finding one would be appreciated

I do plan on overclocking the rig and dont know whether or not this motherboard is adequate enough.

I also dont know whether or not i need to buy a sound card or a network card for this. I've heard that most new mother boards dont require a sound card or a network card.

any help is much appreciated!

You won't need either a network or soundcard.

Go with a FX6300 and with the savings buy 2 - 4gig sticks of ram. I'm not saying you can't run games with only 4 gigs but you'll be cutting it awfully close.

Good luck.

 

[Cerb]

So, here's where I'm at:
W7HP OEM Substitute with Windows 8, if you prefer
FX-6300 and MSI 970A-G43
G.Skill PC3-1280 9-9-9 1.5V 2x4GB
1TB Caviar Blue
DVD drive
Corsair CX430 430W PSU
Total: $488+s&h (the RAM came down by over $10 CAD since the thread started)

For <$15 more, you could move to the Corsair CX500, a PSU with more CPU+GPU overclocking headroom.

For just over $30, you could add the Cooler Master Hyper 212+, which would handle your overclocking ventures.

With those in mind, if you must stay right at or very near the target budget, a GTX 650 Ti BOOST 2GB would be a good value, keeping the total right near $700, even with overclocking goodies. Boo on them for the fake currency crap, though, compared to including games. Saving $15+ to go to a lesser GPU than this will sacrifice a lot more performance than the money saved. It's a really good minimum to go for.

If the budget is a bit more flexible, a Radeon HD 7850 2GB (stock OC) would include games with purchase (as Steam coupons). The performance will be similar to the 650 Ti BOOST, though the HD 7850 should best the GTX 650 if you play with AA on.

With a flexible budget, and being more of a Geforce fan, or just preferring more GPU performance? This GTX 660 is quite nice, has a $20 MIR, and gets you Mtro: Last Night.

To throw another wrench in there, the Biostar TA970 might be a btter mobo for overclocking. Note the $10 MIR.

Since the MIS 970A-G43 supports 125W CPUs, even with hot and uncooled VRMs, it would be OK, with most samples, to 4-4.2GHz (3.5GHz stock), but once you started to have really increase Vcore to get more speed, I'm not so sure. If your budget is fairly tight at $700, don't sweat it, and get the initially mentioned combo. If you can stretch it to include the HSF, 500W PSU, and Biostar mobo, you'd have better overclocking prospects (around $50-55 more total cost).

The FX-6300, with any of those GPUs, may not be as fast a Core i5, Core i7, or even FX-8350, but it will fit the budget, offer good bang/buck, and handle any game thrown at them today and through the next few years, even not counting the overclocking, which would add further value.

Note, as well, that I'm not in Canada, so if there are any sites like pcpartspicker.com, use them. Also, check Tigerdirect.ca, NCIX.ca, and Amazon.ca for video card and such. I've not done exhaustive searching on that stuff.

 

[mfenn]

AMD isn't bad. You can do intel if you got the money but when you have a budget you get a budget processor that runs everything fine.

Not on this site but on a site I can't remember of the top of my head if you OC the 6300 is runs almost identical to the i5 so why spend 170 on a i5 when a 6300 is $130 and does the same thing?

Because when you overclock the i5 to the same degree, it blows the FX-6300 out of the water?

EDIT: I should really just read the whole thread before replying, I see that this has already been covered in-depth.

 

[mfenn]

Note, as well, that I'm not in Canada, so if there are any sites like pcpartspicker.com, use them. Also, check Tigerdirect.ca, NCIX.ca, and Amazon.ca for video card and such. I've not done exhaustive searching on that stuff.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/ !

 

[Cerb]

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/ !

See? Not being a Canuck, I miss these things!

 

[tonyz3t]

So, here's where I'm at:
W7HP OEM Substitute with Windows 8, if you prefer
FX-6300 and MSI 970A-G43
G.Skill PC3-1280 9-9-9 1.5V 2x4GB
1TB Caviar Blue
DVD drive
Corsair CX430 430W PSU
Total: $488+s&h (the RAM came down by over $10 CAD since the thread started)

For <$15 more, you could move to the Corsair CX500, a PSU with more CPU+GPU overclocking headroom.

For just over $30, you could add the Cooler Master Hyper 212+, which would handle your overclocking ventures.

With those in mind, if you must stay right at or very near the target budget, a GTX 650 Ti BOOST 2GB would be a good value, keeping the total right near $700, even with overclocking goodies. Boo on them for the fake currency crap, though, compared to including games. Saving $15+ to go to a lesser GPU than this will sacrifice a lot more performance than the money saved. It's a really good minimum to go for.

If the budget is a bit more flexible, a Radeon HD 7850 2GB (stock OC) would includes games with purchase (as Steam coupons). The performance will be similar to the 650 Ti BOOST, though the HD 7850 should best the GTX 650 if you play with AA on.

With a flexible budget, and being more of a Geforce fan, or just preferring more GPU performance? This GTX 660 is quite nice, has a $20 MIR, and gets you Mtro: Last Night.

To throw another wrench in there, the Biostart TA970 might be a btter mobo for overclocking. Note the $10 MIR.

Since the MIS 970A-G43 supports 125W CPUs, even with hot and uncooled VRMs, it would be OK, with most samples, to 4-4.2GHz (3.5GHz stock), but once you started to have really increase Vcore to get more speed, I'm not so sure. If your budget is fairly tight at $700, don't sweat it, and get the initially mentioned combo. If you can stretch it to include the HSF, 500W PSU, and Biostar mobo, you'd have better overclocking prospects (around $50-55 more total cost).

The FX-6300, with any of those GPUs, may not be as fast a Core i5, Core i7, or even FX-8350, but it will fit the budget, offer good bang/buck, and handle any game thrown at them today and through the next few years, even not counting the overclocking, which would add further value.

Note, as well, that I'm not in Canada, so if there are any sites like pcpartspicker.com, use them. Also, check Tigerdirect.ca, NCIX.ca, and Amazon.ca for video card and such. I've not done exhaustive searching on that stuff.

Thanks for the advice, I will stick to the fx 6300 and the GTX 660