Orcin
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2007
- Posts
- 1,396
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- 20
I started my research by consulting a few websites, like AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware, for the “build your own” articles. I was looking for mid-range gaming builds costing between $1500 and $2000. I had a preference for Intel over AMD and the latest Intel processor series, Core i7, was possible in that price range.
I decided to build around this processor rather than getting last year’s model at a cheaper price, because the latest technology would be more apt to meet the predictably escalating game requirements of the next few years. I also reasoned that a motherboard suitable for the bottom Core i7 processor would accommodate the top-of-the-line Core i7 in a couple of years when they were being phased out, offering an easy upgrade.
I locked in the Core i7-920 processor for roughly $300 and, after consulting s1rrah, budgeted $300 for an ATX motherboard with the X58 chipset. His advice was to buy quality and not cut corners when it came to the motherboard, memory, and power supply. This made good sense to me since those components would determine the performance and overclocking abilities.
He also advised that I could save a few dollars on the graphics card(s), considering that I play role-playing and strategy games and not first-person shooter games. I was determined that I wanted a NVIDIA card, and he didn’t try to talk me out of that. I budgeted $250 for a GTX280 with 1GB of RAM. My reasoning was that I could upgrade later with a second card of the same type in SLI mode (again on sale when they were being phased out).
Memory choices made my head spin, so I started by consulting the motherboard specs. I needed DDR3 triple-channel memory and the performance gaming builds were all using 6GB of RAM. The good news was that top-of-the-line memory is really cheap these days, and I quickly concluded that $200 would get me 6GB of screaming fast RAM. My advisor kept saying “Mushkin” over and over again. I assumed he was talking about a brand of memory and not sled dogs, so I wrote it down.
I started playing with an online “power calculator” and became alarmed when I saw how much power was needed for a Core i7 build with SLI graphics, a couple of hard drives, and a few extras… not to mention the headroom needed to overclock. I was bumping up against my initial target of 500W without the second video card or extra hard drive(s), so I budgeted $150 for a power supply in the range of 750-1000 watts in order to leave room for expansion.
So I had the guts of the computer down and had spent a mythical $1200. My $1500 build seemed a bit of out of reach at this point, but in reality I had gone over that threshold the moment that I chose the Core i7 path instead of the older technology. My $600 headphone amplifier became a $1200 model by the time I purchased, so this budget creep came as no surprise. I plodded on with $2000 as my new budget target.
I was determined to have a widescreen monitor, and I wanted a native resolution of 1920x1200. I had been using 1600x1200 and did not want to get used to something dramatically different. I did not plan to use this computer to watch movies, so I preferred the 16:10 aspect ratio for games. This requirement sent me to 24” monitors and an estimated price of $300. I could always use my existing monitor for a while and buy this later if my budget became tight (yeah… right… sure).
I was sure I could get a keyboard and mouse for $150, and would settle on the models later. I took the same approach to the drives (models to be determined, budget of $150 for HDD and optical combined). All I knew for certain was that I wanted a 1TB hard drive to store my future collection of FLAC files, and I did not want to mess with a RAID setup or multiple drives in my first build. There would be plenty of time to investigate those options later as an upgrade.
I needed an operating system, and that decision way back there about 6GB of RAM had already locked me in to Vista 64-bit without my realizing it at the time. The budget was stretching already, so it would have to be Home Premium for $100.
The case was very important, and I needed to see some in person before making any decisions. I knew that it needed to accommodate an ATX motherboard, and I wanted good cooling for overclocking. A gaming case ($150?) was in order, but I did not want a big red flame on the side or something equally brassy. I wanted hip but tasteful… preferably black! A trip to Fry’s would be in order, but first let’s tally up the budget. Never go to a place like that without a price limit.
I ran this tentative list by my advisor and he came back with some nonsense about a CPU cooler, fan controllers, thermal compound, blah blah… but after some more research I realized the necessity of upgrading the stock CPU cooling for overclocking and added another $100 to the budget.
My new total was $2150… well; I could live with going a little over $2000 because I was making good choices – compromises would lessen the value now and end up costing more later (see how this cost escalation happens?). I decided to make that trip to Fry’s on Saturday, and shop in person for a case and the keyboard/mouse combination. Those were items that I needed to see to evaluate. I spent the rest of the week shopping online for the rest of the build, and by Saturday morning I had a cart at Newegg filled to the brim… pretty close to the budget.
Next up… the shopping trip.
I decided to build around this processor rather than getting last year’s model at a cheaper price, because the latest technology would be more apt to meet the predictably escalating game requirements of the next few years. I also reasoned that a motherboard suitable for the bottom Core i7 processor would accommodate the top-of-the-line Core i7 in a couple of years when they were being phased out, offering an easy upgrade.
I locked in the Core i7-920 processor for roughly $300 and, after consulting s1rrah, budgeted $300 for an ATX motherboard with the X58 chipset. His advice was to buy quality and not cut corners when it came to the motherboard, memory, and power supply. This made good sense to me since those components would determine the performance and overclocking abilities.
He also advised that I could save a few dollars on the graphics card(s), considering that I play role-playing and strategy games and not first-person shooter games. I was determined that I wanted a NVIDIA card, and he didn’t try to talk me out of that. I budgeted $250 for a GTX280 with 1GB of RAM. My reasoning was that I could upgrade later with a second card of the same type in SLI mode (again on sale when they were being phased out).
Memory choices made my head spin, so I started by consulting the motherboard specs. I needed DDR3 triple-channel memory and the performance gaming builds were all using 6GB of RAM. The good news was that top-of-the-line memory is really cheap these days, and I quickly concluded that $200 would get me 6GB of screaming fast RAM. My advisor kept saying “Mushkin” over and over again. I assumed he was talking about a brand of memory and not sled dogs, so I wrote it down.
I started playing with an online “power calculator” and became alarmed when I saw how much power was needed for a Core i7 build with SLI graphics, a couple of hard drives, and a few extras… not to mention the headroom needed to overclock. I was bumping up against my initial target of 500W without the second video card or extra hard drive(s), so I budgeted $150 for a power supply in the range of 750-1000 watts in order to leave room for expansion.
So I had the guts of the computer down and had spent a mythical $1200. My $1500 build seemed a bit of out of reach at this point, but in reality I had gone over that threshold the moment that I chose the Core i7 path instead of the older technology. My $600 headphone amplifier became a $1200 model by the time I purchased, so this budget creep came as no surprise. I plodded on with $2000 as my new budget target.
I was determined to have a widescreen monitor, and I wanted a native resolution of 1920x1200. I had been using 1600x1200 and did not want to get used to something dramatically different. I did not plan to use this computer to watch movies, so I preferred the 16:10 aspect ratio for games. This requirement sent me to 24” monitors and an estimated price of $300. I could always use my existing monitor for a while and buy this later if my budget became tight (yeah… right… sure).
I was sure I could get a keyboard and mouse for $150, and would settle on the models later. I took the same approach to the drives (models to be determined, budget of $150 for HDD and optical combined). All I knew for certain was that I wanted a 1TB hard drive to store my future collection of FLAC files, and I did not want to mess with a RAID setup or multiple drives in my first build. There would be plenty of time to investigate those options later as an upgrade.
I needed an operating system, and that decision way back there about 6GB of RAM had already locked me in to Vista 64-bit without my realizing it at the time. The budget was stretching already, so it would have to be Home Premium for $100.
The case was very important, and I needed to see some in person before making any decisions. I knew that it needed to accommodate an ATX motherboard, and I wanted good cooling for overclocking. A gaming case ($150?) was in order, but I did not want a big red flame on the side or something equally brassy. I wanted hip but tasteful… preferably black! A trip to Fry’s would be in order, but first let’s tally up the budget. Never go to a place like that without a price limit.
I ran this tentative list by my advisor and he came back with some nonsense about a CPU cooler, fan controllers, thermal compound, blah blah… but after some more research I realized the necessity of upgrading the stock CPU cooling for overclocking and added another $100 to the budget.
My new total was $2150… well; I could live with going a little over $2000 because I was making good choices – compromises would lessen the value now and end up costing more later (see how this cost escalation happens?). I decided to make that trip to Fry’s on Saturday, and shop in person for a case and the keyboard/mouse combination. Those were items that I needed to see to evaluate. I spent the rest of the week shopping online for the rest of the build, and by Saturday morning I had a cart at Newegg filled to the brim… pretty close to the budget.
Next up… the shopping trip.
