1000$ gaming build

[guitarwiz23]

It may be worth it to take the intel build, drop down to a 7850 and push the i3 up to either a 2500K or a 3570K, once you can afford a nice aftermarket cooler those would be great overclockers and provide much better performance. I have a 7850 overclocked to 1050/1300 and put bf3 up to Max and I get around 40fps, no problems with diablo3, always get 60, it's a great card, and yes it may be a little overpriced for now since it has no competition (jus like the 7870) but if you look around people are getting crazy overclocks with them and getting gtx580 performance from them. (also to note the performance between the i3 or the 8120 and the 2500k or 3570k may not be noticeable in gaming now)

[great_big_abyss]

See, this is a hard build because you want to buy a monitor, all your components, all your peripherals and windows for < $1000.

In reality, this turns it into more of a $650-700 build. At the same time, you want to play BF3 on ultra settings. This requires quite a bit of horsepower, even with a single monitor.

So let's try to shave some money off of the basic build.

ASUS M5A97 - $99.99
AMD FX8120 Bulldozer - $169.99
Kingston HyperX 2x4GB 1600Mhz $48.99
Stock AMD heatsink - $0
XFX Radeon 7870 Double D - $299.99
Antec HCG-520M 520W Powersupply - $64.89
WD 1TB Black - $114.99
Bitfenix Shinobi - $69.99

Total: $868.83

I removed the heatsink (use the stock HSF, but don't overclock) and spec'd slightly cheaper RAM and powersupply. I also replaced the SSD with a 1Tb harddrive.

I'm trying to spec quality components that I know are going to last you a long time. Hence why I'm using a slightly more expensive ASUS board than the Gigabyte that you initially spec'd, same with the WD Harddive vs the Seagate that you spec'd. I know that these components/manufacturers are solid and should give you years of service.

You'll probably need to beg/borrow/steal a DVD drive from a friend in order to install Windows. But really, they aren't necessary after that in this day and age, which is why I didnt' spec one.

[great_big_abyss]

Originally Posted by guitarwiz23

It may be worth it to take the intel build, drop down to a 7850 and push the i3 up to either a 2500K or a 3570K, once you can afford a nice aftermarket cooler those would be great overclockers and provide much better performance. I have a 7850 overclocked to 1050/1300 and put bf3 up to Max and I get around 40fps, no problems with diablo3, always get 60, it's a great card, and yes it may be a little overpriced for now since it has no competition (jus like the 7870) but if you look around people are getting crazy overclocks with them and getting gtx580 performance from them. (also to note the performance between the i3 or the 8120 and the 2500k or 3570k may not be noticeable in gaming now)

In this instance (gaming), I think graphical horsepower is more important than CPU horsepower. Hence my proclivity to spec a higher graphics card, but a lower processor.

And the AMD build is simply because it is actually quite a bit cheaper.

[guitarwiz23]

That is a good point, I had an amd build (955 BE) and it was slightly bottle necking my 7850, I upgraded to a 3570K and you can see the difference in the 3dmark graphics scores. Don't know how the 955 compares to the 8120 though. The 7850 does get pretty close in performance to the 7870 and you save $100 but you have to hope you get a good clocker and the 7870 will still win due to the extra shaders