So, I've finally got enough money saved up to build my own desktop, but of course, I have no idea what to get exactly, so here I am

I'll be using it mostly for gaming, probably some streaming and school stuff too, but nothing really major. My main reason for getting it is for gaming, so I want something that will last a while and will be able to run things very well of course.

Im looking to spend about $800. I already have all the peripherals and such. I'll also need a wireless card, since my internet at home and school is wifi.

As far as SSD's and such go, im not sure if the money wold be worth it if i had to downgrade any of the other components to fit it in my budget.

Im planning on purchasing the parts fairly soon, as id like to have it built before i have to go back to school, but im not sure if that will happen. I may also need a bit of help since this would be my first build. I know the whole, 'if you can put together a lego set you can build a pc' thing, but im particular about getting things right.

Thanks in advance guys.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($159.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 76.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($19.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Performance ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($107.86 @ Newegg)
Memory: Patriot Intel Extreme Master, Limited Ed 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($31.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Sandisk Extreme 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($159.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 650 1GB Video Card ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 650W 80 PLUS Gold Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($17.89 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $817.67
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-26 04:42 EST-0500)

---

The CPU will run you another $50 if you don't have a Microcenter near you. The 2500k is a pretty good CPU (I have one myself) and overclocks well (I just threw in the cooler that I have; if you don't plan on overclocking, you don't need to buy an aftermarket cooler and can strike that $20 off the total).

The Motherboard looks pretty good as far as I can tell. You got your SATA 6Gb/s and your fancy USB 3.0 ports; you could go for a later model if you want to throw down more money here, but I don't think you need to.

The memory is just cheap memory. 8GB is all you'll really need for now, and you can always buy another pair of 4GB sticks later on if you decide for whatever reason you need more than 8GB (easy upgrade, saves you $50 on the initial build; best option).

I threw in an SSD because you mentioned it. The one I picked has pretty good reviews and is at a decent price per GB. You don't have to get an SSD, but I would recommend you get one if you want your machine to really feel like it's new, ya know? Install the OS and your favorite programs on the SSD and you'll be flying. If you need more than 240GB for storage (which most people probably do), I put in a 2TB HDD that was at a decent price (and I find 7200RPM to be a good balance). You can get a smaller SSD to save some cash if you'd like.

For the video card, I always go with NVidia on gaming rigs, but AMD cards are more friendly on your wallet and normally perform just as well. That being said, though, I just defaulted to the budget GTX 650, which is a pretty impressive card for its price. If you find yourself with some extra money to put toward this build, you'll probably want to aim higher on the GPU budget to make it more future-proof.

For the case, I actually have that case for my dev box at work. It seems to be a pretty solid case, and the front panel is on the top and slanted, which I like more than the panel on the CM690 II (which is what my personal rig uses).

SeaSonic has good power supplies, from what I've heard and from personal experience. 650W should definitely give you enough power unless you plan on doing something like running multiple graphics cards. Gold certified because you should care about your power supply being efficient.

I also threw in a random optical drive in case you need one. I literally just took the cheapest one listed. If you use disks a lot or need to read Blu-Rays, you should probably revise it. If you can take the optical drive from your old computer, you can save $20 here.

For the wireless adapter, I bought this for my machine. It works well (though there is a minor driver issue in that it will try to find a nonexistent DLL each time it connects to the router. This doesn't cause any performance issues; it just logs the warning in the event viewer, which apparently not many people look at).

---

By the way, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

My counter:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD A8-3870K 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-A75-D3H ATX FM1 Motherboard ($97.24 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($91.78 @ eCost)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($194.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($75.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: Lite-On IHAS324-98 DVD/CD Writer ($24.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $764.93
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-26 05:49 EST-0500)


Roy did a nice job but I have some problems with it.

Intel is just too expensive on budgets below 1000$ right now. If we were talking 1150-1300$ budget for this build I'd say yeah rock Intel. But trying to get a good gaming build together at a low total cost is usually a reason to go for AMD. So we'll sacrifice a little CPU power for some more GPU power. We can always overclock anyway.

By comparison, I was able to put in twice the RAM, one of the best SSDs on the market, and a better GPU for a lot less. We also didn't touch Seagate who are not nearly as reliable as WD. We may not have as much disk space on this build (120GB+1TB as opposed to 240GB+2TB) but I'd rather have the RAM and gaming performance and drop another 1TB in if and when we need it. I also prefer the HAF over the Storm Scout but that's just personal preference. Any sub 100$ mid tower will do you just fine. We can also use a 520w SeaSonic vs the 650w since we aren't drawing that much power. If you plan to overclock, you can throw the Hyper 212 EVO on there as well. For wireless this TP Link has some serious power.

That's my build and I'm sticking to it.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 26 2012, 11:32 am by Excalibur.

I've really only skimmed these, but I'd only go with 8GB ram, not 16. Ram is easily expandable if you decide you need more. Save the money, or go for a 240GB ssd - much more of a hassle to upgrade later and bigger ones are actually faster (more ram only helps if you start running low - I get by on 4GB just fine).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 26 2012, 7:22 pm by Lanthanide.

I like ex's build better, since i really dont need the extra hard drive space, and would rather have the better GPU. I do like the case Roy picked more, so ill probably go with that one as long as it fits with everything in ex's build.

Would i need to get thermal paste at all for the cpu, since ive seen you suggest it on other builds? Also, I'll need an OS, but im not sure what the best deal i could get on it is.

edit: I would rather have the extra ram than 80 more GB on the ssd. I really dont use much HD space from experience. I had a 250 GB Hd for 4 years and never had a problem with space.

On a related note (and if its a tangent I will star a new topic, but I expect it to be short lived), as I'm looking to soon build a performance/gaming desktop, I want to know what the "ideal" price point is for a gaming desktop. I have been of the opinion with laptops, for example, that once you start looking about $450 the increase in capabilities is nearly negligible until you get up to around $700. This isn't as true as it used to be, but the general idea was that if I needed a laptop for class I'd probably stick beneath $400, whereas if I was looking for something more fun I'd look closer to $700. So while I've been pricing parts for a desktop I've had one friend offer to help me create a build for $1200, but my boyfriend says he can build just as good of a desktop for $800. So my question is, why exactly do you gain by raising the price from $800 to $1000/1200/+? Longevity? Efficiency? Higher Tolerance?

From what ive seen, and anyone correct me if this is wrong, but the desktop price range is much larger. Desktops that can run most things on high will only run you ~600 dollars. raising the price like that from 800 to 1200+ doesnt really do too much in my opinion. You'd get more hd space, and youd be able to run anything on max settings, but from what ive seen, it would be better to buy one for 800 and upgrade it in 2 years for 400 than buy one for 1200 and upgrade it in 3 years for 200. Desktops running at higher prices will be more powerful, but arent much more than the average gamer needs. Maybe you'd need it if you're looking to do 3d modeling or something.

On a side note for laptops, you wont find a laptop for 700 that can run games at good-looking settings, or that would be relevant for more than a year or two.

Laptops aren't really the question here...

and personally I don't mind paying a premium upfront for a desktop if it means another year before I need to upgrade parts.

Hear, hear! I haven't gotten into any RAM-intensive aspects on my desktop yet, and so 8GB would have gotten me by just fine. Prices are dropping as time goes on, so the longer you can wait before needing the extra RAM will equate to the more you can save on buying it.

Yeah, both cases are good to go with either build; they're both mid tower cases.

You only really need it if you're getting an after-market cooler (which you really only need if you plan on overclocking your CPU). The stock cooler comes with the thermal paste pre-applied. If you are looking for thermal paste, though, Arctic Silver MX4 has been doing all kinds of good for me. You'll get enough of the stuff to last for eternity, though, because you only need a little bit for one CPU.

You sound a lot like me. I use about 100GB on my laptop and roughly the same on my desktop. If your data usage is really low, I would opt for an SSD that will fit everything and no HDD. My biggest regret is getting a smaller SSD and a large HDD that I won't do anything with. If I knew then what I know now about my data usage, I'd have probably gone with this SSD (or similar at the time) and no HDD.

But that's all just my opinion. SSDs are expensive, so getting a large one probably isn't in your budget.

Depends on how long you want it to last before getting new parts, and what parts you are willing to replace before others. I built my machine on a $1500 budget (for the desktop, at least; I needed monitors and peripherals as well), and I expect it to last well over 5 years, though I'll probably want to upgrade it well before it becomes incapable of handling the latest games.

Generally, better parts will last you longer and be more reliable. As far as efficiency, I assume you mean the PSU; a good PSU should be in the budget for almost any build, really. As far as using the computer today, both an $800 rig and $1200 rig would probably be indistinguishable in performance.

If the budget were to increase by $200 here, I'd probably put that money toward the GPU, since newer games will really only be hitting that part until a significant amount of time passes. For a gaming machine, as long as you start with a decent CPU, the GPU will determine how long it will be before you need an upgrade.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 26 2012, 10:22 pm by Roy.

@Kame
The more you spend now the less you spend later. If you want to make a topic I can create two builds for two price points and give you the differences between and what they mean.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($129.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($91.78 @ eCost)
Video Card: PNY GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card ($279.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 620W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($78.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $800.71
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-26 18:27 EST-0500)

$800 and you couldn't even fit in a GTX 670? for shame you all. There's an extra $10 off the case that pcpartpicker is too slow to pick up. CPU and motherboard is a combo on newegg for extra $7 off.

What you gain by adding in extra cash is better quality. There are many places where I skimped, and it's pretty obvious where those are.

More places to skimp:
Ram is $30 for 8 GB ddr3-1866
No SSD
cx500 PSU for $30.

There are 2 methods to build. From the computer up or the GPU down. You will get the best gaming computer if you build from the GPU down.

Seriously, extra ram over 8gb is a waste of time.

Given that you've been happy with a 250gb in the past, I think you'd actually be better of just dropping the 1tb HD altogether and going with the 240gb SSD that Roy priced up. That will give you far more performance gain than 8gb of RAM would, and like I said earlier upgrading RAM later is incredibly simple, whereas upgrading an SSD (with the OS installed on it) is trickier.

Can anyone comment on rockz' build? I can see it has a worse CPU and, from what i've heard, hard drive.

As far as the Hd goes, while yes, i didnt use too much space on my current HD, i want the space. While i don't have problems with space, the difference between 160GB+1TB and 240GB is quite large. The thing too is that I can make use of the extra space quite easily.

I still have the question of OS, since I'm pretty sure ill need that...

WD has pretty miserable failure rates, much worse than seagate (more than double according to some figures). Seagate got a miserable reputation for their 7200.11s which are indeed godawful. they fixed the problems and recently purchased samsung, which is among the better HDD manufacturers. With SSDs providing performance now, the only logical choice on HDDs is price per GB at the desired size. 1 TB is more than enough for just about anyone, especially to start with, and provides a cheap upgrade down the road in the form of a RAID with $50 disks.

The CPU is quite awesome all things considered, and I would recommend it over the A8. When you can purchase two processors at the exact same price/performance it's worthwhile to purchase, as diminishing returns hasn't set in yet. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/399?vs=699 The 8000 series competes directly with intel's golden processors in the 2500k and 3570k, but it's got pretty miserable single threaded performance, and it's not a whole lot cheaper than the i5k processors. Also, the 6300 is technically a 3 module processor, with each module having 2 threads. It's similar to hyperthreading, but is done much better, to the point that AMD calls each module as 2 cores, when in reality it's not 2 distinct cores. Thus the performance suffers slightly.

I have a moral objection to paying so much for windows, so I don't mind stealing it. I'm not going to tell you how to do this, as it's very easy to do, and Microsoft can't block it without making millions of dells have non-genuine keys. If you can get it for $30 though, by all means purchase a legitimate copy. There are student prices all over the place, and many students get windows for free. Personally I have 4 XP keys, a server 2008 key, and a vista business key from MSDN while my subscription was active. All of these are only legal if using for testing purposes.

I will say that I really don't like the sacrifices I made on the parts that don't matter, like case, hdd, psu, motherboard. Roy's build will make an excellent all around computer which has an upgrade path. Excalibur's build will make a very good computer, but the upgrade path is limited. My build is a dead end path. You're already at the top tier graphics, so they don't need to be upgraded. The next logical step would be upgrading all the crappy parts which won't actually make your computer better.

Have you got a reference for that?

In my experience, most recommendations for and against HDs based on failure rates are simply anecdotal. I'd be happy to see some hard evidence.

The CPU rockz suggested is actually better than the one Excalibur suggested, and it's way cheaper than the one I suggested because Intel is generally more expensive (price != performance between these brands).

The motherboard has everything you'd want on it, but judging from the reviews, it's not too reliable.

As far as Seagate vs Western Digital, I wouldn't stress over it. I've never had a problem with Seagate, and they're usually a few bucks cheaper than WD. Obviously Ex will disagree with me here, but I'd say you shouldn't be too concerned as they are both good brands.

Operating systems are expensive, yo. I'd never suggest here that you should get a cracked version, of course, so if you can't/don't want to reuse your current OS for your new build, you may have to put down another $80-100 for the OS. I'd go with Windows 8 because it's the newest OS from Microsoft (and it's pretty slick once you get past the UI changes), but you can still find copies of 7 easily enough.

Don't get Windows 8. Productivity is lower than with classic GUIs unless you have a touchscreen.

As for hard drives Seagate, Samsung and WD are all fine. Actually, in my experience computer parts in general have much lower failure rates than 10 years ago.
I'd recommend going with a medium sized SSD and a HDD for storage. Since the hdd is for storage you don't even need to consider speed. Just go for GB/$ of your favorite brand.
My system has a Samsung 830 128GB and a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB, which are both awesome, so I can vouch for the 840 being a good choice.

8 GB RAM is enough for now. As Lanth confirmed you typically won't even need 4 GB, so you get 8 to be on the safe side.

For GPU get the fastest you can afford a build around now, since that's what matters for gaming computers.

As for PSU, Seasonic is obviously an awesome choice, but I wouldn't bother aiming for high efficiency rates since PSU > 500W won't get hot even during long gaming sessions and power is really cheap so who cares if your computer draws 5W more -- but that's just me.

Yeah, right now I'm leaning towards rockz' build. The only part I'm concerned with is the motherboard, sincere case seems fine, as does the HD, but I would be willing to spend a but more if it meant a more reliable motherboard. Otherwise it seems like a good fit.

I would only consider windows 8 because might be able to get a student discount on it, but I'm not too worried about that right now.

There should be deals available through your school for a windows 7, or as demon said in the sbox, you could try to get an oem.

Also for Office and such, my school had them for free download. So you might look into that and see if you can get it for free too.

I run out of RAM with 4 GB frequently when playing sc2. I just upgraded to 16 GB because it was $50 for ddr3 1866.

I'm surprised your school gave you office kame. Usually they do OSes, but MS is very stingy with office. I had to take a CSC or EE course in order to get a MSDN subscription, and all I got was operating systems and a few development tools.