OK, so with the coming release of Star Citizen I have finally decided to stop trying to game on my netbook and the computer lab iMac's bootcamp partitions, and come into the 21st century with a gaming build.

Now since I'm on a college student budget* I can't do anything too crazy...but that's OK, because I'll only be using a 1440x900 resolution monitor. After some researching online and such here's what I've come up with: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/ThePilot/saved/1SNe

Any suggestions, critiques, or criticisms are welcome!!

* Currently I'm working a summer job and next week I'm starting a job hunt for next semester. All of the money from my job either goes to saving for school-related items or rent/insurance. (most of the money for the computer will come out of parting out my motorized bike). Does anyone have any suggestions for any kind of fund-raiser style thing I could do to raise some money for my college computer? (Although I'm building it for gaming, I will be using it for coding and other things, cause I'm a CS major...ever tried compiling code on a netbook? :P)

Thanks!

well, to begin with, if you are going to use it for gaming AND other things, that 128gb isn't going to last that long. I'd advise you to either find a smaller sd just to install the os on, and then get a decent tb hard-drive, or ditch the sd entirely and save some money.

The intel cpu i assume is a preference. Personally i would have picked AMD.

Can't complain about the video card.

Maybe you could get some slightly better/faster RAM? You risk that becoming the bottleneck.

What RAM would you suggest? I'm trying to keep my cost as low as possible :)

I'm using the SSD cause of its speed. I think I'll just use it till it fills up then get an HDD to move data to :)

Hmmm a difficult one, i was reading about Star Citizen a few months back, do they have min/max specs currently? All i remember is it probably really pushing alot of machines to the limit, or trying to. Could be wrong. Would you want to 100% go with intel, or are you open to amd? For intel, they recently released Haswell, however it isn't cheap (i think the 4760 or 4770k - if i have the numbers right) Is around £180+, An ivybridge is still good, it's just it's on a dead socket 1155 (as 1150 is now haswell) If you went Ivy, i would recommend i5 3570k.. but that is £180, so its virtually closing in on haswell. It can overclock nicely when been reading on forums. I haven't looked at the motherboard, but be careful to check if the mobo can run the cpu without a bios update etc...

Personally, i would go amd for the price, a 8 core 8320 retails at around £120, or 8350 for £170ish i think (Can't remember) The amd chips are great for multicore tasks, and these two chips can be o/c very nicely (read 8320, stock 3.5, o/c to over 4/4.5 in some cases) Still even the amd 6300 6 core is a great chip at the price, that can be o/c aswell.

But... amd are coming out with Steamroller around January time, and that might be worth waiting for, or at least looking at.

If you are going with amd make sure to really read up on motherboards, in regards to bios updates/whether it can stable overclock (good heatsinks on vrams etc..) and if the motherboard can handle the cpu's (the 8320/50 draw around 125w, some motherboards won't be able to cope) Tbh for motherboards you're looking at close to £100 or more.

For the gpu, i haven't been reading up on recently, so unsure of comparisons atm, for bang for buck have been reading though that 7850 2gig being very good for the price, or even the 7870, again though that's amd and not intel.

Still it's what you are willing to pay, or what you prefer as in brand. Bang for buck for that price range would be amd in my honest opinion, Intel are good, but you have to pay for it

You could go for 1866 speed ram for about a tenner more aswell

This is only my opinion, and i could be wrong, and you should research more :P

Hope this huge amount of drivel helps!

Yes it does! I've heard that AMD aren't as good for gaming overall...is that not true? My price point is definitely right around the $700-$800 range, so if I can do better by going with AMD at that price point I'm not against it :)

sorry for not answering before, i didn't notice.

You know what they say when you shouldn't believe everthing you hear? :p

I have always used amd and haven't had a single problem, and i assure you that i did mistreat my hardware a lot (i remember having a pc with some overclocked cpu that i only realized years later reached 70-80°, and it is still working great (if you were wondering, it was my fault for never applying thermal paste).

In that regard, it's funny how the only part that ever malfunctioned for me was my nvidia card, but that's just something that happened to me, and you shouldn't decide based on some (internet) story.

If you really want i can attempt to give some specific advice, but since you are the one who is going to pay for it it's better if you do your research yourself! Of course, if you want to discuss something you are always welcome :)

Well after a lot of research it looks like for what's available right now that I'll go with the intel/nvidia rig :)

I did change a couple of things...the PSU and RAM brand most notably, so you can check out my changes :)

I only have one comment really...I would think long and hard on that power supply.

You are going to spend some decent money (especially the $260 on the video card) and then have it all powered by a $50 power supply that only has 500w? I know it recommends a psu with a MINIMUM of 500w...with my own experience of a GTX 670, I would say 650-750 minimum. Give yourself some breathing room and make sure to spend some money on a very critical part. A bad psu can screw up the rest of your computer very easily.


Although this is my opinion as I feel a great power supply is just as needed to go along with a great processor and video card among other things.

According to the eXtreme PSU calculator, my system (at 100% peak and with 25% capacitor aging) has a recommended PSU wattage of 462W (A minimum of 412W), so I figured a 500W PSU would be fine. Do you think that's not enough breathing room?

God, i'm knackered, pretty late here. For a good psu aswell, Xfx are supposed to be quite good with a single volt rail, i think you guys have Seasonic more available and they are supposed to pretty good aswell, probably a few more too.

Ati doesn't perform as well compared to intel (intels single core speed is better) but the price would be £180 starting for the i5 3570k (then a motherboard that can o/c... more cost etc..) But for the price range of £90-15 odd amd perform very well for a low/mid range build. And alot of amd chips can be overclocked really well... bear in mind if any overclocking is done you will need a beefier psu, 550w/600w or even 650, stock speeds though should be fine on 550... i think, but again, its all just reading :P

If i was going intel, especially with star citizen/high end game involved i would say i5 3570k minimum for intel (with a z77 board) If i was going amd i would go for either (Depending on cost) the amd 6300 (£90) but most probably amd 8320 (£120) or the 8350 (£170ish), for an fx chip it would have to be a am3+ board with either a 970 chipset, or 990fx. But even then we don't really know quite how hard that game will push the machine, and in what ways (cpu/gpu etc)

You should check out toms hardware/anandtech/overclockers etc... forums for opinions aswell (though you might have already :P) For every motherboard you see/ like the look of, google it, for reviews, and forums for problems... for eg i was reading very bad things about certain msi motherboards recently.

damn, tried to edit/link but i can't i think i need more posts or something.

Well after a good bit of researching, I figured that to get the same performance I'm getting now with an AMD build would cost more, so I'm gonna stick to Intel on this one :)

I did update the PSU (and several other things) though, so check it out and tell me what you think! :)

Intel makes better processors, period.

For gaming and processor intensive work go with intel.
For everything non-intensive AMD works great.

Make sure you get a dual PCI-E mobo so you can SLI in the future when your video card drops in price to almost double the output for graphics. (Roughly 1.5x the output, depending on the game(s))

Edit: That mobo is NOT a dual PCI-E, and I really would recommend you get one that IS. When the price drops on your current 760 you could buy a second one and improve your video performance. Just a suggestion.

I've built 5 brand new gaming rigs for myself and others, so I know a little of what I'm talking about. Just for your info. ;)

Thanks! I'll look around and see if I can find one...but will my current PSU handle 2 video cards?

EDIT: Well it looks like my current PSU wouldn't be able to handle it, and to get a motherboard with support for SLI would cost at least $100, so I think I'll just go with this. (I'm upgrading from gaming on a netbook...and I've never gamed on anything with a dedicated graphics card, so this is a HUGE step and will last me for probably 7 or 8 years cause all the games I love are quite a few years behind development lol)

OK final (I think ;) version of the build. It's funny cause the only thing that's the same as my original build is the disk drive lol!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: ASRock H77M Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($75.66 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($79.29 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card ($259.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Xion XON-560 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Rosewill RFA-120-WL 74.5 CFM 120mm Fan ($3.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $753.88
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-07-04 10:53 EDT-0400)


I got several of these on sale (including the CPU which I got for $170!!) so my total cost comes to around $700-$725.

Future Pilot, Are you aware of the Falcon Guide?