Hey guys, I am looking to build a gaming PC pretty soon. I have an older dell box that i bought off Craigslist, and its a intel duo quad core or w/e but I cant really use it for a fresh build. So my main questions are: 1. Which processor should I get? a.i5 3570k b.i5 2500k c.i5 3450 2. Should I upgrade my gpu? (I currently run a gtx 550 Ti) Suggestions please on upgraded gpus 3. Box? (Size, Maker, Accessories, etc.) 4. Is quad core enough, or should I go with an octo or double octo? (8 core; 16 core. My lingo not sure if accurately titled) 5. Power supply? I have a 600w power brick right now that is newish (my old dell battery supply died and was replaced with a 600w.) will that be enough to run my new system? The main things I will be running on my computer are: Media, Gaming, Making Beats (I doubt this is a high usage task), typical internet surfing, and of course CLUTCHFANNING. Any and every suggestion is appreciated
In the next few months my dad and I are going to buy a rental property I'll make sure to hit you up. If you want advice on a computer I'd call Matt O if you've talked to him in the last few years, he seems to know a crap ton. Anyways I'm back in Houston now and looking to play some ball. I'll get your number from Phil.
you probably can only use the hard drive, optical drive, video card from the dell machine. The newer processors require a new motherboard and depending on your dell case, it may not fit. 1. i5-2500k is fine unless u want to get the latest and great, but it's not much more improvement over the i5-2500k. 2. 550 Ti is fine, depends on what you intend to play. i would stick with it and see how it runs w/ the new stuff before upgrading. 3. Any case is fine, up to you really. 4. quad core i5 is fine for most of the games out there. 5. many people like the Corsair power supplies, get atleast 600W. FYI, you probably want to get atleast 4gb of ram, i recommend 8gb since it's pretty cheap right now, so you'll need Windows 7 64-bit. Also, you may consider getting a ssd hard drive, Intel has been discounted there 180gb 330 series drive by 60 bucks, so it's like $130-140 which is a great price for a 180gb ssd. It's really not that hard putting the system together, I just built 3 for work yesterday in about 1 hour.
Cori- for sure man, yeah we hooping today at meadow bend around 5:30-6. MykTek- dang you seem to know a lot about computers. I really wanted to upgrade to IVY Bridge, but I've just heard so many negatives about the 3570k compared to 2500k....
Ya, Ivy Bridge may be the latest and greatest, but it was really built for the mobile market. If you look at pricing, I think Sandy Bridge chips are actually more expensive then Ivy Bridge. The big deal about Ivy Bridge really is that it handles multimedia better and it has a better graphics chip built on it. If your building a gaming machine, this new stuff really isn't going to help you much since your going to have a discrete graphics card anyway. So, I would build a 2500k, 8gb's of ram(corsair), ssd for OS drive(intel 330 ssd 180gb), another hard drive for storage(wd 1tb black), 650w corsair power supply, hyper cooler 212 cpu cooler, antec case. That will run you about 8-900 probably don't know if you'll be able to see this or not. https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=17086491 with this setup, you can use your old video card and see how your games play before you decide if you wanna upgrade that or not.
This is using Australian prices but I think our dollars aren't far off anyway (in fact alot of Aussies import stuff from US because it sometimes ends up cheaper) but nevertheless: http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/rmp_sg_whirlpoolpcs_gaming_configs_1 I usually spend 1500-2000 on just the box and that usually lasts me around 4 years before I replace it again, I'm an avid gamer but I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore gamer, getting a bit old to keep up with the potty mouthed kids these days. Hope this helps.
Is there an easy way I can transfer Windows 7 to a new hard drive without re-installing everything? I've did a search and the solutions are either too complicated or involve me buying new backup/cloning software. TIA
get: i5 ivy bridge 800 watt supply GTX 670 gfx card (400 bones but arguably the best card on the market...it was 1344 CUDA cores compared to your current 550, I get 120FPS on BF3 ultra at 1080p) 16gigs ram Asus or Gigabyte MOBO Thats all folks! Thats my current PC and it is MURDERING games right now...that 670 is a monster.
One free solution. If you have a Western Digital hard drive, connect the drive and install the free Acronis software at: http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&type=download&wdc_lang=en
So I'm looking at $1300-1600 If i went with your build? because I'd basically be able to salvage nothing. and of course I'd have to get some better storage.... Guess I better start selling my consoles
About to build a new gaming machine myself. Microcenter has amazing prices on CPU's right now. i5 3570K for $189 or 2500K for $169. Unfortunately for me they don't have a location in Austin, so I'll likely just end up going with newegg for most of my build.
Yeah I have a microcenter about 25 miles away, but Frys 5 miles away that will price match, just not bundled deals (i5 3570k plus MOBO for cheaper) so I might have to make the drive...
i am not sure what your budget is like but also recommend getting a 128gb SSD for your OS drive and then a spare 750gb/1tb drive for storage
YES, but well worth it. ^ Trust Señor The_Yoyo. He knows what's going on. Good call. Saw one of these puppies KILL a regular ol' hard drive with performance while churning out a bunch of Requests-per-second at a SharePoint demo. The spinning hard drive did stuff in more time than the SSD did with the same application running a MS SQL database and app server for SharePoint. I was impressed (that's what SHE said). SSDs are the future... no moving parts make it FASTER.
