Galaki said:
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Video Card: You can probably get away with a GTS here, if you check out the Bioshock official forums you can find tons of info on how you can run everything at some pretty rediculous settings. I personally plan on running it at 1680x1050 with my 8800GTS which is a $300 card right now.
Case: You can get a nice case for $40 if you don't need to compensate for anything.
PSU: For a single 8800 you can get a PSU for $60 that is both reliable and beefy enough to handle your rig.
--saved so far with my modifications = $300 --
Motherboard: In no way do you need crazy over the top motherboard, a nice $100 board will do just fine here.
CPU: Their quad core goodness is nice but was probably yawning from all the rest it was getting. You can do just fine here with a 6000+ for $170.
RAM: I just bought 2 gigs of DDR2 800 Corsair HyperX for $70 so I will set this at $140 for what is probably overkill of with 4GB.
Mouse/Keyboard: $20..no seriously this is just stupid that people spend this kind of money...are you serious?
--saved so far with my modifications = $1620 --
Monitor: You can get a nice monitor for $120 but if you want a very nice monitor you can get 22" monitors with 2000:1 contrast ratio and 2ms responce times for around $200-250. Lets just call this $250.
Hard Drive: If you really need to get two and raid them get two 320GB Seagate Barracudas and you are only set back $160.
Total savings with my modifications: $1,910 saved
Stuff you missed: CD/DVD Burner - +$40, Floppy Drive $5
Final Cost: $1,285
The key here is the rig you spec'd out was full of places where you were paying hundreds of dollars to improve areas of the PC that were already being bottlenecked by other areas of the PC. You were literally paying for no gain. And there are probably still some cases of that in my setup sadly.
PS - This isn't necessarily the rig I would purchase but with a similar build 6 months ago I built mine for $850. And according to the folks at the Bioshock forum I should be able to run it with max settings at 1680x1050...we shall see tonight though when I get the demo downloaded.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
