| I LOVE GIGGS said: Can I build a good 3d gaming PC with only $1,500? |
Can you ever. I build a pretty solid gaming PC for less than that... A few months ago... I got -
(This is approx - one or two components I didn't see on Newegg, so I selected the closest equivalent)
Mobo: MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3 AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX
Boot HD: OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM
Those exact components total $1,254, and that build is great - but I was just relisting my system. You can get a lot of those things on sale or look for similar items with combo discounts. And Windows Ultimate is entirely unneccesary... I only installed it because I got it free from my job. All told, for $1500 you could get a similar build with a higher end processor and a substantially better video card... and that system would scream.
I STRONGLY recommend using the nVidia chipset (560,570,580 series) As ATI currently have very buggy drivers. I actually started out this built with a 5770, and it was terrible. all sorts of issues in the games I played... Even older/not graphically intensive games (WoW and League of Legends both had serious issues... SC2 had slight issues). And this was with settings not maxed. The card wasn't being taxed, it just didn't work correctly. I hung with it for a pair of driver updates, but how can the 5700/5800 series still be working through so many kinks over a year after launch? Once I got a factory overclocked 560 ti (HIGHLY recommended - generally the same price as regular 560) everything worked perfectly. No hiccups, no stutters, and most importantly, no driver related crashes to desktop.
