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Forums - PC Discussion - How to Build a Kick-ass $800 Gaming PC

A Radeon 4850 for $185 is a ripoff...I just bought a Radeon 4830 for $85, which is basically an underclocked 4850/70, which I then overclocked to 4850 levels, since I have good cooling.

You can build a gaming rig that can play Crysis at 1680x1050 (22 " widescreen) at high settings (a few on medium) for about $500.

I just made $425 of upgrades for a new CPU, mobo, video card, case, PSU, and memory. I re-used my 500GB hard drive and DVD drive, keyboard, and mouse...that'd be another $100 probably, and that's it.  And I can play L4D, TF2, COD4, Company of Heroes, all completely maxed, including AA at its highest.  Crysis, I can run all on high, with 2x AA, and I get just over 50 fps with a couple dips to 40 sometimes.



LEFT4DEAD411.COM
Bet with disolitude: Left4Dead will have a higher Metacritic rating than Project Origin, 3 months after the second game's release.  (hasn't been 3 months but it looks like I won :-p )

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BenKenobi88 said:

A Radeon 4850 for $185 is a ripoff...I just bought a Radeon 4830 for $85, which is basically an underclocked 4850/70, which I then overclocked to 4850 levels, since I have good cooling.

You can build a gaming rig that can play Crysis at 1680x1050 (22 " widescreen) at high settings (a few on medium) for about $500.

I just made $425 of upgrades for a new CPU, mobo, video card, case, PSU, and memory. I re-used my 500GB hard drive and DVD drive, keyboard, and mouse...that'd be another $100 probably, and that's it. And I can play L4D, TF2, COD4, Company of Heroes, all completely maxed, including AA at its highest. Crysis, I can run all on high, with 2x AA, and I get just over 50 fps with a couple dips to 40 sometimes.

 

"But wait a second, I thought it would cost me thousands of dollars every year just to play games and still have them look nice."

WRONG



Oh, and I basically built a whole new PC because my previous one got screwed up when my room flooded.  It's not like my previous PC couldn't play modern games on decent settings...it could have lasted another year or so, it being built early '07.  It didn't get submerged, but the carpet was wet, and the power supply started dying on me a few days later. I replaced it, the next power supply died, and my onboard ethernet died, so I figured my mobo was dying.

In the end, I decided I wanted an upgrade anyway, so I paid a little over $400 and now I have a screaming fast PC. Buying an old part to replace something would cost nearly that much anyway, since computer parts get very expensive when they're near obsolete.



LEFT4DEAD411.COM
Bet with disolitude: Left4Dead will have a higher Metacritic rating than Project Origin, 3 months after the second game's release.  (hasn't been 3 months but it looks like I won :-p )

ZenfoldorVGI said:

I let Squilliam find me a prebuilt 400$ PC that I added a card on, and it runs HD games well enough for me to realize I'd rather be playing them on a console.

 

 Why do you prefer playing them on a console?

disolitude said:

I recently took the plunge and spent 250 bucks to add to my 400 dollar PC that I bought earlier this year. Fairly happy thus far...but not too sure this beats console gaming as it is now.

 

 Why not?



Why's this a big deal? You've been able to buy a great gaming machine for $800 for a while now. I haven't looked in a while, but I imagine you could build one for even less, given the deflation in computer part prices.