Budget gaming PC~ $850 (Have a few things already)

[Sora]

Hello, I'm quite young and building a budget PC of about $850.

I have done 3 months of extensive research and I'm pretty sure this setup would be pretty much the best for my needs. As for the gaming I will use it for I plan on using it for future RPG's and moderate FPS's. Since RPG's usually dont have nearly as high graphical needs as FPS do i feel i should be alright for a while. Also, I only have a 17inch monitor which kind of shuts me out of anything past 1024x800 res, the bad being that ...its only 1024x800..while the good being that It will be less work for my Card at that res. I will just upgrade the monitor and the card later. Anyway enough of that I know...On to the System Please!!!


The CPU I choose is the E6300 just becuase its budget, but this

E6300

I am building this with no need of RAID or heavy OC, maybe like 2.4 or something?. I Also don't need SLI therefore im going with a cheap Mobo to budget. I know its pretty much the lowest of the Line and like to have a DS3 but that adds almost 70 bucks to my "budget"

Biostar 945P

The case I choose may be starting to get old, but with 2x120mm fans front and back, 1 80mm side, a sick *** look, and an awesome price, the Xion Xion Xon-103 seems like its the case for me I pretty have my heart set on it so dont try and change my case on me >.>

Xion Xion Xon-103

Along with the case Im getting a subsiste PSU and fans for it. Since I hear they arent that good.

The PSU that should be more than enough I think is this~

Rosewill 480w-Dual fans

as for the replacement fans i choose these nice 2 blue ones to match my case~

Apevia 120mm Blue LED fan

I feel that since im not replacing the stock cooler on the CPU i would try to get decent cooling other ways. Tell me if you think the cooling sounds good enough please, would appreciate it.

Ok now for the HD. I'm not trying to use any crazy raptors here just a standard SATA 3.0 with 16mb cache. This one stood out in reviews, on paper, and in price.

Western Digital Caviar 250gb SATA

Now this next piece probably is one of things i spent the most time on researching and thinking about, and that is my RAM. I originally was going to get 1 gb for budget at DDR2 800 but instead, i decided to go for 2 GB of DDR2 675 with Heat spreaders, low voltage and a Cas lat of only 4 running on DIMM. After searching like crazy for the best priced the one that stuck out the most, by far is this.

Wintec AMPX 1GB DDR2 675

I feel that instead of trying to get some DDR2 800 with no heat spreaders, high voltage, and a Cas of 5, i can take this Ram and beef it up to 800 just fine still with a Cas of 4 and spreaders. Do you think this would be my best choice?

Now for the last piece of my system, the second hardest decision I choose is my Graphics card, I originally wanted to get the x1800 GTO, but i hear for alot less this card is just as good if not better. Also with my low res screen it should kill games for a while with the rest of the system i put together. Here we go~

eVGA GeForce 7600GTS

I was going to get the GT but after hearing that they were pretty much exactly the same thing i decided to save some money. I feel that with a tiny bit of OC maybe like 600/1600 or something it should kill things. I was looking for a card in the price range of about 140-170 anyway but there arent too many cards in that range except for the 7600GT, nothing seems better.

The next best thing is at 180 and then i would have to make cuts somewhere else. That is the more powerful 7900gs. And dont say that there 150 on newegg with a rebate of 30 becuase i hear eVGA is really bad on those rebates. Do you suggest that i try to make some pretty big cuts to get it? or would you think the 7600 would be fine with my system. This is currently the biggest decision I am facing. Please give input on this and suggest cuts places. AS stated the Budget is around 850 and after shipping it comes to $833 in my cart. If I were to get this card right here...

eVGA 7900gs KO Model

I would have to make cuts of about 50 bucks. And Im at the lowest line of C2D and Mobo as it is. As for RAM i want 2 GB. So its hard. I could however try to raise about 50 bucks more but since I am only 16 myself it's a bit hard to get. I mean is it really THAT much of a huge increase to where i NEED to get it with the system and only 1024x800 res? I dunno it doesnt seem like it to me but thats why im asking you guys. Last but not least please tell me if 480w at 70% efficiency is plenty of power, becuase to me it seems like more than enough but i'm not the best at this stuff.

If you got this far I want to thank you for reading such a long post, I tried to make it the most reader friendly as I could. Please post input and suggestions to make this the sick system i want for a budget!

Thanks alot

 

[lancec2c30]

About the 7900gs

If you could, you should. Do all you can; ask for lunch money and dont buy lunch, ask for money for a hair cut and let your friends do it. Stop driving to school for a week and save the gas money.

 

[Sora]

other than That which I am really considering, do you think the rest of the system will be fine?

 

[TriEclipse]

Now here's a first post I can respect. Very nice job, one of the better explanations I've heard of what you want. You also look like you've done a lot of research, excellent work here.

Firstly, what you've designed here is fine. You could go ahead and get this stuff and you'd probably be just fine. The only things I can offer here are my opinions on some of the things you've chosen, and maybe some alternatives.

The CPU is spot on, definitely a good pick there, no question.

As for the motherboard, I know you're trying to save money and not pushing the OC too far, but you should be wary of cheap motherboards. My first custom build, I went with a "cheap" $100 motherboard, and I had problems for the next 3-4 months with it. Since you are overclocking a little bit, might I suggest the Biostar 965P. Its reputed to be one of the better overclockers in the $100 range. Don't be put off by the Newegg reviews, I learned about this board from the highly respected [H]ardForums, and someone on XtremeSystems also used it in one of their overclocks. A similar board is the Foxconn P965. Can you tell its an all 965P show in this price range? I know what I'm recommending is about $30 more than what you were planning on, but I really would like to see you avoid a lot of pains with a sub-par motherboard, haha.

The Case and Power Supply are again great picks. Yes, 480W with dual 15A +12v rails should be more than enough for what you're planning. And that case looks sick.

The case fans were just something I had to comment on. While the look crazy, notice in the specs it says that they put out 35dBA of noise. Well, I have a two 35dBA fans in my case, and they produce a fair bit of noise. Enough that when I turn it off, I can notice a sickly difference in the noise in the room. Also when I take my noise-cancelling earbuds out, its a sad realization for me. You could try to look for some quieter fans on Newegg, there's a filter for them, I believe. But still, like I said in the beginning, you could keep them and still be quite satisfied with your system.

Hard Drive is also just peachy. Notice that everything I'm saying is very minor and that you've already done a great job of picking parts.

You made a smart decision with the memory going with a 1GB stick, letting you upgrade to 2GB in the future without clogging up your case with 4 x 512MB sticks. It actually duped me for a minute as I was about to recommend 2 x 512MB for Dual Channel, but upgradability comes first. Just an alternative that I'd recommend to the Wintec is this Patriot Signature 1GB DDR2-667 memory. The Wintec looks fine too, but Patriot has a much better reputation. Plus, it's also a bit of an overclocker, so it'll help you get to that 2.4Ghz overclock. Plus, its the same price, so shouldn't interfere too much with your budget. The lack of a heatspreader isn't really an issue as RAM will NEVER get hot enough to need one at these temperatures. Even at high DDR2-800+ speeds, a heatspreader is mostly there for looks.

The videocard is the exact one that I would've recommended for your system, so you've again done your homework. You had some questions though, so I'll just clear those up. Yes, the eVGA 7600GTS is the exact same thing as the rest of the 7600GTs, so you don't have to worry about that. The 7900GS is an excellent card for the price, but you don't have to push that far for one. Bit of an overkill thing for your system, especially at 1024x800 resolution.

As for the eVGA rebates comment, I don't know who could've told you that. eVGA is basically perfect in every way as far as most nVidia enthusiasts are concerned, and their rebates are better than other one's I've experienced. Rebates traditionally take a long time and are a bit of a harrowing process, but eVGA is no worse than anyone else. But still, no reason for you to deal with any unnecessary rebates, the 7600GT should be fine.

A good long post deserves a good long reply. Everything I've said up there are just little tweaks to the build to make it optimal, you could go ahead and get what you originally planned and be just fine with it.

 

[Sora]

haha i just noticed a major error on my part, my price that im saying right now INCLUDES 2gb of ram 2 sticks of that ram. I kind of got way ahead of myself while typing and figured I already I had mentioned that i wanted 2 sticks. Now I could get 1gb now and upgrade the mobo to the 965p and then something else possibly and get another stick later on. I have never really decided if 1 or 2 gigs would be good. I know i'll want 2gb on DIMM pretty soon but i never decided if i should only get 1gb to start and then add another stick later on. The mobo has always been the only thing I wanted to change but never could budget it. So I think i may get 1 stick right now and get the upgrade on the mobo. If so thats 105 a stick i could upgrade my mobo and that would leave me 80+ left in my budget since i said i still had about 20 left over. Then maybe get the 7900gs and call it good? Thanks for the reply btw

 

[TriEclipse]

Sounds good with the 7900GS, you should be set for a while with that thing. It overclocks to past 7900GT speeds, BTW; close to 7900GTX sometimes. Yeah, I agree with getting 1GB now and upgrading later. Memory is mostly used for the textures in games, and 1GB should be enough for the ones at 1024x800.

 

[j12]

you said SATA 3.0 its actually SATA 2. and SATA 2 has 3.0 gb's per second. or if you dont want to call it SATA you can call it ATA300.
if you were referring to SATA (sata1) it would be be ATA150.

otherwise your build will be pretty good. if you don t plan to oc then you can stick with the stock hsf. but if you wanted a slight speed boost i would try to overclock. i have overclocked on crappy motherboards before, its stable to a certain extent. if i were you i would oc, just to get some extra juice out of my cpu. if you were to get an aftermarket fan i would reccomend the artic cooling freezer 7 pro. its a good price for a good hsf. although i did get mines for 22$ instead of 30$.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835186134

 

[Sora]

Ok so, After dropping a gig it saved me 104 bucks. I Upgraded to the Biostar 965p and the 7900gs. I kept the same ram becuase of the cas being only 4 on the Wintec. I know Patriot is much better known but the specs on Wintec as well as reviews are good enough for me.

I Kept the same fans becuase id like one with still good airflow yet around 25-30dba. But i still havent seen any that were reviewd that good. Plus i really like the LED lights. Also this house was custom built by my dad and noice is kept in WELL. So no problem with other people getting annoyed, and as for my when i'm gaming I always have a headset on since i need it for vent. Either way if someone can find one thats lower dba and a slighlty lower cfm then please post. I can't seem to find any on newegg, but as stated the noise isnt that much of a problem.

I did however select the 7900gs as well and plan to overclock. Also just for fun i added a Blue LED upgrade Fan on the side. For looks and just to add another few degrees drop.

Thing is my budget is 850 and now im 50 bucks under haha. My CPu and GPU are perfect i think, as well as the ram being fine. Maybe another upgrade on the Mobo? I think that oens fine since im not trying to do any serious OC without an aftermarket Cooler on my CPU. So what else is there then?

 

[Sora]

Sorry for double Post, but I think I should go with J36's cooler, i was looking at that months ago with OC in mind. Now with 50 bucks under my budget I think i can can get it and then maybe some round cables for more convience for now, and then get another gig later on and be happy.

So hows this for a system then heh no links this time, just text

-E6300 C2D
-BIOSTAR TForce965PT <--only thing it says standard is 800, but i have 675, I will OC to 800+ but it will boot with it right?
-Wintec AMPX 1GB DDR2 675 CAS4
-2- 77 CFM 120mm Blue LED Fans
-1- 33 CFM 80mm Blue LED
-ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
-Rosewill RV480-2-FRB 480W Dual Fans PSU
-eVGA 256MB GeForce 7900GS
-Western Digital 250GB SATA 2, 16 cache HD
-Xion Xion Xon-102 case
-Some Round IDE Cables or so

Total Price after shipping: $843.31
Not bad making that budget

Thanks everyone for your input, I hope i wasn't too noob sounding since i've been reasearching for about 3 months now trying to make sure I knew what i was talking about enough.
Any suggestions are still appreciated

 

[Ridlyn]

May i suggest getting 1 1 GB stick of DDR2-800 and then buying another one later. You'lle get more of a oc out that conroe.