Hey duders. I'm planning to build my first gaming PC and was looking for some help/feedback on a budget build. I'm not sure I know entirely what I'm doing, but this is the build I've assembled mostly using this site as a rough guide: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/YkUW

Any feedback would be appreciated and feel free to talk to me like an idiot. I was hoping to keep it close to the $500-$600 range, but if you have any suggestions that would make it run substantially better or allow for better upgrading potential in the future that'd be great. Also I live in Canada so keep that in mind for prices/shipping I guess.

Also also, if anyone could recommend a good wireless network adapter that would be super cool of you.

I am using the same site for my PC project as well, just a slightly higher budget. My only advice is to see if another site is selling the parts cheaper than what you have, because Mail-in rebate is usually pretty bad at giving you money back.

Looks pretty good to me. I don't know about buying a CPU cooler if you're going budget. I don't know if you're gonna be overclocking though. If you aren't, I think stock would be fine...? But then again, I don't know how the stock cooler is on AMD processors (haven't used an AMD since 2008).

The power supply seems pretty good, but I would bump that up to at least 500W just so you have some head room for that video card and for any future upgrades. Besides that, the build looks fine. Everything should work with everything else and I have an ASRock motherboard myself and love it. I used to buy ASUS exclusively, but the ASRock provided everything I needed without anything unnecessary.

As for wireless network adapter, the D-Link DWA-566 is what I got my buddy and he's had no problems with it. I also saw someone else on these boards recommend it in another thread. It's a PCI-E adapter, so you just need to plug it into your motherboard in the proper slot and hook the drivers up in Windows. I've also tried D-Link USB adapters and those are just plug and play usually. You could also look into ethernet over power line. I've never done it myself, but that might be more reliable than wi-fi.

@funkasaurasrex: If you wanna go hardware-heavy, consider dropping Windows and switching to Linux, it's free, fast and small - although you'd find your gaming options pretty limited, at least for now.

Also, do you really need a DVD drive? When was the last time you actually used one?

G'luck duder!

It's a bit of a personal preference but I'd get more HDD space, 1TB won't last all that long depending on what you do with it. I'd also agree with a slightly more powerful PSU since its nice to have the extra just in case.

Thanks for the suggestions duders. I've made some changes to the build now: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/Yo6m. Most of it happens to be through Canada Computers, as they have a location not too far from where I live.

As per the advice @myketuna and @scroll I dropped the cooler, went for a 550W PSU and upped the HDD to 2TB. I might follow @mctangle's advice and ditch the optical drive as well, unless I can think of a good reason to keep it.

Anyone have any opinions in regard to Windows 7 vs 8? I've heard many a complaint about the latter, but I haven't used Windows as my primary OS in years so I'm not super clear on what all the hullabaloo is/was about.

Like @scroll said, it was more preference for 2TB than a mandatory thing. I've been using my PC every day since May 2012 and my 1TB drive is only 40% full. Most of that 40% is due to the amount of games on there (I keep forgetting to delete Dragon Age Origins and my BF3 Premium install was ~30GB) and some because I do some music stuff on the side and my sample library gets pretty big. But I bet his is already full or something. It really depends on what you're doing.

The optical drive is really done for at this point. I still have one just because I have a back ups and things on DVD, but if you don't, it's really unnecessary. I would spend the drive money on some kind of card reader with USB 3.0 ports, if you really want to spend that money at all. Otherwise, you could axe it.

Windows 7 and 8 are pretty much the same thing. I hear 8 is faster than 7 (even with the start screen stuff), but I haven't tried it myself even with a Windows 8 disk sitting around ready to go. The only thing that has really held me back from installing 8 is I read that my Logitech F310 game pad may have some issues in 8, so I just didn't want to deal with that possible headache. I find 7 suits my needs and I've messed with it so many times that I know how to configure it how I want it once it's installed. I'll probably make the switch to 8 on my next build unless a newer version comes out by then.

@funkasaurasrex: I would buy a single pack with two 4gb sticks of RAM instead of buying them separately. They test the sticks that come together to make sure they work together and while it's probably fine to buy two 4gb sticks separately it's better to play it safe.

Yes, you're right. I always err on the side of caution and do the same thing. Didn't notice it was separate. Buying the dual channel combo ensures (more or less) that the sticks are as identical as can be.

@myketuna: Yeah I just carried away with my steam library, large music files and video stuff.

Anyway good luck building a new pc, I'm putting off building something new until next year but I can tell that my pc hasn't much life left in it.

Looks like a solid budget build, and sticking hard to a real tight budget too. Nice, I like that discipline.

@funkasaurasrex: I use Windows 7 and I freakin' love Windows 7. As for Windows 8? I have spend ~30 minutes with it and I found it confusing and sort of annoying, however a new patch is out soon to fix many grievances people seem to have with it. Apparently 8 is a bit better performance wise.

Windows 8 is essentially just Windows 7 with a fun new colourful overlay and it can detect more RAM. I can't really speak to its performance, though.

Continue having good luck!

@mctangle: I'll just go with Windows 8 'cause it's marginally cheaper and I imagine that I won't find it nearly as irritating as people with a lot of experience using 7. The metro-menu-thing looks hell of dumb, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

Anyhow, thanks for all the feedback guys and here's the build I've settled on if anyone cares. I reigned myself in a bit and stuck with the 1TB hard drive and kept the optical drive, even if I'm not sure I'll necessarily need it. I think I'm being pretty frugal otherwise, so fuck it.

if you have a personal pc already i would look into reusing parts (harddrive/dvd drive) and transfering them over then getting a better processor and power supply.

Nice! Good luck with the actual build. I like the case. Feel ya on the frugalness: last night I put together a prelim build (getting the range to save for) for both games and work, and it came out to about $1200 to $1300. So that'll take awhile.

Great build duder, just beware of AMD/ATI graphics cards, as the driver updates can be few and far between, also - no PhysX.

All the best!

I'm not if you sure if you are a fan of reddit but maybe check out this subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc

I went through those guys and they seemed pretty knowledgeable My budget was pretty similar and they can give you some good ideas and say what things are better than others.