UhOhCheerio

@Mr402 said:

Here's my final thought. Just buy it, build it and enjoy it. Take everyones advice at heart but in the end you will nit pick yourself into insanity until you pull the trigger and go for it. Once again my suggestion is 660TI, or 7950, I5-2500k or 3570k and screw the SSD because for the size your spending too much. Remember you can always upgrade a part in the future if it's needed. Have fun dude in whatever you go with.

I'm actually going along with downgrading the GPU because from all the reviews I've seen for the GPU that i have picked have said not to buy it unless you're intent in tri-screening your games. Now I'm still a little confused on whether to get nvidia or ATI though. And one more thing, has anyone ever tried buying components on black friday or cyber monday? If so, would there ever be a chance that stores or websites would be out of stock of a certain component? I assume not because these things aren't flying out stores like a newly released video game but it's just a thought lol.

@mosdl: Oh yea! I forgot about the student discount on the OS. Thanks for the heads up on that.

@IrrelevantJohn said:

@UhOhCheerio: I'm a graduate of the same field you are going into for school and here is my recommendation.

- Your current PSU on that list is top notch. As long as it is above 650w then it's fine. (Assuming you don't Crossfire in the future)

- Memory is more of a personal investment for yourself. I think 8GB is fine for gaming but in computer science, you will be using a lot of virtual machines and they will use a lot of your RAM. Just leave it at 8GB for now and if you need more you can always buy more. RAM is so cheap these days.

- As for GPU, tone it down to an AMD Radeon HD 7950. It's the sweet spot for Price/Performance ratio.

- I personally think you should get a cheaper PC Case. $179 is way too expansive for just a case. Is there a reason why you are going with that case? Will this be fine? http://pcpartpicker.com/part/bitfenix-case-shinobiwindow

- I'm not sure if you want an SSD but maybe you can combine a Crucial M4 128 and 500GB hard drive. Again, this is personal preference but I think it's about time for everyone to have an SSD.

Now for some good news. This build will last you through your entire major in computer science... if you start soon lol.

Thanks for this! I don't think I would use more than one GPU any time soon so I don't think that would be a problem. And I never realized that school work for my major would eat up my RAM so that's a good insight too! I'll cross that bridge when I get to it though and as you said, RAM is pretty cheap these days. In regards to your suggestion on GPU, you're actually the first to suggest that specific one. I'll have to look into it more but it does sound promising. For the PC case... well... the case I picked just looked damn sexy lol. I also wanted to go with a red theme to the PC and I've heard good reviews with the size and ventilation of it. If I go way over budget then that I would probably downgrade that though. Nice pick on a case and pretty affordable too! I've also heard good things about the SSD. If only it were cheaper and could hold more memory then we wouldnt need HDD's much anymore. I'll think about that SSD/HDD combo some more though. Overall, extremely helpful and I'm glad to see someone with the same interest in CS! Appreciate the help.

I will look more into my build and keep all of you posted. Like I said, I will be purchasing all of this at Cyber Monday which is around a month away so I'll have time. Give me more suggestions if possible guys! When I do purchase my build, I'll see if i can post pics of it on here to complete the thread and maybe help out anyone else with questions like mine.

Whoa, I'm loving this thread. I've been too busy to keep up with the responses and suggestions that i didn't get to read all of them. My apologies for that one guys. I honestly dont mind bumping up the price tag a bit to keep some of the stuff I have on the list. My main confusion now comes from my PSU, memory, and GPU. I've been collecting info from other sources other than this thread and many say to keep the graphics card or tone it down. I'm honestly starting to lean toward toning it down but I do want to max out my graphics in any game I play. Mr402 makes very convincing statements though I would still like some more input on other people if downgrading the GPU is really what I should be doing.

THIS is my latest build. would the PSU suffice in this PC? Also in regards to what Mr402 said, is it wise to downgrade the CPU? a few others have suggested to keep the i5-3570K so I am a little unsure. I don't really have much experience with high end computers so I'm a little in the dark in all this so all this help is much appreciated.

One more thing, I'm planning to major in Computer Science. Would this change anything in my current build in terms of my future interest in coding?

I've finalized my build and I'm liking the results! With some advice from a few other people, I came up with this.

It looks like it's a little over budget but i plan on purchasing all the parts on Cyber Monday. Would there ever be a chance that any of these components become out of stock around that time though? That thought has been swimming in my head for the past couple of days. Either way, leave me some feedback on how you like the build or if there's anything you think I should change as I'm still open to new ideas. Thanks for all the help to whoever gave me these awesome suggestions!

@Mr402 said:

First off the idea of future proofing is not something you should worry about. Single monitor 1080P is something that many cards can achieve easily. Only reason you should get the most expensive cards is if you are planning on multi-monitor super high resolution gaming. Cards like Geforce 680, AMD 7970's and higher are for those specific types of users. Cards like the 660TI (Which to me is the one you should go with) will run anything at 1080P at awesome settings. Core I5-3570K is all the processor you need for gaming but watch out when you overclock. Unlike Sandy Bridge the Ivy line runs a lot hotter. So you may want to invest in water cooling if you are going for a serious overclock. . Like others have said the extra hyper threading of the I7 is not going to make a huge difference in gaming performance. Same for SSD they are nice but honestly for the space to price ratio to me they are another thing that you could skip and sink the money into something else. My suggestion is to research the onboard sound option on your board. Does it support DTS or Dolby Digital signals? If it does not you should look into a more expensive board that does or purchase a dedicated sound card. I have my PC hooked up to my home theater/3DTV and my sound bar only support's SPDIF Dolby Digital which my onboard THX sound would not. So I had to purchase a dedicated sound card. I went with the Asus Xonar DX and could not be happier with the surround sound it produces for gaming. I know most folks don't worry about great sound but to me it's just another part of gaming that if your paying a premium for PC parts why skimp? Just something else you should think about. Main thing I always tell people is go for bang for your buck. Try websites like Toms Hardware or Maximum PC which give great build ideas. Sorry for wall of text but too many times I see folks spend way beyond what they should simply because they have the option too. It's about great gaming not big spending remember that. Have fun with what ever build you choose.

No worries with the wall o' text! I actually enjoy reading detailed and helpful posts. In regards to the sound card, I do enjoy the sound quality, but I might want to wait on that for now. I suppose it's not something i desperately need in my pc for it to work the way i really want it to but your insight got me thinking about it more than before so I might consider it.

Now in regards to your GPU suggestion, you think i should downgrade it? I know for a fact I wont be multi-screening it so your suggestion caught my eye, not to mention I don't even have the table space for two screens lol. Anyone else agree to downgrading my GPU? I would love to have a water cooling system instead of a fan, though the fan I chose is a great one from what I've heard. Lets get a debate going on here! :D

I'm sorry i haven't taken into account some posts here! (I forgot to refresh the page... >__>)

Thank you guys for all the suggestions and I will be putting more research on my build right now.

@Bourbon_Warrior I suppose you're right with that. I'll take that into consideration but I do have my personal reasons why I popped up into building a PC at this time.

@LiquidPrince said:

@UhOhCheerio: If this is a gaming machine, I would drop the i7 in favor of the i5, and swap out the SSD for HDD. Very few games that I have come across take full advantage of SSD just because of the way they load their data. It will be faster, but getting a better GPU is more worthwhile in my opinion. SSD prices should drop in a couple of years, and you can get decent sized drives then. 128GB - 256GB in my opinion is a joke for the prices they're charging right now.

I have changed the i7 to the Intel Core i5-3570K.

This my current build right now if you want to check:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kzak

But I did some more research and tried out your suggestion with removing the SSD. I found a reasonably priced GPU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125418

This is my new build with the changes:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kzjZ

How does it look?

@Ravenlight said:

@UhOhCheerio said:

I was also wondering about the 128 GB hard drive as well. i was looking into this one in particular for a bigger hard drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227792&name=Internal-SSD

Would this suffice? Or should I be looking into HDD's with 1 or 2 TB of space?

@Ravenlight LOL hell ill even put a money blowing machine with gold fans into it to give it some more swag. :P

Btw, are there any components that you see that could be replaced with a cheaper component to lower the price but still have good performance? Unfortunately, the build I've made is roughly $200 above my budget, but i have no idea which i should keep or switch out. Any other ideas aside from changing the processor?

I'd suggest getting a traditional hard disk drive as well as a solid state drive. Toss your OS and most-used programs on the SSD and put everything else on a much larger (and cheaper) HDD.

I'm unfamiliar with the NVIDIA lineup, but you could probably downgrade the GPU and get the same performance with slightly less efficiency and save a bit of dosh. Also check out Newegg for daily or bundle deals. Sometimes you can get CPU/mobo/RAM all in one go with a huge savings.

I have looked at several forums saying that getting both an SSD and an HDD would be better in the long run but I was worried about the price. I've tweaked the build i previously made with your advice and I was surprised that the price range dropped! I added a 2 TB HDD:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148681

I also downgraded my GPU to this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908

This is now my current build all together with a price range of my budget:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kzak

How does it look? Are there any other components i could downgrade to make it cheaper but keep the same or close to the same performance? I would like to note that I do love really good looking graphics so I was wondering if the GPU I chose would be good enough for games that require a lot in that aspect.

@LiquidPrince said:

I would go with an AMD card if you want more future proofing taking into consideration that all three future consoles will be using AMD graphics cards, so the transition between PC and console will go smoother (I would assume). Plus the cards are a bit cheaper. I would go with the 7970 GHz edition.

I took your advice and tried looking into AMD cards instead and you were right in saying they were generally cheaper. But the 7970 GHz edition GPU's seem to be a little bit too pricey for me. Should I switch a few other components with cheaper models to compensate?

Thank you for the responses!

@iBePeRFeCT I was contemplating on whether or not i would put an i7 or i5 cpu on it. The i5-3570k has been on my sights as well and would definitely lower down the price range a good deal so that sounds good to me!

@ajamafalous I was also wondering about the 128 GB hard drive as well. i was looking into this one in particular for a bigger hard drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227792&name=Internal-SSD

Would this suffice? Or should I be looking into HDD's with 1 or 2 TB of space?

@Ravenlight LOL hell ill even put a money blowing machine with gold fans into it to give it some more swag. :P

Btw, are there any components that you see that could be replaced with a cheaper component to lower the price but still have good performance? Unfortunately, the build I've made is roughly $200 above my budget, but i have no idea which i should keep or switch out. Any other ideas aside from changing the processor?

I forgot to mention that I already have a good 1080p monitor, keyboard, and mouse. However, I would also love suggestions on any tried and true keyboards (backlit) and mice you all enjoy. I currently have my eyes on Logitech or Razer products. I have a laptop at the moment so I won’t be using any old components and I also intend to overclock my PC.

As i said above, I have a $1200 budget for my first custom built gaming PC. I’ve checked various websites and forums for good components and have come up with this build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kxio

It is a bit over budget as you can tell. Is this a good build? Would this be future proof? I am fairly new to PC gaming but I am very curious and open to learning new things. I’m a little stuck at this point and would appreciate more suggestions on different builds and components which would lower down the price tag but not lower down its performance by a big margin.

Thank you in advance for any support!