Hi all,
I'm looking to put together a new PC specifically for gaming: I'd been holding off building one until Battlefield 3 was announced but now I'm tempted by a bit of Champions Online and possibly Aion. I want something that:
- Will play stuff at a reasonably high res (say 1920x1080)
- Won't be ludicrously out of date in six months (I'm hoping the spec below will give me a bit of room for overclocking for when BF3 does come along)
- Plays Blu-Rays with full HDCP compatibility and the ability to easily connect to an HDTV (so HDMI).
- Doesn't sound like an aircraft taking off
I've found Anandtech's guides very good in the past. They did one in the last few months for what they call a mid-range performance AMD machine (they had an Intel as well, but I can't really justify the extra cost). I've taken this, changed the Blu-Ray drive (I fancy picking up some cheap HD-DVDs so I wanted a multi-format one) and swapped out the graphics card for a similar spec one.
Their base machine came in at $1079. Mine works out to about £900, which seems a bit steep even given that prices are normally higher in the UK (they saved a lot on theirs through rebates, which we don't seem to get). By the time I've added the monitor, it's well over £1000.
So, any thoughts on savings I could make without too much of a performance hit? I was originally going to go for a 1900x1200 monitor (that did HDCP over DVI) after reading the comments in another thread about 1920x1080 ones being lower quality, but this Acer one is only £160-odd, which is swaying me.
PSU: 750W TX Corsair £91.71
Cooler: Xigmatek HDT-S1283 £29.89
Optical: LG GGW-H20L £138.55
Memory: 4GB (2x2GB) Super Talent DDR 3 PC3-12800 (1600MHz) 7-7-7-21 £80.44
HD: 1TB Western Digital WD1001FALS Digital Caviar Black £68.87
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Sok AM3 £145.92
GPU: 1GB Sapphire HD 4890 Vapor-X £158.69
Mobo: MSI 790FX-GD70 £129.95
Case: Coolermaster Storm Scout £79.98
That comes to £926.01
All prices including VAT and from Scan.
Add a 24" Acer V243HBD 1920x1080 monitor for £166.74 and it's £1092.75 (plus delivery).
Ideally I'd like to get it down to under £1000 *with* monitor (don't need keyboard, mouse, OS etc. - got those sorted). Any suggestions for cuts or comments in general very welcome
Ta!