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Trying to build a $550 Gaming PC

1K views 41 replies 15 participants last post by  anubis1127 
#1 ·
#9 ·
I personally stay away from OCZ PSUs and go for Corsair/Silverstone ones, but check out Antec ones as well. But those should be fine for your build. Save some money and get a P67 mobo (use the money you saved from the PSU to get a SLI certified mobo as 460s just beg to be SLIed). You might need a 600W PSU to SLI tho.
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by sloppyjoe123;15249288
I personally stay away from OCZ PSUs and go for Corsair/Silverstone ones, but check out Antec ones as well. But those should be fine for your build. Save some money and get a P67 mobo (use the money you saved from the PSU to get a SLI certified mobo as 460s just beg to be SLIed). You might need a 600W PSU to SLI tho.
Do you have any links/prices for that? I need links and prices so I can actually compare.
 
#19 ·
Personally, my recommendation is get as high wattage (but still good quality) of a PSU as you can because that will prevent you from having to pay for another PSU next time you want to upgrade your rig to something a little more powerful. Buy it nice, or buy it twice. Also make sure to buy modular. I've seen how nice rigs with modular PSU's and cable management holes look in their cases, and its really nice. My rig on the other hand, with no cable management and a non modular PSU, looks pretty cluttered in there. It also prevents a lot of air flow that could be helping keep my CPU cool...

For $550, I'll throw together a cart for you of what I would do with i3-2100 on newegg and $550. I'll post back in a few, or edit this post.
 
#21 ·
Dang, that was a lot harder than I thought... That budget won't allow for much higher wattage PSU or modular at that sadly
I was able to fit in a fantastic case though, the M59 has great features for its cost, fairly roomy inside for a mid tower, tool free hard drive installation, cable management, some others as well. Looks awesome too in my opinion. The PSU is also decent quality. Not enough for SLI/Crossfire. The GPU out performs the 460 a little bit in most situations, and I think overclocks a little better than the 460 as well. It draws less power, so ultimately I believe it also runs cooler.



$10 off that price because of the MIR, and the sub-total is about $556. You can of course buy the i3 2100 from your link at micro center, and save another $30 bucks just about and that almost allows the $70 monitor... Ah, that's what I thought of, also, sell the Dirt 3 coupon that comes with it for $40 to finish off that $70 for the monitor and you should be all good (in other words flat broke but happy about the new hole in your pocket
) lol. At least that's how I was with my PC, spent every dime I had getting the best rig possible. I think I got a great bang-for-buck PC. Ran the BF3 beta on ultra with 4x AA minimum frames of 29 on my 6870 (Its official according to a twitter post though, from a BF3 dev, that the ultra textures weren't put in the beta as the DL would have been to big for consoles, so really it was like running it on high and 4x AA).

Now to be honest though, my other thoughts about this, even though there is a little less performance with a Phenom II, there is always the AMD route. Great for budget builds. Not sure if you would or wouldn't mind it though.
 
#22 ·
The OP looks perfectly fine. I ran an overclocked Phenom II 550 @ 3.8GHz with a GTX 470 on the 600w OCZ ModXStream Pro. He's fine. That's a beautiful build there. You'll tear up any game that is thrown at you.
 
#23 ·
Quote:


Originally Posted by rivaldog
View Post

Dang, that was a lot harder than I thought... That budget won't allow for much higher wattage PSU or modular at that sadly
I was able to fit in a fantastic case though, the M59 has great features for its cost, fairly roomy inside for a mid tower, tool free hard drive installation, cable management, some others as well. Looks awesome too in my opinion. The PSU is also decent quality. Not enough for SLI/Crossfire. The GPU out performs the 460 a little bit in most situations, and I think overclocks a little better than the 460 as well. It draws less power, so ultimately I believe it also runs cooler.



$10 off that price because of the MIR, and the sub-total is about $556. You can of course buy the i3 2100 from your link at micro center, and save another $30 bucks just about and that almost allows the $70 monitor... Ah, that's what I thought of, also, sell the Dirt 3 coupon that comes with it for $40 to finish off that $70 for the monitor and you should be all good (in other words flat broke but happy about the new hole in your pocket
) lol. At least that's how I was with my PC, spent every dime I had getting the best rig possible. I think I got a great bang-for-buck PC. Ran the BF3 beta on ultra with 4x AA minimum frames of 29 on my 6870 (Its official according to a twitter post though, from a BF3 dev, that the ultra textures weren't put in the beta as the DL would have been to big for consoles, so really it was like running it on high and 4x AA).

Now to be honest though, my other thoughts about this, even though there is a little less performance with a Phenom II, there is always the AMD route. Great for budget builds. Not sure if you would or wouldn't mind it though.

I don't mind the AMD route. Could you please show me what you have in mind?
 
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