Silkroad Online Forums

With the placenta of amazing games coming out, I thought it was about time to build myself a new PC. I was just planning on buying a PS3, but I should be able to borrow some money from the bank and so I decided to just build a new PC.

But honestly, I have no idea what I'm looking for. The main areas I'm having issues with are the GPU, Power supply and case. So far, I've got the following specs picked.

Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Guerrilla
CPU: Intel i-7 960
HDD: Segate 7200rpm 500GB
CD/DVD: Some random blueray burner (not too relevant, I'll hardly use it)
Monitor: Unsure of yet, but I may be able to get a free one from work
Memory: 12 GB Kingston 1333
OS: OEM Windows Professional x 64

So far that's what I have. My budget will be around $2000, although it may drop back to around $1500-$1800 depending upon what the bank says. So far all of that comes up to around $950 and w a monitor included, it should place me at about $1100-1200 (I live in Australia, so the choice of where to buy products is limited). So, given the above circumstances, what options can anyone here recommend? I know I'm spending a lot on the motherboard/CPU, and I could potentially save some money there, but I'm also trying to future proof myself a fair bit as I don't really want to upgrade for a few years.

As far as the PSU is concerned, I don't really have much of a clue what kind of power supply I will be needing, so I'm not too sure what to look for in this area.

For the GPU, I was looking at either the GTX 560, 570 or 580, depending upon the budget. But with that said, do those cards compare to similar level ATI cards? Is there a particular model that is the recommended choice? And are the high end cards with the extra money they cost?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've been meaning to do this a few times over the last year but every time I go to buy the part, something important comes up (car failures etc). Now that I have the chance to do it and, hopefully, the money to do so as well I'm keen as a bean to get it done.

You are going to borrow money from the bank to buy an i7, 12 gb of ram, and a blue ray burner ? kguy.

Also a bit sick by now of people thinking they're future proofing themselves with these 2k builds when this is not the case at all. If you spend 1/3 of that budget now by the time that system falls in performance it is my experience that you are able to upgrade to high performance once again for 1/3 the price. Difference is that this time around you have another machine with available parts and you saved money, not to mention tech just keeps getting cheaper.

The 12GB of RAM is actually necessary for work, we have to use virtual PC's a lot with 3-4 open at once, all running applications, and I've found that even on 6 odd GB of RAM it seems to struggle a lot (on the work pc's). That and RAM is dirt cheap, literally, costing $80 for the whole 12GB. 6GB is around $60 from where I've sourced it from, so for $20 more it's a worthy investment in my eyes.

2k on a pc? jeezas i spent 800-900 on mine and im playing bf3,mw3, and skyrim on maxx its all about the gpu dude go easy on ram 6-8 is good enough.

I like this comment.

tl;dr Here base your purchase of this if you have no idea by the sound of it.


You're wasting money on the build. 12gb of ram is silly unless you're buying something like a $70 worth of it set up in triple channel. Bluray burner is a waste since the discs are expensive. i7 is pointless if this computer is purely for gaming. Going all out, but getting a cheap harddrive? What? Anyhow this guide is pretty much the best guide on the internet. "Excellent" can pretty much max out most games out on the market today and will continue to do so until developers make games for the PC only.

I have 6gb of ram and I NEVER go max on it. I built a buddy a computer with this guide with excellent and it came out around $750 or so with sales n stuff. What does he do? Buy 8gb more ram. His reason? "Because it's cheap and just in case." Welp The 560 ti is a great budget card. Does really well with games on maxing them or just about.

There's a reason why a 560ti stays pretty much all the way. It's a cheap very efficient 'budget' card. ~$200 to pretty much max out most games? Hell yeah. Add in another? Well damn it's better than a 580 and cheaper. There is a new 560ti that puts two gpus inside the board. I don't know if that came out yet.

well if hes going for the 1st gen core series I hope he is planning to triple-channel. Though triple-channel isn't really that great XD. Go for a 6970x2 if you can, but at least one 6970.

Well depends on the motherboard, right? I'm not the brightest with RAM and channel set up. If the board has 4 slots and using ram set up in triple wouldn't it have issues?

Anyhow I haven't really been keeping up with graphics cards other than 560ti being great. lol

Are you thinking of getting a loan for a PC?

lol a direct loan from a bank?

at least do it with a credit card XD (though a bank may have better interest rates)

I've overpaid about 4k on my car loan, so I was able to withdraw 2k from it without any issues. Sure, it's technically borrowing, but I put the extra money into my car loan for exactly this purpose. The money is all sorted though, just got back from the bank then.

Judging from everyone comments and the picture that Toshiharu linked, I've gone a bit over kill with a lot of the specs. Thanks for the advice, I didn't really know that what I suggested was a bit overkill. I'm having a look over the picture Toshi linked, as well as what I can get here, and I'll post a bit of a revised specifications list. Thanks for the advice.

I die a little bit inside whenever one of my friends tell me they're gonna get an i7 to game.

I think he means 2000 AUD.

convert that and it'll be around ~$5 USD

I've made my purchase! I did a bit more lurking on other forums and got myself what I think is a rather good PC. In total it cost me $1900, although $170 of that is in Goods and Services Tax and I spent a good $600 on luxeries (headset, mouse pad, good monitor etc).

I had to change some of my specs based on what they had in stock, but the specs are as follows.

Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4 Z68 HDMI DDR3 Intel 155 pin Motherboard
Intel core i5-2500 3.3ghz 1155 pin
Gigabyte 2GB 6970 GPU (may consider getting a second in the future when the 7000 series are released and the price of this card drops)
Corsair CC600T Case
500GB HDD (honestly, I've never go over 500GB. I barely went over my 120GB in my laptop)
2 x 4GB 1600 DDR3 RAM
Windows x64 Prof OEM

All up I'm pretty happy with it all, I just finished building it and I'm currently installing all the drivers etc. Thanks for all the advice everyone, I'm as happy as a bee right now ^_____^

^

Much more better, congratz.