Gaming PC for under R20 000

[StarPhoenix]

I had the pleasure of being asked to put together a gaming machine for one very lucky teenager. The father has fairly deep pockets.

What do you think of this:

Case: Coolermaster CM690 II Advanced
PSU: Gigabyte ODIN 720W
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D E LX
RAM: Corsair Dominator DDR-1600 2x2Gb
CPU: Intel Core i5 760
Graphics: eVGA GeForce GTX 470
Sound: ASUS Xonar Essence ST
Optical drive: LG GH22LS50 22x Lightscribe
Hard Drives: 500Gb Seagate Barracuda
1Tb Seagate Barracuda
Keyboard: Microsoft Sidewinder X6
Mouse: Logitech G500 laser gaming mouse
Speakers: Creative Inspire T6200
Monitor: Samsung B2430H
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium


What would you change if you were putting this together?

[KALSTER]

What does that come to about?

[Puento]

I had the pleasure of being asked to put together a gaming machine for one very lucky teenager. The father has fairly deep pockets.

What do you think of this:

Case: Coolermaster CM690 II Advanced
PSU: Gigabyte ODIN 720W
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D E LX
RAM: Corsair Dominator DDR-1600 2x2Gb
CPU: Intel Core i5 760
Graphics: eVGA GeForce GTX 470
Sound: ASUS Xonar Essence ST
Optical drive: LG GH22LS50 22x Lightscribe
Hard Drives: 500Gb Seagate Barracuda
1Tb Seagate Barracuda
Keyboard: Microsoft Sidewinder X6
Mouse: Logitech G500 laser gaming mouse
Speakers: Creative Inspire T6200
Monitor: Samsung B2430H
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium


What would you change if you were putting this together?

I would go for the BX2350 LED screen.
Swop the 470 for a 6870, same performance R1000 less.
and maybe go i7 9xx?

[Johnny Fairplay]

Gigabyte PSU are FTL really. I had one which started making strange noises after 2 months and the thing snapped out with a bang.

Why don't you opt for Antec, or a PC Power & cooling, or even Vantec. And I would swap the GTX470 for a HD5870 since they are coming down in price due to the release of the 6870 if i'm not mistaking

[The_Jelly]

as said above i7 9xx FTW... id also get a better psu there are so many other brands to choose from that will be better in the long run... never try skimp on the psu iv learnt the hard way..... my build came to about 12k excluding Gpu monitor keyboard and mouse... and im sure you could buy all those things with 8k spare...

[Anthro]

CM HAF 932 Case
CM 750W 80+ PSU
Asus Rampage III Gene X58
Intel Core i7 950 9(OC @ 3.9 Ghz)
1600MhZ Gaming RAM
Sapphire HD 5970 2 GB GPU
R18.499
Only need to add a screen, KB and Mouse
and maybe some butter - since it seems this kid is floating in it

[Puento]

CM HAF 932 Case
CM 750W 80+ PSU
Asus Rampage III Gene X58
Intel Core i7 950 9(OC @ 3.9 Ghz)
1600MhZ Gaming RAM
Sapphire HD 5970 2 GB GPU
R18.499
Only need to add a screen, KB and Mouse
and maybe some butter - since it seems this kid is floating in it

That will be a crazy system! add 2k for a LED 23" and its game on!

[Anthro]

CM HAF 932 Case
CM 750W 80+ PSU
Asus Rampage III Gene X58
Intel Core i7 950 9(OC @ 3.9 Ghz)
1600MhZ Gaming RAM
Sapphire HD 5970 2 GB GPU
R18.499
Only need to add a screen, KB and Mouse
and maybe some butter - since it seems this kid is floating in it

That will be a crazy system! add 2k for a LED 23" and its game on!

hell yeah
Page 56 PCFormat South Africa (EveTech.co.za)

[hamin_aus]

How about a Western Digital Raptor hard drive instead of the 500GB?
Less space, but much faster - most gamers will trade capacity for speed any day

[StarBound]

How about a Western Digital Raptor hard drive instead of the 500GB?
Less space, but much faster - most gamers will trade capacity for speed any day

Its called a SSD. The smile to frown factor is 1:1 though.

[hamin_aus]

The newer raptors (velociraptors?) are much cheaper and give comparable performance to SSD drives.
Just saying....

[andrekruger]

i agree, the raptors are not to far behind in real world performance, and you get a lot more storage space for your money.

the price per GB for a SSD is just to high right now, if you ask me.

[StarPhoenix]

Thanks.

I'll see if I can squeeze in a socket 1156 i7, change the PSU, choose a 6870 and shoehorn a Velociraptor into this bad boy.

[GDI_Lord]

The newer raptors (velociraptors?) are much cheaper and give comparable performance to SSD drives.
Just saying....

You forgot the "[citation needed]" tag.

Translation: "I, and many others[citation needed] don't believe you in the slightest. Prove it."

[StarBound]

6 seconds boot time speaks for itself. But you are paying 10x the price for 2x the performance. Also [see specs below] is not the fastest SSD avalible. I would love to try one of those OCZ drives that reads and writes at 480mb/s but I think that price point might be better suited for justifying a 46" LED Full HD 3D screen or something.

[GDI_Lord]

6 seconds boot time speaks for itself. But you are paying 10x the price for 2x the performance. Also [see specs below] is not the fastest SSD avalible.

Is that YOUR 6 second boot time?!?! Congratulations dude!!!

In related news: Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Boots In 3.6 Seconds

[hamin_aus]

Lets not try to derail this thread by talking about Linux.

Nobody cares

[The_Jelly]

how does this sound?

i7 950 3.07ghz 1366 R2580
Asus Rampage 3 formula R3300
Corsair dominator 1600mhz cl8 R1650
Coolermaster 750w psu R1000
coolermaster cm690II advanced R1000
Msi HD6870 R2750 or 2 for xfire (R6500)

Total R15030 with xfire
Total R12280 without xfire

the rest is up to u....

[Prime]

I'd ditch all the seagates for western digital and put in a Corsair PSU. But that's personal preference

Would choose a lighter case instead of the HAF932. It's likely that he's going to be lanning if he games that much.

[Smilodon111]

The_Jelly got a good config there....