[Product F(RED)]

I'm building a new rig, with around ~$900 budget, although any less would be great. I'm not a hardcore gamer in the sense that I don't "acquire" every new game that comes out, but I do have a bunch of Steam games and would love to be able to run Crysis and Modern Warfare 2, as well as upcoming games for years to come.

I use my PC mainly for browsing the web and playing multimedia nowadays, sometimes playing Half-Life 2 mods, but I think that's just because its gotten too old to play anything relatively new. I really want to get back into PC-gaming. Console gaming is overrated when you have a powerful PC. Here are the specs, laugh all you want. It cost me $735 at the time:




Here's my list of parts so far. My rig is going to run Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate 64-bit (I can get that legit, without buying). I can pretty much salvage my hard and optical drives from my current computer:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition Callisto 3.1GHz Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASUS M4A77TD AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
GPU: SAPPHIRE 100283L Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0
PSU: OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS 600W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready
Case:COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black
Memory: Patriot G Series ‘Sector 5’ Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3

Any suggestions? And please no "just buy a Dell/HP/whatever" comments. I dislike pre-configured systems because they come with trialware and other crap to down the price of manufacturing costs for the company, and because having a warranty on separate parts is better than having a warranty for a whole system.

[Julie]

The $800 Killer Gaming PC - How To by ExtremeTech

and

Dream Machine 2009: How To Build the Best PC For Any Budget! | Maximum PC

[blackrok15]

The only thing that I'd have to say is although the price is great, I don't trust ASUS. A couple of buddies of mine have had terrible experience with them.This one is nice, and not too much more expensive

I'm also a big fan of Nvidia GPUs. This one is very reasonably priced Also, it's compatable with the motherboard mentioned.

BTW; My computer is much older and obsolete compared to yours. Mine's a Celeron 2.7GHz. 768MB of RAM (PC2700/PC3200) A Nvidia Geforce 5200 (256MB) in the *gasp* AGP port.

[Killer]

Originally Posted by blackrok15

The only thing that I'd have to say is although the price is great, I don't trust ASUS. A couple of buddies of mine have had terrible experience with them.This one is nice, and not too much more expensive

I'm also a big fan of Nvidia GPUs. This one is very reasonably priced Also, it's compatable with the motherboard mentioned.

BTW; My computer is much older and obsolete compared to yours. Mine's a Celeron 2.7GHz. 768MB of RAM (PC2700/PC3200) A Nvidia Geforce 5200 (256MB) in the *gasp* AGP port.

That's not going to play the modern games though is it? ATI GPUs far outperform Nvidia at the moment at cost. the HD4870 and GTS250 are similarly priced, but the 4870 is the much better card. I wouldn't recommend anyone to buy Nvidia at the moment.

[Knightsofwar210]

Nvidia is kind of hurting right now too.

[iPenguin]

1.5GB RAM isn't gonna get you far in terms of PC Gaming.
MW2 needs atleast 2GB to run w/ no/very little lag.

[Killer]

Originally Posted by iPenguin2

1.5GB RAM isn't gonna get you far in terms of PC Gaming.
MW2 needs atleast 2GB to run w/ no/very little lag.

Pay attention Penguin! That's his old spec, he's getting 4GB of DDR3 in his new machine.

[iPenguin]

Originally Posted by killer

Pay attention Penguin! That's his old spec, he's getting 4GB of DDR3 in his new machine.

Oh haha, i want 4GB... 1GB is shit.

[Product F(RED)]

Personally I'm more of an Nvidia guy, but I'm going to take Killer's advice and go with an ATi. It also makes sense since I'm definitely an AMD guy and AMD owns ATi.

EDIT: So Killer, this is the ATi card you were referring to? The HD4870? It's actually pretty cheap. I'll just need to pick up a VGA cooler from what I'm reading because it overheats a lot. Here's my total. As I stated before, I can salvage drives from my current rig and the OS I can get on my own (legally). Not bad, not bad at all:

[Killer]

I've absolutely nothing against Nvidia cards, they're just not good value at the moment compared to ATI cards. Build looks good anyway.

Also, if you've got some money left over, i'd still recommend a new hard drive, because it's bound to be better than your current two. What specs are they? Anyway, I'd recommend a Samsung F3, very, very good drives.

[Product F(RED)]

I was actually looking around and the Radeon HD5770 is only ~$10 difference, so I'm opting for that. Also, it has DX11 support which is very important. So my total as of now $616 including the shipping.