November/Black Friday budget build
 

Hey guys, not sure if this should go in with the Building/Upgrading thread or not, but since Black Friday is coming up and Newegg is running "Black November" I want to start piecing together a new gaming PC. I can also order stuff from the US no problem so if here are better deals to be found down there let me know.

I'm looking to spend around $5-600, I'll spend a bit more if it's worth it. All that I play/will play are GW2, the new CS, LoL, L4D2 and UT3 with the main one being GW2, I'd like to run them on decent settings and be able to run Skype and a few windows in Firefox alongside it. I'll likely run dual monitors as well. Something that leaves room for upgrade ability would be nice too, as my current PC is maxed out and it annoys me that I really can't upgrade anything without needing a new build like I'm doing now.

I'm also looking to build or buy a cheap (<$300 ish) general purpose tower for my parents, something in a small form factor would be ideal.

TIA

Depends what you're looking for in a gaming rig. Newest and best or mediocre or..

whats your budget..

Sorry I forgot about budget and needs, I'm updating the OP now.

subscribed.

looking for a laptop/desktop for parents for $150 (is that even possible?)
will be used for MS WORD / Outlook / News reading / some you tube watching

current pc is running windows ME - you guys remember that??

You won't need a super fancy laptop or desktop for the purposes you listed.
But $150 is kind of tight. The cheapest portable pc you can get is probably a netbook, that that's still going to run you at least $200 brand new. Are you looking for used?

for your parents, maybe something from giada? If you don't want to build a cheap mini-itx system by hand.

Giada i35G Atom D2500 Mini PC System, Nvidia GT610 GPU

Giada A51 T56N Mini PC System, ATI Radeon HD 6320 GPU

for the $150 guy, http://www.itxcanada.com/products/GI...-1081-167.html

If your parent's don't do any actual work on the computer (ie. MS Office etc.), tablets might be a better option.

asrock z77 extreme 4 $120
i5 3570k $200-220 (you could replace it with a locked i5 (non-K) or a i3 to save $$ but overclocking it is dead easy if you need that boost in a few years)
amd 7870 2gb $200-220
8gb ram $30-40
128gb sata 6gbps ssd $90

in a few years you can refresh by getting a new GPU..OC the CPU...add moar ram

^ that's sounding pretty good to me, toss it in a cheapish case and I'm good to go. How large of a PSU would you guys suggest?

Those look pretty sweet, I was thinking of grabbing them something like this

Newegg.ca - lenovo IdeaCentre Q180 (31102NU) Desktop PC Intel Atom D2700(2.13GHz) 2GB DDR3 320GB HDD Capacity AMD Radeon HD 6450A Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Just for the disc drive and frontal USB ports.

Oh and the last thing is that I'm looking to get some nice quiet fans. My gf's PC sounds like a jet engine and I bleeping hate it, whereas my current PC is so quiet I had to add LED's to know if its on.

I prefer using YateLoon fans for quietness.

Everyone seems to hate stock antec fans that comes with their cases. But I just undervolted them to like 700 rpm.


But I think the biggest factor in "quiet fans"


is just lowering the rpms.

Ive tried fans in the past that were market as quiet fans, but anything over 1200 rpm, I would say is too loud for me.

8 cores? I must be missing something, wouldn't this be wickedly fast?

Newegg.ca - AMD FX-8320 Vishera 3.5GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8320FRHKBOX

CPUs arent always just about how many cores they have. Depends on architecture and clock speeds i believe.

not too hard to google benchmarks

ivy bridge has a healthy lead over piledriver/vishera as expected
AnandTech - The Vishera Review: AMD FX-8350, FX-8320, FX-6300 and FX-4300 Tested

From my own personal research, I think games don't really take advantage of multiple cores anyway. Only multitasking multiple applications do.

So for gaming purposes, 8 cores is unnecessary. And this as well:

Ivy Bridge doesn't have a 'healthy lead' over FX processors. In most cases, the FX is faster, except in high FPU low threaded applications.

Power consumption is another story

It has a higher clock and is cheaper than the i5-3570K posted?

That seems to go back and forth between the two, and I'm not sure which of those categories is most important.

im looking for a new build myself for gaming/music editing.. looking to spend 1000$ tops after taxes. and maybe go with ivy bridge now instead of sandy bridge.

im sure if i get each part on sale i can get a killer setup for around 1K

I'm currently trying to decide whether to go with the 3570k or an AMD...

Is the FX-3580 unlocked?

What do you do the MOST with your CPU?

Gaming? Core i5

Video/Audio Encoding? FX

3D Rendering? FX

"Everything Else"? It doesn't matter.

^ It's gonna be a mix of all of the above. I'll keep my old PC for the "everything else" ie all the little stuff, and have this new rig for gaming, video/photo editing and animation as the added horsepower will be beneficial (but I want to keep it as stripped down as possible to keep it fast)