I can't believe how cheap this is. The last desktop that I bought was in 04. It was 1.4GHz, with 256k of RAM and a CD R/W and it cost $1400, lol.

You could drop in a 2nd 6850 for almost 2x performance increase for less now, or not too distant future.

You can thank consoles for stiffing hardware requirements.

Although I'm not up to date with SLI and Crossfire scaling, have they improved that much in the past 8 months-1 year?

(Edit) You got me to double check some sites, and they have made impressive gains (~30% then, to ~50% now, really impressive).

the 6xxx series of radeon xfire way better than 5xxx series. One of the major improvements of the new architecture. Certain games and situations actually get really close to 100% performance improvement.

of course xfire/sli have higher probability of bugs, and micro-stutter really bother some people. But I still see it as a really viable upgrade path, you just gotta be more diligent with driver and crossfire profile updating.

OK, he went with the upgraded PS and the 2500k but balked at the mobo.

And I quote:

As for the motherboard, why? It's more than twice the price just because it includes a whole bunch of stuff you won't use. An extra PCI-e slot that you won't use, more memory slots you won't use, faster SATA that you won't use, a fancy BIOS chipset that you won't use, a RAID controller you won't use, etc. Although, it is definitely a much better motherboard overall, it will be largely wasted on your build. The only advantage is that it gives you more options for upgrading and expanding in the future, but I assume that by the time you upgrade even that motherboard will be out of date.

Thoughts? Will I really honestly use or need the capabilities of the Z68? Or is it just a "nice to have"?

It's a must if you don't want to rebuild in 1 year.

Extra PCI-e to run crossfire when your current card gets old. More memory slots to upgrade memory when your 8gb (already the min standard) is not enough. RAID controller for in the future if you get a second 500gb drive and want to run RAID for the free performance upgrade.

I say if you would like to hang onto this build for more than 2 years you NEED that motherboard.

OK, everything is ordered. I went with the Z68, i5 2500k and 550 watt PS so all should be good to go.

+1, and motherboards have a much longer shelf life nowadays thanks to consoles. My current motherboard is like 5 years old, still on ddr2 lol... it's survived 2 cpu upgrades, 2 gpu upgrades, a ram upgrade, and 2 hard drive upgrades. It probably won't survive another round of upgrades, but i can still max out every game out so far.

Well, a little here and a little there. As a result of adding the better mobo he upgraded the RAM to the 1600 instead of 1066 and added a CPU cooler

Of course, all of this required a bigger and better case, so now my $600 budget build ballooned to $750.

Oh, well, it's just money.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Pu...umber=18062065

looks good, but why the pricey case? Also, I'm not too sure how reliable Rosewill power supplies are, yea its 80 plus certified, but keep in mind psu is one of those parts that could survived into a 2nd comp. My last power supply I paid $200 for in 1999, but it lasted me 10 years before I needed to upgrade.

IMO, case and psu budget should be reversed.

The case is my doing. I need a silver case. It will look "just like my old HP case", if you know what I'm saying.;) Choices are limited in silver cases.

I bought this case in 06 when I built my gamer, except it was silver. Would buy again.

Oh, it's more than half of your original budget... probably wont work for ya

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811163067

^ Umm, yeah. Thanks for bringing something to the party. That helped me a lot.

Your e-peen is much larger and shinier than mine.

I run Rosewill power supplies. They are just re-badged major manufacturer supplies sold as Newegg's house brand.

Too much to list. The motherboard and 2500k are well worth it.

If the heatsink he got you for the PC is decent, you'll be able to push the 2500k to 4.5ghz-5ghz in a year or so when you think it's getting long in the tooth. 2500k's are ridiculous.

TBH, I had been considering doing a rebuild on my machine for about a year now. The ASUS Crossfire MoBo along with the RAID 0+1 setup has been total crap since I built it. I was looking for an excuse to do the rebuild for awhile, and damn if newegg didn't send me an email flyer today with a promo code for the 2500k....

My plan always was a 2500k with a 6850 and an SSD for the OS, so this thread definitely caught my eye from the beginning. I made the mistake in the old build of trying to be cutting edge on everything, the SLI was less than impressive, and the motherboard was complete shit at running 4 hard drives in a raid array. It also wouldn't boot with a full compliment of RAM.

But at least I get to keep my kick ass case!! :P

Just put in my order on Newegg

Hello Miata people. I'm the guy who put together the original budget build. Just thought I'd stop by to say hi and track down the people responsible for making this poor guy spend an extra $150 so I could read the reasoning for myself and have a laugh.

You guys know who this guy is right? He hadn't even heard of Steam until about 2 days ago, and he thought he needed to buy a "controller" for playing PC games.

So now that you all have convinced him to upgrade to a baller case and a beefy aftermarket CPU cooler coupled with the K-series processor, I guess that means I'm going to have to overclock it for him. Should be fun, but I'll be pissed if his 2500K hits better numbers than mine does lol

As for the power supply, it would have been fine for my original build, but now that he's rocking the K-series processor I completely agree with upgrading to a 550W just for a little more overhead for overclocking. I don't know why you guys are so worried about Rosewill PSU. I know they have a hit and miss reputation, but that's because they just re-brand other manufacturer's stuff. In this case, the Rosewill PSU is 80+ certified, there is no reason to be worried about it.

And finally, the motherboard still makes me laugh considering who is going to own it. Once you talked him into the K-series processor, an upgrade was in order, but the one you guys convinced him to go with is still massively overkill. All it really needed was a different chipset, and I suppose an extra PCI-E slot with Crossfire support is good for future-proofing...even though I don't think he'll ever use it because by the time he probably really feels the need to upgrade his graphics card it would make more sense to just get a beefier single card. Hell, by the time that happens he'll probably want to build a whole new rig haha

Anyway, don't take this the wrong way, you guys are absolutely right on track for your average gamer who is computer savvy and knows their hardware, but it makes me laugh thinking this will be owned by a guy living in the country with basically no internet connection who asked about a "controller" :)

Fuck you Spoon!:rofl:

awww :(

Seriously though, you have the most baller computer within 50 miles of your house I guarantee it.

WE HAVE SMALL DICKS HERE SO WE OVERKILL EVERYTHING.

Some members on here are still trying to run ALL the boost.