Need help picking parts for $600 computer for birthday; have ZERO idea what to get
11 replies, posted
[B]Can a mod change this from $600 to $800 in the title?[/B]
I know I've made several threads in the past looking for new parts but money problems came up and just as we thought we were going to buy them the idea fell through. But we're determined to do it THIS MONTH.
I'll just use the guide in the sticky here...
-Budget
[del]$600[/del] $800 US. [B]MUST BE PURCHASABLE ON NEWEGG, CANNOT BE PURCHASED ANYWHERE ELSE.[/B] (Sorry I have to make this bold and loud, very very important detail. If you're wondering why, the persons buying have lots of credit there they'd like to use.)
-Games that you'll play/Applications you'll use
Garry's Mod mostly game wise, but I'd like to also be able to play newer games on at least 60fps on medium MINIMUM. As for programs I do a lot of modeling work, usually several modeling programs, Photoshop and Garry's Mod open at the same time.
-Native resolution of your monitor
1920x1080
-Things you can reuse (OS, hard drive, optical drive)
N/A, everything in this HP POS is pretty much too old to use now.
-Extras that you want (monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc)
An SD card slot in the tower and with the motherboard or whatever would be nice.
Frontal mic/headphone jacks would be nice.
Otherwise I have everything else I need.
-Where you live
Midwest United States
I know I have at least hardware preferences to help.
I want an AMD GPU. (Sapphire, maybe?) Cheaper and I know more about them due to dealing with them all my life.
I don't [I]really[/I] need anything more powerful than an i5, CPU wise. They say the better your CPU the worse Garry's Mod runs, and that's usually all I play.
12gb of RAM would probably suffice, I can live with 8gb if the budget calls for it.
I need at least three USB slots in the [I]front[/I] of the machine.
Please don't give me anything Asus, I hear nothing but terrible things about them nowadays.
Extra notes:
I'm hardware stupid. Very hardware stupid so that's why I need so much help. I don't trust myself to pick out everything myself because I don't know what thing works with what other thing. I'm not exactly sure what details I really need either aside from those essentials, so please bear with me and if you need any more information I will supply.
Some helpful and comprehensive tutorials and videos for dumb people to help me build the computer when it arrives would also be very nice.
Thanks in advance. And sorry for my cluelessness.
[del] NEVER MIND. This isn't going to go anywhere.[/del]
Budget increased!
$600 isn't gonna get you much.
Someone told me in the past that I could get something that was at least 2x stronger than what I have currently (AMD Phenom II x4 945, 8gb of ddr3 nameless RAM, ATi Radeon HD 5450, weird Foxconn Aloe motherboard, 1 TB WD Caviar Green and some shite nameless 300w PSU) for 600 bucks... I guess they lied or prices went up drastically for everything ever within half a year.
But never mind I guess. It's obviously not going to go anywhere so I guess I'll have to tell them to forget about it and just get me the mouse I wanted instead.
[editline]9th July 2014[/editline]
Woah woah, just been told that the budget has been increased to about $800 USD.
They said that really there isn't a tangible limit, they just want to know a list of parts. I told them that's not what you guys want and you NEED a definable budget but they won't have any of that, they just want a list of parts to look at because well.. They ARE good at penny pinching and finding steal deals.. So yeah.
[PCPartPicker part list]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tqf923[/url]) / [Price breakdown by merchant]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tqf923/by_merchant/[/url])
Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54690[/url]) | $214.99 @ Newegg
**Motherboard** | [Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gah97d3h[/url]) | $105.66 @ Newegg
**Memory** | [Team Elite 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/team-memory-ted38g1600hc1101[/url]) | $68.99 @ Newegg
**Storage** | [Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st310005n1a1asrk[/url]) | $74.99 @ Newegg
**Video Card** | [Gigabyte Radeon R9 280 3GB WINDFORCE Video Card]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvr928wf3oc3gd[/url]) | $239.99 @ Newegg
**Case** | [Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-case-200r[/url]) | $39.99 @ Newegg
**Power Supply** | [Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply]([url]http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-power-supply-cx600m[/url]) | $44.99 @ Newegg
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | $789.60
This is what I could do. It's all Newegg.
Hey, that's pretty awesome and looks like it fits my needs pretty well! Thank you very much.
Except the case. That might need to be changed because some stuff I have doesn't work very well on USB 3.0.
But I can probably pick out another one on my own since that seems to be the easiest thing.
All it needs to be is an ATX Mid size case, right?
[QUOTE=SuperDuperScoot;45344047]Hey, that's pretty awesome and looks like it fits my needs pretty well! Thank you very much.
Except the case. That might need to be changed because some stuff I have doesn't work very well on USB 3.0.
But I can probably pick out another one on my own since that seems to be the easiest thing.
All it needs to be is an ATX Mid size case, right?[/QUOTE]
Yes, choose something high quality.
Also, do you have an OS?
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147023[/url]
Rosewill Blackbone Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Is this okay? It has plenty of frontal USB ports, I don't really need any 3.0 ports in the front.
It's only ~$5 more, and I don't care how it looks really.
I don't have an OS but I'm trying to think of ways to get it cheaper. Isn't there some.. Dream.. Something or other you can get OSes from for practically free and legally?
If that's not an option my brother has a friend that has stockpiles of these kinds of things he just gives out willy nilly.
Are you in college? You get a discount or even free Windows 8. I would get Windows 7 from somewhere.
Just ask your brother's friend if you need to.
I forgot to mention, take a look at your new VS old benchmarks:
[URL="http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4690-vs-AMD-Phenom-II-X4-945-95W"]http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4690-vs-AMD-Phenom-II-X4-945-95W[/URL]
[URL="http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-280-vs-Radeon-HD-5450"]http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-280-vs-Radeon-HD-5450[/URL]
I am not, but do all I need is an edu email out of curiosity?
Also wow, I like them comparisons, especially the GPU. Droolin' already.
I'm really not sure. Illegal ways are easy to do, but I'm not gonna endorse that and it's completely up to you if you want to use a torrented copy or not.
You can really reuse your RAM and then have the money for an OS. RAM is RAM is RAM.
Probably, could consider that. I don't have many issues with RAM so it's probably okay. It's still DDR3 so it will work.
I think we've got it all sorted out. If I need anything else I'll come back here. As for now, thank you very much everyone! You were all a big help.
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