Thread: Need help deciding on parts.

I haven't built a pc since 2006, and I'm finally going for an upgrade. My main goal is to build a pc that can easily handle Battlefield 3, as well as last me for about 5 years (including video card and ram upgrades down the road). I'm wondering if anyone could help me decide what parts to order to get the best pc possible for my budget. I have a budget of $2,000.

Actually just stumbled across this, the specs seem okay based on what I'm reading, especially for the price, question is: can I do better?

iBUYPOWER Gamer Extreme 940SLC BTS 11 Gaming PC - Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz, 8GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti, Liquid Cooling, DVDRW, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit at TigerDirect.com

define "do better" you mean in terms of price or can you get better parts for that? Also do you need a monitor upgrade(s) or mouse/keyboard upgrades or headphones upgrades too?

The GTX 550 Ti is "midrange" for the 500 series and the storage is "ok". You could throw an SSD in there and ebay the GTX 550 Ti and put a GTX 580 in there...

But as-is should be fully BF3-capable on medium if not high settings...

Newegg has a similar prebuilt rig here: Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more!

Originally Posted by Solstatic

Actually just stumbled across this, the specs seem okay based on what I'm reading, especially for the price, question is: can I do better?

iBUYPOWER Gamer Extreme 940SLC BTS 11 Gaming PC - Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz, 8GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti, Liquid Cooling, DVDRW, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit at TigerDirect.com

Oh dear god, yes. That's not a horrible rig but for 2000$ you can build a great rig. Im on my phone, but I'll design one when I get my computer.

Originally Posted by [CoFR]SirMoo

define "do better" you mean in terms of price or can you get better parts for that? Also do you need a monitor upgrade(s) or mouse/keyboard upgrades or headphones upgrades too?

The GTX 550 Ti is "midrange" for the 500 series and the storage is "ok". You could throw an SSD in there and ebay the GTX 550 Ti and put a GTX 580 in there...

But as-is should be fully BF3-capable on medium if not high settings...

Newegg has a similar prebuilt rig here: Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more!

By do better I guess I was meaning a bit of both. I just need the pc itself, I have the monitor, mouse/keyboard, and all the other fun stuff. I'm thinking I'd like to get around 16gb of ram, a really good video card, or 2 decent video cards to run in SLi or Crossfire, and a 6 core processor. Just not sure which parts I should look into getting.

This is pretty good ref material. AMD-Based Office PC

Newegg.com - ASUS P8Z68-V PRO LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K

Newegg.com - CORSAIR Professional Series HX850 (CMPSU-850HX) 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model 996982

Newegg.com - Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CT040G3K5 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1502FAEX 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Newegg.com - EVGA 015-P3-1580-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card x2

total is 2,001.78

Build your own. You wont regret it.

When choosing a CPU:
Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: August 2011 : Best Gaming CPUs For The Money, August UpdatesWhen choosing a GPU:
Best Graphics Cards For The Money: September 2011 : Best Graphics Cards For The Money, September Update
Take a look at that. I am not big on SSDs, they are a HUGE money sink for very little gaming gain. Just get a good 1TB drive and call it a day.

I have a Core i5 2500K and I am VERY VERY happy with it. It is overkill, even for BF3.

Originally Posted by BrockSamson

Build your own. You wont regret it.

When choosing a CPU:
Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: August 2011 : Best Gaming CPUs For The Money, August UpdatesWhen choosing a GPU:
Best Graphics Cards For The Money: September 2011 : Best Graphics Cards For The Money, September Update
Take a look at that. I am not big on SSDs, they are a HUGE money sink for very little gaming gain. Just get a good 1TB drive and call it a day.

I have a Core i5 2500K and I am VERY VERY happy with it. It is overkill, even for BF3.

However, I would say do not rely on the "performance in games" for the GPU specs in that Tom's Hardware guide since I truly doubt they have benched them on BF3 (and benches on Alpha are not going to reflect Gold anyway). Remember, Patrick Liu from DICE said "You will be safe (at max settings) with dual GTX 580". (The equivalent of saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM"). I concur that quad core (most necessary for BF3) 2500K 3GHz is good for BF3 and the extra $100 for the extra cache in the 2600K is probably not going to be cost effective until Ivy Bridge (spring/summer 2012) and games/game engines written that will benefit/take advantage of it (Arma3? Crysis3?). Whatever you do for GPU, don't skimp on the ram. Get more than 1GB on the card.

I would say, maybe go with 2xGTX560?

Unless you are going with the ATI stuff, but just remember, BF3 specifically is heavy on tessellation (Patrick Liu again: "Tessellation is sexy!"), and NV cards are handling that slightly better than the ATIs...although a Radeon 6950/6970 might still be decent especially because you now have an extra GB of vram for stuff that's not BF3 (again, Arma3/Crysis3)...