Challenge!! If you DARE

gadunk

Ok, I know there are peeps on here with way more k-nowledge than me about where and what to buy so I'm going to give this a shot.

My wife gave me the thumbs up to build up a second pc woohoo! The budget, is slim though! And AND I want to at least run Warhammer Online.  We don't need a monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers.. Just the case and what goes in it

So here's the challenge: Build me a PC for $600 !!  Please please don't just list off a bunch of graphics cards, CPU/MoBoards etc. Links and prices y'all!

 

The prize if I go with your configuration? Um, my thanks?   Anyway, I would appreciate any help I could get because I really don't want to go spend $600 on a bunch of parts only to find out I didn't get what I could have got. Know what I mean?

Thanks for any help!

kingfet

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147024  -- 30.99

Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817103940 - 59.99

Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138112 - 59.99

Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103283 - 105.99

Memory: 4x - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231143 - 99.96

HD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145162 - 41.99

Video: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162013 - 124.99

 

I am sure there are better, but this is a good start. 523.00 Total, plus shipping. You get a 9 series video card with DDR3 Memory on it. A triple core processor. A nice stable power supply, 4 gigs of memory, and a 160 gb sata hd. You may want to add a few two dollar fans to keep your case cool. 

You can also move stuff around, if you need for HD space, personally that would be more than enough for me, because I have several machines and it sounds like you do as well. I am personally a fan of nvidia, I am sure there are people here that could recommend an equivolent or better ATI card, but I do not know their product well enough. I also am an AMD fan (how am I not an ATI fan?) At this point especially on a budget a quad core processor wont do you much better than a triple core or dual core if its mainly for games/browsing internets. Again someone may be able to recommend a Intel processor that is the same or better. This machine I have listed will certainly run WAR though.

Make sure you choose a name brand PSU, even if its only 500w, it will outperform a cheapo 600-1200w PSU any day. If I told you to keep just one thing for sure off the list it would be that power supply or a better one from Antec or Thermaltek.

gadunk

That's an outstanding list! Thanks alot for this. I just might snag exactly those parts.

I could browse around newegg for hours day after day and never come to a solid decision on exactly what to get. I'm terrible about second guessing myself always wondering "But maybe this combo will work better" lol.. the big problem is my tech knowledge stops just above casual user so getting into specific ins and outs of combinations of parts kills my shopping fun.. anyway, rambling done. Thanks again for putting that together I really appreciate it!

xDarc

Ok here we go:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128077 Mobo - $65

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115038 CPU - $164

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130380 GFX - $120

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231145 RAM - $75

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182016 PSU - $50

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119115 Case - $30

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136098 HD - $60

Total cost after rebates and with shipping included: $607.  Before rebate: $627.

The mobo, the PSU and the case are as low as you want to go.  You can save about 15 bucks on the harddrive by selecting a smaller capacity or off-brand, but it's really not worth it.  The meat of this system is in the CPU, GFX, and RAM. 

An E8200 wolfdale on the new 45nm process, the 9800GT and the 4GBs of DDR2 1000 RAM is a pretty good combo for high performance gaming.  I wish there was room in the budget to go with a 4850 instead of a 9800GT.  There's a deal on the 1GB 4850 for $180 after $20 rebate.  The card itself has about a 15%-25% edge over the 9800GT- double the memory sweetens the deal. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102759 Sapphire 4850 1GB

There's no way to bring it down 60 bucks without losing the hard drive.  If you skimp on the CPU you will wind up bottlenecked.  But if you have a spare hard drive you could put an OS on... do it!