What is the best gaming PC setup under $1000?

February 17, 2012 9:46 AM PST · Flag · 3 answers

Looking for black editions, should I go with a hard drive that spins vs a hard drive that's solid. Want the highest FPS I can get under $1000, thanks.

Zake Tesera

MMOGiveback

Professional I

This answer is the generic one I give for all questions regarding gaming PCs under $1000:

Intel Core i5 Quad-Core: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80623i525...
Cooler Master Hyper cooler: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-cpu-coo...
ASRock Motherboard: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-p6...
8GB Patrio DDR3 RAM: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/patriot-memory-pxd38g...
EVGA 650 Ti Video Card: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-01gp3...
500W Power Supply: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/apex-power-supply-ald...

This will run you up approximately ~$625.00 after shipping, with the only thing you needing to buy after is a monitor, a tower, a hard-drive, a mouse, and a keyboard.

Since you are a fan of the traditional HDD, I suggest the:
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB 3.5" 5400RPM: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-inter...
This HDD holds 1TB of memory, and has an extremely high cache memory space of 64mb.

Including the HDD brings up the approximate price to ~$725.00, before monitor, tower, mouse, and keyboard. If you're really into gaming, I'd try and convince you to buy a mechanical keyboard such as the Razor Black Widow, and some sort of high DPI mouse.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask away.

✔ Highest voted answer

Reply · Send thanks · posted 93 days ago · 6 people agree

3 points posted by Aaron Maxfield

This really helps, I've already got a really nice 23-inch Samsung HD monitor, keyboard, gaming precision mouse. Seeing this estimate also spells RELEIF, as it's not close to $1k. I look forward to checking on all your recommendations. I will be sure to check out the other recommendation such as the mechanical keyboard(Razor Black Widow) as well as a "high DPI mouse", this won't be for mmo's(like WoW or The Old Republic) but mostly FPS's and other FPP games(First Person Perspective) such as Skyrim, can't wait for Aliens: Colonial Marines to see if that will actually be worth it to pick up. Know any other games, to push a machine to really see what it can handle to blow my mind away?

2 points posted by Zake Tesera

High DPI mouses, like my current one the Logitech G9X help a LOT with FPS games imo, but you have to get used to them. They can really be customized quite well, though. Mechanical keyboards click a bit more, and register keystrokes quite faster than traditional, dometop, mouses and have less ware-and-tare from extensive use.

Yeah, I tend to undercut the budget given as to leave room for other upgrades that people would personally want to get, or so they can upgrade something that they feel they should.

Other games that could push your computer to the limit. . . The best I can think of is Crysis II, which is probably the most graphics intensive game on the market, potentially Diablo III, if you're into that sort of thing, and maybe even some games which you have played in the past and thought "Why not?" to turning down the graphics for a little bit of performance. Seeing the difference in things you've played in the past feels great.

Goodluck, mate!

3 points posted by Aaron Maxfield

Thanks for laying that all down for me and explaining those, sounds like a keyboard with lots of macro's to setup with software. I thought they lowered the system req's for Crysis II because Crysis was so much to handle? I do play Crysis on this one and it runs..okay for the most part lol.

1 points posted by Zake Tesera

Crysis II with the DX11 patch is pretty hard to handle, without it it's not that bad.

2 points posted by Aaron Maxfield

PC gaming is where it's at! Another question is it worth it to go for the dual SLI? or SLI-X, sure it's something like that, a friend mentioned this to me, I do like to play strategy games, coming from Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander and such where having a lot of units can strain a card and having 2 can significantly take that strain and spread the workload out...?

1 points posted by Zake Tesera

I can't extend our thread any further than your post above, so I'll respond here:

It's really a toss-up; if you go with dual-SLI, I would advise you get get two identical cards- which can get to be just as expensive as one extremely good card. In my opinion, if you want to spend the money on good graphics cards, just go with one well-to-do card, as it reduces the chances that something can go wrong with dual-SLI. (I've had this happen to me in the past, when dual-SLI was rather new-ish.)

On an unrelated note, if you don't have Supreme Commander II yet, I've got a -50% off coupon on Steam that I'll never use for it.

2 points posted by Michael F.

You might want to go back to the permalink for your build and repaste the links; if looks like you copied and pasted from a previous post on here, and it truncated most of your links (I did the same thing yesterday).

2 points posted by Zake Tesera

Fixed! Realised that my other posts had the same issue, so going to go fix them as well. Thanks yet again, I'm getting sloppy. <3

2 points posted by Aaron Maxfield

Thanks for pointing this out.

Michael F.

My Flickr Page

Practitioner II

Zake's build is a very good one. Here's my standard alternative that aims for mid-level enthusiast-grade parts:

Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/4xK2
Part price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/4xK2/by_merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($179.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V LE ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($125.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($81.99 @ NCIX US)
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($98.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Hard Drive: Crucial M4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($162.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 560 1GB Video Card ($174.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($86.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $961.92
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated 2012-02-17 13:59 EST-0500)

It includes both a good platter drive (the WD Black 500GB) AND a very reliable, very fast 128GB Crucial M4 SSD; you'd install your OS and programs on the SSD, and store all of your media on the platter drive. Zake's build forgoes the SSD, and puts a slightly better video card in. You can mix and match from each build, of course.

Reply · Send thanks · posted 93 days ago · 2 people agree

2 points posted by Zake Tesera

The only problem with your build, is that it includes a SSD as opposed to a HDD, which the poster didn't exactly want.

2 points posted by Michael F.

Actually, I think in his post he was asking which he should go with: "should I go with a hard drive that spins vs a hard drive that's solid". The wording and lack of a question mark confused it a bit. And my build includes both; he's welcome to take out the SSD and save the $160+ dollars; it's far from a necessity.

2 points posted by Zake Tesera

Oh wow, I had skimmed it and seen a debate between SSD and HHD, and immediately thought he wanted a HHD. Thanks for clarifying it.
I would definitely had added in a SSD, if I had read it properly, although the HHD I provided is very cost-effective.

2 points posted by Michael F.

No worries. I run the older model 2TB WD green series drives in my home server; they are great drives. Man, the prices have sure gone up since the Thailand floods. I paid $80 each for those 2TB drives just a few months before the prices skyrocketed, and now a drive half the capacity is $20 more... and that's a GOOD price! :-D

2 points posted by Zake Tesera

Yeah, I had bought myself a 2.5TB WD Green Series for nearly $100.00 only a week or so before the flood.
It definitely is a sad sight to see.

2 points posted by Aaron Maxfield

Yes.A SSD is faster, however more expensive and less storage. What I'd like to do is have a 1TB HDD as my 2nd storage and maybe a 64 or 128GB SSD as a 1st internal hard drive to use for the games I want to play?