The Gigatron Omega eXtreme 3000 Ultra Z
Processor:
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core -- $219.99
Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard -- $119.99
RAM:
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL -- $24.99
Graphics Card:
EVGA 02G-P4-3664-KR GeForce GTX 660 Ti FTW Signature2 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 -- $289.99
Hard Drive:
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 ASP900S3-128GM-C 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) -- $104.99
Hard Drive:
Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -- $79.99
Case:
Rosewill REDBONE Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case -- $29.99
Power Supply:
SeaSonic X750 Gold 750W ATX12V V2.3/EPS 12V V2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply -- $99.99
Cooling:
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler -- $24.99
DVD Burner:
LITE-ON DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model iHAS124-04 - OEM -- $17.99
Ok so here's my reasoning for this build:
Processor: The only reason to get a K-version CPU is to overclock, and the Ivy Bridge CPUs are gimped when it comes to overclocking because of the poor heat dissipation due to the internal solder. IMO It is better to go Sandy Bridge, even though it offers ~3-5% less performance than an Ivy Bridge CPU
at a given frequency, the higher frequency you will be able to (safely) attain with your OC will net you more performance. If you were not overclocking or were concerned about power consumption
then Ivy Bridge would make sense.
Motherboard: It has 4 DIMM slots, 2 PCI-E 2.0 slots @ x16/x8 when both are populated, 4 x SATA 6Gb/s, and 2 x USB 3.0 ports. I wanted a system that had SATA/USB 3.0, no less than a Z68 chipset for my Sandy Bridge chip, and also had room to be upgraded in the future...so I wanted 2 free DIMM slots and a free PCI-E slot. PCI-E 2.0 @ x8 is completely satisfactory and won't hurt your video performance at all (or at least an extremely miniscule negligible amount) compared to PCI-E 3.0 x16. This board has all that and also was offered as a combo deal with the CPU, and therefore $20 was saved which allowed more budget for other components.
RAM: Everyone seems to like G.SKILL, and this is a steal at $24.99. As an added bonus it meets my criteria for frequency, latency, and voltage at 1600, 9-9-9-24, and 1.5V respectively.
Graphics Card: I prefer nVidia personally, but bias aside this card outperforms a 7950 in a lot of games (and even a 7970
NON-GHz in some), and offers ~75-80% of the performance of a 680 for <60% of the cost. This is an awesome bang-for-buck card. Even though it does not offer quite as much value as the 7870 from a price/performance standpoint, it is a better performing card and there was room in the budget....and this is a gaming build so the more video card the better.
Guru 3d's review recommends a 700W PSU for 2 of these in SLI and I have a(n awesome) 750W PSU for this build so it also fits in the power envelope for future expansion.
Hard Drives: Well the disk drive is a Seagate Barracuda....and my name's bardacuda, sooo.....it seemed logical. No but seriously, this is a good storage drive for a good price too. The SSD should have enough room for Windows and a good amount of apps and games, and it even got a
recommendation from Tom's recently I
think (well the 256GB version anyway). I'm not sure if they were only recommending the XPG SX 900 or the Premier Pro SP900 as well, but regardless they perform practically the same, except in 128 Kb sequential writes of incompressible data.
Case: It's cheap, but still looks cool and seems popular.
Power Supply: HOLY $#!& only $99.99 for this awesome PSU!? This is a no-brainer! You can't skimp on the PSU, and when it comes to quality, Seasonic is one of-- if not THE best. This thing gets a
gold award from Hard OCP, and they don't give those things out easily, and go really in-depth in their testing and scrutinizing.
Cooling: This is the cooler I use. It's one of the best air coolers, and it's only $24.99. Another no-brainer.
DVD Burner: Like the case, it's cheap and seems popular.
A lot of these components are on sale now as I put this build together but right now the whole thing comes in at $992.90. Just ducking under the $1000 budget limit and not skimping on anything. Here's an image of the shopping cart for proof of prices at this time. If only my bank account were not keeping me from clicking the "Proceed to checkout" button...
http://imageshack.us/a/img255/5300/budgetintel.png
EDIT: Oh and you get Assassin's Creed 3 for free which helps with the idea of the build being for gaming.
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