New Build with some twists?

[heavymetal2000]

OK so this ought to be fun. Building a new Budget Gaming PC to replace my old one which im giving to my cousin.

I have 700$C Max to spend on it IT MUST BE: AMD CPU, Nvidia GPU, and i'd like everyhting to be BLACK and RED.

I compiled a list below of the things ive looked at and placed on my build. Biggest thing i would really like to know is can anyone make this better for under 700$? Or better yet can someone make it cheaper without losing any performance. OR haha make it better and cheaper While still maintaining my wants. I do not necessarily want or need the best of the best I just want a good black/red AMD/Nvidia Gamin pc in my budget that has some OCability.

The list below is just what ive come up with i leave it with the community to switch things in and out or even a totally new build. I currently have an eclipse II keyboard, R.A.T. 5 mouse, lite on DVD drive, logitech 5.1 surround, and i also have a coolermaster black 500W PSU.
If my current psu wont power these builds feel free to throw one in that will.

Thank you all in advance also if i left anything out feel free to remind me.

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/ca/p/nanI
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/ca/p/nanI/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/ca/p/nanI/benchmarks/

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($79.99 @ Newegg Canada)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.91 @ DirectCanada)
Motherboard: Biostar TA990FXE ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($109.99 @ Canada Computers)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($37.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($94.79 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 2GB Video Card ($224.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Power Supply: Corsair Enthusiast 750W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($89.99 @ NCIX)
Total: $666.65
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-11-10 09:49 EST-0500)

 

[cutebeans]

FX-4300 would be on-par with the i3-3225 too. Your point fails because you forget that AMD's eight-core models are not gaming CPUs like Intel's SB-E CPUs aren't gaming CPUs. AMD's much cheaper CPUs such as the FX-6300 game about as well as the FX-8350 which is on-par with the i3-3225.

Where are you getting your figures anyway? Point taken. Although, I really think that Intel is still ahead when gaming since most games do not utilize more than 2 cores.

 

[blazorthon]

Where are you getting your figures anyway? Point taken. Although, I really think that Intel is still ahead when gaming since most games do not utilize more than 2 cores.

The A10-5800K is functionally identical to the FX-4300 except for the L3 cache and maybe a little Turbo difference. The A10-5800K, without any L3 cache and a lower frequency, nearly matched the FX-4170's performance. The FX-8xxx and FX-6xxx CPUs that are otherwise about identical (of the same architecture and about the same frequency) have pretty much the same gaming performance overall because most games tend to not use those extra two cores over four too much, let alone over 6.

The FX-6300 is only a somewhat lower frequency than the FX-8350 (not as much as one might think either thanks to Turbo) and its loss of two cores doesn't impact gaming performance much, so it'd perform about the same, just slightly lower than the FX-8350. That puts it at slightly slower than the i3-3225/3220 models, but still pretty much indistinguishably close. The FX-6200 is a little slower than even that at about on-par with the FX-8150 thanks to its frequency advantage over it being almost minor enough for even the little core count difference to equalize the playing field between the two.

Also, most DX11 games can use at least four cores and utilize them at least somewhat effectively. It's mostly games using exceptionally outdated technology that don't scale effectively past even one or two cores nowadays and we've now got a few games that scale quite effectively across six to eight cores.

 

[cutebeans]

Where are you getting your info from? Please link the source first before you say that. Maybe you are talking about threads?

I have never heard of games that have used 6 to 8 cores nor have most DX11 games use 4 cores for that.

Anyway, I really would like to see the source of your info.

 

[blazorthon]

Where are you getting your info from? Please link the source first before you say that. Maybe you are talking about threads?

I have never heard of games that have used 6 to 8 cores nor have most DX11 games use 4 cores for that.

Anyway, I really would like to see the source of your info.

BF3 MP, Metro 2033, and a few others consistently scale in performance up to eight cores. Not exceptionally well for some of them, but noticeably.

A wide variety of DX11 games can use four cores (yes, threads too, but saying cores is equally accurate in this situation). In fact, one of the main differences between DX11 and DX 9 is that it was designed to work better with multi-core CPUs. This is easily shown by comparing CPU performance between dual, triple, and quad core Athlon II CPUs between the DX9 and DX11 versions of World of Warcraft. Scaling is shown to improve significantly with the triple core model versus the dual-core model. Scaling on the quad-core model is still less than stellar, but it improved. That's with World of Warcraft, many more modern games can scale better. There are games such as SCII:WoL and Skyrim which don't scale excellently, but they're not the norm these days.

An easy experiment for this is comparing average i5 gaming performance to average i3 gaming performance in different games. Even better is comparing mobile i5s to desktop i5s because they don't have the cut-down cache and lack of Turbo that i3s have. Also, although I probably don't need to say it, that's not counting Nehalem i5s which had dual-core desktop models too, although they could easily replace the mobile i5s for comparing against desktop Nehalem quad-core i5s.

I could look around for more links, but that i5 outperforms i3 so much in most modern games should make this fairly conclusive already IMO.

 

[heavymetal2000]

http://pcpartpicker.com/ca/p/nObE

Ok so there she is. I feel like this is the build i want i love everything about it. Im about 25$ over budget but im gonna make it happen. If possible blazorthon could you just have a quick peak and tell me if this would have any issues with anything at all or if theres anything you personally wouldnt go with perzonally due to an obvious error or non quality part?

Thx in advance.

Edited to add canadian link that should work i hope.

Changed link again to includ Seagate HDD bigger for less only 11$ over now.

 

[cutebeans]

http://pcpartpicker.com/ca/p/nNGT

This would be a bit cheaper with no compromise to the build. Also, you listed out American Sites. Not Canadian.

 

[heavymetal2000]

Woops forgot to switch to /ca... >< haha time to review.

Seems like a lot of reviews on that case people absolutely hated how extreme the exterior looked and felt they needed to run the case into the ground. Although the design may not be for everyone i feel likefor the price its a good tower abd comes stock with some nice accessoriez.

 

[heavymetal2000]

Also i love extreme design and out of the ordinary designs over "sophisticated" designs. Heh i wanna game and feel like my tower is unique and radical as opposed to seeing the same run of the mill looking tower. To each his own i guess. I also like the ms-I commander tower.

As for that psu love that its black dont like non modular design so much and 380w is that going to be sufficient for said build and it not have to work its arse off?

Edited for typos sry about the abyssmal typing on my phone nightshift at work reviewing all this.

 

[cutebeans]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($131.39 @ DirectCanada)
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS7000C-Cu Ball Bearing CPU Cooler ($26.99 @ Computer Valley)
Motherboard: Biostar TA990FXE ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($109.99 @ Canada Computers)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($38.06 @ DirectCanada)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($190.89 @ DirectCanada)
Case: Thermaltake VL800P1W2N (Black/Red) ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Canada Computers)
Power Supply: Rosewill Green 530W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($49.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($16.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Total: $654.28
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-11-15 06:08 EST-0500)

Look at the case, it's something to be proud of. It's red and black which really fits your motif.

I changed the PSU. Don't worry about it being non modular at least you save money when it's all assembled up, you won't notice it ever.

 

[heavymetal2000]

Sticking with the cougar case. May switch up hdd though is there a big difference between seagate and wd for quality?

 

[cutebeans]

Sticking with the cougar case. May switch up hdd though is there a big difference between seagate and wd for quality?

Not much. Seagates are good but it used to have 1 yr warranty so people avoided it like the plague but now it has 2years again on the sale so you should really jump on it.

 

[heavymetal2000]

Best answer selected by heavymetal2000.