Your mission

You have a $1000 CAD budget to throw a gaming PC together sans any peripherals. What do you choose?

To find a buddy in the United States to get the parts closer to cost because otherwise the prices are unreasonable

Seriously, though, I still haven't found a reliably priced canadian retailer that I'd recommend getting parts from yet. No one has ever shown me one anyway. Sites like NewEgg don't ship internationally. I think TigerDirect does, but there's a good amount of premium there (though it IS still cheaper than getting them at bigger stores that charge idiotic amounts)

Anyway, my basic suggestions are always AMD for the CPU and nVidia for the GPU, EVGA manufacture with lifetime warranty. Asus or MSI for the mainboard and the RAM should be something that has a lifetime warranty. (All the modules are made by like five companies so it really only comes down to the quality of the board manufacturing) HDDs, generally Seagate or Western Digital, still warranty is a good indicator of longevity. SSD ain't worth it.

Why not Intel? Too expensive. Seriously, you're adding about $200-300 in total machine costs just to make it Intel, and you'll likely have to get something slower than you could get with AMD for the same price.

Why not AMD GPU? nVidia tends to have more options in games and better driver support all around. And while AMD chips do perform a bit better in most cases, the nVidia chips tend to scale better in resolution, especially if you use something like SLi. Crossfire doesn't really have the same scaling numbers.

For the power supply ... don't skimp. Get something nice. And you probably want to overshoot with it. So, if you need ~500W power supply, you'll probably want to look at ones in the 800-1000W range. Not because you'll need the extra power now, but when you decide to upgrade you want it to be as cheap as possible, and the only way to do that is to buy parts for longevity. (AM3 socket board, for example, even if you only get a Phenom 2 X3 or something, since in a year or two you could pop in a Phenom 2 X6 without issue)

The idea is, you plan to upgrade in about 2 or three years time and that upgrade should be a fraction of the cost. (Should only really cover RAM, CPU, and GPU)

I'd give suggestions on actual setups, but I have no idea how much the stuff would end up costing you ... like I said, no real online retailer that's cool with Canada.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Tigerdirect is probably the best way to go. If you wait for deals which they run all the time.
Of course having one 4 miles from my house helps too.
If you have any Fry's electronic stores in Canada, they can have some good deals though they have crappy customer service.
ATi is not my favorite either, driver issues seem to be constant and I've had every ATi card I ever owned crap out on me and never had 1 nvidia die.
My last build was Intel but I've owned several AMD's and have no complaints about them at all. I just wanted SLi at the time which finding an AMD board was hard to do.

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Light is faster than sound:That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Your riches in life are family and friends, everything else is just a distraction.

If there's a good retailer in say, Buffalo, then I can easily make the hike to the US, I just need to find a store that has everything in stock.

Pretty much all stores in the US are overpriced. Even Fry's (and to note their cheap stuff is non-warrantied refurbished junk ... and I do mean JUNK)

The only store I have local that has decent prices is a store called ENU Inc. They're by no means national, though. But even their prices can't compare with online. I'd say they're akin to maybe Tiger Direct...

The entire point is ... it's hard to say what kind of system you'd get for that money, based on the limited store options. Normally, I'd say, hey, you know, $700-$800 USD, badass gaming rig ... but, honestly, on Tiger Direct, that's more like $1000-$1200 USD, which is only slightly lower in CAD.

Finding an AMD + nVidia board has become somewhat of an issue ... but Asus and MSI are still making them. And they tend to be pretty nice boards.

Another concern you should have is ... even if you bought from Tiger Direct ... would the warranties apply, since you live in Canada. This is actually an issue. Parts DO die, and with more and more complexity, there's just more components that can fail and not having any way of replacing it ... just because you live somewhere different, is shittastic.

You might want to do some research on warranties offered by EVGA and XFX (for GPUs) as well as Western Digital, Seagate, and Samsung (for HDDs).

If you just want a straight up parts list suggestion, I can write one up, but I can't guarantee $1000CAD, you'll have to do some leg work

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Well there's a Tiger Direct pretty close to my place - I can go in and sort out warranty issues there. I was kind of hoping to get away with only 1k on the system since I have to buy a monitor as well and that's another $200 at least. I may be able to get away w/o buying RAM - my uncle has 4x 1GB that I can grab for next to nothing, and he's got two video cards as well (I can't remember which right now).

Looks like I have to get off my lazy ass at this point - I'll update here w/ any pieces I'm thinking of and y'all can offer advice.

Cheers for the help.

EDIT: Also, is it worth it to buy a faster CPU or should I buy something not as fast but get a good cooling system and overclock the tits off it?

EDIT EDIT: For example, looking at this: Phenom II X2 is 3.2GHZ, but only 100 CAD instead of this which is 3.5 GHZ but double the price. It's been a long time since I've looked at this kind of stuff... I feel so lost.

Didn't we go thru this a few weeks back??? Frenchy, why would you settle for a dual core or a quad, when the low end 6 cores are around the same price?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Because the last time I built a PC or took an active interest in what's going on w/ technology like this was 9 YEARS AGO when I built one w/ my dad. I have NO IDEA what I'm doing.

join the club. I was totally out of the loop for 4 years bud. Anywho, look at that 6 core.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Oh hey, there's a newegg.ca

Sweet.

I've heard that not much is ready for a 6 core CPU and a quad-core makes more sense at the moment.

Speed isn't as important as cores and threads, just to note.
And if you're playing games, the GPU and RAM is more important anyway.

People seem to think they're CPU bound ... but they're really not. There's really no game out there that REQUIRES a quad core, for example.

I also wouldn't suggest overclocking, OC voids any and all warranties, and you never know. Also, the added performance is not going to be too dramatic. You'll get in the range of 500Mhz or something.

The main difference in prices you're going to find, aren't for speed at all, it's for cache sizes. (The big gaps, anyway). The L3 cache is important, more important than straight up speed, and the ~$40 difference is reasonable.

Anyway. Based on TigerDirect ... here's a parts list (minus Motherboard because ... they just don't offer the one I'd suggest getting ... maybe finding a store that has it would be possible. The board is $136 CAD)

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5752143
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6389019&CatId=2534
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6078414&CatId=1624
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5758911&csid=ITD&body=MAIN
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6510322&CatId=3669
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6613461&csid=ITD&body=MAIN

Which (with the board) adds up to $846 CAD, minus case.

On NewEgg, there's some better part selection (like the motherboard and the power supply on NewEgg has four 12V rails, not just one)

This is what it would be like there:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152043
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136783
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130568
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131636
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808

Which is $803 USD ($780 CAD), they're pretty similar. The major difference is I can't find the board (maybe you can look at some local places), and the power supply is not as nice and costs a bit more.

The system, though, you could put in a second 460 at some point (560s are like $300) three more 4GB sticks of ram (they're dual channel, also), and a Phenom II X6 (up to 140W) and that board and power supply would be able to handle it just fine ... which is a REALLY nice upgrade.

But yeah, that's in your price range, I'd say. There's a good $150-$200 room for a case, which is, really up to you.

I do have a suggestion for a monitor though. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236117
LED Backlight, 50 million to 1 contrast ratio, 23". HDMI, DVI, and VGA ...

the only monitor akin to it I can find is this one:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7094925&CatId=5469

It's about the same, but no HDMI. It's $213 CAD, which would leave ... $141 CAD for a case. Which should be doable

EDIT:

There's a newegg.ca site? :O ... updating ... (rounded up)

Monitor: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236117&Tpk=VH238H $200 ($9)
DVD: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204&Tpk=DRW-24B1ST%2fBLK%2fB%2fAS $21 ($7.50)
HDD: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136783&Tpk=WD20EURS $119 ($7.50)
MB: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131636&Tpk=M4N98TD%20EVO $145 ($13)
GPU: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130568&Tpk=01G-P3-1373-AR $219 ($12)
PSU: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817189017 $129 ($15) <~ Not really the best.
RAM: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233132&Tpk=CMX4GX3M1A1333C9 $46 ($10)
CPU: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808&Tpk=HDZ955FBGMBOX $140 ($0)

Outside of the shipping being ... fairly ridiculous ... that's not too bad.

Let's see ... $884 CAD with shipping and no case. $1093 with monitor and no case ... leaving ~$110 CAD for a case. Hmm.

Well, there's some options anyway. Wouldn't hurt to mix and match stores for best prices/parts combinations. Just ... you know ... remember which store you bought each part from.

Final note: getting a 6-core CPU right now, makes no sense. It's just extra money that won't be used for a couple years. And if that's the case ... why wouldn't you just wait a couple years and get it for half the price?

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Thanks a bunch man, this is insanely helpful. Shipping is indeed a little ridiculous, but I'm Canadian and I learned to accept that a long time ago.

I'm also hoping I can avoid buying RAM right now by grabbing it from my uncle, and I have to see what video cards he has. He says he bought them 3 years ago but paid $800 a pop when he did...

Also going to skip the optical drive because I should be able to grab that off my previous defunct PC (hopefully).

My dad has mentioned something about trying to grab a HDD with Windows already on it so I can get my OS on the cheap? Not sure what the deal with that is.

Thanks a bunch again man, time to start stashing money away

EDIT: My uncle says he's got GeForce 8800 gtx (x2)

I'd just like to say, comparing the 8800, even the dual card version, to the 460, is sort of a joke. I understand money savings and all that, but honestly, there's games that are requiring GF9 and equivalent series GPUs for proper operation now.

And, again, the GPU is, pretty much, the most important component for games. So, just keep that in mind. (The 8800 GTX x2, which is, basically an SLI in one card ... only gets about 35fps, max, in Crysis at around 1080P resolutions, no AA, no AF. A single 460 with the same settings will only be about 10fps lower and take nowhere near the same amount of power. And, if you SLI a 460, the resolution scaling is amazing. It's like, full 60fps at 1080P with AA and AF maxed. The 560s perform a bit better than that, like, 35/70 as opposed to 28/60)

The RAM is sort of non-negotiable, just because, it HAS to be DDR3. Also ... it's $45 which is really not that much. If he's got some DDR3 1066 or 1333 RAM, then go for it, I guess ... but if it's not, then you can't use the board I'm suggesting (or any AM3 socket board for that matter)

Also, there's no longevity in 1GB sticks ... I'd argue it's REALLY worth the $45.

a 32-bit OS can't address more than 4GB of memory, in Windows it'll only recognize 3GB of it. You need a 64-bit OS, really. And, Win XP 64 shouldn't be an option (it's just Windows Server 2003 with media enable, and no drivers)

If you need to purchase (gasp) a copy of Windows, 64-bit version of 7, single use license are about $100 USD OEM.

You can't buy hard drives with the OS already installed unless it's from a pre-built system. And honestly, are you going to find a 2 TB drive with 64MB cache that has Windows on it and a 3 year warranty? (The answer is no).

Unless your dad is thinking about jacking parts from work or something ... I have no idea.

Honestly, I think the list I suggested is pretty reasonable, especially since it's in your budget. The subtraction of the optic drive, pretty much offsets the cost of the shipping and it is possible to go lower on the power supply (Really I just chose one that would handle the system maxed out ... which this set up is not)

Anyway it's a balance of longevity, performance, and cost. While I understand budgets and saving money and all that jazz ... I don't think it's wise to undercut your own budget that you set out. A lot of people do this and it makes no sense. You end up losing out on a significantly better machine usually for not that much extra.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Alright, thanks for the response. Like I said - I'm very poorly informed about this area at the moment. It would have been nice to save some money w/ my uncles parts but I'm not going to compromise the quality of the system for it now that I know it's not worth it.

Crono picked all the parts I was looking at how weird is that.
The only thing I might suggest is instead of a 2 tb drive find 2 1 tb drives and go raid. which is what I did.
The failure rate I think on these big drives are high enough to warrant raid to protect your data. Just my thinking.

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Light is faster than sound:That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Your riches in life are family and friends, everything else is just a distraction.

Alright, so using the parts list Crono put together plus a case I found for 89.99, my total cost w/ shipping (and 13% tax) is $1352.29

Methinks that's do-able, though I'm going to poke around and see if I can find some of these for less (or at least somewhere with lower shipping).

I have a 1tb external drive on my desk, so I may play with my HDD options a bit.

Thanks for the help boys.

EDIT: Any recommendations on a CPU fan?

you need to take the size of your case,MB and GPU into consideration when getting a cpu fan. Their are plenty of good fans out there cheaper and expensive just do your research is all I can suggest

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Light is faster than sound:That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Your riches in life are family and friends, everything else is just a distraction.

Zalman is quiet and efficient.

I have a zalman fan for my i7 920 (stock 2.6 GHz), and I over clock it to a stable 3.6GHz, and it idles at 25 degrees C (I think thats the right temp). (basically the CPU runs cooler over clocked than it would with the stock fan at normal clock).

They're big, but in-expensive, I think I got mine for 40$.

And what meme on your avatar is that Frenchy?

Like one of these?

There was some picture of this cat and it said I is pooping so I shooped an Indiana Jones hat on it.... that's the story. Don't know where the original picture is, this was a long time ago.

sgtfly said:
Crono picked all the parts I was looking at how weird is that.
The only thing I might suggest is instead of a 2 tb drive find 2 1 tb drives and go raid. which is what I did.
The failure rate I think on these big drives are high enough to warrant raid to protect your data. Just my thinking.

It's like the same price. And you'd still want about 2TB of usable, space, so you'd need two 2TB drives. You want redundancy, not extra space if you're investing in RAID (RAID 0 is pretty useless)

HOWEVER, if he has a 1TB external drive, he can probably just back up the specific things he wants to keep backed up for much cheaper.

The only difference is time and energy for restoration. To note, it's actually pretty unlikely that THAT drive is going to fail on you. But, backups are always a good idea. It's just really up to you on if you want to save that ... extra hour or whatever when if it fails. It's important to note that, the RAID array would still be rather useless until you got a replacement drive for the dead one.

As for non-standard cooling. I gotta be honest, I've never found an issue with it. It's more important to have a case with proper heat distribution and air flow than it is to have custom cooling on the CPU.

The only time you'd want to use it is when overclocking ... and if you're overclocking that much, you're playing with fire, basically. Everything you're doing is probably not going to benefit you more than you're risking in the money department. (Overclocking isn't just a heat game. You're changing the voltages on the lines ... which there is a maximum longevity to) Getting a pre OC device, is different, because the manufacture's OC is warranty covered.

Then again, CPUs are pretty damn reliable. So. Do whatever you want. You're kind of on your own for that stuff, though. Just make sure the new fan can push at least the same amount of air as the stock one, and the new heat sync has at least the same heat capacitance as the stock one. If they don't (which happens), then there's absolutely no point in getting it.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

French Toast said:
Like one of these?

Yes. Just be careful when installing it, be sure not to cut your fingers on the blades.

Oh okay, I didn't realize that a fan came with the CPU. In that case I'm not going to bother at the moment. I'm heading out to go to some physical stores on Friday, and I'm hoping to pick up a HDD and PSU in-store to cut out shipping if possible.

Things to look for:

Power Supply:
850W land (for future upgrades ... if you're OK with buying another one later, then 600W land)

~50A on the +12V rails! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Your video card could fry the system without a proper current rating on the +12V line. MORE than ONE +12V rail is what you want (the one I linked has 4) The current is additive, since the GPU uses two PCI-E plugs ... you can make sure two separate rails are supplying it.

You want an Energy Efficient one. The ones I were looking at are Silver and Gold 80+ certified. This means, during average load, the efficiency of the unit is 80% or above. (Higher efficiency % is better)

You'll probably want something with modular cabling ... it just makes your life so much easier.

Warranty is also something you want to look at. Most will only have a year warranty. But better ones will have 3-5.

As for HDDs ... I'd really suggest tracking the one I linked down. The RPM is lower, but it actually averages out. (As long as you're not moving around terrabytes of data constantly, you shouldn't experience any slowness)

If you choose something else you want these things:

64MB cache or higher. Don't go lower. If data can sit in cache it won't even have to look at the disc.

3-5 Year warranty. Accept nothing lower. You'll regret it, believe me (I had a Hitachi drive, and it was the only new HDD I bought that crapped out on me. And they're normally so reliable)

So yeah. The only thing is ... at least, how it is here, is the prices are so much higher in stores that you could almost buy two of the same item and ship them both and still save money. Alright that's an exaggeration, but still they're really expensive.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

What I actually did was take an old dual core box I had threw in a couple 1tb drives in that raided it and made a home server for all my backing up and the wifes business backups.
If you have an old machine thats the way to go

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Light is faster than sound:That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Your riches in life are family and friends, everything else is just a distraction.

I dunno. When two parts are within 50 bucks of one another I'd have to wonder where the waste comes in. Now I admit, I am still learning the new processor types but it just makes sense to have the two other cores if the prices are so close.

My reasoning before you ask. You mentioned getting one later for 1/2 the price. That would be 100 bucks assume its 200 now. If you can get a quad for 150 or less, you'd still be paying 50 bucks more in some future time for the 6 core. (more than if you just bought it now) You'd not be saving and you'd have a 4 core just laying around.

Still, if dollars won't permit you must get what you can afford. SO THE QUAD IS A GOOD DEAL!

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The best things in life, aren't things.

How true in alot of this discussion, if you can get 6 cores almost as cheap, go for it...why not. Alittle extra ram is a very good idea.
My biggest thing w\comps is keeping them cool, as Crono said you don't fancy but functioal. Keep your case air flowing and your fine. I'm not a big fan of OC'ing either, thats for tech geek bragging rights, to push their comp faster than the next guy...whoopee!
If you can get some overkill for a few extra bucks go for it...saves on upgrades down the road, too many get just enough and a yr later bang it's not enough.
Things change so fast it is ridiculous but that's the tech world for ya.

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Light is faster than sound:That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Your riches in life are family and friends, everything else is just a distraction.

The problem is it isn't like $50. A nice X6 processor is more than $200 now. And if the upgrade is in like three years ... he'll be getting a better chip, likely. That's the idea anyway.

But, I only suggested the lower end one, because he's very concerned with money. I mean, maxing out the system I proposed is still sub-$1300 USD, so it's not really overpriced by any means.

Honestly, the component you'll have to be wary of finding is the GPU. I'd suggest doubling up as soon as the price goes down or the card becomes rarer. Just because, if you want SLI to work, they do need to be relatively the same. (PhysX processing will work with non-matching GPUs, though, but that's not what you want ... you want that in ADDITION to additional GPU processing) ... those cycle the fastest ... CPUs the next fastest and RAM the slowest.

You'll be able to find this RAM for the next 5-6 years, at least. No joke.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I was more less just keeping the topic live and going. I was just adding up the ones and zeros and came up with my post. It just made sense to me that any 6, even a bottom rung one would be better than a 4.

No matters. It was a good read.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Hokay, so I've started spending money like a mofo. Got a combo deal on NewEgg for a 2TB HDD plus Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, so I grabbed that. First time I've paid for an OS and it's Windows.... I feel a little dirty.

Anyhoo, was pleased to find out that some stuff is the same price in-store as online so I can save shipping costs on my RAM and CPU at least. Also, a lot of this stuff is shipping from the states so they charge international shipping rates... that's why it's so ridiculous.

Last thing I haven't decided on yet is the power supply. If TigerDirect customers are to be believed then I should be going with this, but I'm not sold yet. I've been told the Corsair HX series is quite good. Thoughts?

EDIT: Or this, but I did get pretty excited about this Modular shebang.

Oh shit, lifetime warranty on a power supply say whhaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!? Go for the second one.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009

Ah, wait, crap, I misread it. Nevermind. Modular is really worth it though. So much headache is just ... gone.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Sweet ass sweet. Everything is ready and installed - just waiting on my video card to arrive. Hopefully tomorrow I can turn this thing on and find out what explodes first because I installed it wrong.

LOL..
We have faith in'ya Frenchy. You'll do fine.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Bahahahaha, went to put the Windows Install disc in and it turns out my drive is so old it doesn't read DVDs.

Your PC's chain is as strong as its weakest link. Apparently that link is its operator.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Yeah, that seems to be true. I didn't plug anything in wrong though, the BIOS setup went fine, just going to be about 3 hours before I can grab a spare drive from my Uncle.

Well, thanks a lot Crono for all your help and guidance on this build. Crysis in 1080p "Very High" w/ 16x AA is a thing of beauty.

Crysis 2 MP demo looks even better (and is more efficient, go figure) You should check it out before it's no longer available.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.