My friend needs help.

So I came here to ask some advices for a gaming rig that costs around $900-$1500 Price range because my friend wanted to build a PC.

Any suggestions with parts are very helpful :)

I will keep my friend updated to this thread on facebook.

Is he going to use this PC for anything OTHER than gaming? Does he have any parts he will be reusing? Is he interested in overclocking?

After those questions are answered, we'll proceed with a parts list

Sorry for the late reply guys because of the bad internet connection in the internet cafe.

My friend will use it for gaming and Browsing and he's not usually a fan of overclocking because it will mean expensive electric bill.

I have made a config for you: Intel Core i7-4770K, EVGA GeForce GTX 770 - System Build - PCPartPicker It is about $1500 but the case and OS is not included.

If he doesn't want to overclock, and it's going to be a gaming and regular PC duty rig then here is what I would go with. This is overkill for gaming, BUT will last for quite a while and will take care of other tasks if he decides to do more than game in the future.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690

MOBO: Asus Z97-PRO

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 2x4GB Kit Gold

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro *

PSU: SeaSonic X650 Gold

GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB SC **

SSD: Samsung 850 Pro 128GB ***

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200 RPM HDD ****

There are a few notes I should make about these parts.

* The case is just a suggestion. I have looked this particular case over and for the price, you'll have a damned hard time finding something similar for anywhere close to that money. Also, a case is personal and subjective, your friend may hate everything about that particular case. Find something from Phanteks, NZXT, Corsair, Fractal Design, or Coolermaster and he'll be fine.

** The GPU I have listed is a 4GB model. This card will run ANY game @ 1080p on the highest settings, and will run any game @ 2560x1440 with high settings at least. If he is only running 1080p resolutions, you can knock that back to the 2GB model of that card and save around $50.

*** The SSD I picked is a 128GB model. If he intends on installing the OS, programs, and a handful of games on there, he should be fine, but if he has a large game library, either buy a bigger SSD, or install the games to the regular HDD

**** The 1TB hard drive was just a placeholder. I don't know how much storage he needs, but price-wise, get at least a 1TB hard drive. He may need more, who knows........I currently have 22TB of storage in my PC, and there are others who need more than that. 1TB is as low as I would go, but for a few more dollars you can double that and get a 2TB.

This will be about $1200 and will be a solid computer for several years. I didn't add monitor, keyboard and mouse because most people reuse what they have, but if he needs suggestions for those components, I can do that as well.

kbrady1979 said:

If he doesn't want to overclock, and it's going to be a gaming and regular PC duty rig then here is what I would go with. This is overkill for gaming, BUT will last for quite a while and will take care of other tasks if he decides to do more than game in the future.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690

MOBO: Asus Z97-PRO

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 2x4GB Kit Gold

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro *

PSU: SeaSonic X650 Gold

GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB SC **

SSD: Samsung 850 Pro 128GB ***

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200 RPM HDD ****

There are a few notes I should make about these parts.

* The case is just a suggestion. I have looked this particular case over and for the price, you'll have a damned hard time finding something similar for anywhere close to that money. Also, a case is personal and subjective, your friend may hate everything about that particular case. Find something from Phanteks, NZXT, Corsair, Fractal Design, or Coolermaster and he'll be fine.

** The GPU I have listed is a 4GB model. This card will run ANY game @ 1080p on the highest settings, and will run any game @ 2560x1440 with high settings at least. If he is only running 1080p resolutions, you can knock that back to the 2GB model of that card and save around $50.

*** The SSD I picked is a 128GB model. If he intends on installing the OS, programs, and a handful of games on there, he should be fine, but if he has a large game library, either buy a bigger SSD, or install the games to the regular HDD

**** The 1TB hard drive was just a placeholder. I don't know how much storage he needs, but price-wise, get at least a 1TB hard drive. He may need more, who knows........I currently have 22TB of storage in my PC, and there are others who need more than that. 1TB is as low as I would go, but for a few more dollars you can double that and get a 2TB.

This will be about $1200 and will be a solid computer for several years. I didn't add monitor, keyboard and mouse because most people reuse what they have, but if he needs suggestions for those components, I can do that as well.

That seems better than what I chose. Good job kbrady1979! :)

No need for the 850 PRO unless he's doing live HD video capturing or running a heavy read/write server. It's an awesome drive and new technology, don't get be wrong, but it would be wasted for its true potential. Get one of the 840 EVOs instead, honestly. The 1TB cost me around 450 USD a while ago on Amazon, and can likely be found for less than that now.

Definitely a fan of the EVGA cards. Can not recommend them enough. I had duel SLI 680 FTW+ (OC 4GiB) cards which I upgraded to 2 Titan Blacks, but one of my 680s had a voltage regulator that was going bad on it (I think) causing driver crashes, so I RMAed it and they gave me a 770 FTW (4GiB) card to replace it with. Since these were used in SLI, they offered to replace my second 680 with another of the 770s, and they even payed for shipping in the second RMA. So yeah, basically a free upgrade with a value of around $820 USD (minus the older 680s which don't have quite as high performance, and of course one of them only kind of worked, which is fair considering that these cards were crunching for scientific research near 24/7 for over two years). So yeah, can't recommend EVGA enough. :) (For more info on this specifically, check out this thread I started on the EVGA forums: SLI 770 FTW with 680 FTW+ - EVGA Forums)

An i5 is more than enough for gaming, but what you have to look at other than just processing power is the system as a whole that the CPU is a part of. More specifically, how many PCIe lanes they support, whether they're 2nd gen. or 3rd gen., and how many channels the RAM is. Still though, should be fine with an i5 for gaming unless you're pushing some of the high-end limits by running multi-threaded tasks, etc.

For higher-end motherboards that are reliable and great performers (in my experience, and that of countless others), ASUS has more than proven themselves. Take a look at these to see what suits your friend's needs.

For RAM, get 16GiB (yes, I installed that much on my wife's laptop, and yes, it uses it thanks to Windows features such as super fetch, even with her 500GB 840 EVO - just make sure you enable it in the Samsung Magician software, along with RAPID mode. - Her i3 2.4GHz with HD 4000 graphics laptop performs a whole lot better than it did with stock hardware). This is assuming you get a 64 bit version of Windows, which yeah, you should get. Just bite the bullet and get and OEM copy of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit SP1. (Some people may recommend Windows 8.x, and fair enough, but I do not.) I'm running 64GiB RAM on my main computer, and even that can get filled up with just file caching (don't worry, this capacity is left available to be overwritten if a program needs the space, it's just not left empty and wasted by Windows).

Sorry for the late reply again guys I'll try suggesting these suggestions you offered :)

I recently built a killer mini-ITX build and I would consider it unless you wanted huge expansions like SLI or Crossfiring later.

Something like this would freaking rock, just add a spinner for data and the OS. It will be a thoroughly challenging build that you'll love when done and it will kick ass at gaming and anything else !