So you’ve got $1000 to spend, and you want to experience Crysis in all its graphical glory? You want to know you can juice up Fallout 3 to max lushness. You want the comfort of knowing you’re not missing out on gaming candy by needing to turn the details down.
Impossible, right? Never! Here at gameplayer we work miracles then pass the benefits onto our loyal comrades.
Behold, the bang-for-buck gaming beast. Use this guide as a template to build it just as we recommend if your current rig is past the cobweb stage, or zero in on select items to upgrade your system as needed.
Even better, the prices we’re quoting today are ballpark RRPs. Shop around on
staticICE :: Australia's comprehensive computer hardware and gadget price comparison search engine to find the cheapest prices on all the bits. Either way, it’s nothing but win for your gaming and more bucks in your pocket.
(and be sure to check our
other two ultimate gaming PCs that are in different price brackets, plus our
three tiers of ultimate gaming laptops).
CPU – Intel E8500
Price: ~$200
The Intel Core 2 range has been a massive success for gamers, delivering performance, popularity, and price. The E8500 sports a 3.16GHz clock speed with 6MB of L2 cache; perfect for demanding tasks. Its 9.5x multiplier is a blessing if you’re willing to overclock - 4GHz can often be obtained on stock cooling – now that’s impressive! The power of this dual core processor also frees the GPU to perform at its best so you’re minimising any bottlenecks, and at this price, it’s impossible to find a better performance to price ratio.
RAM – DDR2 4GB 800MHz RAM
Price: ~$100
The techies of yesteryear claimed that you should buy as much RAM as the budget would allow. These days, RAM is so cheap that if we were to take that advice we’d be hard pressed to find a capable motherboard to fit it all in. We recommend 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM. 4GB has recently become standard for gaming rigs, and the 800MHz clock speed not only gives great performance, but also features enough grunt to allow decent overclocking of the CPU and FSB. You may have noticed that there’s no specified brand. This is because it doesn’t really matter; even generic is fine, get anything with good warrantee.
Expensive RAM may have tighter timings, but the performance gain is negligible unless you do some serious overclocking. 32-bit OSs won’t address the full 4GB – but should manage between 3 and 3.5GB. So you lose half a gig? So what, we say. 2GB is pissing on a bushfire, 3+ is where it’s at, baby.
Motherboard – Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Price: ~$130
The P45 chipset continues Intel’s legacy of budget performance solutions. This Gigabyte offering provides two 16x PCI-e 2.0 expansion slots allowing you to insert another GPU into Crossfire configuration. Four RAM slots are provided allowing a massive 16GB to be installed if you ever feel the desire to do so. The inbuilt high definition Realtek sound chipset removes the need for an add-on APU (Audio Processing Unit – or ‘sound card’ in old-fashioned talk), unless of course, you have high quality speakers or headphones which demand the best. It’s LGA775 socket supports a wide range of Intel CPUs, including the E8500 above. The greatest element of this motherboard is that it’s cheap, yet still delivers the performance and bandwidth required by a gaming rig. Simply outstanding value.
GPU (Video Card) – ATI 4870
Price: ~$300
Nvidia held the crown for cheap (and expensive) performance until recently when ATI brought down the hammer with their 48xx series of cards. The 4870 in particular is a gaming powerhouse, a masterpiece of graphic processing glory. The 4870 was enough to force Nvidia to bring out refreshes of their current line of offerings and drop prices across the range, yet they still fall short of this DDR5, DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1 driven performance solution. We’ve managed to squeeze this card into the budget, and as you can see, it’s worth a 3rd of the total build. But we’re gamers, we want need it.
PSU – Silverstone Strider ST50F 500W
Price: ~$80
There is common misconception regarding PSUs that higher wattages are better. This is not always so, it’s all to do with efficiency and the 12v rail. A better PSU will have a high efficiency of 80%+ (also known as 80 plus certification) and a large distribution of the current to the 12v rails. The Silverstone Strider ST50F 500W does both, and again, at a nifty little price tag. Rest assured that your new gaming machine will have enough juice to power through intensive gaming sessions. New graphics cards need 6 or 8 pin PCI-E connectors. Most Nvidia cards need 2 x 6-pin connectors, the 4870 needs 1 x 6-pin and 1 x 8-pin. Matching a PSU’s connectors with your current and future graphics card needs is critical – and catches many people out.
Case - Antec NSK4000
Price: ~$65
Antec are known for their quality budget cases. The NSK4000 combines elegance with a functional ATX design, perfect for this gaming system. The case has 8 drive bays, 3 of which are 5.25” for any optical drives, fan controllers, card readers and other gadgets you may be inclined to use. Yet another case (pun!) of cheap quality.
Optical Drive – Pioneer 215BK SATA
Price: ~$30
Pioneer is best known for producing the highest quality optical drives on the market. And their best consumer model DVD burner happens to be dirt cheap. It’s not uncommon for other brands to use re-branded Pioneer drives with nothing more than a price mark-up, useless bundled software, and outdated firmware. For these reasons, there’s no better choice than this display of optical omnipotence.
Storage – Western Digital 640GB
Price: ~$93
This 7200RPM HDD is one of the fastest on the market. Encased inside the black metal exterior are two 320GB platters - a wonderfully huge platter density - meaning extra performance without breaking the bank. If you were a fan of high speed (and high price) 10000RPM Raptor drives, you’d be happy to know that this drive exceeds them in performance. Can’t get much better than that!
Cooling – Stock
Price: Free!
Stock cooling sounds boring, but with a budget so low the coolers you’ll get bundled with the CPU do a decent job, there is really no need. Even overclocking is still feasible, just watch those temps.
Checkout
- CPU: Intel E8500 - $200
- RAM: DDR2 4GB 800MHz RAM - $100v
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 - $130
- GPU: ATI 4870 - $300
- PSU: Silverstone Strider ST50F 500W - $80
- Case: Antec NSK4000 - $65
- Optical: Pioneer 215BK SATA - $30
- HDD: Western Digital 640GB - $93
Total Price: $998
The Verdict
What can you expect from a PC of this calibre? Well it should play any game at high frames per second, with detail at the high end of the scale. Only large resolution monitors will slow this beast down – and we’re talking 1920 x 1200 or higher, and even at that res you can still expect fluid play with rich detail for many months or even years.
It’s quite amazing how far $1,000 can go in computing these days. Even the resource hog that is Crysis will run smoothly, depending on the settings and resolution used. As of now, you can’t get a better system for this price.
Gameplayer - Ultimate PC Gaming Machine < AU$1,000
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Prices have increased as fast as the value of the Oz dollar has dropped, and are now much dearer than the prices they state.
