Updated December 2011
A few things have changed since our last article. Hard drives are way up in price, and SSD drives and RAM have come down in price. Let’s see how this affects our sub-$2000 gaming machine build. Once again, the Intel Sandybridge i5 2500K processor is the CPU of choice. The 3.3 GHz i5 2500K will give 90% of the gaming performance of the top-of-the-line i7. And being unlocked, you are free to experiment with overclocking.
As usual, prices are before tax, Canadian dollars, current to Dec 15 2011. In all of the configurations, we have gone with full sized motherboards that have:
- two PCI-e video card slots compatible with Crossfire (or SLI) for future acceleration
- USB 3.0 on board
- SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) on board
- Gigabit Ethernet (1000BT)
- digital audio out
- 4 RAM sockets with overclocked DDR3 capability
We have gone straight to 8 GB RAM – while not strictly necessary for games, it will help with multitasking and graphics/video/audio production software. In this build, we are targeting a price under $1500, so we are going with a single Radeon HD6970 video card with 2 GB of GDDR5 RAM. The upgrade option to 2 x 6970s would provide stunning frame rates, and would take the budget with an SSD drive to the $2000 mark. But the real bargain is a pair of Radeonm HD6950s. These will get 90% of the performance of the dual HD6970s (for $230 less), and they handily outperform a single 6970 by about 80% (for only $160 more)
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K unlocked 3.3 GHz SandyBridge LGA1155 Dual Core Retail box 6M cache $256
Motherboard: MSI P67A-GD53B3 SKT.1155 INTEL P67 ATX 4X DDR3,2PCI-E X16/2PCI/3PCI-E USB3.0, SATA 6.0 Gb/s $151
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD6970 900MHZ 2Gb RAM GDDR5 256 BIT, DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI PCI-e $390
Memory: Kingston HyperX 8GB kit (2x4GB) Dual Channel 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM $55
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive $47
DVD Drive: Asus DRW-24B3ST 24X Internal DVD Burner with Nero software $32
Case: Antec Six Hundred Gamer ATX case $99
Fan: Additional case fan 120 mm quiet model $19
Power Supply: Thermaltake TRX-750M 750W modular PC Power Supply 16dBA (quiet) 14cm fan, 80+ Bronze efficiency, Crossfire and SLI compatible $99
CPU Cooling: Coolermaster HYPER 212 Plus CPU Cooler $35
Mouse: Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 $22
Keyboard: Wired Keyboard 600 Black USB Port English $15
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium $129
Total: $1401.00
Upgrades:
Dual video cards – Gigabyte Radeon HD6950 840 MHz video cards $550 (+$160)
SSD Boot drive: SandForce 2200 series SATA 6.0 Gb/s 120 GB SSD drive $199
Total: $1760.00
Video Upgrade: with 2x Radeon HD6970 video cards instead (+$230)
(Note that the HD6970 pair consume 120W more than the HD6950 pair, and while a 750 Watt power supply is still enough – just – you might want to consider an upgrade of the power supply at the same time)
Total: $1990.00
Other upgrade options:
Case: Antec Nine Hundred Gamer ATX case $139 (+$40)
Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM 5 year warranty $199 (+$100)
Optical Drive: Lite-On Blu-Ray ROM reader DVD-RW combo drive $69 (+$37)
Power Supply Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 850W modular PSU $199 (+$90)
Cooling: Corsair A70 CPU Cooler $49 (+$14)
Memory: There’s not much to gain by going faster than 1600 MHz on the memory, but you can get faster performance by lowering the latency from CL9 to CL7
8 GB of Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C7 XMS3 Low Latency (CL7) DDR3-1600 (4x2GB) $144 (+$99)
To either package you can add upgraded keyboard and mouse, although we advise to stick with wired, not wireless.
Add to this a monitor if you need one, labour to assemble and test if you don’t want to do it yourself, taxes, eco- fees and shipping as required.
