Reply To: Thinking of building a new rig

Home › Forum Archive › PC Discussion › PC Hardware Discussion › Thinking of building a new rig › Reply To: Thinking of building a new rig

#92582
Nickname
Spectator

Pay a bit more and get an i5…

Intel Core i5 750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor – $200

ASUS P7P55D LE LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard – $135

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL – $80

plus the original power supply you had chosen. This option is $70 more but definitely worth it.

 

Also if you plan to use your computer for gaming, don’t bother upgrading if you aren’t going to upgrade your video card. Video card is #1 most important upgrade for gaming. I would suggest, depending on budget, to get like a radeon 4850 or something like that because 1) they are pretty cheap, only about $100 and can play most every game on high settings and 2) both the motherboard you posted and the one I suggested support crossfire, so it would be easy to add a second card later for that.

 

As for hard drive, buy a western digital black series drive. Speed and reliability cannot be beaten.

 

Also I should note that if the 480W power supply you have now is a quality power supply, you likely can hold off on upgrading that; using the extreme power supply calculator, the i5, ram, motherboard, 1 radeon 4850, 2 sata hard drives and 2 dvd burners only requires a 285W power supply, using the phenom requires 311W, so your 480W should work fine