Just an ASUS B85M-G. Just one Intel i5 4460 up for grabs. I’ve got one MSI GTX 970 Gaming on the table—GDDR5, 4GB, 256-bit. It's pulling about 1140 MHz on the core and clocks in at 7010 MHz. Just putting that out there. Just one stick of 8GB Kingston HyperX Fury DDR3. I’ve got one Patriot SSD Blast R560/W530 sitting here—it's the 240GB model, 2.5" with a 7mm profile. Just a single drive. Just a single 1TB Toshiba P300, 7200rpm, with 64MB cache. Just one Fortron Hyper 700W. One Zalman Z3 midi tower.
TOTAL: $2309
Honestly, this CPU can still chew through just about any GPU you throw at it. Personally, I think overspending on anything more right now is just overkill. $1.50 Look, if you're running a GTX 980—especially if you're sticking to 1080p—8GB of RAM is still plenty for gaming. You really don't need to jump to 16GB right now. I went ahead and threw in a beefier power supply per your request, mostly so you have the headroom to swap in a high-end, power-hungry GPU down the road without having to rebuild the whole rig. It makes future upgrades a breeze. Honestly, take the money you saved on the extra RAM and put it in your pocket; this setup is more than enough to keep things running smoothly.
Try disabling Windows 7 Aero and see if that clears things up. Also, just a heads-up—sometimes an antivirus can act up and cause these kinds of glitches, so you might want to try turning that off too.
1x Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P 1x AMD FX X8 8300 (3.3GHz, 16MB, 95W, AM3+) box 1x LC Power CPU Cooler LC-CC-95 1x Gigabyte GTX950 2GB DDR5 1x Kingston DDR3 1600MHz, C11, 8GB 1x Seagate BarraCuda 500GB, 64MB, 7200rpm 1x Fortron Hexa Plus 400W, 80+ 1x MS VOYAGER case without PSU 2x Xilence 120mm case fans One front-mounted, one rear
Total: $1393
Slightly weaker CPU, lower-end motherboard, but a beefier GPU:
1x Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 1x Intel Core i5-3570K 1x LC Power CPU Cooler LC-CC-95 1x Sapphire NITRO R9 380 2G GDDR5 1x Kingston DDR3 1600MHz, C11, 8GB 1x Western Digital Blue HDD (3.5", 500GB, 32MB, SATA III-600) 1x XFX 500W XT Series 80 Bronze, XFX-P1-500B-XTFR 1x MS VOYAGER case without PSU 2x Xilence 120mm case fans One front-mounted, one rear
wearytinker8 said:Thanks, everyone! One more thing... When I'm installing Windows on either of these two setups, do I need to worry about whether I should go with a 32-bit or 64-bit version?
You definitely want a 64-bit OS. If you go with 32-bit, you won't be able to use more than 3.5GB of RAM.
We're talking about SSDs here, and look, obviously anything can fail—an HDD isn't any safer. My point is just this: if his SSD kicks the bucket, he isn't losing much besides those specific files we talked about. I mean, let's be real, who actually keeps their most important photos or critical data sitting on an SSD?
I mean, who actually keeps their vital files on an SSD anyway? If it dies, you just lose your Windows install and whatever programs you had running on it. Use an HDD for storage instead.
Oh, absolutely. Especially since the X version packs about a 10% punch over the standard 380, but he was pretty dead set on an Intel + Nvidia combo, so I just threw together one example to show him what I meant.
Look, just tell him this: if he actually cares about making these components last, he needs to stop playing around and pick up a decent case, something like a Cooler Master Hyper 212
Honestly, if someone doesn't want to overthink this too much, they should just grab the last build I suggested: an FX8300 paired with a CC 120, an ASUS GA-970-Gaming, and an ASUS R9 380 x. Throw that together and you're good to go.
Look, I don't have anything beefier than an FX8300 lying around. Honestly, most of those other FX83xx chips are just overclocked FX8300s anyway, which feels like a total waste of cash. You can easily bump up that 8300 clock speed to something like an 8350 yourself. You might as well pocket that extra 450-$167 or put it toward a decent SSD. If someone really wants to push the overclocking, they’re going to need a more expensive motherboard and maybe a better GPU, like a GTX970—though I wouldn't bet on that recommendation until we know what kind of power supply they're actually running...
So, if we're talking about an OC build, it could look something like this:
1x AMD X8 FX-8300 Processor 1x LC Power CC 120 CPU Cooler - 120mm Intel/AMD 1x ASUS GA-970-Gaming 1x Corsair DDR3 HyperX Fury, 1866MHz, 8GB Black HX318C10FB/8 1x ASUS Radeon R9 380 x G1 gaming, 4GB GDDR5
Paul Garcia42 said:Hey there. Wouldn't it be better to just grab a console if you mostly want to play games? You'll save a ton of money. 🙂
Can you walk me through that logic? How much are we talking about dropping on a new console? The 500GB version is sitting at $0.92 at the cheapest retailer, and the 1TB model hits $1.00. On top of that, you only get one controller in the box—and let’s be real, who plays solo these days? So, tack on another $167 for a second controller, plus you have to pay full price for every single game you want to play. It's a different world on PC (looking at you, budget gamers 😁). Plus, this guy put together a rig that costs about $1.25 locally, which actually delivers better FPS in something like GTA5 compared to a console. He even went out of his way to match the exact console settings on the PC to see how they stacked up; check out the results here: . And don't even get me started on trying to play FPS titles with a joystick. Games like Bloodborne, Diablo 3, Dark Souls, or Assassin's Creed are great with a controller, but once we tried COD, BF, or Battlefront, we immediately tossed those games into the trade group 😁. With a PC, you can always pick up an extra controller, but you can't exactly do that with a PS4 😁 (well, you can, but it's a massive investment and still doesn't feel right)
If you're worried about your power supply, I’d honestly just go with the GTX 960. You can grab the version from Gigabyte that comes with dual fans, and it actually carries a three-year warranty $0.60