'Budget' Gaming Rig...

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:28:56 Post Subject: 'Budget' Gaming Rig...

Figured I'd see what I could put together for $800. An $800 budget isn't cheap, but neither is this system! The total (without tax or shipping) comes to $779.12...

CPU: AMD A64 3200+ Venice Core - $190.00 at ZipZoomFly (free shipping)
Motherboard: DFI LANPARTY UT nF4D Motherboard (SLi) - $115.00 at Monarch (shipped free)
Video Card: 128MB Gigabyte 6600GT PCIe (SLi ready) - $174.99 at ZipZoomFly (shipped free)
Memory: Corsair 1024MB Dual Channel Kit - $82.90 at ZipZoomFly (free shipping)
Case/PSU: RaidMax Scorpio (Silver) with 420W PSU - $48.99 at ZipZoomFly (plus $18.30 shipping).
Optical Drive: NEC 3520A Dual Layer DVDRW (Silver) - $52.25 at ZipZoomFly (shipped free).
Hard Drive: 200GB Seagate 7200.8 SATA Drive with NCQ - $114.99 at ZipZoomFly (free shipping) (review coming soon).

Gotta reuse the keyboard, mouse, OS, and monitor.

Some thoughts... may want a better PSU (especially if the system is upgraded down the road or overclocked), but the one with the case may be worth a shot out of the box. A few paychecks down the road you could add another drive for RAID... Then a few later you could add another 6600GT for SLi. Maybe the next paycheck would be time to unload the current PSU and DDR on eBay for stuff with higher performance, but it may not be necessary.

Comments? Other ideas?

**JimBowy** · Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 1627

I'd make the budget higher and just do it right the first time. RAID doesn't benefit you much in games at all btw....

**JimBowy** · Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 1627

For a budget gaming system I wouldn't be buying an Athlon 64 either btw....

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:12:21 Post Subject:

I was thinking RAID 1, just because I never want to lose stuff again... Gaming or business, RAID is a good idea!

What chip would you use?

jake_johnson · Posted: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 19:32:29 Post Subject:

I like his setup.

Why not do a monthly competition. Dream budget pc sub $750. key/mouse/os recycled of course.

however if doing that I would spend the extra $115 and get the second gfx card.

BeerCheeze · Posted: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 20:03:02 Post Subject:

Normally I can ding people on stuff, but other than my normal get a better PSU... that's a pretty dam good setup.

And I wouldn't DREAM of using anything but an A64. Specially in your price range.

I can say in a workstation I'm not a big fan of RAID 1 though. Just seems to be a waste to me. Truth is you only care about a limited amount of stuff not to lose. So instead of paying for 400GB of hdd space to only get 200Gb. Why not just back up stuff to a DVD(RW) once in a while.

I use Zip Backup to CD. You can either do it manually or configure it as a service to run say once a week or so.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 21:11:25 Post Subject:

The case and psu only made it for gaming looks, and the fact that dadx2mj seemed to like the Raidmax cases we reviewed...

http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews/raidmaxcobra/index1.php
http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews/raidmaxsamurai/index1.php

And hey look, 420W psu in each of them... probably the same.

I'd go for more with a bigger budget, or just reuse a case, as I find myself getting comfortable with them. But, this was for someone else, who had a mouse, keyboard, and monitor worth keeping... as well as a copy of Win XP to use.

I'd be interested in jake_johnson's idea... maybe different themes... gamer, budget, desktop, htpc and see who comes up with the most popular setup... This can be our dry run... Laughing

Spire · Posted: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 22:41:22 Post Subject:

Just snuck up on 2700 MHz (300x9) on my new 3200+ Venice core...

superflymx6 · Rated PG Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 3

OK, I have been reading up one alot of the reviews and staying connected to a few forums and I would just like to pass along what I have found regarded the SLI mother boards and the SLI set up for graphics. I have a few links that you might have already read but I wanted to make sure you know what going on. But you seem to already do.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2295

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=1571&cid=3&pg=18

http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-x800xl/index.x?pg=1

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/geforce6600gt-sli/index.x?pg=1

The reason I have all of these is because my system was looking very close to yours until I read about the ATI 800XL.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Sat, 09 Jul 2005 23:25:54 Post Subject:

Why consider an ATI 800XL if you are considering SLi? It doesn't work...

Although, ATI does have their own version of SLi now, I'd like to see more results before I get too excited.