TR Forums

Hello TechReport forum members, I'm new here and interested in getting together a rig just nice for some decent gaming (e.g. Left for Dead 2 at ok smoothness), not doing overclocks probably, top budget would be around 1k australian dollars, please do give some comments.

It is okay if you guys skip the budget part and go straight to giving some comments about the build I have thought about as converting the currency would be kinda hard and parts here are also not as cheap as in the US. Thank you!

The build I have in mind, with some open options, together with the current lowest prices behind in Australian Dollars:
#I'm open to any comments on other brands/better/less expensive parts suggestions#

Processor
Intel Core i5-650 Clarkdale 3.2GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 AUD239

Memory
4GB Kit DDR3 1600 G.Skill-Ripjaws AUD131(not sure which type of Ripjaws they selling)
or
4GB Kingston HyperX 2000Mhz C9 "KHX2000C9D3T1K2/4GX" AUD169 (normal Kingston 1333 DDR3 4GB goes for AUD117)
or
any other brands that friends from here would like to suggest?

Motherboard
Asus P7P55D AUD192.50
any bad things about this board? I'm quite aligned towards Asus' boards as I had a nice P5K-VM back then.

Graphics Card
Asus EAH5750-2DIS-1GD5 HD5750 1G AUD167
I'm going to use my 22" Samsung 2243BW on 1680x1050

Hard Disk Drive
Western Digital Caviar Blue 32MB buffer 500GB AUD59

Casing
Antec NSK4482B Casing with 380w EarthWatts Power Supply AUD115.5
I have read from some of the posts around here saying that the power supply will be sufficient to power up the ati 5750 + other components at more than 60% capacity, will friends here recommend another casing or just go with this?
Anyone here has experience with the NSK4482? Does it differ much from the 4480II or 4480 casing? or should i go for the Sonata III?

DVD-RW
Asus AUD39

Total: AUD943
Thanks once again~

taeyeon wrote:

Hello TechReport forum members, I'm new here.

Welcome to the Tech Report!

First comment:
For those of us using the tr_prosilver_blue forum theme, your blue text is unreadable.

taeyeon wrote:

Processor
Intel Core i5-650 Clarkdale 3.2GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 AUD239

If you're going to use a discrete graphics card, I see no compelling reason to buy a dual-core CPU with a low-end graphics processor built into it. Consider the quad-core Core i5-750 or an AMD Socket-AM3 triple or quad core processor, instead.

taeyeon wrote:

Memory
4GB Kit DDR3 1600 G.Skill-Ripjaws AUD131(not sure which type of Ripjaws they selling)
or 4GB Kingston HyperX 2000Mhz C9 "KHX2000C9D3T1K2/4GX" AUD169 (normal Kingston 1333 DDR3 4GB goes for AUD117)
or any other brands that friends from here would like to suggest?

2x2 GiB of PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600) running at 1.5-1.65 V seems like your best bet. The faster 2 GiB modules don't appear on the motherboard vendor's QVL sheets yet. Crucial, Corsair and Mushkin are also good memory brands.

taeyeon wrote:

Motherboard
Asus P7P55D AUD192.50

You could also consider the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3. On the AMD side, motherboards with the AMD 770 chipset like the GA-MA770TA-UD3 are inexpensive.

taeyeon wrote:

Graphics Card
Asus EAH5750-2DIS-1GD5 HD5750 1G AUD167
I'm going to use my 22" Samsung 2243BW on 1680x1050

This will play Left4Dead 2 just fine. More demanding games might benefit from a slightly faster GPU.

taeyeon wrote:

Hard Disk Drive
Western Digital Caviar Blue 32MB buffer 500GB AUD59

The Caviar Blue drives have 16 MB or 8 MB buffers. The Caviar Black drives have 32 MB buffers. The 320 GB WD3200AAKS is the smallest/cheapest Caviar Blue/SE16 drive. You might also consider the Samsung SpinPoint F3.

taeyeon wrote:

Casing
Antec NSK4482B Casing with 380w EarthWatts Power Supply AUD115.5
I have read from some of the posts around here saying that the power supply will be sufficient to power up the ati 5750 + other components at more than 60% capacity, will friends here recommend another casing or just go with this?
Anyone here has experience with the NSK4482? Does it differ much from the 4480II or 4480 casing? or should i go for the Sonata III?

These are decent cases. The Sonata III is a bit quieter, if that's important to you. A quality 380-watt power supply is enough for the system that you've specified. With the low power consumption of the GPUs built at the 40nm node, you could even power a Radeon HD5770 or HD5850 with the Antec earthwatts EA-380 power supply included with that case.

taeyeon wrote:

DVD-RW
Asus AUD39

If you're not re-using an old optical drive, have you considered Blu-ray?

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Welcome to the Tech Report!

Comment:
For those of us using the tr_prosilver_blue forum theme, your blue text is unreadable.

Thank you for informing me about this!
Now I have changed the colors back.

I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with many Australian e-tailers, but I linked to one of them, anyway. The MSY site is much better than it used to be, but it may still cause headaches.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

taeyeon wrote:

Processor
Intel Core i5-650 Clarkdale 3.2GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 AUD239

If you're going to use a discrete graphics card, I see no compelling reason to buy a dual-core CPU with a low-end graphics processor built into it. Consider the quad-core Core i5-750 or an AMD Socket-AM3 triple or quad core processor, instead.

If you are not sure that quad core would benefit your applications, wouldn't a 3.33GHz lower power Clarkdale i5-661 be a better choice for an extra $10 vs the 2.66GHz i5-750? I'm assuming the reduction in cache size from 8MB to 4MB wouldn't hurt because you are going from 4 cores to 2. The graphics core would not be an issue, just ignore or use for 3rd monitor, the horsepower is what could be the deciding factor.