1000 dollar budget

[Acer555]

im building my own computer and i have 1000 dollars

im really into gaming but the computer i have now is getting to old to keep upgrading

i need to buy a monitor, keyboard/mouse and speakers with this

any suggestions on decent gaming computer components i can get for 800-1000 dollars?

[Eriol]

that might be hard if the monitor and computer parts combined need to fall under 1K

[Stuey]

I agree. You might have to make a few sacrifices. Give me a few minutes and I'll dig up a few suggestions.



Case& PSU: Antec Sonata II
This is a decent looking case, and it includes a 450W PSU which should be sufficient for a while. It's not a gaming case, but it's still stylish and it saves the cost of buying a case and PSU separately. I can't think of any other good case/PSU combos (well, not with a 450W PSU at least), and I cannot think of any other PSU+Case choices which would be for less than $100.
($119 w/ shipping but before rebate).

HD: Seagate 160Gb. 160 Gb should be more than enough to keep you going for a while. If you want, 250Gb is only $20 more or so, but I'm trying to think of where you could save a few bucks. ($92 with shipping).

Speakers: Buy these items locally or from a major chain retailer as there are sales almost every week on decent systems like from the Creative Itrigue series. Shipping on speakers plus the online price is going to be more than retail sale price + tax.

Keyboard and Mouse: I would also buy these locally or at least shop around locally as you may not like the feel of certain keyboards. A general purpose Microsoft or Logitech wireless kit cost $30 or so. Again, something in this price range will be sufficient but not fantastic, you can upgrade these later.

Microsoft XP Home OEM. If you want the retail version, it will cost $10 more. I'm not quite sure what the differences are but I believe the technical service from MS might be different. I'm probably wrong though. ($88)

Monitor: Samsung 930B. This 19" monitor is on sale at a office supply store or major chain retailer on a weekly basis, usually with rebates also. The cost may be a bit high for your budget (expect $360 before rebates or tax) so you may want to consider the 730B, the 17" version for about $250 or so.

So we're at $550 so far. Figure in $80 or so for a gig of value ram (DDR or DDR2, depending on the motherboard/CPU you choose), $30 for keyboard/mouse, $50 or so for speakers, $140 for a motherboard (or so), $200 for a CPU, $200 for a video card, ~$50 for a decent DVDRW (it's only a bit costlier than a reader) That's... about $1250, a bit over your budget.

You're not going to want to cheap out on the video card, but you might be able to truncate the cost of the CPU, the monitor, the HD, and the speakers.

If you buy cheap speakers, you can always upgrade them later as well.

You're probably going to want to go with AMD, but I'm an Intel guy so I'm not too familiar with which the best options are. BUT I can tell you that the video card, CPU, and motherboard will be the most expensive options to upgrade so you should think about getting the best you can afford with your budget. Also, you may consider dropping to 510mb ram, but a gig is really the sweet spot, and the savings won't swing your cost too much lower.

[jayb1234]

Actually the retail windows is about $100 more, I think that was a typo.

A non-SLI ASUS or Intel motherboard motherboard in 775 or 939 pin would probably be the best choice.

Liteon has some nice CD/DVD burners that come with the burning software in the $40-$50 range.

Get a retail boxed processor and use the stock heatsink/fan unit that comes with it.

Sound Card: Use the onboard sound at first. It will be pretty good 8 channel and you can add one later if you want.

Throw a floppy drive on your list, you are likely to need it during the setup.

This hard drive is one of the best values at present, 250Gb, 16Mb cache and a quality manufacturer.

[Stuey]

Sorry, it wasn't a typo, it was a stupid stupid mistake. I was looking at the "upgrade" version.

As for floppy, he could always pick one up at a local store. Yes, I know that it's only 9 bucks or so, but I haven't ever used the floppy I installed in my build two and a half years ago. I just bought parts for a new system and the mobo (although it's socket 478 and outdated) doesn't even come with any floppy-based setup drivers. I suppose he would only need it for initial non-native SATA drive installation.

[peekaboo]

Originally Posted by Stuey83 Case& PSU: This is a decent looking case, and it includes a 450W PSU which should be sufficient for a while. It's not a gaming case, but it's still stylish and it saves the cost of buying a case and PSU separately.

What's the definition of a "gaming case"?

[Stuey]

Well, some gamers go for highly flashy brightly lit odd angled cases.

Examples: an Asus, a Thermaltake.

[jayb1234]

And speaking of mistakes, I didn't put the link for the hard drive in my other post.

[BrokenKingdom]

Haha yeah I'm still waiting for the link to that list of SLI vid cards haha

Well unless you are using a laptop as your current pc, I would suggest useing your current keyboard, mouse and speaker set up(or the on board sound on your new motherboard). The extra $70ish dollars goes a long way on a budget build. Especialy if you have to buy a monitor.

For a hard drive I would check a store like best buy or circuit city first just to see if they have any sales going on. Recently I had bought a retail 160Gb 72,00rpm WD caviar serial ata150 hard drive for $60 after the mail-in-rebate (it was $100 before it) and thats a realy good deal concidering newegg has it listed for $93.00 OEM and newegg generaly has the best prices around so sometimes you get lucky. Though don't buy one if its been "referbished" of "fixed up" by circuit city or best buy because the people who work on them have the IQ of a walnut trust me.

Also DON'T skimp on ram or your video card haha for a gaming rig you should have at least a gig(you can get 1Gb value ram for cheap about $80) Another thing is SLI on your Mother board its more expensive but if you are an avid gamer and keep current with new titles SLI will become very important to you in the near future so personaly I'de throw down the extra $$$ that way your MoBo will last you longer for future upgrades. But thats just My humble opinion.

Hope at least some of the essay I wrote helped at least a little bit haha

[jayb1234]

SLI certified parts list