Best Gaming Rig for $800-850!?

[essential]

Hello everyone! Nice forum you got going here...

I am in the process of designing my a new gaming computer (built one about 5 years ago with the help of a friend). My budget is right around $800 bucks but will go slightly higher if the value is there.

Here is what I've picked out so far :

-Rosewill Blackbone Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $39.99

-AOC 2236vw Glossy Black 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor 60000:1 $159.99

-Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99

-ASUS M4A77TD AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard $76.99

-XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card $159.99

-OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ500MXSP 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply compatible with core i7 $64.99

-G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL $104.99

-AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor $160.99

Total : $794.01

Questions :
1. What is your overall opinion of this rig?
2. Are their any parts you would recommend in place of what I have listed?
3. Do you see any compatibility issues?
4. Do you think this will play all the new games out and then some...?

Thanks in advance!

[essential]

anyone?

[essential]

Anyone x2 ????????????

[Blue Flux Blazer]

Hi essential, I'm a newbie also, but since nobody replied, I thought I'd give you my free advice, so take it for what it's worth. Also, I'm not a gamer, but I have been following this forum since September.

Take a look at the three lower cost cases just for some other options here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...rchResult=True These seem to be in a similar price range as the Rosewill.

Seagate is good, as is Western Digital. For gaming, the WD black gets recommended a lot. For 20 dollars more you get 250 gb more. Couldn't hurt to go with a bigger drive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136283

Asus is heavily recommended here, and it looks like that is a good model number Asus motherboard.

I don't know anything about video cards, hopefulluly someone else can chime in.

I don't see OCZ being recommended very often. You might want to give yourself a little more headroom on the wattage and check out these power supplies as well. Seasonic is another good brand. I just bought a Corsair and I love it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139005

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371015

If you haven't done so already, make sure the RAM is on the Asus QVL (Qualified Vendors List or something like that). I have no idea how OCZ is, but I see Kingston, Crucial, and Corsair RAM recommended around here.

I saw a post by Khalil stating that you could go as low as an Athlon II X2 250 for gaming, because it's all in the video card. (I hope I remember that right). You might be able to do that, and use the money you saved and buy a more powerful video card. Or you could go with a Phenom dual core, and still save money.

Do you have an optical disk drive? If not, this one is one option that looks good.

I hope this helps, and I hope somebody else can tell you that I don't know what I'm talking about, or confirm some of these statements.

Cory
Blue Flux Blazer

[Khalil]

Hi essential.
Forget about XFX they make crappy cards and customer support is hedious. I would go with either a Diamond or an Asus for an ATI video card.
Seagate have had a lot of firmware issues, please stick to WD, they have the best drives currently.
OCZ power supplies have dropped in quality in the last year or so, stick to Antec, Seasonic, Corsair or FSP.
The motherboard you chose is awesome, the CPU is great, runs cool and delivers killer performance, however if you can fit a 5850 video card and drop the processor to the Athlon II X4 630 you will have a much better gaming rig.