July 4, 2012

My First Gaming Rig

The first thing I wanted to do with my money was not to get a car or save up to buy a place... I want a gaming rig. I have put off gaming for the past two years (at least the major titles) because my current machine is currently four years old. In tech years, a four year old machine is archaic.

My current machine - HP dv6800ee Notebook
  • CPU: Intel Mobile Core2Duo T8100, 2.1GHz, 3MB L2
  • MOBO: Intel PM965 chipset
  • RAM: 3GB DDR2
  • GPU: Nvidia 8400M GS, 256MB
  • HDD: 250GB, SATA, 5400rpm
Yeah, miserable. So, I thought of going custom. Here's what I have in plan as of now... There's a quite a while before I put it all together. I have been messing with the design for the past three months. What am I looking for. A GRig that works perfect on stock and dominates on overclock, and single monitor, single gpu, mid range budget..

CPU

Intel i5 3450K - 3.1GHz, Ivy. Has good OC capabilities like the gaming mainstream i5 2500 of the sandy era. Though it only has the intel 2500 HD for graphics... like that is a concern. I did also consider the i5 3570K - 3.4Ghz - Intel 4000HD...

Rs. 12, 508


Motherboard

ASUS - P8Z77 - VLX. Yeah, with the new z77 chipset, this is ivy ready on stock with native usb 3.0 and pcie 3.0 support, and is one beast of an OCer. Like I said, I don't intend to SLI or crossfire or even use more a single monitor. So, this caught my eye.

Rs. 11, 395

RAM

Corsair Vengeance DDR3 4GB x 2, stocked at 1600MHz... OC to 2300MHz. 

Rs. 3,466

PSU

Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650 V2, 650W. Should be way more than enough for an ivy and a kepler on a z77.

Rs. 5,857

HDD

Seagate Barracuda 1TB, SATA, 7200rpm. What? You thought I was going to SSD? Well, yeah ... eventually. Let me get the bare bones up first.

Rs. 5,454



CPU COOLING


Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, the ultimate underdog on the cooling scene. This is the successor to H212+. I did also consider Noctua's D-14U. But, this gives the best cooling for the buck. No liquid cooling for me... yet.

Rs. 2,355


CASE

Cooler Master 690 II Advanced, Mid tower, has USB 3.0 ports, dust filters, bottome psu (duh!) and most importantly agrees with my wallet. I will get a something from the CM Storm series later... or an HAF 912.

Rs. 5,922






For a monitor I'll pick a 20" from Samsung or Dell, they all cost the same, around Rs.6,500. For an optical drive... for starters, an LG SATA dual-layer dvd writer should do - Rs. 1230. What? Am I missing a part? Is it the most important part of a gaming rig? Is it the one thing that differentiates a gaming rig from a desktop? Here,

GPU

ASUS Geforce GTX670, 2GB DDR5, factory OC'd.

Though, by the time, I am ready to buy this, the GTX660 (Ti) shall be out, and I will readily switch to that. I have been with a 8400M GS for way too long. Honestly, a single monitor would not require anything more than a GTX660. Either that or I am making excuses to myself. But, I am not. The 670 and 680 are GK104, same thing that forms Nvidia Tesla. The 660 shall be GK106 with 4/5 SMXs.

Rs. 31,375


Overall Cost: Rs. 85,000
Looks Good :)
Before I even attempt getting this, I need to replace my laptop. sigh... I am thinking of a 50k budget on that one. 

3 comments:

  1. like it...love it...just buy 2 of each

    ReplyDelete
  2. on popular request, you should recommend a build for micro atx gaming rig costing not more than 60k :)

    P.S. don't look at the smiley, i am serious

    ReplyDelete
  3. I did do that a while back... lemme scour for the ultimate database management system's file of the common man - MS Excel file on the same.

    Will post on that soon! Else come over and we'll scavenge on flipkart and make a bucket list of parts.

    ReplyDelete

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