Let's start here and see where this goes: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/nXnV PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($129.99 @ NCIX US) Motherboard: Biostar TA970XE ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($64.99 @ Newegg) Memory: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($28.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.99 @ Newegg) Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 2GB Video Card ($214.99 @ CompUSA) Case: Rosewill REDBONE ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($37.99 @ Newegg) Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($17.99 @ Newegg) Total: $572.92 (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-11-16 14:36 EST-0500)
I'm not too familiar with the processor so can't comment, is 500W enough for that card? I'm not saying its not, it just feels borderline.
I was going to ask about the PSU and the requirements of the card as well. Also, does that case come with fans already and if so how many come and what size?
500w should be fine for that card with those components - but you should consider bumping it up if you beef anything else out, and a 600 - 750w might run more efficiently
I would spend another 30 and get 16gb of Ram. Just personal preference, but I will never again own a mid tower. My antec 900 broke me of that. Also for $60 you can get a 60gb SSD for your OS and games. I would certainly recommend it if you have the budget. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227725
I'd not bother spending $60 on a 60gb SSD. Your OS will eat up half of that space which only leaves ~30gb left and most games today are 15+gb before patches so you could only really have 1-2 games on the SSD tops. Save the money until SSD drops further in price then invest in something more like a 250gb SSD and use SATA as storage.
Looks fairly good, your psu should be sufficient for the build but you may find you'll need more if you intend to bump up components in the future. My only recommendation would be to get a minimum of 6 Gb of memory (considering triple channel has gone out of fashion you will probably have to get 8). In my experience 4-5 Gb is usually the cap for maximum program usage so I find it better to have that buffer (plus DDR3 is cheap).
I would give Microcenter a try. They have that proc at the same price, but if you buy it at the same time as an mb, you get a $40 discount. That mb is $5 more than at newegg, so you end up saving $35. Take a look at the links: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/c1e38eef#/c1e38eef/29 That would get you to an initial price of $175 for the two, but with a $15 mail in rebate.
The entire build jumped hundreds of dollars within the few days after I linked everything, and Black Friday didn't help. I'm waiting on a quote from a local PC shop because I wanted to buy local and I wanted the support.
TBH I'd avoid the 6 core because little is going to utilize the 6 cores at the moment. I'm not familiar with Antarus, just saying you might save a few pennies there on a faster clock speed with a quad, and put them into a better PSU / whatever.
Avoid seagate HDDs if you can. I prefer Western Digital. Agree totally with the SSD comment, best thing I ever bought, only put the OS on there and your everyday apps, will totally change your machine. Games on conventional HDD makes more sense. I would stick with Samsung SSDs if you can, intel, Corsair and OCZ are ok from what I have heard. Steam and games on a second drive mean you can reinstall an OS at any time with no loss of important data. 500 PSU will be fine for a card of that power I would say but important to think about what you might do in future- sli etc. Stick to recognised motherboard manufacturers, I have never heard of the one listed. Asrock, Asus Gigabyte etc Corsair ram and PSU both perfectly fine. Case is largely down to personal choice assuming it is ATX form factor. That CPU will be fine for games, with a decent cooler you can overclock it later. The Phenom X4 or X6 could well be better for gaming but nearly impossible to find now. More games will appear that take advantage of the cores before long, too.
Just to follow up, I've since lost the PC Parts Picker for the build, but I ended up going with: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6GB/S 7200RPM Radeon HD 7870 2GB ASRock 970 Extreme3 AM3+ 8gb G.Skill DDR3 1600 Corsair Builder CX600 Fronze Certified PSU Raidmax Helios Case
Good choices, WD Caviar blue will be fine for long term storage, always find WD drives are the most reliable. When you have the cash, you can buy a SSD, and use that as a boot drive. GPU card is an excellent choice and complements the rest of the build well. Mobo will be fine for some time, AM3+ socket will fit the latest CPUs but you'll probably need a bios update at some point to do so. Even so, you could fit a bulldozer/piledriver 8150 or 8350 in there one day when the budget allowed. For now, the quad core phenom is petty raved about. When you can afford to so, buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock that sucker. Then keep an eye on the price of the later FX chips. Ram is perfect and I had the PSU myself some time ago, it won't let you down. You now have the backbones of a good system which can be readily upgraded in future.
