Hardware Revolution

Budget Gaming PCs v3.7

Mathieu Bourgie — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:15:09 +0000

Never built a PC before and need help? No problem.

You don’t have to be a Geek to build a PC!
Building a PC has never been easier. We have hundreds of readers who had no experience and who built their first PC with the help of Hardware Revolution. If they can do it, so can you!

Start by reading our “Building Your First PC?” article, which covers everything that you need to know to get started.

The EVGA Geforce GTX 660 2GB Superclocked, the video card newly recommended for Tier 2.

Click on a section to jump to it:

About Hardware Revolution’s Budget Gaming Computers:

Performance and reliability at a low-cost

With their low-cost, our Budget DIY(Do-It Yourself) Gaming Computers feature parts that were hand-picked to offer the maximum bang for your buck, or in other terms: to offer the best performance possible at a given price, while fitting within your budget.

However, these low-cost PCs are still designed with reliability in mind. They feature a safe, reliable power supply and a case with good cooling abilities, so that your PC will last you many years and to ensure that it will not overheat.

Tier System:

Instead of having several articles that each cover one specific build, there are Tiers, allowing you to pick one of several systems at broader price points.

The Tiers are color coded as such:

Choose from five Tiers:

Tier 0.5: (Identified by a Dark Red color): $320

This is our lowest cost Tier that’s perfect if all you want to do is play at 1366 x 768 or 720p with medium/high settings, older games, browse the Internet, watch some videos, listen to some music, do some Office work and the like, on a reliable and relatively quiet PC that doesn’t consume much power.

Tier 0.625: (Identified by a Red color): $371

This is our lowest cost Tier that’s perfect for playing games at lower resolutions (1366 x 768) with high graphic settings or higher resolution (1600 x 900) with medium settings. With an alternative motherboard and after-market CPU Cooler, both of which are recommended in this guide, Tier 0.625 can be overclocked to reach even higher performance, despite its rock bottom price!

Tier 0.75 (Identified by a Fuchsia color): $471

This is our lowest cost Gaming PC, which is fine for older games or more modern games at a low or medium resolution (1600 x 900 or 720p HDTVs). 1920 x 1080 should be playable too, although with lower graphic settings. With an alternative motherboard and after-market CPU Cooler, both of which are recommended in this guide, Tier 0.75 can also be overclocked to reach even higher performance, despite its low price.

Tier 1 (Identified by a Green color): $501

Great entry-level gaming machine, perfect for gaming at a 1680 x 1050 or 720p resolution. 1920 x 1080 should be playable too, although with lower graphic settings.

Tier 2 (Identified by an Orange color): $591

This Tier can handle most games at high/maximum settings at 1920 x 1080/1080p.

Need a Tier recommendation for a specific video game?

Ask us on the forums: Tell us about the video game, the level of details that you want (i.e. I just want to be able to play the game, medium, high or maximum details) and the resolution (e.g. 1920 x 1080. NOT the size) of the monitor (HDTVs: 720p or 1080p) that you’ll use.

Recommended Parts Summary:

Main recommendations, upgrades and alternatives:

1. Recommended Components are in Bold, with one or more colors/symbols for the Tier(s).
2. Suggested Alternatives and Upgrades are in Italic. You can upgrade as many parts as you want to, including parts from higher Tiers.
3. All Parts are interchangeable/compatible with each other, except for AMD CPUs that only work with AMD motherboards and Intel CPUs that only work with Intel motherboards. Smaller Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX cases that don’t support larger Micro-ATX and ATX motherboards respectively and may not support some large after-market CPU Coolers. Ask us on the forums if you want us to double-check your build.
4. If this is your first build and if you just a simple template to follow, stick to the recommended parts for a Tier.

Budget Gaming PCs Tiers: Tier 0.5 (in Dark Red): AMD Llano, light gaming, web, music, Youtube, Office, etc. Tier 0.625 (in Red): AMD Trinity APU, can be overclocked with alternative parts Tier 0.75 (in Fuchsia): Lowest cost Gaming PC with a dedicated video card Tier 1 (in Green): Our classic $500 Gaming PC Tier 2: (in Orange): Low cost 1080p Gaming PC Click on a component’s name (e.g. CPU) to jump to the detailed section of it.	Price $320 $371 $471 $501 $591
CPU AMD Llano* APU: Only compatible with FM1 motherboards.* Tier 0.5: AMD A8-3850 Llano APU (CPU+GPU) Radeon HD 6550D AMD Trinity* APU: Only compatible with FM2 motherboards.* Tier 0.625: AMD A10-5800K Trinity APU (CPU+GPU) with Radeon HD 7660D AMD Phenom II* CPUs: Only compatible with AM3 motherboards.* Tier 0.75-1: AMD Phenom II X4 965 AM3 Quad-Core 3.4Ghz Unlocked Intel CPUs: Only compatible with LGA1155 motherboards. Tier 2: Intel Core i3 3220 Dual-Core + Hyper-Threading 3.3GHz Intel Core i5-3350P Quad Core 3.1-3.3GHz Turbo No IGP	- - $85 - $129 - $85 - $110 $180
Motherboard FM1 motherboard: Only compatible with AMD Llano APUs. Tier 0.5: MSI A55M-P33 FM1 Micro-ATX: For Llano APUs FM2 motherboards: Only compatible with AMD Trinity APUs. Tier 0.625: ASRock FM2A75M-DGS FM2 Micro-ATX: For Trinity APUs ASRock FM2A75 Pro4-M FM2 Micro-ATX: For Trinity APUs ASRock FM2A75 Pro4 FM2 SATA6Gb/s USB3 ATX: For Trinity APUs AM3+ motherboards: Only compatible with AMD Phenom II/FX CPUs Tier 0.75-1: Asrock 960GM/U3S3 FX Micro ATX AM3+ For OCing: GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ ATX LGA1155 motherboards: Only compatible with Intel CPUs. Tier 2: ASRock B75M-DGS LGA1155 SATA 6Gb/s USB3 Micro-ATX ASRock B75M-ITX LGA 1155 SATA6Gb/s USB3 Mini-ITX ASRock Z75 Pro3 LGA 1155 Z75 ATX ATX form factor motherboards: Compatible with ATX cases only Micro-ATX form factor motherboards: Compatible with Micro-ATX/ATX cases Mini-ITX form factor motherboards: Compatible with Mini-ITX/Micro-ATX and some ATX cases	- - $48 - $55 $75 $80 - $55 $104 - $50 $90 $85 - - -
RAM Tier 0.5-0.625: G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) 1.5v DDR3 1866MHz $68 – G.Skill 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866MHz Tier 0.75-1-2: ADATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600MHz ADATA 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz	- $38 $68 $37 $56
Video Card Tier 0.5: Radeon HD 6550D – Integrated Tier 0.625: Radeon HD 7660D – Integrated Tier 0.75: Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 1GB Tier 1: Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 OC 1GB Tier 2: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SUPERCLOCKED 2GB	- Free Free $115 $145 $205
Storage Hard drive: Tier 0.5-0.625-0.75-1-2: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 64MB cache SATA III Western Digital Red 2TB SATA III Western Digital Red 3TB SATA III SSD (Solid State Drive): Sandisk 2.5″ 64GB SATA III SSD Samsung 840 2.5″ 120GB SATA III SSD Samsung 840 2.5″ 250GB SATA III SSD	- - $57 $67 $115 $151 - $64 $100 $171
Optical Drive All Tiers: Lite-On SATA 24X DVD Burner Pioneer Black 15X SATA Blu-Ray/CD/DVD Burner	- $24 $65
Power Supply All Tiers: Antec VP-450 450W SilverStone Strider 500W 80 PLUS SilverStone 600W 80 PLUS SilverStone ST50F-P 500W 80PLUS BRONZE Modular SilverStone PP05 Set of Short Cables for PSU	- $38 $56 $65 $75 $20
Case ATX cases: Compatible with ATX/Micro-ATX motherboards, some with Mini-ITX Tier 0.5-0.625: NZXT GAMMA Classic 1x 120mm fan Tier 0.75-1: Corsair Carbide 200R 2x120mm USB 3.0 x2 Tier 2: Rosewill R5 3x120mm USB 3.0 Fan Controller NZXT Source 210 Black 1x120mm NZXT Source 210 White 1x120mm NZXT Source 210 White Elite 2x120mm Cooler Master Storm Scout 1 x 120mm, 2 x 140mm Rosewill Blackbone 2 x 120mm fans Cooler Master Elite 430 2 x 120mm fans COUGAR AF-2 Black & Army Green 1x120mm Cooler Master HAF 912 2x120mm Rosewill Line Glow USB 3.0 4x120mm NZXT Apollo 2 x 120mm fans NZXT M59 2 x 120mm fans NZXT Tempest 210 1x120mm NZXT Tempest 410 2x120mm NZXT Guardian 921 3 x 120mm fans NZXT Lexa S 3 x 120mm, 1 x 140mm Cooler Master Storm Enforcer, 1 x 120mm, 2 x 200mm Cooler Master HAF 922 Red LEDs 1 x 120mm, 2 x 200mm NZXT H2 H2-001-BK Black 3x120mm SILVERSTONE Precision PS06B-W 1x180mm 1x120mm Corsair Carbide 400r 3x120mm Rosewill Challenger Mid-Tower 2 x 120mm, 1 x 140mm fans COUGAR Challenger Black 1x120mm 1x200mm COUGAR Challenger Orange 1x120mm 1x200mm COUGAR Evolution Black Window 2x120mm COUGAR Evolution White Window 2x120mm Fractal Design Define Mini Micro-ATX 2 x 120mm fans NZXT Phantom 410 Black 1x140mm + 2x120mm fans NZXT Phantom 410 White 1x140mm + 2x120mm fans NZXT Phantom 410 Black Orange 1x140mm + 2x120mm fans NZXT Phantom 410 Gunmetal 1x140mm + 2x120mm fans NZXT Phantom 410 Red 1x140mm + 2x120mm fans Antec Eleven Hundred 1 x200mm + 1x120mm fans Antec Three Hundred Two 1x140mm 1x120mm Corsair Vengeance C70 Black 3x120mm Corsair Carbide Series 300R 1x140mm 1x120mm Corsair Carbide 400R 3x120mm COOLER MASTER HAF XB Cube 2x120mm COOLER MASTER Storm Scout 2 Black 1x120mm Antec P280 Sound proofing panels and foam 3x120mm Fractal Design Define R4 Black 2x140mm Fractal Design Define R4 Window Black 2x140mm Fractal Design Define R4 White 2x140mm Fractal Design Define R4 Window White 2x140mm Fractal Design Define R4 Titanium 2x140mm Fractal Design Define R4 Window Titanium 2x140mm Corsair Carbide 500R Black 3x120mm 1x200mm Corsair Carbide 500R White 3x120mm 1x200mm LIAN LI PC-7HX 1x120mm 2x140mm Aluminum Corsair Vengeance C70 Black 3x120mm COOLER MASTER HAF XM 1x140mm 2x200mm Corsair Obsidian 550D 3x120mm Micro-ATX cases: Compatible with Micro-ATX/Mini-ITX motherboards NZXT Crafted Series Vulcan Micro-ATX 2x120mm SilverStone SST-PS07B Micro-ATX USB 3.0 2x120mm SilverStone SST-PS07W White Micro-ATX USB 3.0 2x120mm Fractal Design Define Mini Micro-ATX USB3.0 2x120mm Thermaltake A30 Micro-ATX USB 3.0 1x230mm 1x90mm 2x60mm SilverStone TJ08B-E Micro-ATX USB3.0 1x180mm 1x120mm LIAN LI PC-A04B Aluminum Micro-ATX USB3.0 3x120mm Fractal Design Arc Mini Micro-ATX USB 3.0 3x120mm fan contr. Micro-ITX cases: Compatible only with Mini-ITX motherboards BitFenix Prodigy Black 2x120mm BitFenix Prodigy White 2x120mm BitFenix Prodigy Red 2x120mm BitFenix Prodigy Orange 2x120mm LIAN LI PC-Q08B Black Aluminium 1x140mm 1x120mm LIAN LI PC-Q25B Black Aluminium 1x140mm 1x120mm	- - $30 $60 $70 $35 $40 $50 $70 $45 $40 $50 $62 $60 $70 $50 $45 $60 $70 $80 $80 $100 $100 $90 $98 $50 $76 $81 $110 $95 $100 $100 $100 $100 $100 $100 $100 $75 $120 $80 $98 $100 $100 $110 $110 $110 $110 $120 $110 $120 $119 $100 $100 $130 $120 $130 - $70 $75 $84 $100 $109 $100 $130 $100 - $90 $80 $90 $90 $110 $120
Cooling All Tiers: Stock Cooler Included with CPU Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler for Micro-ATX cases: COOLER MASTER GeminII M4 120mm CPU Cooler for Mini-ATX cases: The BitFenix Prodigy supports CM Hyper 212 Evo, use this alternative for other Mini-ITX cases: COOLER MASTER Vortex Plus 92mm Cooling fans: CM Barometric Ball .6k-2k RPM 26-86CFM 13-30dBA PWM Rosewill 1.2k-2.2k RPM 43-87CFM 23-38dBA Blue LED fan contr. AC Fluid Dynamic .3k-1.35k RPM Max 57 CFM w/ 4 Pin PWM Silverstone 2Ball .8k-2.4k RPM Max 110CFM 17-40dBA fan contr. Noctua NF-P12 SSO .9k-1.3k RPM PWM Cooler Master 120mm Red LED Fan Cooler Master R4 Series Silent 140mm Fan 200mm Red LED fan for Cooler Master HAF cases	- Free $28 - $35 - - $25 - $18 $10 $12 $17 $19 $10 $10 $15
Sound All Tiers: 5.1/7.1 sound card: Integrated on motherboard ASUS Xonar U3 USB Sound Card w/ Headphone Amplifier ASUS Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card Speakers: 2.0 (2 satellites no sub-woofer) Logitech X-140 2.0 5W Creative Inspire T12 2.0 18W Creative Gigaworks T20 Series II 2.0 28W 2.1 (2 satellites + sub-woofer): Logitech Z313 2.1 25W Logitech Z323 2.1 30W Logitech Z523 2.1 40W Logitech Z623 2.1 200W 5.1 (5 satellites + sub-woofer) Logitech Z506 5.1 75W Headphones/Earphones: *Open Design* Headphones: Koss KSC75 Clip on headphones Koss PortaPro Superlux HD668B Grado SR-60i Audio Technica ATH-AD700 Grado SR-80i *Closed Design* Headphones: Koss UR-20 Audio-Technica ATH-M30 Shure SRH440 Audio Technica ATH-M50S (Straight 10ft Cable) Audio Technica ATH-A700 Audio-Technica ATH-M50 (Coiled Cable) In-Ear Headphones: Logitech Ultimate Ears 200 Sennheiser IE 4 Earphones Microphone: Syba 3.5mm microphone with stand Blue Microphones Snowball USB Microphone Headsets: Yapster TM-YP100A Koss SB-45 Corsair Vengeance 1100 Sennheiser PC 151 Razer Moray Plus ARCTIC Sound P531 SteelSeries Siberia V2 Logitech G35 Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Wrath Wireless Logitech G930	- Free $43 $30 - - $24 $56 $71 - $40 $60 $75 $129 - $75 - - $16 $45 $53 $79 $100 $99 - $19 $44 $88 $107 $130 $102 - $14 $60 - $9 $65 - $13 $27 $58 $44 $57 $50 $84 $95 $84 $110
Network All Tiers: Ethernet Up to 1000 Mbps: Integrated on motherb. Rosewill 802.11b/g/n 300Mbps Wireless USB2.0 5dBi Antenna TRENDnet TEW-684UB Dual Band 802.11b/g/n 450Mbps USB2.0 Wireless Routers: TP-Link WL TL-WR841N 300Mbps TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND 300Mbps USB D-Link DIR-645 300Mbps USB ASUS RT-N56U Dual-Band 600Mbps	- Free $20 $35 - $26 $52 $64 $99

Recommendations in details:

Motherboard:

Tier 0.5:

$48 – MSI A55M-P33 FM1 Micro-ATX: For Llano APUs

Compatible only with AMD Llano APUs, not AMD Trinity APUs nor Intel CPUs.

This motherboard offers AMD FM1 Llano CPU support and UEFI support at a great price ($47), making it an excellent choice for the lowest cost Budget Gaming PC Tier.

Despite its low cost, it’s equipped with solid capacitors for long-term reliability and it comes with a three year warranty.

It comes with VGA and DVI video outputs.

Ports, expansion slots, features, what’s included in the box, etc.

Ports on the back: Six USB 2.0 ports, two PS/2, VGA, DVI, Gigabit LAN and 6 Channels audio on the back.

Expansion slots: On the board itself, you have one PCI-Express 2.0 16X, one PCI-Express 2.0 1x and one PCI slot.

Other connectors/features on the motherboard: Three fan connectors (Two four pins, one three pins), six SATA 3.0Gb/s and three USB 2.0 headers.

Included in the box: Motherboard, two SATA cables, manual, CD with drivers/utilities and I/O backplate.

Tier 0.625:

$55 – ASRock FM2A75M-DGS FM2 USB3 SATA6Gb/s Micro-ATX: For Trinity APUs

Compatible only with AMD Trinity APUs, not AMD Llano APUs, AMD AM3 CPUs, nor Intel CPUs.

This motherboard offers AMD FM2 Trinity CPU support and UEFI support at a great price ($55), making it an excellent choice for the 2nd lowest cost Budget Gaming PC Tier.

Despite its low cost, it’s equipped with USB 3.0, SATA 6.0Gb/s, solid capacitors for long-term reliability and it comes with a three year warranty.

It comes with VGA and DVI video outputs.

Note that due to its limited amount of Phase PWM, it’s not the ideal choice for overclocking the Tier’s 0.625 unlocked APU. If you intend to overclock, consider one of the two alternatives below.

Ports, expansion slots, features, what’s included in the box, etc.

Ports on the back: Four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0, two PS/2, VGA, DVI, Gigabit LAN and 6 Channels audio on the back.

Expansion slots: On the board itself, you have one PCI-Express 2.0 16X, one PCI-Express 2.0 1x and one PCI slot.

Other connectors/features on the motherboard: Three fan connectors (Two four pins, one three pins), six SATA 6.0Gb/s, one USB 3.0 header and three USB 2.0 headers.

Included in the box: Motherboard, two SATA cables, manual, CD with drivers/utilities and I/O backplate.
Alternatives

$75 – ASRock FM2A75 Pro4-M FM2 USB3 SATA6Gb/s Micro-ATX: For Trinity APUs – Equipped with 6 phase PWM, in a Micro-ATX form factor, this motherboard offers better overclocking capabilities than the recommendation above. It also features HDMI output, E-SATA and a total of four fan connectors.
$80 – ASRock FM2A75 Pro4 FM2 SATA6Gb/s USB3 ATX: For Trinity APUs – Also equipped with 6 phase PWM, in an ATX form factor. Features six fan connectors, a total of six USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, LED debug, reset and power buttons and includes four SATA cables. A great choice if you plan on keeping/upgrading your PC for a while, thanks to all its expansion ports.

Tier 0.75-1:

$55- Asrock 960GM/U3S3 FX Micro ATX AM3+

Compatible only with AMD Phenom II/FX CPUs, not AMD Llano/Trinity APUs nor Intel CPUs.

This motherboard offers AMD AM3+ support at a great price ($55), making it an excellent choice for Tiers 0.75 and 1 of the Budget Gaming PCs that are equipped with AMD AM3+ CPUs.

It comes with an integrated graphic processor, so that you can use your PC without a dedicated video card if necessary. This is great if you’re waiting to get your dedicated video card or to troubleshoot your PC if your dedicated video card isn’t working.

Note that while it is compatible with the 125W AMD Phenom II X4 965 recommended for this Tier, don’t expect to overclock it much with this motherboard, due to low number of power phase and lack of VRM cooling. See the alternative motherboard if you want one that offers good overclocking capabilities.

Also something to note: It features an IDE (PATA) port, allowing you to re-use your older IDE/PATA hard drives and/or optical drives.

Ports, expansion slots, features, what’s included in the box, etc.

Ports on the back: Four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, two PS/2, VGA and DVI outputs, Gigabit LAN and 6 Channels audio on the back.

Expansion slots: On the board itself, you have one PCI-Express 3.0 16X, one PCI-Express 1x slot and one PCI slot.

Other connectors/features on the motherboard: Three fan connectors (Two four pins, one three pins), two SATA 6.0Gb/s, four SATA 3.0Gb/s, one IDE/PATA and two USB 2.0 headers.

Included in the box: Motherboard, two SATA cables, manual, CD with drivers/utilities and I/O backplate.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Alternatives

$103 – GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ ATX – If you have the money, the GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 is a great upgrade, providing excellent overclocking ability (provided you use an after-market CPU Cooler), a USB 3.0 header (so you can connect a case front panel USB 3.0 port to it), four RAM slots and six SATA 6.0Gbps ports. Note that it has no video outputs, so you must have a video card to use it. Also make sure your case can fit ATX motherboards.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Tier 2:

$50 – ASRock B75M-DGS Rev.2.0 LGA1155 SATA 6Gb/s USB3 Micro-ATX: For Intel CPUs

Compatible only with Intel 2nd and 3rd generation of “Core” CPUs, not AMD Llano APUs nor AMD CPUs.

This motherboard offers Intel LGA1155 and UEFI support at a great price ($50), making it an excellent choice for the higher Tiers of the Budget Gaming PCs that are equipped with Intel CPUs.

It also allows you to use the integrated graphic processor (IGP) from the CPU, so that you can use your PC without a dedicated video card if necessary. This is great if you’re waiting to get your dedicated video card or to troubleshoot your PC if your dedicated video card isn’t working.

Ports, expansion slots, features, what’s included in the box, etc.

Ports on the back: Two USB 2.0 ports, twoUSB 3.0 ports, two PS/2, VGA and DVI HDMI outputs, Gigabit LAN and 6 Channels audio on the back.

Expansion slots: On the board itself, you have one PCI-Express 3.0 16X and one PCI slot.

Other connectors/features on the motherboard: Three fan connectors (Two four pins, one three pins), one SATA 6.0Gb/s, three SATA 3.0Gb/s, USB 3.0 header and two USB 2.0 headers.

Included in the box: Motherboard, two SATA cables, manual, CD with drivers/utilities and I/O backplate.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Alternatives

$90 – ASRock B75M-ITX LGA 1155 SATA6Gb/s USB3 Mini-ITX: For Intel CPUs – If you’re building a small form factor PC, this Mini ITX motherboard will give you all the features you need (and HDMI, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0) while still being very compact.
$85 – ASRock Z75 Pro3 LGA 1155 Z75 ATX: For Intel CPUs – If you have the money, the ASRock Z77 Pro4 is an excellent upgrade, providing overclocking ability (assuming your CPU supports overclocking), a PCI-e 3.0 X16 slot as well as a PCI-e 2.0 X16 slot, and of course HDMI/SATA 6Gb/s/USB 3.0 support. Make sure your case can fit ATX motherboards.

In short, if you intend to invest into your PC and upgrade it as time goes by, the last motherboard is as future-proof as it gets.
Click here to go back up to parts summary

CPU:

Regarding “Trinity”, the new 2nd generation of AMD’s APUs:
As you may have heard, AMD recently launched “Trinity”, their 2nd generation of their APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), a combination of a CPU and a relatively powerful GPU (video card) on a single chip, for the desktop platform. Featuring even faster GPUs, they are now fast enough in my opinion to be recommended for the Budget Gaming PCs.

Tier 0.5

$85 – AMD A8-3850 Llano APU (CPU+GPU) Radeon HD 6550D

Powerful APU at a low price:
The AMD A8-3850 is based on AMD’s first generation of APUs, Llano. It features a 2.9GHz Quad-Core CPU and the Radeon HD 6550D onboard GPU.

VS the competion:
Intel only offers dual-core offerings with rather underwhelming integrated graphic processor at this price range, hence why the AMD A8-3850 is easy to recommend.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Tier 0.625:

$129 – AMD A10-5800K Trinity APU (CPU+GPU) with Radeon HD 7660HD

High-end APU at a reasonable price:
The AMD A10-5800K is based on the 2nd and latest generation of APUs, Trinity and features the Radeon HD 7660D onboard GPU. This is AMD’s fastest APU.

Relatively low cost:
While it may seem expensive when compared to the CPU recommendation for Tier 0.75 and 1, keep in mind that those Tiers also need a discrete video card, bringing up the cost way higher when you compare the Tier 0.625′s AMD APU ($129 for CPU and video card) to the Tier 0.75 ($200) and Tier 1 ($230) CPU and discrete video card combos.

For the AMD A10-5800K integrated video card performance and what you can expect of it, see the video card Tier 0.625 section.

Unlocked and ready to be overclocked:
Being an AMD “K” series processor, it is fully unlocked and can easily overclocked. However, for maximum overclocking potential, I recommend upgrading the motherboard to the recommended alternative for overclocking and I recommend getting the alternative after-market CPU Cooler.

If you overclock it, I recommend overclocking the GPU (video card) cores, as they will give a bigger performance boost in games vs overclocking the CPU cores.

Tier 0.75 and 1:

$85 – AMD Phenom II X4 965 AM3 Quad-Core 3.4Ghz Unlocked

VS the Competition:
Intel offers no dual-core + Hyper-Threading or Quad-Core CPUs at this price range and with games now taking more and more advantage of quad-core CPUs, you don’t want to settle for only a dual-core CPU.

The AMD Phenom II X4 965 is a 3.4GHz Quad-Core CPU and on top of that, it can easily be overclocked, thanks to its unlocked multiplier. If you do choose to overclock it though, make sure to upgrade the motherboard and CPU Cooler to handle the additional power draw and heat, in order to maximize the CPU’s overclocking capabilities.

Ideal for:
A budget Gaming PC, when you can’t afford faster CPUs.

However, if you have a bit more money to invest and can afford a Core i3-3220, then by all means, go for it. AnandTech’s bench tool clearly shows how much more powerful the Core i3-2100 is versus the Pentium G850 , the G850 being a slightly slower version of the Pentium G860.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Tier 2:

$110 – Intel Core i3 3220 Dual-Core + Hyper-Threading 3.3GHz

Replacing the Core i3-2120:
Based on the 3rd generation of Core processors, codename “Ivy Bridge”, the Core i3-3220 replaces the Core i3-2120. While they both run at the same frequency (3.3GHz), the Core i3-3220 has a slight performance advantage (5-10%) and a slighly lower power consumption compared to the Core i3-2120.

VS the Competition:
While AMD’s APUs offer great performance for lower Tiers, when you start using a dedicated video card, the Intel CPUs just have the edge when it comes to performance in video games with a dedicated video card.

Don’t let the dual-core part fool you vs AMD “quad-core” processor available at the same price: Intel’s and AMD’s definition of a core isn’t the same thing any more so an AMD quad-core isn’t comparable to an Intel quad-core.

AMD’s FX line-up stand no chance either. While they offer competitive performance for multi threaded programs and workstations loads, the similarly priced FX-4170 just can’t keep up in gaming performance vs the Core i3-3220.

On top of that, the Core i3-3220 consumes about 100W less at load compared to the AMD FX 4170 and roughly 20 Watts less at idle!

Alternative:

For $60 more, you can upgrade to the $180 – Intel Core i5-3350P Quad Core 3.1-3.3GHz Turbo No IGP, which offers two extra cores, which results in a solid performance bump. Note that it doesn’t come with integrated graphics, which doesn’t matter since you’ll have a discrete video card.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Video Card:

A few important recommendations and notes regarding video cards:

Get the latest version of the video card drivers directly from AMD or Nvidia. That way, you’ll be sure to get the latest bug fixes as well as the best performance possible from your video card(s).
Most video cards require one or two PCI-Express 6 or 8 pin power connector(s) to be plugged into them to function properly. Make sure that your power supply comes equipped with enough 6 and/or 8 pin connectors for your video cards. Of course, I double-checked that already for the recommendations in this article, I simply mention it if you decide to modify a build to your own taste.
Looking for a monitor recommendation? Visit The Best Monitors For Your Money article.

Tier .05:

Free – Radeon HD 6550D – Integrated

The Radeon HD 6550D is the integrated video card featured on the AMD A8-3850 APU.

What games can this video card handle?

The Radeon 6550D is capable of handling the vast majority of games at 1366 x 768 or 720p with medium/high graphic settings. Older games should be playable with higher graphic settings.

The recommended motherboard has VGA and DVI video outputs.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Tier 0.625:

Free – Radeon HD 7660D – Integrated

The Radeon HD 7660D is the integrated video card featured on the AMD A10-5800K APU.

What games can this video card handle?

The Radeon 7660D is capable of handling the vast majority of games at 1366 x 768 or 720p with high or maximum graphic settings and at 1600 x 900 with medium/high settings, although you might have to lower details for the most demanding games.

The recommended motherboard has VGA and DVI video outputs.

Tier 0.75:

$115 – Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 1GB

Replacing the Geforce GTX 550Ti is the Radeon HD 7770 1GB.

The Radeon HD 7770 HD outperforms the Geforce GTX 550 Ti in the vast majority of games and also consumes roughly 35 Watts less under load, resulting in also a more quiet card.

What games can this video card handle?

This card is capable of handling the vast majority of games at 1600 x 900, although you might have to lower details for the most demanding games. 1920 x 1080 should be playable too, although with lower graphic settings.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Tier 1:

$145 – Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 OC 1GB

Replacing the previously recommended Geforce GTX 650 Ti is the Radeon HD 7790.

I’m recommending the Radeon HD 7790 over the Geforce GTX 650 Ti simply because it offers a a 12% performance advantage overall, it consumes roughly 12 Watts less under load and it’s more quiet at idle and under load, all according to AnandTech.

The Radeon HD 7790 will do the job at 1680 x 1050 and even 1920 x 1080 although you might have to lower details in more recent and more demanding games.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Tier 2

$205 – EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SUPERCLOCKED 2GB

Performance:
Replacing the previously recommended Radeon HD 7850 1GB is the Geforce GTX 660 2GB

Thanks to price cuts, the Geforce GTX 660 is only $35 more than the Radeon HD 7850, and for that price, you get significantly higher performance, as well as a more future-proof video card, thanks to the 2GB of onboard memory, compared to 1GB for the Radeon HD 7850.

This particular EVGA card is factory overclocked, for even higher performance than the standard Geforce GTX 660.

The Geforce GTX 660 is capable of handling most games at 1920 x 1080, although you might have to lower details a tad in more recent and more demanding games.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Need a monitor recommendation?

No problem, I invite you to visit The Best Monitors For Your Money article.

RAM:

Tier 0.5 and 0.625:

$38 – G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) 1.5v DDR3 1866MHz

AMD Llano and Trinity APU performance under video games dramatically increase when using DDR3 1866MHz RAM versus slower RAM, which makes sense considering that the integrated video card relies on the system RAM for storing data.

In other words, it’s the exception to the rule that faster RAM usually doesn’t boost performance much.

Alternative

$68 – G.Skill 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866MHz – Our recommendation if you’d rather have a 8GB kit of DDR3 1866MHz RAM, in order to future-proof your build.

Tier 0.75, 1 and 2:

$37 – ADATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600MHz

4GB of RAM is pretty much mandatory to handle the latest video games along with Windows and background background such as your anti-virus, web browser, music/video player, etc.

Considering the price of RAM these days and the ever-expending memory use of games and programs, 4GB of high-speed DDR3 memory is a no-brainer.

I went with this particular kit from ADATA for their great low price and excellent reliability.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Is it worth it to get more than 4GB of RAM?
Except for a few exceptions, according to Tom’s Hardware, current games and applications won’t take advantage of more than 4GB.

However, if you intend on keeping this Gaming PC for more than say, 2-3 years, I’d highly consider getting more than 4GB of RAM now, considering that RAM prices have never been this low!

Faster or More RAM?
Can’t decide between getting faster (Higher frequency) RAM, or more (More GB) RAM?

I recommend going with more RAM, as this will allow your PC to be more future-proof and it will improve its responsiveness when you’re using demanding programs/games.

In short: More RAM will give you more performance, in the long run.

Maximum amount of RAM: Motherboards in this guide that supports two sticks of RAM can be equipped with up to 8GB (2 x 4GB) of RAM and the motherboards that support four sticks of RAM, can be equipped with 16GB (4x4GB) of RAM.

If you want more than 4GB of RAM, here’s my recommended upgrade:

$56 – ADATA 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz – Inexpensive and reliable choice for a 8GB kit of RAM.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Heatsinks and CPU cooler clearance:
Every kit that I recommend in this guide feature either no heatsinks or small heatsinks that don’t raise too much above the RAM sticks.

Why?

Because RAM heatsinks barely make any difference when it comes to RAM temperatures. Besides, even if you overclock it/raise the voltage (at your own risk), RAM temperatures aren’t a problem as long as you have decent airflow in your case.
Tall RAM heatsinks can get in the way of larger aftermarket CPU Coolers, preventing you from installing your aftermarket CPU Cooler!

Important: RAM can require manual configuration within the BIOS to reach its full potential or function properly!
By default, some RAM kits will boot at lower frequencies than they are rated for. This is perfectly normal, it does not mean that your RAM is defective.

You simply have to go within the BIOS/UEFI (The first thing that you see when your PC starts) and enable XMP, for your RAM to function at its rated speed. If XMP is not available or doesn’t work for some reason, you can adjust the RAM settings manually, such as frequency (In MHz, usually linked to the CPU, look for a CPU:RAM ratio), voltage (e.g. 1.50v) and timings (a series of numbers, such as 9-9-9-24). Refer to your motherboard manual and your RAM specifications for more information.
Click here to go back up to parts summary

Storage:

Tier 0.5, 0.625, 0.75, Tier 1 and Tier 2:

$57 – Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III

The Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB hard drive is available for $57 and it’s pretty much the least expensive reliable modern hard drive that’s available on the market right now.

SATA III hard drive on a motherboard with SATA II? Not a problem.
The SATA standard is backward compatible, meaning that SATA III hard drives will work on a motherboard equipped with SATA II.

As I explain below, this will not result in any performance bottleneck, seeing as no hard drive offers performance that’s high enough to be bottlenecked by a SATA II connection.

SATA II 3.0Gb/s vs SATA III 6.0Gb/s: No performance difference for hard drives!
SATA 3.0 Gb/s (SATA II) and SATA 6.0Gb/s (SATA III) refer to the speed of the connection between the drive and the motherboard.

However, the best hard drives reach about 210MB/s (or 1.68Gb/s) in best scenarios. SATA 3.0Gb/s is plenty enough to handle that and for hard drives, SATA 6.0Gb/s does not offer any performance advantage, since the hard drives can’t even max out a SATA II 3.0Gb/s connection.

Only SSDs take advantage of SATA 6.0Gb/s due to their higher transfer rates.

In other words, if you take two otherwise identical hard drives, the SATA III model will not be faster than the SATA II model. SATA III for hard drives is just a marketing scheme

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Hard Drive alternatives:

$67 – Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 64MB cache SATA III – For only $10 more you can double your capacity and get one of the best performing and most reliable 7200RPM drives on the market.
$115 – Western Digital Red 2TB SATA III – Replacing the Samsung F4 HD204UI, which I no longer recommend now that it’s a rebranded Seagate hard drive and is thus no longer what I’d consider a reliable hard drive, is the Western Digital “Red” 2TB hard drive. While it’s optimized for NAS (Network Attached Storage) usage, it’s also an excellent hard drive for a desktop PC, offering great performance, great reliability being designed for 24/7 usage, low power consumption and noise as well as a 3 years warranty. Thanks to its 1TB platters, its performance is excellent, despite its lower rotation speed and low power consumption/noise, being capable of trading blows with the much more expensive Western Digital Caviar Black hard drives.
$151 – Western Digital Red 3TB SATA III – Same series as the drive above, but with 3TB of storage capacity.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Solid State Drives
SSDs dramatically improve storage performance. SSDs are for you if you want:

Much faster OS boot, Shutdown, Sleep and Hibernation
Much faster program and game loading, meaning that you don’t have to wait as long for your program or your game to load.
A system that feels more responsive.

Ideally, what you want to do is get a SSD to store Windows and your favorite (or most demanding) games, with the rest of your media/games on the hard drive.

Here are my recommendations, in order of storage capacity and price:

$64 – Sandisk 2.5″ 64GB SATA III SSD – 64GB is a great choice for a boot drive with a few games.
$100 – Samsung 840 2.5″ 120GB SATA III SSD – A high performance, reliable 120GB SSD that’s selling for only $100.
$171 – Samsung 840 2.5″ 250GB SATA III SSD – A high performance, reliable 250GB SSD that’s selling for only $171.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Optical Drive:

All Tiers:

$24 – Lite-On SATA 24X DVD Burner

This drive is able to read and burn CDs and DVDs. Relatively silent (it obviously makes some noise when reading/burning at high speed), compatible with all major formats including DVD-RAM.

The motherboards for all Tiers includes two SATA cables, of which one will be used for the hard drive and one for this DVD Burner, so you don’t need an additional cable, unless you decide to add a SSD, another hard drive or another optical drive.

If you need additional SATA cables, we recommend this SATA cable: $3- 18″ SATA Cable w/Locking Latch

Upgrade for Blu-Ray playback and burning:
If you’d like to watch BluRay movies or TV shows and want the ability to burn Blu-Ray disks as well, then the $65 – Pioneer Black 15X SATA Blu-Ray/CD/DVD Burner is what you want.

Regarding Blu-Ray playback:

As far as I know, you still require a specific software to playback Blu-Ray disks on a PC.

Based on various reviews and feedback on various forums, PowerDVD 13 3D Ultra is the software that I recommend to you. You’ll want at least the professional version for Blu-ray playback.

It is fully compatible with Windows 7/8 and shouldn’t give you any problems.
Click here to go back up to parts summary

Case:

Tier 0.5 and 0.625:

$30 – NZXT GAMMA Classic 1 x 120mm fan

Cooling wise, this case includes one 120mm case fan, which is enough for Tier 0.5-0.625.You can also add five additional 120mm case fans (Two on the side, two at the top, one in the front) if you wish to.If you live in warm weather without A/C, adding a front 120mm case fan is recommended. See the cooling section for my case fans recommendations.

Features wise, you get:

Plenty of ventilation holes, so your parts won’t starve for fresh air.
2x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA, Audio out, MIC in at the front.
Various holes and space to route and hide your wires.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Tier 0.75 and 1

$60 – Corsair Carbide 200R 2x120mm USB 3.0 x2

Cooling wise, this case includes two 120mm case fans, insuring proper cooling for your Gaming PC. You can also add many more case fans if you wish to. Here’s what possible: (x5) 120mm/140mm fan mount locations, (x3) 120mm fan mount locations, Includes (x1) front-mounted 120mm fan and (x1) rear 120mm fan

Features wise, you get:

Tool-free SSD, hard drive, and optical drive installation.
The inside of the case is painted in black
2x USB 3.0, Audio out, MIC in at the top.
An hole on the back panel, to easily install after-market CPU Cooler without having to remove the motherboard from the case.
Various holes and space to route and hide your wires.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Tier 2:

$70 – Rosewill R5 3x120mm USB 3.0 Fan Controller

A new case from Rosewill, the R5 is an excellent case for the price, offering a lot of features for $70.

Cooling wise, this case includes three 120mm case fans, ensuring proper cooling for your Gaming PC. The R5 supports up to 10 fans (6 x 120 / 140mm + 4 x 120mm)

Features wise, you get:

Removable top and front compartment panels with filter
The inside of the case is painted in black
An hole on the back panel, to easily install after-market CPU Cooler without having to remove the motherboard from the case.
Various holes and space to route and hide your wires.
2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, E-SATA, Audio out and MIC in on top of the case.
6 internal drive bays that support for 2.5″ (e.g. SSDs and laptop hard drives) and 3.5″ drives.
A fan controller to adjust the speed of the case fans.

Recommended alternatives:
Click here to go back up to parts summary
If you a want with a different look, more case fans, a smaller form-factor, an handle (LAN parties anyone?) and/or other features (e.g. fan controller, USB 3.0 front ports, etc.), take a look at my list of other recommended cases.

The vast majority of them are compatible with any Tier, although it’s always good to check the video card length clearance, CPU Cooler height clearance and the accepted motherboard form factors (ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX, etc.).

Of course, there are many other cases available on the market, so feel free to look at other options if you’re looking for something different.

Ask us on the forums if you have a doubt about whether a case is compatible or not with your build.

ATX cases alternatives: Compatible with ATX, Micro-ATX and some of them are also compatible with Mini-ITX motherboards:

Micro-ATX cases (Only compatible with Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX motherboards) :
Note that some of them may not support larger after-market CPU Coolers, so pick a smaller CPU Cooler (see the cooling section for our recommendations) and preferably ask us on the forums to double-check your build to ensure that everything is compatible and will fit.

Mini-ITX cases (Only compatible with Mini-ATX motherboards) :
Note that some of them may not support larger after-market CPU Coolers, so pick a smaller CPU Cooler (see the cooling section for our recommendations) and preferably ask us on the forums to double-check your build to ensure that everything is compatible and will fit.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Power Supply:

All Tiers:

$38 – Antec VP-450 450W

The Budget Gaming PCs parts are fairly energy efficient and don’t feature very power hungry components, so you don’t need a power supply that’s very powerful.

However, the power supply is one of the most important components when it comes to the stability and reliability of a PC.

This is why I’m not cutting corners here, by making a recommendation for a fairly high-quality Antec 450W power supply.

Mind you, at $38, it is a very affordable power supply considering its quality.

It is capable of delivering up to 450W, but more importantly, 30A on the 12V lines, the most important lines for a power supply in a modern PC.

Note that if you intend on overclocking Tier 0.75, 1 or 2, you’ll want to upgrade to the 600W PSU recommended below. Tier 0.5 and 0.625 can be overclocked with the Antec VP-450.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Upgrades:

$56 – SilverStone Strider 500W 80 PLUS – For $18 more, you get an additional 50W and a more efficient power supply that’s 80 PLUS certified.
$65 – SilverStone 600W 80 PLUS – For $27 more you can get an extra 150W. Ideal for overclocking Tier 0.75, 1 or 2.
$75 – SilverStone ST50F-P 500W 80PLUS BRONZE Modular – A more efficient power supply as well as a modular one to reduce cable mess. If you’re going to use a Mini-ITX motherboard/case, I highly recommend getting the set of shorter PSU cables below, so that you don’t have way too long cables in your smaller case.
SilverStone PP05 Set of Short Cables for PSU – A set of shorter cables for the SilverStone ST50F-P power supplies, ideal for Mini-ITX cases.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Power Consumption:

How to calculate power consumption:
I recommend using the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator. Here are the settings that I used:

CPU depending on the Tier, 90% TDP.
Video Cards depends on the Tier, None if integrated
Two sticks sticks of DDR3
One regular SATA drive
1 DVD-RW/DVD+RW Drive
4 USB Devices
4 x 120mm regular fans
System Load: 90%
Capacitor Aging: 20%

A quick note about the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator:
While this is the main tool that I use to estimate power consumption, do note that sometimes, I’ll do some additional research on my own to verify these numbers. This is why you may notice that the numbers that I give below may or may not match what the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator gives you. In doubt, stick with my numbers or ask us on the forums.

Give your power supply some overhead:
While you can match a 650W PSU with a 630W requirement, it is good practice to add about 75-100W of overhead, so that your PSU doesn’t run at full capacity all the time, as that will reduce its lifespan, increase its chance of failure, increase its heat output and its noise output.

Estimated Power Consumption, per Tier:
According to the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator, with the settings that I described above, it is estimated that this system will require at load (peak usage), the following numbers. The minimum requirements are in Italic, while my recommendations (including overhead) are in Bold:

277W/350W with the AMD A8-3850 and the integrated Radeon HD 6550D (Tier 0.5).
277W/350W with the AMD A10-5800K with the integrated Radeon HD 7660D (Tier 0.625).
345W/450W with the AMD Phenom II X4 965 and the Radeon HD 7770 (Tier 0.75). Upgrade to the 600W PSU for overclocking.
360W/450W with the AMD Phenom II X4 965 and the Radeon HD 7790 (Tier 1). Upgrade to the 600W PSU for overclocking.
350W/450W with the Intel Core i3-3220 and the Geforce GTX 660. (Tier 2). Upgrade to the 600W PSU for overclocking.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Cooling:

CPU Cooler:

All Tiers:

Stock Cooler

To save on costs, I recommend using the cooler included with the CPU.

While there are better coolers, the one that is included is good enough to keep the CPU at safe temperatures.

The recommended case includes one or several cooling fans as well to help you keep your system cool.

However, here are two reasons why you may choose to upgrade your CPU Cooler:

To keep your CPU temperatures lower, which improves the reliability of your PC and the longevity of your CPU.
To lower noise, as the stock cooler can get noisy at times, especially during prolonged work sessions, or in a warm room.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Alternative:

$28 – Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

The Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is the improved version of the Hyper 212 Plus and now that it’s only $3 more than the 212 Plus, it offers the a better bang for your buck, offering great cooling performance and much lower noise compared to the stock cooler, for only $28.

Need help figuring out how to put the Thermal Compound with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo?

Follow this tutorial, where they compare different methods to figure out the best one.

Thermal compound:
All recommended CPU Coolers include thermal compounds which are pretty good, so no need to spend more money on a tube of thermal compound.

Micro-ATX

$35 – COOLER MASTER GeminII M4 120mm – Recommended if you want an after-market CPU Cooler with a Micro-ATX case. Note that the Bitfenix Prodigy cases support the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, so use that instead for those cases.

Mini-ITX

$29 – COOLER MASTER Vortex Plus 92mm – Recommended if you want an after-market CPU Cooler with a Mini-ITX case.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

CPU and Case Fans:

On the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, you can add a second 120mm fan to improve performance.

If you want to add a different fan to your CPU Cooler, or simply want to add a case fan to help keep your computer components cool, here are my recommendations:

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Sound:

5.1 channels sound card: Integrated on the motherboard

Integrated with the motherboard, this sound card will handle many different sound setups, including headphones, a microphone and more.

While integrated audio on a PC used to be absolutely horrible, it has gotten much better in the last few years, thus why I have no trouble recommending it.

Recommended upgrade:
However, if you do want better sound quality, all the recommended and alternative motherboards (except the ASRock B75M-ITX Mini-ITX, see below) have space for a PCI sound card. I recommend the $30 – ASUS Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card

The only exception is the ASRock B75M-ITX Mini-ITX alternative motherboard for Tier 2, which has no space for an add-on card. If you want a better sound card, simply get the $43 – ASUS Xonar U3 USB Sound Card w/ Headphone Amplifier which is a USB sound card.

Both are equipped with an headphone amplifier, with three settings in the control panel, which will bring out the best out of your headphones and speakers.

Speakers:

While I do not include speakers in the Tiers budgets, seeing as you may already own some or simply do not want any, here are some recommendations for great speakers at various price points:

Note that the power output is in RMS Watts, a more accurate measurement.

2.0 speakers: 2 satellites and no sub-woofer:

2.1 speakers: 2 satellites and a sub-woofer:

5.1 speakers: 5 satellites and a sub-woofer:

$75 – Logitech Z506 5.1 75W

Headphones/Earphones

I do not include headphones nor earphones in the Tiers budgets, seeing as you may already own a pair or simply do not want any.

Also keep in mind that sound quality is subjective, so while these are some great recommendations, in my opinion, at their respective price points, those recommendations are based on my own research, not yours. I do recommend that you do your own research, to figure out the best headphones for your needs, based on the type of music that you listen to and the games that you play.

Open Design Headphones:
As the name implies, an open hear headphone means that it doesn’t cover or seal off the ear from hearing outside noises.
Pros: Enough airflow to keep your ears cool. On average lighter than closed design headphones. Resonance is significantly reduced providing better audio quality and a better audio experience.
Cons: You hear outside noises, so they can’t be used in noisy environments. They leak out sound, so they provide no privacy and can bother people that are close to you.

Closed Design Headphones:
These are the opposite of open design headphones. These headsets usually have larger ear cups that isolate the user’s ears from his surroundings and its design is typically meant to block out outside sounds.

Pros: 1- Closed ear cups that seal off the ear from the outside world so you can expect sounds not to leak in and out of the headphones.
2- You can enjoy exclusive audio entertainment particularly in a typically noisy environment.

Cons: 1- Due to the closed ear design, airflow is greatly minimized or prevented, producing more resonance and this can negatively affect the quality of sound.
2- Due to how they isolate you from outside noise, it makes you more vulnerable to accidents.

$19 – Koss UR-20
$44 – Audio-Technica ATH-M30
$88 – Shure SRH440
$130 – Audio Technica ATH-A700 – Usually $150+, currently at a great price.
$107 – Audio Technica ATH-M50S (Straight Cable) – There’s also the $102 – Audio-Technica ATH-M50 (Coiled Cable), non-S version, which comes with a coiled cable. I personally ordered myself a pair of the ATH-M50 a few months ago and I love them, they sound better than any other ~$100 headphones that I tried before and isolate fairly well from the sound. They are tight at first, so you need to “flex” them a bit. Of course, as in with any good pair of headphones/earphones/speakers, having a good source of source makes all the difference in the world. I use them on the laptop with an ASUS Xonar U3 and they are a great combo.

In-Ear Headphones:
Simply put, these are headphones that you insert straight into your ear, to create a seal between the headphones and your ears.

Important: Make sure to take your time to properly test the different size of included tips, to find the ones that best fit your ears. This will make all the difference between a poor sounding pair and a good sounding one.

Microphone:

If you want a dedicated microphone, to talk to your teammates online or for any other purpose, I recommend the $9 – Syba 3.5mm microphone with stand, which is an excellent low-cost option with perfectly fine audio quality and build quality (Well, unless you have an habit of throwing your microphone around after losing a game… ).

Personally, I recommend going for a pair of headphone with this dedicated microphone versus going with a headset that has a microphone, for two reasons:
1- The sound quality is on average superior with a dedicated pair of headphones and a dedicated microphone vs a headset at comparable price points.
2- If the microphone on the headset breaks down (and they do more often than not…), you’ll be stuck without your headset if you get it replaced, or either getting a new headset ($$) or a separated microphone. If either the headphones or the microphone breaks down, you still have the other that you don’t have to replace.

However, if you do high quality broadcasts such as podcasts, or you record music I recommend the $65 – Blue Microphones Snowball USB Microphone which gives excellent sound quality for only $65.

Headsets:

Headsets are basically headphones with an integrated microphone.

If you go with an headset, make sure to check them all out, since they vary considerably in design.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Network:

Ethernet RJ-45 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN: Integrated on the motherboard

Integrated with the motherboard, this network adapter will allow you to access your local network and Internet, using a standard LAN (RJ-45) cable.

If a LAN network is not an option or if a wireless network is preferable for you, know this before you use wireless for a Gaming PC:
The problem with wireless is that:

It’s not as reliable as LAN, with signals dropping out, interference and the like.
It induces additional latency compared to LAN, which is the last thing that you want when you’re playing online, especially with first-person shooters.

In short, for reliability and getting a low ping, LAN is simply superior (and cheaper!).

If you understand that and still want to go with wireless, here are my suggestions:

I recommend two adapters:
1- If you want a fast adapter without spending a fortune, I’d consider the $20- Rosewill RNX-N180UBE Wireless USB 2.0 Dongle 802.11b/g/n w/ 5 dBi Antenna, which connects in a USB 2.0 port. It comes with a base, so that you can move it away from the PC for better reception and a 5dBi external antenna to improve reception further more. It support 802.11b/g/n, with transfer rates up to 300Mbps.

2- The best solution is the $35 – TRENDnet TEW-684UB Dual Band 802.11b/g/n 450Mbps USB2.0 which offers the best range and the best throughput at 450Mbps

Recommended wireless routers:

Need a wireless router too? No problem. Here are my recommendations, in an ascending order of performance and price:

$26 – TP-Link WL TL-WR841N 300Mbps – A great basic no-frill fairly reliable 300Mbps router.
$52 – TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND 300Mbps USB – Similar to the one above, but with an extra antenna and a USB port, to share a printer, storage, etc.
$64 – D-Link DIR-645 300Mbps USB – Higher performance than the TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND, hangs out with more expensive routers, but at a lower price.
$99 – ASUS RT-N56U Dual-Band 600Mbps – High-performance dual-band router, with great looks too!

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Recommended operating systems:

The operating system cost, if there’s one, is not included in the total cost. The two reasons for this are:

The budget only considers hardware.
You may be able re-use a previous license, go with an open-source OS such as Linux or, if you’re so inclined and are aware of what you’re doing, use torrents.

If you decide that you need an OS, here are some recommendations:

Windows 7

Despite Linux gaining more and more support, Windows still is the platform of choice for compatibility at the moment.

Considering that you’ll have 4GB of RAM or more, along with a dedicated video that also has memory (512MB or 1GB), you’ll need a 64-bit version, as 32-bit is limited to 4GB of memory for the entire system, which is not enough now, nor in the future if you decide to upgrade.

64-bit drivers are widely available for pretty much any devices nowadays.

Windows 7 is by far better than Windows Vista, looks better, more functional, less annoying, consumes less resources and brings DirectX 11 to the table.

Three Available Versions:

Windows 7 Home Premium: The basic edition, with all the looks, most of the functionality and DirectX 11.
Windows 7 Professional: If you want the virtual XP mode, you’ll need at least the Professional edition. Also required if you want to backup to a network, using the built-in backup mode in Windows. Also good to know: You’ll need at least the pro version to take advantage of Remote Desktop Connection.
Windows 7 Ultimate: To help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker and to work and switch between 35 languages.

OEM Versions:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM SP1 – $90
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1 – $136
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OEM SP1 – Currently unavailable

Retail Versions:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Retail – $170
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Retail – $292
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Retail – $330

OEM vs Retail:

The OEM version allows you to only install it once on a computer. You cannot transfer the license to another computer in the future and you do not receive support from Microsoft. It’s the same type of license you get when you get Windows on a desktop or laptop that you buy from Dell, HP and such. It’s less expensive, but gives less flexibility. Ideal if you intend on keeping your computer for many years.

The Retail version is the full version, which allows you to transfer the license to another computer in the future and you can call Microsoft if you need any form of support. Ideal if you intend on upgrading/changing your computer down the road.

Other than that, you get the same features on both, only the license differs. The price between the two differs obviously.
Click here to go back up to parts summary

Windows 8

Released on October 26th 2012, Windows 8 is Microsoft’s latest version of the popular Windows operating system. While it uses the same core as Windows Vista and Windows 7, visually it is a departure from these two OS, using colourful tiles and a look often referred to as “Metro”.

While you can switch back to the classic desktop look, “Metro” loads up by default. The “Start” button and menu are gone too. While this will irratate some users, it is possible to have the desktop load by default and it is also possible to bring back the start button and menu by installing third parties apps.

The vast majority of applications that ran on Windows Vista and 7 should have no problem running on Windows 8.

For more information on Windows 8, there are countless reviews of it available online that will do a better job than I can fully describing the changes that it brings to the Windows OS.

Let’s address the obvious question:
Should you use Windows 7 or 8 for your gaming PC?

While I welcome novelty and change, gaming performance doesn’t improve on Windows 8 and the “Metro” looks makes it less efficient to multi-task and switch back and forth between various open applications, which is problematic for some of us who use their Gaming PCs for everything.

More importantly, Windows 8 is a brand new OS, while Windows 7 has been around for three years. What this means is that Windows 7 bugs have been nearly all fixed, while Windows 8 is crippled with bugs, as any new operating system usually is.

Considering these two points, I’d sticking with Windows 7 for now. Don’t get me wrong though, Windows 8 definitely brings some good changes to Windows and it has the potential of being a great OS for gaming PCs, but it still needs some time to get its bugs fixed to be reliable enough for a workstation laptop. Perhaps when its first service pack (SP) will be released, Windows 8 will be the OS of choice.

Note that to fully take advantage of all Windows 8 features (such as secure boot) you will need a motherboard that features UEFI. All the recommended and alternatives motherboards in this guide feature UEFI, so no need to worry about that.

To find out more about Windows 8, I invite you to read one of many reviews available online that get deep into what has changed from Windows 7 to WIndows 8.

That said, if you’re interested in Windows 8, there are two versions available:

Linux

A lot of people these days boot more than one OS. Linux is a wonderful choice: powerful, cool, and cheap. Take your pick of distribution and have fun! For Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, and Mandriva, try Distrowatch.com, Cheapbytes.com, LinuxQuestions.org or one of the many others.

While Linux does not offer the wide compatibility of Windows with video games, gaming on Linux is still possible, through projects such as Wine, Cedega and Crossover. For more on the topic of Linux Gaming, I invite you to read this excellent article from AnandTech: Linux Gaming: Are we there yet?

What about Word processing, Excel and other Windows-based programs that you need? Linux, being an open platform, has many free alternatives for you. For Word/Excel and such, try LibreOffice.
Cost: Free

Conclusion

What do you think of the latest version of the Budget Gaming PCs? Let me know if you have any suggestion to improve this article or your opinion on it by leaving a comment below. Additionally, if a part goes out of stock, let me know.

Don’t agree with my choices? Have a better idea?

Feel free to leave a comment. There’s always place for improvement and after some research I may change the part according to your suggestion.

Building this PC?

If you build this system, I invite you to share your experience on how well it runs: What applications do you use, what type of work do you do, how well does this PC performs, is there anything that slows it down? Your feedback will help other people make an informed decision on what to buy for their own needs.

Do you need a guide on how to build a computer, need help or do you have some questions?

Computer Builds FAQs:
I often get questions such as:
- Who are you to tell me which parts to choose?
- Can you suggest me a step by step guide to build a computer?
- Why should I build a PC instead of buying one in a store?
- And many more…

1. You will find the answers to all of these questions and more in this article: FAQ: How to Build Your Own Computer
2. Is this your first build? Here are 10 Quick Tips for 1st Time Builders to get you started.
3. Newly built computer won’t start? I invite you to read Help me: Why won’t my newly assembled PC start or boot?
4. Visit our forums here, where you can join our helpful community and ask questions

Recommended step-by-step guides to build your PC:

Newegg TV has three great videos on how to build your PC. The first covers choosing your parts, which we help you with in this article, so I chose not to include it. The second one, below, shows you in detail how to assemble your PC. The 3rd one shows you how to install Windows and software.

If you prefer a text version with pictures, here are two great guides by ArsTechnica, the first one covering the assembling and the second one covering Windows and software:

Arstechnica Outstanding Guide for Hardware (Building the PC)
Arstechnica Outstanding Guide for Software (EFI/BIOS, Windows, etc.)

Free Assistance

If you have any question(s) about the build, simply head over to the forums and our community will be there to assist you.

No worries, there are no stupid questions here on Hardware Revolution. We all started from scratch and learned through our mistakes. We”ll just help you make sure to avoid those mistakes

If you want to have your final build double-checked and get my opinion on it before ordering, or for anything else, don’t be shy, just post a thread on the forums.

Build your Gaming PC today!

Why should you?
For the same price, you’ll get more performance out of your custom PC, or you’ll save money while getting the same performance compared to a retail PC. Not to mention that retail PCs come with tons of bloatware and limited warranties. Why settle for less?

Stop relying on HP, Dell and other companies:
Build your own custom PC today. It’s easier than you think!

This Build includes all the parts/cables that you need and it was double-checked to ensure compatibility. Simply order your parts, set aside some time, grab a screwdriver and build your own personal PC. No worries, we’ll (the HR community) be there to assist you if you have questions or need help.

Then you’ll be able to say, “See that computer over there? Yeah, I built that.” Talk about being proud of a job well done.

Want or need a more powerful Gaming PC? No problem.

If you’re looking for a Gaming PC that boots and launch games/applications faster thanks to a SSD (Solid State Drive) and that can handle most of the latest video games at a 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution at their maximum graphic settings, head over to our Mainstream Gaming PCs article.

If you’re looking for a Gaming PC that can handle all of the latest video games maxed out at a 1080p (1920 x 1080) on a 120Hz monitor or to play video games on a multiple monitor setup or to play games in 3D, head over to our High-End Gaming PCs article.

Don’t miss our future articles!

Make sure not to miss our future articles and updates by subscribing for free via RSS or E-mail and automatically receive our future posts.

If the fact that you’ll be receiving outstanding articles for free is not enough to convince you, here are 7 Reasons to Subscribe.

High-End Workstations: Dual CPU (12-16 cores), 32+GB RAM, Dual SSDs, Nvidia Quadro+Tesla, Pro Audio and more!

Mathieu Bourgie — Sat, 04 May 2013 17:05:30 +0000

The Corsair Obsidian 550D, the case recommended for the High-End Workstations, thanks to its looks, sound dampening, cooling performance and ease of components installation.

Six reasons to choose HR’s Workstations:

1. Every single part is hand-picked to ensure top-notch reliability and performance.
2. We don’t cut corners by using a no-brand low-quality power supply, cheap sleeve fans or any other parts that are likely to fail early.
3. Designed to run cool and relatively quietly.
4. For the same price, you’ll get more performance out of your custom workstation, or you’ll save money while getting the same performance compared to a retail PC.
5. Longer warranties on individual parts vs a shorter warranty on the whole PC. Parts have 1 to 6 years or even lifetime warranties.
6. No time wasted on uninstalling pre-installed bloatware and useless programs that you didn’t want in the first place.

Stop relying on, overpaying and being disappointing by HP, Dell and other big companies:
Build your own custom workstation today. It’s easier than you think!

This Build includes all the parts/cables that you need and it was double-checked to ensure compatibility. Simply order your parts, set aside some time (a few hours at most), grab a screwdriver, get a table with a lot of light and build the workstation.

Then you’ll be able to say, “See that computer over there? Yeah, I built that.” Talk about being proud of a job well done.

High-End Workstations VS Mainstream Workstations:
The High-End Workstations, compared to the Mainstream Workstation, offer:

Much higher CPU performance thanks to the two physical CPUs with up to 16 cores in total.
The possibility of adding more RAM, up to 128GB, thanks to more RAM slots.

Choose Your Tier, based on your needs:

We offer four different tiers (configurations) in this article, to match different workload requirements. Go right below this section to see our recommendations depending on which program you use.

Tier A: High-End Workstation, with support for up to 4 or 8 monitors.

Tier A is the basic high-end Workstation, equipped with dual CPUs and one or two video cards to handle up to 4 or 8 monitors at once. This Tier is ideal if all you need is a lot of CPU processing power, with support for multiple monitors.

Tier B: For 3D modeling, CAD and the like.

Tier B is equipped with a Nvidia Quadro K5000, in order to handle your 3D, CAD and the like. Supports up to 4 monitors.

Tier C: For more GPU computing performance, with Nvidia Maximus, combining the power of a Quadro card and a Tesla card

If you need strong computing performance for GPU Computing applications (e.g. Seismic processing, CFD, CAE, Financial computing, Computational chemistry and Physics, Data analytics, Satellite imaging, Weather modeling, etc.), Tier C is the way to go.

It supports Nvidia 2nd generation “Maximus” technology, where you combine two video cards: A Quadro card for graphic (display) purposes and a Tesla K20 5 GB GPU Computing Accelerator card for computing (rendering) purposes. By sharing the loads on two specialized cards, you get better computing performance than using only a Quadro card with your CPU(s).

Tier D: DAW (Digital audio workstation) for Audio Professionals

Tier D is equipped with dual CPUs, one video card that supports up to four displays and a pro sound card, the ESI juli@ XTE.

Which Tier do you need for your applications?

Based on your comments and requests from the Workstation Builds: Throw in your Requests and Suggestions! post, I’ve come up with a list of recommendations, based on programs and their requirements.

Adobe Applications: Creative Suite 5 Master Collection, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom, Illustator, Indesign, Bridge, Bibble, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc.: Tier A. If you have intensive work that brings a modern (Quad-Core and higher) PC that its knees, consider faster CPUs. The faster that your CPUs are, the faster that the rendering/work will complete. Upgrading to more RAM (64GB) would be a good idea if you work with many very large files.
AutoDesk Suite (AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, etc.): Tier B. If your CAD workflow involves a lot of heavy rendering, computing and/or simulation, go with Tier C for higher performance.
CAD: Tier B. If your CAD workflow involves a lot of heavy rendering, computing and/or simulation, go with Tier C for higher performance.
Camtasia: Tier A
Cinema 4D: Tier A, Tier B for higher-performance. While it will run just fine with the High-End Workstation as it is, this is an application which scales very well when you add performance to your PC, meaning that the better that are your parts, the faster that your renderings will be completed. A faster Quadro card will improve performance and so will faster CPUs, especially the 8-core variants.
CorelDRAW Premium Suite X6: Tier A
DAW (Digital Audio Workstation): Tier D
Development (General coding, for web, Oracle, Java, pretty much any computer language): Tier A
FL Studio: Tier D
Microsoft Office Professional: Tier A
Microsoft Visual Studio: Tier A
Nvidia CUDA: Tier B or if you want even higher performance, Tier C.
Oracle Database: Tier A
Pinnacle Studio 16: Tier A, Tier B for higher performance thanks to Nvidia CUDA
Rhino 5: Tier B
Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate (formerly Sage Timberline Office): Tier A. Go with Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate; Home Premium isn’t supported.
Sony Vegas 12 Pro: Tier A
Sound Forge: Tier D
Other Programs: Got another program that you’d like to know if it would run well on the High-End Workstation or would require upgrades? Leave a comment at the end of this article and I’ll get back to you with my recommendations.

Need a Tier recommendation for your specific workload?

Simply leave a comment at the end of the article. Note that if you want me to recommend to you a completely custom workstation which is different from the four Tiers outlined in this article, I offer consulting services as well. Simply scroll down to the Consulting section towards the end of the article for more information.

Recommended Parts Summary:

Main recommendations, upgrades and alternatives:

1. Recommended Components are in Bold.
2. Suggested Alternatives and Upgrades are in Italic.
3. Some parts can be upgraded on any Tier and some parts can only be upgraded on some Tiers. See the indications below.

High-End Workstations Tiers: – Tier A: Basic High-End Workstation, with support for up to 4 or 8 displays - Tier B: For 3D modeling, CAD and the like. - Tier C: More GPU computing performance, Nvidia Maximus: Quadro + Tesla card - Tier D: For Audio Professionals, with ESI juli@ XTE sound card *Click on a component’s name (e.g. CPU) to jump to the detailed section of it.*	Price $3932 $5627 $9020 $4179
CPU: Can be upgraded on any Tier without modification All Tiers: Two Intel Xeon E5-2630 2.3-2.8GHz DDR 1333 Six-Core+HT 95W Two Intel Xeon E5-2640 2.5-3.0GHz DDR3 1333 Six-Core + HT 95W Two Intel Xeon E5-2650 2.0-2.8GHz DDR3 1600 Eight-Core + HT 95W Two Intel Xeon E5-2660 2.2-3.0GHz DDR3 1600 Eight-Core + HT 95W Two Intel Xeon E5-2665 2.4-3.1GHz DDR3 1600 Eight-Core + HT 115W Two Intel Xeon E5-2670 2.6-3.3GHz DDR3 1600 Eight-Core + HT 115W Two Intel Xeon E5-2680 2.7-3.5GHz DDR3 1600 Eight-Core+HT 130W Two Intel Xeon E5-2690 2.9-3.8GHz DDR3 1600 Eight-Core+HT 130W	- $1240 $1760 $2200 $2740 $2960 $3100 $3520 $3940
Motherboard All Tiers: ASUS Z9PA-D8 ATX Dual LGA 2011 Server Motherboard	- $370
RAM: Can be upgraded on any Tier without modification All Tiers: 32GB: Two Kingston 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5v ECC Reg. 64GB: Two Kingston 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5v ECC Reg. 128GB: Two Kingston 64GB (4x16GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5v ECC Reg.	- $360 $640 $1062
Video Card Tier A+D: Radeon HD 7770 1GB Flex 3 monitors support, 4 with adapter Tier A only: 6 to 8(w/ adapters) monitors:2x Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 1GB Flex Display Port to VGA Active Adapter for additional monitor support Display Port to DVI Active Adapter for additional monitor support Tier B+C: Nvidia Quadro K5000 4GB Dual-slot Tier C: NVIDIA Tesla K20 5GB GPU for Computing Dual-slot With 2 video cards, you can’t install a RAID card. You’ll need a NAS for RAID 6 on hard drives.	- $140 $280 $30 $26 $1750 $2870 -
Storage SSDs: Use the motherboard SATA ports. Can be upgraded on any Tier. All Tiers: Two Samsung 840 Pro 256GB in RAID 1. Total capacity: 256GB Two Samsung 840 Pro 512GB in RAID 1. Total capacity: 512GB Hard Drives: You’ll need a RAID card or a NAS for RAID 6. Upgradable on any Tier. All Tiers: Four Western Digital Red 1TB in RAID 6, Total capacity: 2TB Four Western Digital Red 2TB in RAID 6. Total capacity: 4TB Four Western Digital Red 3TB in RAID 6. Total capacity: 6TB RAID card or NAS for RAID 6: Tier A, B and D: ARC-1213-4I-MS PCI-E 4x drives SATA RAID Controller Card Required cable for RAID card: HighPoint Mini-SAS to 4SATAx 3 feet Cable Tier C + A (for 2x video cards setups only): Qnap TS-469-PRO-US NAS	- - $502 $968 - $320 $468 $588 - $370 $17 $815
Optical Drive: Can be upgraded on any Tier without modification All Tiers: Lite-On SATA 24X DVD Burner Pioneer Black 15X SATA Blu-Ray/CD/DVD Burner	- $24 $70
Power Supply: Can be upgraded on any Tier without modification Tier A and D: Seasonic X-850 850W 80 PLUS Gold Modular 5yrs war. Tier B: Seasonic X-1050 1050W 80 PLUS Gold Modular 5yrs war. Tier C: Seasonic X-1250 1250W 80 PLUS Gold Modular 5yrs war. UPS/Surge Protector: Cyberpower PP1500SW-T2 UPS 1000W PureSine 7-Outlet Cyberpower PP2200SW UPS 1500W PureSine 8-Outlet	- $160 $205 $300 - $311 $441
Case All Tiers: Corsair Obsidian 550D	- $130
Cooling: See full section for where and in which direction to install the case fans. All Tiers: Two (2x) Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler All Tiers: Two (2x) Noctua NF-P12 120mm Case Fan Tier A and D: Four (4x) Noctua NF-A14 FLX 140mm Case Fan Tier B and C: Six (6x) Noctua NF-A14 FLX 140mm Case Fan	- $140 $36 $80 $120
Sound: Tier A, B, C: SIIG IC-510111-S2 DP 5.1 PCI-Express 1x Sound Card Tier D: ESI juli@ XTE PCI-E 1x	- $43 $290
Network All Tiers: Onboard 3x Gigabit LAN RJ-45: 2 x Intel® 82574L + 1 x Mgmt USB Wireless network adapters: Rosewill RNX-N180UBE Wireless USB 2.0 802.11b/g/n with 5 dBi Antenna ASUS Dual-Band Wireless-N900 USB-N66	- Free - $20 $65

Trying to reduce the price of your Workstation?
Here are a few things that you can do to cut down on the total cost:

Remove both SSDs (-$500) and only use the hard drives. Sure, the OS, programs and files won’t load as fast, but this won’t affect the processing/rendering speed much, if at all.
Go from two SSDs in RAID 1 to a single SSD (-$250), where you lose both performance and redundancy.
Buy only one CPU and 16GB of RAM (4x4GB, just get a single kit) instead of two CPUs and 32GB (8 x 4GB) of RAM, to save $800. Needless to say, this involves a massive performance hit. Not recommended unless you intend on adding the second cpu/set of RAM later on, otherwise the Mainstream Workstation will offer more performance at an even lower price point.

Building this System, Got a Question, Need Help?

Computer Builds FAQs:

I often get questions such as:

Who are you to tell me which parts to choose?

Can you suggest me a step by step guide to build a computer?

And many more…

You will find the answers to all of these questions and more in this article: FAQ: How to Build Your Own Computer

Also, if this is your first build, here are 10 Quick Tips for 1st Time Builders to get you started.

Finally, if your newly built computer won’t start, I invite you to read Help me: Why won’t my newly assembled PC start or boot?

Have questions, need to consult with an expert?

I offer consulting services if you require my help. Simply scroll down toward the end of the article, to the consulting section, for more information.

High-End Workstation Hardware parts recommendations, detailed version:

Motherboard:

All Tiers:

$370 – ASUS Z9PA-D8 ATX Dual LGA 2011 Server Motherboard

What makes this motherboard great is the fact that it features two LGA 2011 sockets, allowing for a Dual-CPU setup, on the practical ATX format, allowing you to use a regular power supply and case, instead of far more expensive server parts based on far less common standards.

- It supports two Xeon 26xx series CPUs with a TDP of up to 135W for each CPU.
- It supports up to eight RAM sticks, with a frequency up to 1600MHz (depending on the CPU, see the CPU section for more info). I recommend filling them all, in order to get as much bandwidth as possible by taking advantage of quad-channel RAM (quad-channel: 4 RAM slots per CPU x 2 CPUs).

During installation, do note that you need to plug in a 24-pin power cables and TWO 8-pin power cables in order for the motherboard to function properly. Rest assured that the recommended power supplies do come with those power cables.

Back Ports:
On the back, you have two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, one PS/2, a serial port, a VGA output and three LAN ports (Two Intel 82574L 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN ports and one mgmt LAN port).

Expansion ports + Storage Ports on the board:
Two PCI-Express 3.0 16X, three PCI-Express 8X slots, one PIKE slot (Used for Audio Card), two SATA 6Gbps and four SATA 3Gbps ports. Note that the board does not support floppy drives nor IDE-based drives.

In which expansion slots should you install the expansion cards (video, RAID and sound cards):
From top (closest to CPU sockets) to bottom:

Tier A (single video card): Top PCI-Express 8x slot: Sound card, top PCI-Express 16x slot: Video Card, bottom PCI-Express 8x slot: RAID card
Tier A (dual video cards): Top PCI-Express 8x slot: Sound card, top PCI-Express 16x slot: 1st video Card, bottom PCI-Express 16x slot: 2nd video card. No RAID card, make sure to get a NAS for the hard drives in RAID 6 (see storage section).
Tier B: Top PCI-Express 8x slot: Sound card, top PCI-Express 16x slot: Video Card, bottom PCI-Express 8x slot: RAID card
Tier C: Top PCI-Express 8x slot: Sound card, top PCI-Express 16x slot: Quadro K5000, bottom PCI-Express 16x slot: Tesla card. No RAID card, make sure to get a NAS for the hard drives in RAID 6 (see storage section).
Tier D: Top PCI-Express 16x slot: Video Card, bottom PCI-Express 16x slot: sound card, bottom PCI-Express 8x slot: RAID card

Additional information:
Note that the motherboard includes six SATA cables, so you don’t need to buy any additional SATA cable, unless you add a lot more drives, since the build only needs three cables (two SSDs and one optical drive, the hard drives have cables with the RAID card or don’t need any in the NAS).

CPU:

All Tiers:

$1240 – Two (2x) Intel Xeon E5-2630 2.3-2.8GHz Turbo Six-Core + HT 95W

Note that the price is for two (2) CPUs.

The Xeon E2630 is the second lowest-end entry-level Xeon CPU from the E26xx family. It features six cores + Hyper-Threading, so it can handle up to 12 threads. Its base frequency is 2.3GHz but just like the consumer class Core i5 and i7 CPUs from Intel, it can automatically and safely boost its frequency, up to 2.8GHz for the E-2630, when faced with heavy workloads.

Did I say entry-level? That’s relative, considering that this setup will outperform any comparatively priced system. Needless to say, for your workloads, this setup will outperform any single cpu setup, whether it’s from AMD or Intel, in the vast majority of workstation type of workloads. If you need raw CPU power, a dual-CPU setup is a great upgrade from a single-CPU setup.

The dual-socket 2011 platform gives you access to Quad-Channel RAM and also allows you to upgrade to the 8-core Xeon CPUs (See the available upgrades below) if you want even more performance.

Note that no CPU Cooler is included with them, hence why I recommend a CPU cooler further down in this article.

Regarding RAM frequency:
Note that the maximum RAM frequency supported by the E-2630 is 1333MHz. If you want 1600MHz RAM support, you’ll need to upgrade to the E-2650 or an higher-end model. Higher RAM frequency means more memory bandwidth, which can improve performance with some programs.

Available upgrades:
Note that core count and frequencies are compared to the E5-2630.

$1760 – Two Intel Xeon E5-2640 2.5-3.0GHz Turbo Six-Core + HT 95W – Base and Turbo frequency higher by 200Mhz, identical otherwise. RAM will run at 1333Mhz.
$2200 – Two Intel Xeon E5-2650 2.0-2.8GHz Turbo Eight-Core + HT 95W – Two additional cores (8 vs 6 cores), base frequency lower by 300Mhz, Turbo frequency identical. RAM will run at 1600Mhz.
$2740 – Two Intel Xeon E5-2660 2.2-3.0GHz Turbo Eight-Core + HT 95W – Two additional cores (8 vs 6 cores), base frequency lower by 100Mhz, Turbo frequency higher by 200MHz. RAM will run at 1600Mhz.
$2960 – Two Intel Xeon E5-2665 2.4-3.1GHz Turbo Eight-Core + HT 115W – Two additional cores (8 vs 6 cores), base frequency higher by 100Mhz, Turbo higher by 300MHz. RAM will run at 1600Mhz.
$3100 – Two Intel Xeon E5-2670 2.6-3.3GHz Turbo Eight-Core + HT 115W – Two additional cores (8 vs 6 cores), base frequency higher by 300Mhz, Turbo higher by 500MHz. RAM will run at 1600Mhz.
$3520 – Two Intel Xeon E5-2680 2.7-3.5GHz Turbo Eight-Core + HT 130W – Two additional cores (8 vs 6 cores), base frequency higher by 400Mhz, Turbo higher by 700MHz. RAM will run at 1600Mhz.
$3940 – Two Intel Xeon E5-2690 2.9-3.8GHz Turbo Eight-Core + HT 130W – Two additional cores (8 vs 6 cores), base frequency higher by 600Mhz, Turbo higher by 1000MHz (1GHz). RAM will run at 1600Mhz. This is the fastest Xeon CPU available that’s compatible with this build.

Video Card:

Tier A and D:

$140 – Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 1GB Flex 3-4 monitors support

While the motherboard comes with a VGA output, I recommend avoiding using it, as its based on the awful Aspeed AST2050 onboard video chipset with a mere 16MB of memory, which is completely underwhelming and useless for a Workstation.

The video card that I recommend for Tier A and D, the Sapphire Radeon HD 7700 1GB Flex may look like a rather basic video card, but it has the capability of outputting to up to three DVI monitors without any adapters.

It can also output to up to four monitors at once, if your 4th monitor has a Displayport connection or with one of the two following adapter:
- For VGA monitors: $30 – Display Port to VGA Active Adapter
- For DVI monitors: $26 – Display Port to DVI Active Adapter

This is unique to Sapphire Flex video cards, other Radeon video cards support two video cards out of the box or three with an adapter. For more information on Sapphire FleX technology, I invite you to visit this page on their website.

Need support for more than 4 monitors?

If you need support for more than 4 monitors, you can add a second Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Flex to your system, without any other modification to the workstation. Out of the box, you’ll have support for 6 displays. By adding one or two adapters recommended above, you’ll get support for 7 or 8 displays respectively.

Compatibility notes:
- This option is only compatible with Tier A, as the other Tiers have other video or sound cards that will prevent you from installing two Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Flex in your system.
- If you use two Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Flex, you will be unable to install a RAID controller card. To be able to have four hard drives in RAID 6, you’ll have to purchase a NAS (Network Attached Storage). I recommend the $815- Qnap TS-469-PRO-US for its high performance (Dual-core CPU, 1GB RAM, Dual LAN ports), reliability, solid build and top-notch customer support. It will store the four hard drives, will allow you to run them in a RAID 6 array and connects directly to your workstation via two LAN ports. Alternatively, you can connect it to your network, so that other users can easily access it.

Tier B and C:

$1750 – Nvidia Quadro K5000 4GB Dual-slot

Recently launched, the Nvidia Quadro K5000 4GB is the most powerful professional card from the Nvidia Quadro line-up. It will easily take care of 3D rendering, CAD programs and the like, as well as accelerating programs UI and video decoding of course.

It is capable of handling four monitors, with DVI-I DL + DVI-D DL + DP 1.2 + DP 1.2 display connectors.

FirePro vs Quadro:
Performance wise, the latest Quadro line-up (K series, avoid the older non-K series) has the edge over the FirePro series, thanks to superior drivers that simply deliver more performance. Quadro cards are also supported by more applications and finally, their drivers are more optimized for greater performance in some applications.

While the AMD FirePro line-up of cards can be an interesting alternative thanks to their relatively low cost, they are just not supported by as many applications as the Nvidia Quadro line-up cards are.

Considering the cost of this workstation, I’m sure that you’ll want to get top-notch performance all over the place in all apps, including Adobe apps and top-notch drivers, hence why I only recommend Nvidia Quadro cards in this build.

Professional 3D Workstation Video Cards:

What applications benefit from or truly need AMD Firepro or Nvidia Quadro Cards and what’s the difference between consumer cards (Radeon/Geforce) and professional cards (FirePro/Quadro)?

Accuracy & reliability:

“Exact pinpoint renders for things such as vehicle/building/contraption etc design, think many moving parts working together such as an engine prototype….things where a millimeter or so off could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars or much much more lost or even death…. They are tools for professionals, and if you really need one you’ll know it.

Gaming cards and workstation cards are very similar, but the differences are major. Consumer cards are built for speed at the cost of accuracy, gaming renders need to be fast…not perfect.

Workstation cards are the opposite, they need to be perfectly accurate at all times, speeds good but not priority, major differences in the cards are ECC ram (expensive, but a lost bit could be catastrophic) and very robust and detailed driver support…the drivers are really where the bulk of the expense comes from and , they have to work and have to work well, we gripe and moan about bugs in our games…when the card is holding you back from your livelihood….

It cost money to make money and or move things forward to a large degree, great designs aren’t doodled out on a napkin in a country diner anymore.

Similar to other class of products on the market, i.e consumer vs pro cameras:

There are many products out that scale the same way, look at cameras, a $200 point and shoot for the trip to disney world or the $5000+++ used to shoot what we see in magazines and such, a nice solid sub $500 Asian import guitar vs a $3K+ made in the USA model, the latter has better quality components and much more time and care in construction.

Back to the cards a lot of pro level applications will work to a degree on consumer cards (with some hacking and preening), but thats more like an artists sketch pad….good for practice and education, or proof of concept work but nothing mission critical…for most pro applications key features are disabled and their is no formal support unless a proper card is being used.”

“Workstation card core chips are mostly identical to the consumer grade stuff (except for the memory controller), but everything around it is usually made of much higher quality components. The heatsinks and fans are made of better materials etc. etc.”

Thanks to our reader EBOBO and the folks on the forums of DesktopReview.com for that great explanation.

Other than that, Quadros and Firepros have optimizations in their drivers for various specific applications as well for the usual workload that a Workstation will be used for. These optimizations are only activated when a Quadro or Firepro is detected.

Tier C:

$2870 – NVIDIA Tesla K20 5GB GPU for Computing Dual-slot

Need more computing performance?
If you need strong computing performance for GPU Computing applications (e.g. Seismic processing, CFD, CAE, Financial computing, Computational chemistry and Physics, Data analytics, Satellite imaging, Weather modeling, etc.), Nvidia offers their 2nd generation “Maximus” technology, where you combine two video cards: A Quadro card for graphic (display) purposes and a NVIDIA Tesla K20 5 GB GPU Computing Accelerator card for computing (rendering) purposes. By sharing the loads on two specialized cards, you get better computing performance than using only a Quadro card with your CPU(s).

For more information on Nvidia’s Maximus technology, performance improvements that you can expect and testimonials, visit this page.

If your computing needs aren’t that demanding yet, you can stick to only a Quadro card and upgrade to the highest-end Quadro (K5000) if necessary. If you have a Quadro K5000 already and need more computing power or if you just know that you need as much computing power, then adding a NVIDIA Tesla K20 5 GB GPU Computing Accelerator computing card to your workstation that also contains a Quadro K5000 makes sense.

Note that the Tesla card has no display outputs, so you must have a Quadro card to handle your monitors. As explained above, combining it with a Quadro K5000 is the best and most powerful option, hence why that’s what I’m recommending for Tier C.

Warning about a possible compatibility issue:
The downside of using a Tesla K20 card with a Quadro K5000 card is that due to the dual-slot size of both cards, you will be unable to install a RAID controller add-on card, due to the lack of space on the motherboard to do so.

In other words, you can still have two SSDs in RAID 1 with the Tesla K20 card and the Quadro K5000 card, but four hard drives in RAID 6 (which requires an add-on RAID controller card) won’t be possible, unless you get a NAS (Network Attached Storage), which is an external enclosure that can be connected directly to LAN port(s) to ensure high transfer rates, with four hard drives in RAID 6, along with two SSDs in RAID 1 in the PC case.

I recommend the $815- Qnap TS-469-PRO-US for its high performance (Dual-core CPU, 1GB RAM, Dual LAN ports), reliability, solid build and top-notch customer support. It will store the four hard drives, will allow you to run them in a RAID 6 array and connects directly to your workstation via two LAN ports. Alternatively, you can connect it to your network, so that other users can easily access it.

RAM:

All Tiers:

$360 – Two Kingston 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5v ECC Registered

Note that you need to buy two (2) of those kits, so that you get a total of eight (8) RAM sticks, to fully populate the motherboard’s RAM slots, in order to take advantage of quad-channel and get as much RAM bandwidth as possible.

32GB of memory: Run lots of programs with many large files with no problem!
32GB of RAM will allow you to run many programs at once, with a lot of larges files open at the same time, with minimum latency.

Kingston RAM: Highly reliable
I recommend Kingston for their high reliability (lowest return rate in the RAM industry, according to hardware.fr who gets their data from a major e-tailer) and compatibility with the vast majority of motherboards.

ECC Memory:
I recommend with ECC (Error-correcting code) memory, which is a type of memory that:

“(…) can detect and correct the more common kinds of internal data corruption. ECC memory is used in most computers where data corruption cannot be tolerated under any circumstances, such as for scientific or financial computing.

ECC memory maintains a memory system immune to single-bit errors: the data that is read from each word is always the same as the data that had been written to it, even if a single bit actually stored, or more in some cases, has been flipped to the wrong state. Some non-ECC memory with parity support allows errors to be detected, but not corrected; otherwise errors are not detected.“

ECC memory may be more expensive than standard memory, but it’s also a lot more reliable and a lot less prone to failure, two highly important factors for a Workstation.

Alternatives: Need more than 32GB?
If you need more than 32GB for your specific needs or just want to future-proof your workstation with more RAM, here’s a 32GB (x2 = 64GB) and 64GB (x2 = 128GB) kit.

Remember that you need to buy two kits, so that you get a total of eight (8) RAM sticks, to fully populate the motherboard’s RAM slots, in order to take advantage of quad-channel and get as much RAM bandwidth as possible.

64GB: $640 – Two (2x) Kingston 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5v ECC Registered
128GB: $1062 – Two (2x) Kingston 64GB (4x16GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5v ECC Registered

Storage:

High-availability solution that ensures that your data is available even with multiple drives failure:
For the High-End Workstations, I’m recommending two Samsung 840 Pro SSDs in RAID 1 and four Western Digital Red hard drives in a RAID 6 array.

The reason for this recommendation is two-fold:
1. The SSDs will give very high performance for the OS, demanding programs and large files that you are currently working on, while the hard drives will provide a lot of storage space to save your projects and other large files for backup.
2. By backing up your SSD content onto the hard drives, you ensure that you have two redundant storage solutions, so if against all odds you get a critical failure on your SSDs, you still have your data safe on the hard drives, which are setup with RAID 6, which allows for two drive failure, so if you lose one hard drive and when you re-construct the array you lose another (more common than you think, especially with large 1+TB hard drives), you will not lose any data, unlike with RAID 5.

In other words, even if you lose both SSDs AND two hard drives, your data is still available.

Here are a few examples of possible failures and the outcome:
- One of the two SSDs in RAID 1 fails: The other SSD still contains all the data from the failed SSD. Simply replace the failed SSD and rebuild the RAID 1 to ensure data availability on both SSDs. No data loss.
- Both SSDs fail: Replace both SSDs and load a saved image of their content from the hard drives. No data loss.
- One hard drive fail: Replace the failed hard drive and rebuild the RAID 6 array. No data loss.
- One hard drive fail and a second hard drive fail during the RAID array rebuild: Replace the faulty hard drive and rebuild RAID 6 array. No data loss.
- Both SSDs fail and two hard drives fail: My, what are the odds of that? Still, replace the faulty hard drive, rebuild RAID 6 array. Then you replace both SSDs and load a saved image of their content from the hard drives. No data loss.

As you can see, this is a solid solution that ensures that your data is safe.

However, if you have a 3 or 4 hard drives failure, you WILL lose your data, so to be certain, backups over other locations (external hard drive, other NAS, online server, optical disks, USB key, etc.), preferably off-site (to avoid data loss in the case of fire or theft) are recommended to be absolutely confident that you will not lose critical data even in the worse case possible.

RAID is NOT a backup solution:
RAID is not a backup solution, all it means is that if a drive fails, the data is available on another drive. However, it doesn’t protect you from an accidental file deletion, viruses, problems with software or OS updates causing issues and the like. RAID is not going to help you with any of those problems, because all drives will have the same problems.

Taking the time to setup a proper backup system is critical to avoid headaches that will cost you precious time and money later.

That said, let’s move on to the recommendations.

RAID controller or NAS:

For Tier A (single video card), B and D:

To run RAID 6 on your four hard drives, you’ll want a RAID controller card. I recommend the $370 – ARC-1213-4I-MS PCI-E 4x drives SATA RAID Controller Card – Extra Text.

Note that it doesn’t include the necessary cable to connect the hard drives to the controller card. I recommend the following cable: $17 – HighPoint Internal Mini-SAS to 4SATA(SFF8087 to SATA) 1M (3 feet) Cable

For Tier A with dual video cards and Tier C:

Since you can’t install a RAID controller card due to the lack of space caused by the two video cards, you’ll want a NAS. I recommend the $815- Qnap TS-469-PRO-US for its high performance (Dual-core CPU, 1GB RAM, Dual LAN ports), reliability, solid build and top-notch customer support. It will store the four hard drives, will allow you to run them in a RAID 6 array and connects directly to your workstation via two LAN ports. Alternatively, you can connect it to your network, so that other users can easily access it.

SSDs: All Tiers:

$502 – Two Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SATA III 2.5″ SSD in RAID 1: Total capacity: 256GB

Why the Samsung 840 Pro (not to be confused with the 840 non-Pro series) SSDs?

Two very simple reasons:
1. Reliability: From my research and customers feedback, Samsung produce the most reliable SSDs right now, hence why I recommend them for a Workstation.
2. Performance: The Samsung 840 Pro tops the charts, pretty much all professional reviewers online praise its high performance, even under very demanding workloads.

Samsung 840 Pro SSDs have a SMART attribute “Wear_Leveling_Count” which counts down from 100 to 0 as the drives wear out. This allows you to track their usage and to predict when you’ll need to replace one of them if necessary when the time comes. Note that this is likely to take many many years.

Thanks to RAID 1, if one of them fails, the other one still holds your data.

The case natively supports 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives, so you don’t need any adapter.

The motherboard includes six SATA cables, so you don’t need to buy any additional SATA cable, since the build features two SSD and one optical drive, for a total of three SATA drives. The hard drives are connected to the RAID controller card (which has a dedicated cable to handle the four SATA hard drives) or a NAS, which doesn’t require any cables. In other words, you shouldn’t need any additional SATA cables.

Need more than 256GB of ultra-high-speed storage?
Simply upgrade to: $968 – Two Samsung 840 Pro 512GB in RAID 1, total capacity: 512GB

Hard Drives: All Tiers:

$320 – Four Western Digital Red 1TB in RAID 6, total capacity: 2TB

Why the Western Digital Red series?
1. They are designed for 24/7 usage.
2. They are designed for RAID environments, no dropout after a short amount of time.
3. Three years warranty with 24/7 support.

Simply put, they offer great reliability, can be used in RAID, in a NAS, are designed designed for 24/7 usage and offer a great warranty. Ideal for a workstation.

2TB isn’t enough for you?

No problem, you can stick with the same RAID 6 solution and move up to 4 or 6TB of storage capacity with the following hard drives:

$468 – Four Western Digital Red 2TB in RAID 6, total capacity: 4TB
$588 – Four Western Digital Red 3TB in RAID 6, total capacity: 6TB

Optical Drive:

$24 – Lite-On SATA 24X DVD Burner

This drive is able to read and burn CDs and DVDs. Relatively silent (it obviously makes some noise when reading/burning at high speed), compatible with all major formats including DVD-RAM.

Upgrades:
If you want the ability to read and burn Blu-Ray disks, then the $70 – Pioneer Black 15X SATA Blu-Ray/CD/DVD Burner is what you want.

Regarding Blu-Ray playback:

As far as I know, you still require a specific software to playback Blu-Ray disks on a PC.

Based on various reviews and feedback on various forums, PowerDVD 12 3D Ultra is the software that I recommend to you. You’ll want at least the professional version for Blu-ray playback.

It is fully compatible with Windows 7/8 and shouldn’t give you any problems.

Case:

All Tiers:

$130 – Corsair Obsidian 550D

A powerful workstation needs a case to match it. It needs to be capable of ensuring proper cooling, while being discrete enough to not get some odd stares (Lots of noise is annoying and flashy LEDs look out of place in a corporate environment).

With a subtle yet good looking style design including a diamond-cut brushed aluminum front panel, sound proofing and an ease of components installation that their rivals could learn from, the Corsair 550D is what I recommend to you.

Cooling wise, this case includes three case fans but unfortunately, they have sleeve bearing, which tend to fail within a year and can be noisy.To ensure proper cooling with enough airflow, low noise and many years of service, you’ll be replacing them. See the cooling section for more details.

Features wise, you get:

A solid case. No flimsy panel, nor sharp edges here.
A case that facilitates your PC assembly. Working in this case to assemble your PC is a lot easy and simpler than in some other cases.
Outstanding wire management.
Magnetically mounted dust filters
One-button side panel removal
A tool-less system that works.
Support for up to six 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives, perfect for two SSDs and four hard drives.
2 x USB 3.0 and Audio out/MIC in at the top. Unfortunately, USB 3.0 aren’t supported by the motherboard, but the case includes a converter to USB 2.0, which is supported by the motherboard. So you’ll effectively have two USB 2.0 ports on the front of the case. Rest assured that you also have two USB 3.0 and two more USB 2.0 ports on the back of the motherboard.
5 years warranty

Power Supply:

Tier A and D:

$160 – Seasonic X-850 850W 80 PLUS Gold Modular 5yrs war.

This power supply has a maximum power output of 850W, not that should rely only on this information as I often point in posts such as Warning: 6 Surefire Ways of Blowing Up Your Computer Due to an Inadequate Power Supply.

More importantly, it can output a maximum of 70A on the 12V line, one of the most important factors when it comes to choosing a power supply.

Best of all, it is 80 PLUS Gold certified, meaning that it’s always at least 85% efficient, resulting in less heat, more silence and a lower electricity bill for you, compared to a less efficient power supply.

Also good to know: It’s modular, meaning that you only plug in the power cables that you need, instead of being stuck with a bunch of unused cables that you have to tuck away somewhere in your case.

The Seasonic X series is known for the very high quality of its components and its reliability. That and the fact that features two EPS 12V 8 pins connector, a must for the dual-CPU motherboard that requires two EPS 12V connectors. Many power supplies only offer one EPS 12V connector and would be inadequate for this workstation.

Finally, it comes with a solid 5 years warranty.

Tier B:

With its Quadro K5000, Tier B requires a more powerful power supply. I recommend the $205 – Seasonic X-1050 1050W 80 PLUS Gold Modular 5yrs war..

Tier C:

With the Quadro K5000 and the Tesla card, you’ll need an even more powerful power supply. The $300 – Seasonic X-1250 1250W 80 PLUS Gold Modular 5yrs war. is what I recommend.

UPS/Surge Protector:

I highly recommend getting a UPS, especially if you’re in an area with a lot of thunderstorms, brownouts or in a work area with older electric wiring. If you lose power, the UPS will keep your PC running for a few minutes, enough for you to save your work and to properly shutdown your PC.

The two recommended UPS below also protects against electrical surges, protecting your PC and other equipment plugged into the UPS, from dangerous power surges, which are one of the main causes of defective computers.

PC components are extremely fragile and the last thing that you want is to plug all that expensive equipment equipped straight in a power outlet. You want it plugged in a surge protector (featured in the UPS units below), which will protect your expensive equipment.

My recommendation:

The $311 – Cyberpower PP1500SW-T2 UPS 1000W PureSine 7-Outlet is my recommendation for Tier A and D. Keep in mind that the UPS also has to power your monitor and anything else plugged in it, hence the overhead here.
For Tier B and C, you’ll want the $441 – Cyberpower PP2200SW UPS 1500W PureSine 8-Outlet instead. Note that it requires a NEMA 5-20R receptacle, or in other words, a different power outlet. If you have no such outlet, you can simply use this $18 – Conntek 1-Foot 15-Amp to 20-Amp NEMA 5-15P to 5-15/20R Power Adapter Cord and use a standard 15A power outlet for your UPS.

Yes, there are less expensive UPS units available, but nothing that’s as reliable as the units above. These are designed for network-grade, mission-critical servers and other environments where a power loss without a chance to save current projects would be disastrous and unacceptable. The recommended UPS units above are made solid, batteries are replaceable and the UPS units work when they need to.

Cooling:

$140 – Two (2x) $140 – Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler

This Workstation is based on a server-type platform, meaning that the CPUs don’t include CPU Coolers. Also, since this is a dual-socket motherboard, you have to be careful to pick a heatsink that will both fit and that will be capable of offering proper cooling, in order to ensure reliability, even when you run your workstation under a 24/7 load.

The Noctua NH-U12S will do exactly that and after a lot of research, it is my recommendation.

Equipped with the Noctua NF-F12 fan which features a high-quality SSO bearing, you can be sure that it will last many many years while being fairly silent. Rest assured that if for any reason you wish to change the fan, it’s something possible with this CPU Cooler.

To top it off? Noctua offers a six years warranty! The customer service is top-notch and the long warranty is a statement to the quality of this product.

Remember though: You’ll need to buy two, since you have two physical CPUs in this system.

Thermal Compound:
The thermal compound is what you’ll put between the CPU and the CPU Cooler, and its job is to transfer heat between the two. Using an high-quality thermal compound ensure that your CPU temperatures will be as low as possible.

The great news is that the Noctua NH-U12S includes some NT-H1 thermal compound. It’s a top-notch product that I have no problem recommending.

Case Fans

To ensure proper cooling, low noise and longevity, you’ll be replacing the case stock fans with the following Noctua fans.

Why Noctua fans?

Exceptional quality, with SSO bearings that are reliable and will last many many years (MTBF rating of more than 150.000 hours, or over 17 years running 24/7) without making more noise, clicking or anything that you’d expect from an aged fan.
Good airflow to noise ratio: They provide good airflow while being next to silent. A few fans from other companies offer slightly better performance, but none are as reliable as the Noctua fans.
6 years warranty

All Tiers:

Two 120mm case fans, to be placed in the front of the case, as intake fans (pulls air inside of the case. Find the arrow on the side of the fan to determine the direction of the airflow):

$36 – Two (2x) Noctua NF-P12 120mm Case Fan

Tier A and D:

$80 – Four (4x) Noctua NF-A14 FLX 140mm Case Fan

You’ll want to place:

Two at the top of the case as exhaust (pushes air outside of the case)
One at the back of the case as exhaust
One at the bottom of case, as an intake fan (pulls air inside of the case)

Tier B and C:

$120 – Six (6x) Noctua NF-A14 FLX 140mm Case Fan

You’ll want to place:

Two at the top of the case as exhaust (pushes air outside of the case)
One at the back of the case as exhaust
Two on the side of the case as intake fans (pulls air inside of the case)
One at the bottom of case, as an intake fan

Sound:

Tier A, B and C:

$43 – SIIG IC-510111-S2 DP 5.1 PCI-Express 1x Sound Card

Seeing as the motherboard has no onboard sound, I recommend a basic 5.1 sound card.

Because it’s so small, it will fit in the top PCI-Express 8x slot, next to the RAM slots, allowing you to install two video cards or one video card and a RAID card.

Tier D:

$290 – ESI Juli@ XTE PCI-Express 1x Sound Card

Of course, for a digital audio workstation, a basic 5.1 sound card won’t cut it.

For Tier D, I recommend the $290 – ESI juli@ XTE PCI-E 1x.

If you want one of the best, if not THE best professional sound card available, this is it.

It features highest quality 24-bit 192Khz ADC (114dB) and DAC (112dB).
Its unique swappable I/O socket allows you to choose your analog connectors between unbalanced RCA jacks and balanced TRS jacks, making Juli@ XTe the perfect solution for any stereo I/O application, analog and digital.
The EWDM drivers of Juli@ XTe provide unparalleled performance and stability, and provide support for all professional audio applications using ASIO. Of course, Windows 7 and 8 are supported.
With its digital I/O and the integrated MIDI interface, Juli@ XTe is perfect for post-production studios, one man bands and use with mixers and you can monitor the inputs and outputs directly through the digital mixer.
Juli@ XTe features optical and digital outputs that allow AC3/DTS pass through for Dolby digital and DTS surround sound playback.

Of course, if you already have your own PCI-Express sound card and would rather use it, it should work without any issue in this workstation.

Note that PCI sound cards are NOT compatible with this build, because the motherboard has no PCI slots.

Network: Three Gigabit LAN connectors on motherboard

Integrated on the motherboard are three Gigabit LAN connectors.

However, if a LAN network is not an option or if a wireless network is preferable for you, I recommend either the:
- Inexpensive and reliable – $20 – Rosewill RNX-N180UBE Wireless USB 2.0 802.11b/g/n with 5 dBi Antenna, which connects into a USB 2.0 port. It comes with a base, so that you can move it away from the PC for better reception and a 5dBi external antenna to improve reception further. Support 802.11b/g/n, 300Mbps max.
- Supports up to 900Mbps- $65 – ASUS Dual-Band Wireless-N900 USB-N66, which connects into a USB 2.0 port. The receiver is a base, so that you can move it in the best spot for better reception. Support 802.11b/g/n. Dual-band 3×3, up to 900Mbps.

Recommended operating system:

The operating system cost, if there’s one, is not included in the total cost. The two reason for this are:

The budget only considers hardware.
You may be able re-use a previous license, have a corporate license (volume license), etc..

If you decide that you need to buy an OS, here are our recommendations:

Windows 7

Despite Linux gaining more and more support, Windows still is the platform of choice for compatibility at the moment. Considering that you’ll have 4GB of RAM or more, along with a dedicated video that also has memory (512MB or 1GB), you’ll need a 64-bit version, as 32-bit is limited to 4GB of memory for the entire system, which is not enough now, nor in the future if you decide to upgrade.

Windows 7 is by far better than Windows Vista, looks better, more functional, less annoying, consumes less resources and brings DirectX 11 to the table.

Three Available Versions:

Windows 7 Home Premium: To avoid, as it supports a maximum of 16GB of RAM, while the High-End Workstations are equipped with at least 32GB. Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate support up to 192GB of RAM.
Windows 7 Professional: If you want the virtual XP mode, you’ll need at least the Professional edition. Also required if you want to backup to a network, using the built-in backup mode in Windows. Also good to know: You’ll need at least the pro version to take advantage of Remote Desktop Connection.
Windows 7 Ultimate: To help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker and to work and switch between 35 languages.

OEM vs Retail:

Other than that, you get the same features on both, only the license differs. The price between the two differs obviously.

OEM Versions:

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1 – $136
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OEM SP1 – $199

Retail Versions:

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Retail – $300
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Retail – $310

Windows 8

The vast majority of applications that ran on Windows Vista and 7 should have no problem running on Windows 8.

For more information on Windows 8, there are countless reviews of it available online that will do a better job than I can fully describing the changes that it brings to the Windows OS.

Let’s address the obvious question:
Should you use Windows 7 or 8 for your workstation PC?

While I welcome novelty and change, performance doesn’t improve that much on Windows 8 (not when you have such a powerful workstation anyway) and the “Metro” looks makes it less efficient to multi-task and switch back and forth between various open applications, which is problematic for a typical workstation workload

Considering these two points, I’d sticking with Windows 7 for now. Don’t get me wrong though, Windows 8 definitely brings some good changes to Windows and it has the potential of being a great OS eventually, but it still needs some time to get its bugs fixed to be reliable enough for a workstation laptop. Perhaps when its first service pack (SP) or the rumored Windows “Blue” will be released, Windows 8 will be the OS of choice.

To find out more about Windows 8, I invite you to read one of many reviews available online that get deep into what has changed from Windows 7 to WIndows 8.

That said, if you’re interested in Windows 8, there are two versions available. Note that there isn’t any “retail” version, you can re-install it as often as you need to:

Hardware Revolution consulting services:

About me:
I’m a computer expert with over 12 years of experience in recommending, building, fixing and modifying computers. I’ve assisted countless people and companies over the years with completely custom designs ranging from $300 to $25,000+ and of course, I’ve assembled many systems myself. In the last two years, I’ve recommended for over 10 millions dollars in various computer equipment purchases.

I’m not your average Joe, nor your Mom & Pop’s consultant. People trust me because I’m independent, neutral, stay on top of new technologies and because I recommend only what I would buy myself.

Testimonials:

Andrew:
The computer looks amazing. Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very much for your help.

Kevin:
Thanks for all your help! The computer is a beast! You were a great help as I do not have the knowledge base concerning individual components and compatibility. (…) matching the individual pieces to produce a level performance field was key. I could not be more happy with the system!

Paul J. Klein:
I’ve known Mathieu for some time now and while his knowledge of computer hardware has continued to astound me, I’ve been even more impressed with his personable, affable nature! (…) if I were you, I’d hire him without hesitation!

Get Mathieu’s services today!

Basic services:

Configuration verification for compatibility, what’s best for your needs, etc.

- Are you hesitating on what’s best for your needs?
- You want to have your final build double-checked and get my opinion on it before ordering?

My rate for basic services consulting is $99.95.

For this price, you’ll get:
- My recommendation on what’s best for your needs.
- My confirmation that your workstation parts are indeed compatible and are the best choice for your budget or alternatively, will tell you that this is not the case and offer you alternatives that are compatible, reliable and offer the best performance at a given price.

I accept Paypal only, which allows for credit card payments or electronic transfer from your bank account. Once your payment is completed, please contact me with your questions at the e-mail found further down in this article.

Advanced services:

Custom build for your specific workload needs. Basically any modification to a Workstation that requires a part that isn’t recommended/suggested in this article is considered advanced services.

- Need a high-end workstation with more than 4 hard drives for additional storage?
- Need 256GB of RAM?
- Need to modify a workstation Tier to match your needs?
- Have a lot of questions that will requires a lot of my time?
- Want a custom workstation that’s different from the four Tiers recommended in this article?

My rate for advanced services consulting is $299.95.

For this price, you’ll get:
- My recommendations for parts for a completely custom workstation that matches your specific needs
- Unlimited e-mail support with fast replies (usually within 24 hours, often faster).
- I’ll be there to assist you until you’re satisfied with your custom workstation and order your parts.

Note that if you need more than one custom configurations (for a few or many different workload types or different budgets), please contact me at the e-mail address below so that we can negotiate a reasonable rate based on your needs.

Custom services:

- Need assistance or have any questions that aren’t addressed here?

My rate varies depending on your needs. Please contact me with your question(s) at the following e-mail address:

(Yes, this is an image, you’ll have to manually copy the e-mail address. While this may be a slight inconvenience, this is necessary for me to avoid spam e-mails.)

Show your appreciation for this article

If you liked this article, if it helped you save money and time and if you appreciate the website for providing valuable, up-to-date, unbiased information, I kindly ask you to help us by making a donation via PayPal.

I suggest donating 1% of your build cost, or part of what you saved by using our recommendations in this article. Of course, feel free to donate as much as you wish or can. Thank you.

Conclusion

Don’t agree with my choices? Have a suggestion to improve this build?

I do realize that even if I took a year to write this guide, it wouldn’t be perfect and it wouldn’t cover every possible software/scenario.

This is why if you don’t agree with one or several of my choices, think that you can come up with a way to improve this build, have requests, comments, etc. by all means, please let me know by leaving a comment below.

Would you like to see an additional feature? Let me know.

One or several parts are out of stock?

Simply drop a comment below to let me know. I’ll personally recommend to you an equivalent alternative and I will update the build shortly after.

What do you think?

What’s your opinion on this build?
Did you find a typo or error in this article?
Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Don’t miss out on the Workstations updates!

We’ll soon be updating the Mainstream and Entry-Level Workstations. Also, as time goes by, parts go out of stock, new more powerful/efficient parts come out and more reasons cause me to update the builds. To make sure that you don’t miss an update, you can receive our updates for free via RSS or E-mail.

If the fact that you’ll be receiving free updates is not enough to convince you, here are 7 Reasons to Get Our Posts Via RSS or E-Mail For Free!

High-End Gaming PCs v3.5

Mathieu Bourgie — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:05:40 +0000

Never built a PC before and need help? No problem.

You don’t have to be a Geek to build a PC!
Building a PC has never been easier. We have hundreds of readers who had no experience and who built their first PC with the help of Hardware Revolution. If they can do it, so can you!

Start by reading our “Building Your First PC?” article, which covers everything that you need to know to get started. Feel free to join us on the forums to hang out with us and to take all the time that you need to get comfortable with the idea of building your own custom PC. No question is stupid and we’ll all be happy to help you out

Is this the right type of PC for me?
If you’re looking for a high-end Gaming PC, capable of handling any video game maxed out at very high resolutions, in 3D and/or on multiple monitors, you’re at the right place. Otherwise, check out our other Computer Systems or The Best Laptops For Your Money instead.

The Noctua NH-D14, the CPU Cooler for all Tiers of the High-End Gaming PCs.

Click on a section to jump to it:

About Hardware Revolution’s High-End Gaming Computers:

Extreme Performance and Reliability!
1. Our high-end gaming computers feature parts that were not only chosen for the best performance possible at a given price but also for their reliability.
2. All of the Tiers are equipped with SSDs (Solid State Drives), which makes your PC feel more responsive and make Windows/games/programs launch much faster than before.
3. Equipped with powerful video cards, to let you play pretty much any game maxed out at 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1600 or even on multiple monitors and/or with 3D monitors.
4. All Tiers feature a safe and reliable power supply, a case with proper ventilation and an after-market CPU Cooler, so that your PC will not overheat and will last you many years.

Choose Your Tier:

There are five tiers in this article. The Tiers are color coded as such:

Tier 8 (Identified by a Green color): $1759

This Tier features a video card with one of the fastest GPU on the market: The Radeon HD 7970. This Tier can handle pretty much every game with maximum details at 1920 x 1080. Features a 256GB SSD.

Tier 9 (Identified by an Orange color): $1929

Tier 9 takes performance up by a few notches compared to Tier 8, by featuring two Radeon HD 7950 in Crossfire. This Tier will handle any game maxed out at 1920 x 1080 and most games at 2560 x 1600 or on two/three monitors side-by-side. Features a 256GB SSD.

Tier 10 (Identified by a Red color): $2294

Tier 10 brings up performance by featuring two Radeon HD 7970 in Crossfire and an Intel Core i7-3820.

Tier 11 (Identified by a Fuchsia color): $2747

Tier 11 takes CPU performance up, by featuring the Intel Core i7-3930K six-core CPU.

Tier 12 (Identified by a Dark Red color): $4165

Simply put, this is our most powerful Gaming PC Tier available, with two Geforce GTX TITAN in SLI. Also features a larger 512GB SSD.

Need a Tier recommendation for a specific video game?

Ask us on the forums: Tell us about the video game, the level of details that you want (i.e. medium, high or ultra details) and finally the resolution (e.g. 1920 x 1080. NOT the size) of the monitor or HDTV that you’ll use.

Recommended Parts Summary:

Main recommendations, upgrades and alternatives:

1. Recommended Components are in Bold, with one or more color(s) for the Tier(s).
2. Suggested Alternatives and Upgrades are in Italic. You can upgrade as many parts as you want to, including parts from higher Tiers.
3. All Parts are interchangeable/compatible with each other, except for the Intel LGA1155 CPUs/motherboards that aren’t compatible with the Intel LGA2011 CPUs/motherboards. Also, the ASUS P9X79 motherboard requires a case that supports SSI CEB motherboards.

High-End Gaming PCs Tiers: Tier 8 (In Green) Tier 9 (In Orange) Tier 10 (In Red) Tier 11 (In Fuchsia) Tier 12 (In Dark Red) *Click on a component’s name (e.g. CPU) to jump to the detailed section of it.*	Price $1759 $1929 $2294 $2747 $4165
CPU Tier 8-9: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5-3.9GHz Turbo Unlocked LGA1155 77W Tier 10: Intel Core i7-3820 LGA2011 Quad-Core 10MB L3 3.6-3.9GHz Tier 11-12: Intel Core i7-3930K LGA2011 Six-Core 3.2-3.8GHz Unlocked Intel Core i7-3970X LGA2011 Six-Core 15MB L3 3.5-4.0GHz Unlocked	- $322 $297 $540 $1050
Motherboard Tier 8-9: GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB 2xLAN 4xUSB3 LGA1155 WiFi ASUS Sabertooth LGA 1155 Z77 SATA6Gb/s USB3.0 5yrs war. ASUS P8Z77-V DELUXE LGA 1155 Z77 SATA6Gb/s USB3.0 Wifi Tier 10-11-12: ASRock Extreme6 LGA2011 X79 SATA6Gb/s USB3.0 8xDIMM ASUS SABERTOOTH X79 LGA2011 USB 3.0 SATA III 8xDIMM ASUS P9X79 WS LGA2011 X79 (case that supports SSI CEB required!)	- $220 $240 $252 $220 $328 $380
RAM Tier 8-9: Corsair 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600MHz Tier 10-11-12: Corsair 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz G.SKILL 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5v G.SKILL 64GB (8 x 8GB) DDR3 1333MHz 1.5v	- $103 $115 $262 $440
Video Card Tier 8: Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Boost Dual Fans Tier 9: Two Radeon HD 7950 Boost 3GB in Crossfire Tier 10: Two Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Boost in Crossfire Tier 11: GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB Tier 12: Two GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB in SLI	- $410 $580 $820 $1100 $2200
Storage SAMSUNG 840 250GB SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD) Tier 8-9-10-11: SAMSUNG 840 Pro 256GB SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD) SAMSUNG 840 500GB SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD) Tier 12: SAMSUNG 840 Pro 512GB SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD) All Tiers: Western Digital Caviar Red 2TB SATA III Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA III Western Digital Caviar Black 4TB SATA III	- $169 $226 $329 $449 $117 $158 $303
Optical Drive All Tiers: Lite-On SATA 24X DVD Burner Pioneer Black 15X SATA Blu-Ray/CD/DVD Burner	- $18 $65
Power Supply Tier 8-9 and 11: XFX PRO850W XXX 850W Semi-Modular 80PLUS Silver KingWin LZP-850 Modular 850 Watts 80 PLUS Platinum Tier 10: KingWin LZP-1000 Modular 1000 Watts 80 PLUS Platinum Tier 12: Seasonic X-Series X-1050 1050W Modular 80 Plus Gold Seasonic X-Series X-1250 1250W Modular 80 Plus Gold ENERMAX MAXREVO 1350W 80 PLUS GOLD Modular	- $110 $150 $180 $205 $255 $316
Case COUGAR Challenger Orange NZXT Phantom Black NZXT Phantom White NZXT Phantom Black/Orange NZXT Phantom White/Red NZXT Phantom Black/Green NZXT Phantom Black COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Rosewill Thor V2 Tier 8-9: Antec P280 Rosewill Thor V2 White Corsair Graphite 600T Black Antec P280 Silverstone RV03B-W Matte Black Silverstone RV03B-WA Black/Gray Azza HURRICAN 2000 Blue LEDs Azza HURRICAN 2000 Red LEDs BitFenix Colossus Venom Green BitFenix Colossus Venom White w/ Blue LED BitFenix Colossus Venom Blue Corsair Graphite 600T White Antec Twelve Hundred V3 NZXT Switch 810 Black NZXT Switch 810 White COOLER MASTER HAF X Blue Edition Corsair Obsidian Series 650D 1x120mm 2x200mm CM HAF X Blue LEDs 1x140mm 1x200mm 2x240mm + GPU Duct Tier 10-11-12: Corsair Obsidian 650D Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra Thermaltake Level 10 GT Corsair Obsidian Series 800D 3x140mm Thermaltake Level 10 GT Snow Edition Cooler Master Cosmos II SilverStone TJ10-B Nvidia Edition LIAN LI PC-V2120X All Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower SILVERSTONE Temjin TJ11B-W Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower	- $66 $120 $130 $120 $120 $100 $120 $160 $130 $110 $140 $140 $110 $144 $144 $140 $170 $145 $145 $180 $174 $165 $170 $170 $210 $194 $210 $180 $190 $240 $274 $281 $305 $330 $470 $660
Cooling Tier 8-9: Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler Tier 10-11-12: Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 CPU Cooler Sunbeamtech Fan Controller, 6 Channels, Up to 30W each	- $83 $81 $28
Sound: Sound cards: All Tiers: ASUS XONAR DGX 5.1 PCI-Express 1x ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express 1x ASUS Xonar U3 USB Sound Card Speakers: 2.0 (2 satellites no sub-woofer) Logitech X-140 2.0 5W Creative Inspire T12 2.0 18W Creative Gigaworks T20 Series II 2.0 28W 2.1 (2 satellites + sub-woofer): Creative A220 2.1 9W Logitech Z313 2.1 25W Logitech Z323 2.1 30W Logitech Z523 2.1 40W Logitech Z623 2.1 200W Corsair SP2500 2.1 232W 5.1 (5 satellites + sub-woofer) Logitech Z506 5.1 75W Logitech Z906 5.1 500W Headphones/Earphones: *Open Design* Headphones: Koss KSC75 Clip on headphones Koss PortaPro Superlux HD668B Grado SR-60i Grado SR-80i Audio Technica ATH-AD700 Grado SR225i Sennheiser HD 598 Grado SR325is *Closed Design* Headphones: Koss UR-20 Panasonic RP-HTX7 (Available in Black, Red, White, Pink and Green) Audio-Technica ATH-M30 Shure SRH440 Audio Technica ATH-A700 Audio Technica ATH-M50S (Straight 10ft Cable) Audio-Technica ATH-M50 (Coiled Cable) Sennheiser HD25-1 II In-Ear Headphones: Logitech Ultimate Ears 200 Sony MDREX310LP Etymotic ER-4P Microphone: Syba 3.5mm microphone with stand Blue Microphones Snowball USB Microphone Headsets: Yapster TM-YP100A Koss SB-45 Corsair Vengeance 1100 Sennheiser PC 151 Razer Moray Plus ARCTIC Sound P531 SteelSeries Siberia V2 Logitech G35 Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Wrath Wireless Logitech G930	- - $40 $85 $43 - - $27 $47 $82 - $30 $44 $60 $75 $124 $230 - $85 $340 - - $16 $32 $53 $79 $99 $100 $200 $249 $295 - $17 $36 $37 $90 $130 $114 $119 $200 - $12 $90 $249 - $9 $70 - $16 $31 $37 $48 $58 $50 $90 $90 $120 $98
Network All Tiers: Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbps: Integrated on the motherboard Wireless adapters: Tier 8-9: WiFi 802.11b/g/n included with motherboard Rosewill 802.11b/g/n 300Mbps Wireless USB2.0 5dBi Antenna TRENDnet TEW-684UB Dual Band 802.11b/g/n 450Mbps USB2.0 Wireless Routers: TP-Link WL TL-WR841N 300Mbps TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND 300Mbps USB D-Link DIR-645 300Mbps USB ASUS RT-N56U Dual-Band 600Mbps Buffalo WZR-D1800H AirStation AC1300 / N900 Gigabit Dual Band 1300Mbps 802.11ac	- Free - Free $23 $30 - $35 $51 $65 $106 $150

Recommendations in details:

Motherboard:

Tier 8 and 9:

$220 – GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB LGA1155 SATA6Gb/s 4xUSB3.0 FW BT E-SATA WiFi

Only compatible with LGA1155 CPUs, not compatible with LGA2011 CPUs. In other words, you can’t upgrade to Tier 10-11-12 CPUs on this motherboard, if you want such CPUs, you’ll have to upgrade to a LGA2011 motherboard, recommended for Tier 10 and higher.

Why did I pick this motherboard for Tiers 8 and 9:

In my opinion, the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB has the best set of features available on the LGA1155 socket motherboards, many of which that I consider very important for the High-End Gaming PCs:

Two slots worth of space between the two main PCI-Express 16x slots, which gives the top video card some space to “breath” in order to stay at a reasonable temperature.
A PCI-Express 1x slot that is located above the top PCI-Express 16x slot, allowing for a dedicated sound card without reducing the airflow to the top video card.
Five fan connectors (One four pins for the CPU and four 4 pins for other fans)
Three USB 3.0 header and four USB 3.0 ports on the back of the motherboard. You also get an included 3.5″ 2x USB 3.0 bracket that can be installed on the front of your case to get two additional USB 3.0 ports. In total, you get eight USB 3.0 ports (four on the back, two with the bracket and two with the case)
Large variety of connectors on the back: Dual LAN, 4x USB 3.o, 2x USB 2.0, FireWire, E-SATA
A m-SATA connector on the board, allowing you to connect a SSD for example
An included PCI-Express 1x Wifi 802.11 b/g/n & Bluetooth 4.0 adapter, allowing you to connect to a wireless network without needing to buy a separate adapter. It’s fairly short too, so it shouldn’t block much airflow to the video card(s). I’d install it in the 3rd PCI-Express 1x slot (the one above the 2nd PCI-Express 16x slot).
Power and Reset buttons on the motherboard, allowing you to easily test your PC outside your case.
Solid Power delivery components and solid cooling for them, ensuring that the motherboard won’t bottleneck your CPU overclocking.
Dual BIOS, with a physical switch on the board, allowing you to easily switch from one BIOS to another.

Ports, expansion slots, features, what’s included in the box, etc.

Ports on the back: 2x USB 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, FireWire, E-SATA, two 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ-45 LAN, 5 audi0 ports (for 7.1 sound), VGA, DVI, HDMI and Displayport outputs and an Optical S/PDIF Out.
Expansion slots: Three PCI-Express 3.0 16x slots (single at 16x, dual at 8x/8x and triple at 8x/8x/4x), three PCI-Express 1x and one PCI slots.
Other connectors/features on the motherboard: Five fan connectors (Five 4 pins), five SATA 6.0Gb/s, four SATA 3.0Gb/s, one mSATA, Clear CMOS, power and reset buttons, SATA power connector (OC-PEG, located above the SATA ports) connector for additional power for the PCI-Express slots, three USB 3.0 header (to be used with included bracket and case USB 3.0 header), two USB 2.0 headers (for up to four USB 2.0 ports coming from the headers in total), FireWire header, LED debug, BIOS switch, TPM header, SLI/Crossfire support (obviously) and support for LGA1155/LGA1156 CPU Coolers.
Included in the box: Motherboard, four SATA cables, SLI dongle, USB 3.0 3.5″ bracket WiFi/Bluetooth 4.0 PCI-Express 1x card, two WiFi antennas, I/O backplate, manual and two CDs.

Socket: LGA1155

Ivy Bridge CPUs (Core ix-3xxx) use the LGA 1155 socket and the following chipsets:

7 series Chipsets: For Ivy Bridge CPUs, you have the H77, Z75 and Z77 chipsets.

H77 supports the integrated GPU found in the CPU and thus allow for video output without a discrete video card. However, they do not support CPU overclocking.
Z75 does support the integrated GPU found in the CPU, as well as CPU overclocking. However, it does not support Intel SRT (SSD caching), which I don’t recommend anyway (see note below).
Z77 is the high-end chipset. It supports the integrated GPU and overclocking just like Z75. It also support Intel SRT (SSD caching).

While some older LGA1155 motherboard, based on the H61, H67, P67 and Z68 chipsets do support Ivy Bridge after a BIOS/UEFI update, this is not the case of all of them.

Also, the 7-series chipset equipped motherboards bring native USB 3.0 support, with greater performance and thus are recommended if you build a PC with a new Ivy Bridge CPU, so that way, you get the best performance and are sure that it will work with your Ivy Bridge CPU.

CPU Coolers compatibility: CPU Coolers that are compatible with the LGA1156 socket are also compatible with the LGA 1155 socket. Some LGA1155 motherboards support LGA 775 CPU Coolers too.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

About Intel’s QuickSync and SSD Caching:

All 7-series chipsets allows you to access the IGP from the CPU, which allows you to take advantage of Intel’s QuickSync, a technology that lets you use the IGP in your CPU to accelerate video conversion (amongst other things), allowing you to convert video faster than with just a CPU.

However, the drawback is that the quality of converted videos is lower than if they are converted with a CPU. This is subjective though, so the loss in quality might be an acceptable drawback for you, if you value the time than you gain.

As for SSD Caching, AnandTech has two excellent articles on the subject. They are on the Z68 chipset, but SSD caching is the same on Z77:

In short, while SSD caching is an interesting technology, you’re better off using your SSD as your boot drive and manually managing where your applications and games get installed (SSD or HDD), if you want the best performance possible, all the time.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Alternative motherboards for Tier 8 or 9:

$240 – ASUS Sabertooth LGA 1155 Z77 SATA6Gb/s USB3.0 5yrs war. – Featuring ASUS’s “TUF” design and a 5 years warranty, this is a great alternative.
$252 – ASUS P8Z77-V DELUXE LGA 1155 Z77 SATA6Gb/s USB3.0 Wifi – (Currently on sale, usually goes for $280+) The ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe offer similar ports to the recommended Gigabyte, including the WiFi + BLuetooth 4.0, the difference being that the WiFi/bluetooth is integrated on the board and doesn’t take a PCI-Express 1x slot. It also offers excellent performance, I’m quoting AnanTech’s review here: “The P8Z77-V Deluxe utilizes MultiCore Enhancement, a ‘feature’ on ASUS motherboards to boost multi-threaded performance. Combine this with what seem like a few tweaks native to the board and we have a product which single handedly takes the top position in almost every throughput benchmark we have, and comes near the top in ones that it does not.”

Tier 10, 11 and 12:

$220 – ASRock Extreme6 LGA2011 X79 SATA6Gb/s USB3.0 8xDIMM

Only compatible with LGA2011 CPUs, not compatible with LGA1155 CPUs. In other words, you can’t go with the Tier 8-9 CPU on this motherboard, if you want such a CPU, you’ll have to go with a LGA1155 motherboard, recommended for Tier 8 and 9.

Why did I pick this motherboard for Tiers 10, 11 and 12:

Simply put, it is unmatched when you consider the features that it offers and its relatively low price for a LGA2011 motherboard.

For $220, you get eight RAM slots, solid CPU power delivery, four USB 3.0 ports, E-SATA and FireWire on the back of the motherboard + two more USB 3.0 ports via the USB 3.0 header, a bundled 2x USB 3.0 ports panel that can be installed either in a 3.5″ bracket on the front of your case or via a PCI bracket on a PCI slot on your case.

The ASRock X79 Extreme 6 has two slots of space between the two main PCI-Express 16x slots, allowing the top video card (for Crossfire/SLI setups) to have enough room to “breathe” and run at safe temperatures.

All of these reasons are why I’m recommending it for Tier 10, 11 and 12.

Features:

Two slots worth of space between the two main PCI-Express 16x slots, which gives the top video card some space to “breath” in order to stay at a reasonable temperature.
Nothing short of six fan connectors (Two 4 pins, four 3 pins)
A USB 3.0 header to plug in the case’s front USB 3.0 ports.
PS/2, FireWire, E-SATA and USB 3.0 ports, as well as a Clear CMOS button, are all located on the back of the motherboard. The Clear CMOS button alone is hugely useful when you overclock and need to clear the CMOS. No more need to move a jumper, which is a pain compared to using a simple button.
Power and Reset buttons on the motherboard, allowing you to easily test your PC outside your case.
Solid Power delivery components and solid cooling for them, ensuring that the motherboard won’t bottleneck your CPU overclocking.

Ports, expansion slots, features, what’s included in the box, etc.

Ports on the back: 2x PS/2, 4x USB 2.0, 4x USB 3.0 (Two more on the front of the case with the USB 3.0 header), FireWire, E-SATA, 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ-45 LAN, 5 audi0 ports (for 7.1 sound), Coaxial + Optical S/PDIF Out and finally, a Clear CMOS button.
Expansion slots: Three PCI-Express 3.0 16x slots (16x, 16x, 8x), two PCI-Express 1x and two PCI slots.
Other connectors/features on the motherboard: Six fan connectors (Two 4 pins, four 3 pins), five SATA 6.0Gb/s, four SATA 3.0Gb/s, power and reset buttons, 4-pin Molex connector for additional power for the PCI-Express slots, USB 3.0 header (to be used with included bracket), two USB 2.0 headers (for up to four USB 2.0 ports coming from the headers in total), FireWire header, LED debug and SLI/Crossfire support.
Included in the box: Motherboard, four SATA cables, two-way and three-way SLI dongles, I/O backplate, manual and CD.

CPU Coolers compatibility: Only LGA2011 CPU Coolers are supported. Many LGA1155/1156/1366 can be made compatible using an additional adapter.

Alternative

$338 – ASUS SABERTOOTH X79 LGA2011 USB 3.0 SATA III 8xDIMM – The ASUS Sabertooth X79 features a ceramic-coating on its heatsinks, to provide better heat dissipation, “TUF” Capacitors, Chokes and MOSFETS, which are certified by military standard to ensure greater durability and best of all, a 5 years warranty.
$380 – ASUS P9X79 WS LGA 2011 X79 SSI CEB – Note that this is NOT an ATX motherboard and that you’ll need a case that supports E-ATX or SSI CEB form factor motherboards to use it. With six PCI-Express 16x slots, including four of them that can run at PCI-Express 3.0 8x/8x/8x/8x, dual Intel LAN controllers and much more, the ASUS P9X79 WS is truly an high-end motherboard. Note that the recommended case for Tier 10, 11 and 12 does support this motherboard.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

CPU:

Tier 8 and 9:

$322 – Intel Core i7-3770K LGA1155 3.5-3.9GHz Turbo Unlocked Multiplier 77W

Based on Intel’s 3rd generation Core CPUs, Ivy Bridge:

Performance:
Intel third generation of Core CPUs, known under the codename Ivy Bridge (IB from here on) is here.

Replacing Intel’s LGA1155 Sandy Bridge (SB from here on, known as Core ix 2xxx) CPUs, the LGA1155 based IB CPUs (Known as Core ix 3xxx) bring in on average a 7%-15% performance improvement compared to the previous-generation of LGA1155 SB CPUs.

The higher performance is due to improved IPC (instructions per clock, aka performance at a given frequency), improved Turbo and slightly higher frequencies.

Needless to say, if it’s slightly faster than Sandy Bridge, which had no problem outperforming AMD’s Bulldozer/Llano CPUs, Ivy Bridge has no problem outperforming the competition (AMD’s Piledriver/Trinity) in nearly all situations.

Improved Turbo:

On Sandy Bridge, Turbo increases the frequency by 100, 200, 300 or 400MHz, with 4, 3, 2 or 1 core(s) active respectively.
On Ivy Bridge, Turbo increases the frequency by 200, 300, 400 or 400MHz, with 4, 3, 2 or 1 core(s) active respectively.

On top of that, Ivy Bridge runs at Turbo frequencies more often and for longer than Sandy Bridge.

Power consumption:
IB consumes about 17-18W less at load compared to SB and if you consider to it completes workloads faster than SB, it’s quite a bit more power efficient than SB. Idle power consumption is pretty much identical between IB and SB.

Overclocking:
Back in the Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad days and with previous generations of Intel CPUs, to overclock, all you had to do was to raise the BCLK (baseclock) or FSB frequency, until you reach the limit of your CPU and/or motherboard and/or cooling solution.

With Ivy Bridge, just like with SandyBridge, this is no longer the case: the 6 and 7-series chipsets integrate the clock generator. What once was a component on the motherboard, the PLL is now on the 6/7-series chipset die. The integrated PLL feeds a source clock to many other controllers (e.g. SATA) to the CPU itself.

The problem will that is if you if you raise the BCLK frequency, you will also raise the frequency of many other controllers and that will cause your PC to crash after raising the BLCK by more than 5-7%. So forget overclocking via the BCLK if you’re serious about overclocking.

To overclock, you’ll want to raise the CPU multiplier. How much you can raise it depends on your CPU:

If you have a CPU that offers no Turbo mode (e.g. Celeron/Pentium/Core i3), then you can’t raise the multiplier at all and thus can’t overclock. In short: Your CPU is completely locked.
If you have a CPU with Turbo modes (e.g. Core i5-3550), you can overclock, but just a bit, using a motherboard equipped with a Z chipset. You are limited to an overclock of 4 processor bins above and beyond the highest turbo frequency.

Let’s use a Core i5-3550, which runs at 3.3GHz by default, as an example:

When one or two cores are active, the chip can turbo up to 3.7GHz. You can change that turbo state to go as high as 4.1GHz.
When three cores are active, the chip can turbo up to 3.6GHz. You can change that turbo state to go as high as 4.0GHz.
When four cores are active, the chip can turbo up to 3.5GHz. You can change that turbo state to go as high as 3.9GHz.

Overclocking the non-K Core i5/i7 chips relies entirely on turbo however. In the case above, the fastest your chip will run is 4.1GHz but with only one core or two cores active. If you have four cores active the fastest your chip can run is 3.9GHz. Makes sense?

Finally, there’s the K-series of CPUs, with the Core i5-3570K and Core i7-3770K currently available. These chips are fully unlocked and will let you overclock them as far as the CPU and/or your cooling can sustain.

Dynamic overclocking:
One of the cool new features of Ivy Bridge is dynamic overclocking, which allows users to change the CPU/IGP multipliers within Windows without rebooting. It works flawlessly with Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU).

Ivy Bridge running hot when overclocked?
You may have heard reports that Ivy Bridge runs hot, much hotter than Sandy Bridge, when overclocked. There’s some truth to this, so let me explain it to you.

Simply put, Ivy Bridge doesn’t react well to highly increased voltage. Past 1.30-1.35V temperatures greatly increase, so I recommend that if you use air-cooling, even high-end air-cooling, stay in the 1.20V-1.25V range.

Of course, make sure to monitor your temperatures. Ivy Bridge maximum temperature before it starts throttling its frequency down to protect itself from damage is 105C, 5C higher than Sandy Bridge’s 100C. However, for 24/7 usage, I recommend not exceeding 85C, to keep your CPU safe.

The good news is that most chips shouldn’t have any problems hitting 4.5-4.7GHz with 1.20V or less, which is great for the average overclocker, but scaling gets progressively worse as you go above these levels.

In other words, Ivy Bridge is great for the average overclocker and if you intend on really pushing it to its limits, be warned that you’ll need a serious after-market cooling solution.

Does that mean that you should get a Sandy Bridge CPU instead, if you intend to overclock?
In my opinion, no. Even if you’re able to get an extra 100-300MHz with a Sandy Bridge CPU vs an Ivy Bridge CPU, it won’t be enough to overcome Ivy Bridge architecture improvements, so you’ll end with either lower or similar performance and higher power consumption with an overclocked Sandy Bridge CPU vs an overclocked Ivy Bridge CPU.

That said, if you already have a Sandy Bridge CPU, there’s no point upgrading to Ivy Bridge, except perhaps getting PCI-Express 3.0 if you run or intend to run two high-end video cards in Crossfire or SLI and don’t want to be bottlenecked by PCI-Express 2.0.

Tier 10

$297 – Intel Core i7-3820 LGA2011 Quad-Core 10MB L3 3.6-3.9GHz

The Core i7-3820 is the quad-core variant of the LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E architecture.

Those who take their overclocking seriously will be better served with a Core i7-3820. It might be a little slower clock-per-clock, and consume more power, but it offers more overclocking potential, runs cooler when overclocked, and there’s a clear upgrade path to Ivy Bridge-E down the road (Late 2013 or Early 2014). For the LGA1155 platform, Ivy Bridge is the end of the road since Haswell is going use the LGA1150 socket.

Overclocking:

The Core i7-3820 is a partly unlocked CPU. What does this mean? Well, it means that its multiplier is limited to 43x, so overclocking the chip relies either on:
A- Turbo, in which case the Core i7-3820, you can raise the frequency by 400MHz, or four Turbo bins. This means that the fastest your chip will run is 4.3GHz but with only one core active. If you have four cores active the fastest your chip can run is 4.0GHz.
B- Raising the bclk: Unlike Sandy Bridge LGA1155 CPUs, Sandy Bridge-E LGA2011 CPUs can be overclocked by raising the bclk without any problem.

If you want a fully unlocked LGA2011 CPU to make overclocking easier, via the multiplier, you’ll need to get either the K-series Core i7-3930K, recommended below for Tier 11-12, or alternatively the Extreme Edition Core i7-3970X.

Tier 11 and 12:

$540 – Intel Core i7-3930K LGA2011 Six-Core 3.2-3.8GHz Turbo Unlocked Multiplier

Why am I recommending the Core i7-3930K over the Core i7-3820/i7-3770k for Tier 11 and 12?
Gaming performance wise, the Core i7-3770k usually has a slight edge (5-10%) over the Core i7-3930K, thanks to the Ivy Bridge CPu architecture improvements, although some games run just as well on the Core i7-3930K, if not even better in a few cases.

Because there’s more than just gaming:
I also realize that most people dropping this kind of cash on a PC are PC enthusiasts and do more than gaming on their system.

Outside of gaming, the Core i7-3930K offer substantially more performance over the Core i7-3770K in many applications, thanks to its six cores with Hyper-Threading. You can see how the Core i7-3930K and the Core i7-3770K compare here on AnandTech.

Do note that the Core i7-3930K does not include an Intel stock CPU Cooler, which doesn’t matter mind you, since I recommend an after-market CPU Cooler, for low-noise and overclocking potential.

Alternative

$1050 – Intel Core i7-3970X LGA2011 Six-Core 15MB L3 3.5-4.0GHz Unlocked – The best of the best. The Intel Core i7-3970X “Extreme Edition” is the fastest consumer CPU that money can get you. Compared to the Core i7-3930K, you get an additional 3MB of L3 cache, 300MHz higher base frequency and 200MHz higher Turbo frequency. You don’t buy this CPU because it offers a great bang for your buck, you buy it because you want THE fastest CPU available and/or as a bragging right. When nothing but THE best will do, the Core i7-3970X is the way to go.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Video Card:

A few important recommendations and notes regarding video cards:

Get the latest version of the video card drivers directly from AMD or Nvidia. That way, you’ll be sure to get the latest bug fixes as well as the best performance possible from your video card(s).
To confirm whether Crossfire or SLI is working or not, use GPU-Z which will show that information to you in the last field at the bottom of the program.
SLI Guide: How to enable SLI, check if SLI is enabled, actually working in your game and what to do if it’s not is a great guide from the Notebook Review forums. If you know of a similar guide that covers Crossfire, let me know, I’ll make sure to add it to the article.
When using two or more video cards in Crossfire or SLI, you want to connect your monitors into the top video card, i.e. the video card that is the closest to the CPU.
Most video cards require one or two PCI-Express 6 or 8 pin power connector(s) to be plugged into them to function properly. Make sure that your power supply comes equipped with enough 6 and/or 8 pin connectors for your video cards. I mention this requirement in the power supply section. Of course, I double-checked that already for the recommendations in this article, I simply mention it if you decide to modify a Tier.

Tier 8:

$410 – Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Boost Dual Fans

I now recommend the Radeon HD 7970 over the Geforce GTX 680 for three reasons:

AMD introduced performance improvements that lowered the average latency in their newer driver, resulting in the Radeon HD 7970 being pretty much on par performance wise with the GTX 680.
The price of the Radeon HD 7970 went down and is lower than the GTX 680.
You get free Crysis 3 & BioShock game coupons with purchase of a Radeon HD 7970 card.

Tier 9:

$580 – TwoSapphire Radeon HD 7950 Boost 3GB GHz Dual Fans in Crossfire

If you want higher performance than what the fastest video card offers, what do you do?

You team up two video cards together!

For $600, you get two Radeon HD 7950 Boost in Crossfire, which have no problem outperforming a single Radeon HD 7970 or GTX 680.

Upgrade for Ultra High-End 3D Gaming Performance

If you desire even more performance for 3D Gaming at higher resolutions (i.e 3840 x 1080 or 5760 x 1080), or if you want to be a bit more future-proof, I recommend that you go with Tier 10, 11 or Tier 12 video cards recommendations.

Also do note that if you upgrade your video cards, you’ll most likely have to upgrade your power supply too. See the power supply section for more information on this.

Tier 10:

$820 – Two Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Boost Dual Fans in Crossfire

Upside: A lot of performance for $820
Offering higher performance overall than the Geforce GTX Titan, while costing roughly $300 less, two Radeon HD 7970 in Crossfire are a force to be reckoned with.

The downside: Power consumption, heat, noise and Crossfire profiles
Two Radeon 7970 in Crossfire will consume a lot of power, emit a lot of heat and consequently, a lot of noise.

You also will have to deal with Crossfire profiles, updates and games that sometimes need an update to perform properly.

Is it worth saving $200 vs the $1000 Geforce GTX Titan?
If all you care about is raw performance, sure. If you care about power consumption, heat, noise and possible game issues due to Crossfire (this happens with Nvidia SLI too), the Geforce GTX Titan might be the better option. Also, you can add a second Geforce GTX Titan if you want even more performance!

Tier 11:

$1100 – GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB

Simply put, this card features the fastest single-GPU on the market.

If you want the fastest video card without messing with Crossfire, SLI or dual-GPU video card setups, this is the way to go.

While some may complain that it’s very highly priced, keep in mind that it offers a 45%-55% performance improvement over the GTX 680, the sort of performance improvement that you usually see when you jump from one generation of GPUs to the next one.

It’s also by far the fastest single-GPU solution and as such, has no direct competition from AMD, allowing Nvidia to charge pretty much whatever they want at this point.

So, is it a good deal, from a performance/price point of view? Far from it. But if you want THE fastest single-GPU video for a micro-shutter free experience, this is the price to pay to get it.

Tier 12:

$2200 – Two GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB in SLI

If you want the best performance possible, without consideration for anything else, two Geforce Titan in SLI are the way to go.

If you want to play video games on multiple monitors and/or
If you want to future-proof your PC and/or
If you want to play games with texture games that can use more than 2GB of VRAM (e.g. Skyrim)

This is as good as it gets, without messing with Triple/Quad SLI (diminishing returns, very high power consumption and noise, not worth it in my opinion)

Click here to go back up to parts summary

RAM:

Tiers 8-9:

$103 – Corsair 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600MHz

Tier 8 and 9 feature dual-channel motherboards, so I’m recommending a dual-channel kit with two RAM sticks, leaving two free RAM slots on your motherboard if you want to add RAM in the future.

If you’re like me and like switching back (Alt-Tab or Alt-Esc) to your desktop to check something while pausing your game and keeping it open, along with a bunch of open programs, 16GB will further improve the responsiveness of your PC compared to 8GB.

Also, if you intend on keeping this Gaming PC for more than say, 1-2 years, 16GB is worth it.

That way, you know that you’ll be future-proof for a while and that you can alt-tab out of your games with minimal lag.

Tier 10-11-12:

$115 – Corsair 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz

Tier 10, 11 and 12 feature quad-channel motherboards, so I’m recommending a quad-channel kit with four RAM sticks. Note that depending on the motherboard that you pick, you’ll either fill up all four RAM slots if you have four RAM slots or you’ll have four free RAM slots on your motherboard if you pick a motherboard with eight RAM slots.

Maximum amount of RAM: LGA1155 motherboards in this guide support four sticks of RAM, for a maximum of 32GB (4x8GB) of RAM. The LGA2011 motherboards in this guide supports either four sticks of RAM, for a maximum of 32GB (4x8GB) of RAM or eight sticks of RAM, for a maximum of 64GB (8x8GB) of RAM.

Upgrades:

If you want 32GB of RAM on four RAM sticks, I recommend the: $262 – G.SKILL 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5v
If you want 64GB of RAM on eight RAM sticks (make sure to get a motherboard with eight RAM slots), get the: $440 – G.SKILL 64GB (8 x 8GB) DDR3 1333MHz 1.5v

Heatsinks and CPU cooler clearance:
Every kit that I recommend in this guide feature either no heatsinks or not too tall heatsinks that don’t raise too much above the RAM sticks.

Why?

Because RAM heatsinks barely make any difference when it comes to RAM temperatures. Besides, even if you overclock it/raise the voltage (at your own risk), RAM temperatures aren’t a problem as long as you have decent airflow in your case.
Tall RAM heatsinks can get in the way of larger aftermarket CPU Coolers, preventing you from installing your aftermarket CPU Cooler!

You simply have to go within the BIOS/UEFI (The first thing that you see when your PC starts) and enable XMP, for your RAM to function at its rated speed. If XMP is not available or doesn’t work for some reason, you can adjust the RAM settings manually, such as frequency (In MHz, usually linked to the CPU, look for a CPU:RAM ratio) and timings (a series of numbers, such as 9-9-9-24). Refer to your motherboard manual and your RAM specifications for more information.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Storage:

Quick tip: Get the most performance out of your SSD, by selecting AHCI in your BIOS/EFI options. Unless you use two SSD or HDD in RAID 0 or 1 that is, in which case you want to select RAID.

SSD FAQ:

If you wondering “Who are SSDs for?”, if you want a quick recap on what a SSD is, wonder about reports of SSDs slowing down over time or want to learn more about TRIM and/or TRIM with RAID, I invite you to read our SSD FAQ.

I also invite you to read this article of mine, updated monthly, for other recommendations: The Best SSDs and HDDs For Your Money.

Tier 8, 9, 10 and 11:

$226 – SAMSUNG 840 Pro 256GB SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD)

Of course, with an High-End Gaming PC, you have the right to expect an high-end storage solution. A long time ago, I asked you in a poll what would be the minimum acceptable capacity for a SSD for you in a build. The majority of you said 160GB.

Now that the prices of SSDs are going down and that their reliability is going up, I feel comfortable with recommending them for the high-end Gaming PCs.

With nothing short of 256GB, this SSD is above the minimum acceptable capacity for a SSD that most of you want and is enough to handle Windows and many games.

Best of all? The Samsung 840 Pro series is one of the fastest, if not THE fastest and most reliable SSD on the market!

Less expensive alternative:
If you don’t mind sacrificing some performance, the $169 – SAMSUNG 840 250GB SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD) costs quite a bit less than the Samsung 840 Pro series. While their performance is not as good as the 840 Pro the 840 series are as fast as the previous 830 series which were anything but slow. Besides, they are still way faster than any hard drive and their reliability are top-notch.

Tier 12:

$449 – SAMSUNG 840 Pro 512GB SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD)

For Tier 12, we’re bumping the total SSD storage capacity to 512GB.

The Samsung 840 Pro series is one of the fastest, if not THE fastest and most reliable SSD on the market!

With 512GB to play with on your SSD and 2TB on the hard drive, I doubt that you’ll run out of space anytime soon.

Less expensive alternative:
If you don’t mind sacrificing some of performance, the $329 – SAMSUNG 840 500GB SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD) costs quite a bit less than the Samsung 840 Pro series. While their performance is not as good as the 840 Pro the 840 series are as fast as the previous 830 series which were anything but slow. Besides, they are still way faster than any hard drive and their reliability are top-notch.

For other options and more information on SSDs, I recommend that you read our own The Best HDDs and SSDs For Your Money article.

Hard Drives:

All Tiers:

$117 – Western Digital Caviar Red 2TB SATA III

Designed for 24/7 usage, the Western Digital Red hard drive is one of the, if not THE most reliable hard drive currently on the market.

It also offers top-notch performance, while being fairly quiet and offering low consumption for a hard drive. It also comes with a solid three years warranty.

The reason that I recommend this hard drive is because it’s relatively affordable and it’s the most reliable 2TB hard drive currently available on the market.

Besides, you’ll have a 256GB or 512GB SSD to store the OS and programs/games that need the extra performance.

Want a high performance 3TB or 4TB hard drive?

Then I recommend either the $158 – Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA III or the $303 – Western Digital Caviar Black 4TB SATA III. Note that the Caviar Black 4TB comes with a longer 5 years warranty.

SATA II 3.0Gb/s vs SATA III 6.0Gb/s: No performance difference for hard drives!

SATA 3.0 Gb/s (SATA II) and SATA 6.0Gb/s (SATA III) refer to the speed of the connection between the drive and the motherboard.

However, the best hard drives reach about 200MB/s (or 1.60Gb/s) in best scenarios. SATA 3.0Gb/s is plenty enough to handle that and for hard drives, SATA 6.0Gb/s does not offer any performance advantage, since the hard drives can’t even max out a SATA II 3.0Gb/s connection.

Only SSDs take advantage of SATA 6.0Gb/s due to their higher transfer rates.

In other words, if you take two otherwise identical hard drives, the SATA III model will not be faster than the SATA II model. SATA III for hard drives is just a marketing scheme

Reliability/Backup

Keep in mind that no matter how reliable they can be, all hard drives and all SSDs are still prone to failure though, which is why you should Have a Backup System that you can rely on!

SATA Cables: Make sure you have enough!
Just make sure that you have enough SATA cables: The two main recommendations for the motherboards in this guide include four SATA cables. Keep in mind that you’ll need one SATA cable for your optical drive, one for the hard drive and one for your SSD too. Also, all SATA cables can handle SATA III 6.0Gb/s, there are no such thing as a SATA III 6.0Gb/s cable.
Click here to go back up to parts summary

Optical Drive:

Tier All Tiers:

$18 – Lite-On SATA 24X DVD Burner

This drive is able to read and burn CDs and DVDs. Relatively silent (it obviously makes some noise when reading/burning at high speed), compatible with all major formats including DVD-RAM.

The motherboard includes four SATA cables, of which one will be used for the hard drive, one for the SSD (Tier 4 to 7) and one for this DVD Burner, so there’s no need to worry about cables.

Upgrades:
If you want the ability to burn Blu-Ray disks, then the $65 – Pioneer Black 15X SATA Blu-Ray/CD/DVD Burner is what you want.

Regarding Blu-Ray playback:

As far as I know, you still require a specific software to playback Blu-Ray disks on a PC.

Based on various reviews and feedback on various forums, PowerDVD 12 3D Ultra is the software that I recommend to you. You’ll want at least the professional version for Blu-ray playback.

It is fully compatible with Windows 7/8 and shouldn’t give you any problems.
Click here to go back up to parts summary

Case:

Tier 8 and 9:

$110 – Antec P280

For Tier 8 and 9, I went with the Antec P280, a case loved by a lot of people for its looks, features and price.

Cooling wise, this case includes three 120mm case fans, insuring proper cooling for your Gaming PC. Best of all? They come with speed switches, allowing you to between high cooling performance and low noise.

Features wise, you get:

2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, Audio out, MIC in at the top of the front of the case
Case feet stands, for additional stability.
An hole on the back panel, to easily install after-market CPU Cooler without having to remove the motherboard from the case.
Various holes and space to route and hide your wires.
Dual-layer 0.8 mm SECC / polycarbonate side panels absorb noise for sound dampening
Sound-proofing foam on the front down, which cuts down on the noise that the fans emits.
Built-in PSU intake & front air filters

Tier 10, 11 and 12:

$180 – Corsair Obsidian 650D

For Tier 10, 11 and 12, I picked the Corsair Obsidian 650D, a case crafted with brushed aluminium for an unique look that shows that this IS an high-end PC.

Cooling wise, this case includes two 200mm and one 120mm case fans.

Features wise, you get:

2x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, FireWire, Audio out, MIC in at the top
Fan controller that can handle up to four fans
An hole on the back panel, to easily install after-market CPU Cooler without having to remove the motherboard from the case.
Various holes and space to route and hide your wires.
Dust filters
External hot-swappable SATA3 dock
5 years warranty

Alternatives
Pretty much any of these cases can be used as alternatives. If you do go with a dual video cards setup though, make sure to pick a case with plenty of airflow, to ensure proper cooling for your video cards. Feel free to double-check with us on the forums if you’re not sure.

$66 – COUGAR Challenger Orange
$120 – NZXT Phantom Black
$130 – NZXT Phantom White
$120 – NZXT Phantom Black/Orange
$120 – NZXT Phantom White/Red
$100 – NZXT Phantom Black/Green
$120 – NZXT Phantom Black
$160 – COOLER MASTER HAF 932
$130 – Rosewill Thor V2
$140 – Rosewill Thor V2 White
$140 – Corsair Graphite 600T Black
$110 – Antec P280
$144 – Silverstone RV03B-W Matte Black
$144 – Silverstone RV03B-WA Black/Gray
$140 – Azza HURRICAN 2000 Blue LEDs
$170 – Azza HURRICAN 2000 Red LEDs
$145 – BitFenix Colossus Venom Green
$145 – BitFenix Colossus Venom White w/ Blue LED
$180 – BitFenix Colossus Venom Blue
$173 – Corsair Graphite 600T White
$165 – Antec Twelve Hundred V3
$170 – NZXT Switch 810 Black
$170 – NZXT Switch 810 White
$194 – Corsair Obsidian Series 650D 1x120mm 2x200mm
$210 – CM HAF X Blue LEDs 1x140mm 1x200mm 2x240mm + GPU Duct
$190 – Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra
$240 – Thermaltake Level 10 GT
$274 – Corsair Obsidian Series 800D 3x140mm
$281 – Thermaltake Level 10 GT Snow Edition
$305 – Cooler Master Cosmos II
$330 – SilverStone TJ10-B Nvidia Edition
$470 – LIAN LI PC-V2120X All Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower
$660 – SILVERSTONE Temjin Series TJ11B-W Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Power Supply:

Tier 8, 9 and 11:

$110 – XFX PRO850W XXX 850W Semi-Modular 80PLUS Silver

This power supply is capable of delivering up to 850W, not that you should rely on this information only as I often point in posts such as Warning: 6 Surefire Ways of Blowing Up Your Computer Due to an Inadequate Power Supply, but more importantly 70A on the 12V line, the most important factor when it comes to choosing a power supply for a gaming computer.

It is 80 Plus Silver certified, to insure fairly good efficiency, a lower power bill, less heat and noise, compared to a less efficient and/or lower quality power supply.

It’s also “semi-modular” meaning that all cables except for the ones that are always required like the 24-pin and 4/8 pin are modular.

Of course, it’s based on a reliable design, to ensure that it will last you many years.

80 PLUS?
80 PLUS refers to a certification from an independant group that a PSU meets their requirements for the specified level of efficiency. Here’s a chart that shows the different required levels of efficiency depending on the specific 80 PLUS certification:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS

Modular power supply?
A modular power supply is one that allows you to only plug in and only use the power cables that you actually need, instead of being stuck with a bunch of unused power cables that you need to hide somewhere in your case, that are resulting in less of a cable mess.

More efficient power supply:
If you want an even more efficient power supply, to further lower power consumption, heat and noise, the $150 – KingWin LZP-850 Modular 850 Watts 80 PLUS Platinum has a 80PLUS Platinum certification for $40 more.

Tier 10:

$180 – KingWin LZP-1000 Modular 1000 Watts 80 PLUS Platinum

Capable of delivering 1000W and 83A on the 12V line.

This Power Supply is 80 PLUS Platinum certified, to ensure that it doesn’t exhaust much heat and that it’s fairly silent too.
This is a modular power supply, allowing you to only plug in and only use the cables that you actually need, resulting in less of a cable mess.

HardOCP reviewed it and had this to say about it:

The Kingwin LZP-1000 is another in what has become a string of excellent products from Kingwin. From top to bottom, the LZP-1000 is a contender with the best 1000W power supplies we have seen to date. The LZP-1000 features excellent voltage regulation, excellent efficiency, outstanding DC Output Quality, is very quiet, and has very good build quality.

Really, this unit, (…), hits just about all of the right buttons. (…) Users looking for a true high end 1000W enthusiast power supply should give serious consideration to the Kingwin LZP-1000 when they see it at their favorite etailer or retailer as this unit is perhaps the best deal when it comes to an outstanding 1000W power supply we have seen to date.

Tier 12:

$205 – Seasonic X-Series X-1050 1050W Modular 80 Plus Gold

Capable of delivering 1050W and 87A on the 12V line.

This Power Supply is 80 PLUS GOLD certified, to ensure that it doesn’t exhaust much heat and that it’s fairly silent too.

This is a modular power supply, allowing you to only plug in and only use the cables that you actually need, resulting in less of a cable mess.

The Seasonic X-1050W was reviewed by TweakTown here, who gave it a 95% score and had this to say about it:

Seasonic has once again proven why it is often the choice of enthusiasts. The X-1050 performed nearly flawlessly on our test bench through all of our tests. The voltage regulation is at 1% or less across all three rails which is almost unheard of and rarely seen. DC output quality was almost amazing, staying under 30mV of ripple under full load. Topping it off, the unit excels past the minimum for 80Plus Gold certification.

Performance aside, the Seasonic X-1050 has the rest of the package as well. The full modular design coupled with short and long cables ensure that you only have the cables you need in your system. Seasonic backs the unit with a five year warranty and when you add in the price of the unit, it becomes a no-brainer. The X-1050 gives you a win-win no matter how you look at it.

Alternatives

$255 – Seasonic X-Series X-1250 1250W Modular 80 Plus Gold – If you have a Tier 12 setup and really want to overclock your video card to the limit, with additional voltage, upgrading to the X-1250 so that you have enough overhead is recommended. Also a good option to future-proof your build.
$316 – ENERMAX MAXREVO 1350W 80 PLUS GOLD Modular – If you want a power supply that can handle pretty much any setup and/or want to future-proof for a long time for pretty much any upgrade, this will do it.

Power Consumption:

How to calculate power consumption:
I recommend using the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator. Here are the settings that I used:

For Tier 8-9: Core i7-3770K overclocked to 4.5GHz, 1.25v Vcore voltage (fairly realistic and safe), 90% TDP
For Tier 10: Core i7-3820 overclocked to 4.5GHz, 1.35v Vcore voltage (fairly realistic and safe), 90% TDP
For Tier 11-12: Core i7-3930K overclocked to 4.3GHz, 1.35v Vcore voltage, 90% TDP
Motherboard: High-End Desktop
Video Cards depends on the Tier, make sure to select Crossfire or SLI
Four sticks of DDR3 (for 8 sticks, add 15W)
Two regular SATA hard drives + 2 Flash SSD
1 DVD-RW/DVD+RW Drive
Sound Blaster PCI Card (which represents the dedicated sound card)
8 USB Devices
Fan Controller
2 x 120mm regular fans, 6 x 120mm LED fans
System Load: 90%
Capacitor Aging: 20%

A quick note about the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator:
While this is the main tool that I use to estimate power consumption, do note that my recommendations also take into account my personnal experience (over 11 years) and some additional research on my own to verify these numbers. This is why you may notice that the numbers that I give below may or may not match what the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator gives you. When in doubt, stick with my numbers or ask us on the forums.

Give your power supply some overhead:
While you can match a 650W PSU with a 630W requirement, it is good practice to add at least 100W of overhead, so that your PSU doesn’t run at full capacity all the time, as that will reduce its lifespan, increase its chance of failure, increase its heat output and its noise output.

Estimated Power Consumption, per Tier:

According to the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator, with the settings that I described above and my own research, it is estimated that this system will require at load (peak usage), the following numbers. The minimum requirements are in Italic, while my recommendations (including overhead) are in Bold:

600W/700W with the Core i7 3770K (4.5GHz/1.2v) and the Radeon HD 7970 (Tier 8).
670W/800W with the Core i7 3770K (4.5GHz/1.2v) and two Radeon HD 7950 in Crossfire (Tier 9).
800W/900W with the Core i7 3820 (4.5GHz/1.30v) and two Radeon HD 7970 in Crossfire (Tier 10)
720W/850W with the Core i7 3930K (4.3GHz/1.35v) and a Geforce GTX Titan. (Tier 11)
930W/1050W with the Core i7 3930K (4.3GHz/1.35v) and two Geforce GTX Titan in SLI. (Tier 12)

Overclocking your video cards?
Add 30W per card if you don’t touch the voltage of the video cards, 75W per card if you do raise the voltage. Keep in mind that overclocking your video cards will raise their temperatures, even more so if you increase the voltage, so make sure to monitor your video cards temperatures! You want to keep the temperatures below 90C for long-term reliability. Note that if the video cards are factory-overclocked, I already considered this in my calculations, only add wattage if you indeed to overclock them further more.
Click here to go back up to parts summary

Cooling:

CPU Cooler:

Tiers 8 and 9:

$83 – Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler

Inexpensive? Nope.
Light? Nope.
Small? Nope.

So why am I recommending this big, heavy and relatively expensive CPU cooler?

Because it excels at one thing:
It offers outstanding cooling performance, while making not much noise.

The Noctua NH-D14 is considered one of the, if not THE best CPU Cooler on the market, outside of $250+ custom water-cooling setups.

While the Corsair/NZXT/Antec All in one water cooling kits offers ever so slightly better cooling performance, they do so that at the expense of noise, being way more noisy than the Noctua NH-D14.

That’s right: Not only does the Noctua NH-D14 offers top-notch cooling performance, but it does that while being pretty quiet.

As far as I’m concerned, you’re better off with an extra 1-3C but much lower noise levels.

VS the previously recommended Thermalright Silver Arrow:
Performance and noise wise, the Noctua NH-D14 and the Thermalright Silver Arrow trade blows, but the Noctua NH-D14 is far easier to install than the Silver Arrow, hence why I now recommend the Noctua NH-D14.

Compatibility:

This specific model is compatible with LGA1155 platforms, hence why it’s only recommended for Tiers 8 and 9. There’s a similar model, for LGA2011 platforms, that I recommend below for Tier 10, 11 and 12

Tier 10-11-12:

I recommend the $81 – Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 CPU Cooler for Tier 10, 11 and 12, which is the same CPU Cooler recommended for Tier 8 and 9, but with a LGA2011 mounting kit, needed to be compatible with the LGA2011 motherboard..

Why not go with a liquid-cooling CPU Cooler, such as the Corsair H100?
There are a few reasons not to go with a liquid-cooling CPU Cooler:
- Similar cooling performance, but with a much higher noise level, compared to high-end air CPU coolers.
- Higher cost ($110 for Corsair H100 vs ~$90 for high-end air CPU Cooler)
- More possible points of failure (pump, tubing and fans vs only fans)
- Risk of a leak, which can damage many other components!

In the end, a high-end air CPU Cooler is less likely to fail, cannot possibly leak liquid/damage other components, offers similar cooling performance with less noise and costs less.

Thermal Compound

The Noctua NH-D14 comes with high-quality and high-performance thermal compound, so you don’t need to buy any thermal compound separately.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Fan Controller:

$28 – Sunbeamtech Fan Controller, 6 Channels, Up to 30W each

For any Tier, the $28 – Sunbeamtech Fan Controller, 6 Channels, Up to 30W each will allow you to control up to six fans by default or even more if you use y-splitters and the like.

This fan controller is capable of handling six channels (with several fans by channel if you daisy-chain them), with 30W (2.5A at 12V) available per channel.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Sound Card:

Sound card:
All Tiers:

$40 – ASUS XONAR DGX 5.1 PCI-Express 1x

While integrated audio has improved a lot over the years, it’s still no match for the sound quality of a sound card, especially when you use headphones, thanks to the headphone amplifier on the ASUS Xonar DGX.

Considering that audio is a big part of your Gaming PC experience, I believe that $40, or a small % of your total budget, is entirely worth it to improve your PC audio quality, whether it’s for gaming, music or other entertainment purposes.

Notes:
1- I recommend getting a PCi-Express 1x sound card, that can be inserted in the top PCI-Express 1x slot for Tier 8-9 or the bottom PCI-Express 16x slot for Tier 10-11-12, to avoid clearance issues with video cards. Alternatively, you can get the ASUS U3 USB sound card below, which plugs into an USB port and eliminates that issue altogether.
2- I recommend avoiding Creative Labs sound cards, as they have many driver issues and just aren’t as good for the price as the competition.

Alternatives:

$85 – ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express 1x – If you want 7.1 sound.
$43 – ASUS Xonar U3 USB Sound Card – Plugs into an USB port and also has an integrated headphone amplifier. You can also use it with a laptop.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Speakers:

While I do not include speakers in the Tiers budgets, seeing as you may already own some or simply do not want any, here are some recommendations for great speakers at various price points:

Note that the power output is in RMS Watts, a more accurate measurement.

2.0 speakers: 2 satellites and no sub-woofer:

2.1 speakers: 2 satellites and a sub-woofer:

5.1 speakers: 5 satellites and a sub-woofer:

Headphones/Earphones

I do not include headphones nor earphones in the Tiers budgets, seeing as you may already own a pair or simply do not want any.

$17 – Koss UR-20
$36 – Panasonic RP-HTX7 (Available in Black, Red, White, Pink and Green) – I’ve been using these headphones for a few days and let me tell this: For $35, they are a steal. They sound more like $60-$80 headphones in my opinion. Best of all? You have five colors to pick from!
$37 – Audio-Technica ATH-M30
$90 – Shure SRH440
$130 – Audio Technica ATH-A700 – Usually $150+, currently at a great price.
$114 – Audio Technica ATH-M50S (Straight Cable) – There’s also the $119 – Audio-Technica ATH-M50 (Coiled Cable), non-S version, which comes with a coiled cable. I personally ordered myself a pair of the ATH-M50 a few months ago and I love them, they sound better than any other ~$100 headphones that I tried before and isolate fairly well from the outside noise. They are tight at first, so you need to “flex” them a bit. Of course, as in with any good pair of headphones/earphones/speakers, having a good source of source makes all the difference in the world. I use them on the laptop with an ASUS Xonar U3 and they are a great combo.
$200 – Sennheiser HD25-1 II

In-Ear Headphones:
Simply put, these are headphones that you insert straight into your ear, to create a seal between the headphones and your ears.

Microphone:

However, if you do high quality broadcasts such as podcasts, or you record music I recommend the $70 – Blue Microphones Snowball USB Microphone which gives excellent sound quality for only $65.

Headsets:

Headsets are basically headphones with an integrated microphone.

If you go with an headset, make sure to check them all out, since they vary considerably in design.

Click here to go back up to parts summary

Network:

All Tiers:
Ethernet RJ-45 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN: Integrated on the motherboard

Integrated with the motherboard, the Ethernet RJ-45 network adapter will allow you to access your local network and Internet, using a standard LAN cable.

Wireless Networking:
Tier 8-9: WiFi 802.11b/g/n included with the ASUS P8Z77-V motherboard

Note that the GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB motherboard recommended for Tier 8 and 9 comes with a WiFi 802.11b/g/n wireless adapter. Some but not all alternative motherboards also include a wireless adapter.

If a LAN network is not an option or if a wireless network is preferable for you, know this before you use wireless for a Gaming PC:
The problem with wireless is that:

It’s not as reliable as LAN, with signals dropping out, interference and the like.
It induces additional latency compared to LAN, which is the last thing that you want when you’re playing online, especially with first-person shooters.

In short, for reliability and getting a low ping, LAN is simply superior (and cheaper!).

Recommended wireless adapters:
If you understand that and still want to go with wireless, here are my suggestions:

My general recommendation is the $22 – Rosewill 802.11b/g/n 300Mbps Wireless USB2.0 5dBi Antenna, which connects in a USB 2.0 port. It comes with a base, so that you can move it away from the PC for better reception and a 5dBi external antenna to improve reception further more. It support 802.11b/g/n, with transfer rates up to 300Mbps. For $22, it’s unbeatable and it offers a great bang for your buck!

The best solution is the $30 – TRENDnet TEW-684UB Dual Band 802.11b/g/n 450Mbps USB2.0 which offers the excellent range and throughput with up to 450Mbps.

Recommended wireless routers:
Need a wireless router too? No problem. Here are my recommendations, in an ascending order of performance and price:

$35 – TP-Link WL TL-WR841N 300Mbps – A great basic no-frill fairly reliable 300Mbps router.
$51 – TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND 300Mbps USB – Similar to the one above, but with an extra antenna and a USB port, to share a printer, storage, etc.
$65 – D-Link DIR-645 300Mbps USB – Higher performance than the TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND, hangs out with more expensive routers, but at a lower price.
$106 – ASUS RT-N56U Dual-Band 600Mbps – High-performance dual-band router, with great looks too!
$150 – Buffalo WZR-D1800H AirStation AC1300 / N900 Gigabit Dual Band 1300Mbps 802.11ac – One of the two routers that offers 802.11ac (the other has poor customer reviews so far), with support for rates up to 1300Mpbs! Unfortunately no wireless adapters support 802.11ac yet, but of course the router is backward compatible with b/g/n adapters and it’s a way to future proof your network.

Recommended operating systems:

The operating system cost, if there’s one, is not included in the total cost. The two reason for this are:

The budget only considers hardware.
You may be able re-use a previous license, go with an open-source OS such as Linux or, if you’re so inclined and are aware of what you’re doing, use torrents.

If you decide that you need an OS, here are some recommendations:

Windows 7

Windows 7 is by far better than Windows Vista, looks better, more functional, less annoying, consumes less resources and brings DirectX 11 to the table.

Three Available Versions:

Windows 7 Home Premium: The basic edition, with all the looks, most of the functionality and DirectX 11.
Windows 7 Professional: If you want the virtual XP mode, you’ll need at least the Professional edition. Also required if you want to backup to a network, using the built-in backup mode in Windows. Also good to know: You’ll need at least the pro version to take advantage of Remote Desktop Connection.
Windows 7 Ultimate: To help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker and to work and switch between 35 languages.

OEM vs Retail:

Other than that, you get the same features on both, only the license differs. The price between the two differs obviously.

OEM Versions:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM SP1 – $91
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1 – $136
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OEM SP1 – $182

Retail Versions:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Retail – $190
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Retail – $264
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Retail – $310

Windows 8

The vast majority of applications that ran on Windows Vista and 7 should have no problem running on Windows 8.

For more information on Windows 8, there are countless reviews of it available online that will do a better job than I can fully describing the changes that it brings to the Windows OS.

Let’s address the obvious question:
Should you use Windows 7 or 8 for your gaming PC?

To find out more about Windows 8, I invite you to read one of many reviews available online that get deep into what has changed from Windows 7 to WIndows 8.

That said, if you’re interested in Windows 8, there are two versions available:

Linux

What about Word processing, Excel and other Windows-based programs that you need? Linux, being an open platform, has many free alternatives for you. For Word/Excel and such, try LibreOffice.

Cost: Free

Conclusion

What do you think of the latest version of the High-End Gaming PCs?

Let me know if you have any suggestion to improve this article and let me know your opinion by leaving a comment below.

Don’t agree with my choices? Have a better idea?

Feel free to leave a comment. There’s always place for improvement and after some research I may change the part according to your suggestion.

Building this PC?

Do you need a guide on how to build a computer, need help or do you have some questions?

Consult our: FAQ: How to Build Your Own Computer
Also, if this is your first build, here are 10 Quick Tips for 1st Time Builders to get you started.
Finally, if your newly built computer won’t start, I invite you to read Help me: Why won’t my newly assembled PC start or boot?
Need help? Head over to our forums here!

Join us on our forums!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this article, feel free to leave a comment below and remember, you can join us on our forums to discuss with everyone else the build that you’re planning to build, ask your questions and join our helpful community!

Build your Gaming PC today!

Why should you?
For the same price, you’ll get more performance out of your custom PC, or you’ll save money while getting the same performance compared to a retail PC. Not to mention that retail PCs come with tons of bloatware and limited warranties. Why settle for less?

Stop relying on HP, Dell and other companies:
Build your own custom PC today. It’s easier than you think!

This Build includes all the parts/cables that you need and it was double-checked to ensure compatibility. Simply order your parts, set aside some time, grab a screwdriver and build your own personal PC. No worries, we’ll (the HR community) be there to assist you if you have questions or need help.

Then you’ll be able to say, “See that computer over there? Yeah, I built that.” Talk about being proud of a job well done.

Want or need a less expensive Gaming PC? No problem.

If you’re looking for a Gaming PC that costs less than these High-End Gaming PCs and that can still handle most of the latest video games at a 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution at or close to their maximum graphic settings, head over to our Mainstream Gaming PCs article.

If you’re looking for a Gaming PC on a tight budget, head over to our Budget Gaming PCs article.

Click here to go back up to parts summary