Christ Centered Gamer

Look. I've been out of the hardware biz for a minute and I'm not sure what the greatest hardware bang for my buck is. I recently got approved for a line of credit through Newegg and I plan on taking advantage of any Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals they may have. They have a number of DIY kits that look interesting but I wanted to see if someone here could do better.

Budget is $2000. I don't need monitors, keyboard, mouse, or speakers. I need a tower.

So, what can you build me with that through Newegg?

What size tower?

I have the Corsair Vengeance Case. It has a nice look, simple I/O panel in front, has handles, very easy to access the inside with the use of 2 latches at the top. Lots of room on the inside plus ability to route cables making for a neat look as well as better air flow.

Corsair Vengeance Series C70 Gunmetal Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

A favorite resource of mine is PCPartPicker. It's a great way to shop around for parts, and it will only show you parts compatible with your system so far (or otherwise warn you of incompatibility). It can compare prices too, though if you're only going through Newegg, it won't be a huge deal. If you already have a rough idea of what you want, this is the place to go. Otherwise, this is a great way to figure out the holes in your build (I have this processor, this GPU, this RAM...what wattage do I need for my PSU?), and determine if your parts work together.

As for specs, I'll see what kind of builds I can come up with sometime tonight. Links will be here.

ccgr wrote:What size tower?

Full tower with some lighting options.

Preference on AMD or Nvidia graphics?

I'm partial to AMD, but I understand the differences between them and Intel aren't what they used to be. Also partial to Nvidia, but not for any logical reasons.

So whatever is better I'll go with. I'm PC brand agnostic!

here's a wishlist: https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySa ... D=23304491

Alright, so there's a general rule of thumb I've followed for brand pairing: Nvidia and Intel, AMD (Formerly ATI) with AMD.

It's worked well for me (Last build was Intel/Nvidia, current rig is AMD/AMD), and with that in mind, I've constructed two potential builds for you, one for each pairing.

AMD build.

Intel/Nvidia build.

The prices are different (The Nvidia/Intel one is cheaper) because the Nvidia cards and Intel components are more expensive, so I had to downgrade the card and processor from the equivalent to the AMD I selected to be under the $2000 cap.

In general, this highlights a trend: Intel/Nvidia have better drivers and generally better components, but AMD is much cheaper for the power you get. That's not to say AMD is cheaply made, it just may not like overclocking too much (Which is why I outfitted these builds with a liquid cooling system for the CPU). And finally, I can't let you go without giving you full disclosure: AMD graphics drivers are very hit or miss. Most of the time, it's all good. No issues. But sometimes, the graphics driver will crash so hard I have to reboot the system. Happened to me last week. I've noticed that this tends to only happen when the computer is waking from sleep mode, so I always lock my computer before letting the monitors power down. It almost always comes back good after that. Also, the AMD Gaming Evolved tool is pretty awesome. Notifies you when there's a driver update, and ties to Raptr if you're into that sort of thing. Nvidia also has a similar program, The GeForce experience, so don't let that be a deciding factor.

Hope that helped, somewhat.

Thanks for the suggestions!

CCGR, your wishlist is empty.

made it public, does it work now?

https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySa ... D=23304491

Nope. I think it's the URL. It's bringing me to my own account. Maybe you need to find your public build and send that URL.

I e-mailed it to you.

Got it!

good power supply on sale: http://slickdeals.net/f/7360334-1000w-r ... e-shipping