Dushan Karovich-Wynne builds a powerful All-rounder/casual gaming PC
Dushan Karovich-Wynne had a budget of $1,500 and wanted to build a PC powerful enough to handle anything he could throw at it. This meant anything from multi-tasking several CPU intensive programs at once to video encoding
and everything in between
and be able to play all his brother's new games. He says: "t also has to be future proof (well as future proof as possible) and have headroom for future overclocking." Dushan is a Year 12 Student, studying Sciences/IT and has a certificate as a IT Technician.
CORE SYSTEM
CPU: Intel Core i7 860 - $330Good processor, one of the best 1156 CPUs. It's quad core, has a big cache, a fast base clock frequency, HyperThreading and is 64-bit. Also plenty of head room for overclocking if I decide to go down that path in the future. I'm using a stock CPU cooler for the moment, if I start overclocking later I will use a CoolerMaster V8.
COOLING: Stock - $0MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P7P55D-E-PRO - $238Great Motherboard, has it all:. Supports all flavours of RAID, USB3, SATA6 and Quad SLI/CrossFireX (true expandability).
Heaps of ports/headers, 8 channel audio, easy overclocking, supports lots of RAM and has plenty of extras.
GRAPHICS: Sapphire 1GB HD5770 VaporX - $210Nice, well priced, upper mid range 5 series card. DX11, 1GB of GDDR5, DVI/HDMI ports, good air cooling (can be overclocked without after market cooler), supports CrossFireX and has a fast base clock frequency.
RAM: Kingston 4GB DDR3 - $137.54GB (2x2GB Sticks) of 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM from a good manufacturer. Don't need triple channel as this is a P55 computer. This is the fastest RAM the motherboard will support, what more could you want? 4 GB is enough for now and any extra would have pushed me over my limit. Also don't say I should have got RAM with better timings etc. because it isn't possible given my budget.
HARD DRIVE 1: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB - $133.1WD is my favourite brand for hard drives, never had one fail. The WD Caviar Green is a 1TB 7200RPM SATA2 drive with a 64MB Cache, capacious and fast. Later on I might put in a second one in RAID mirror for data security but for the moment I'm just gonna back up to my external HDD.
OPTICAL DRIVE: Lite-On Super AllWrite - $35.2What's to say, it's a 24x DVD re-writer from a reputable manufacturer and it connects via SATA.
PSU: Thermaltake 600W - $79.2I need 550 watts to power the CPU and graphics card, 600 gives me head room for overclocking. This is a good PSU from a reputable manufacturer.
CASE: CoolerMaster 335 Black - $55I chose this case because it looks great, has front USB, FireWire and audio, all my parts will fit in it and it came with some 120mm case fans.
Core system cost: AUD $1,218
MONITOR: Samsung SyncMaster 710v - $n/aI am using my old monitors, they are 17 inch, have a decent refresh rate and are still going strong, I have two of them and will be using both on my new system.
KEYBOARD: Logitech Razer Arctosa Gaming Keyboard - $n/aI got this as a gift a little while ago, great keyboard, looks good, fast to type on and has programmable hot keys.
MOUSE: Logitech M500 - $n/aAnother gift, good mouse, adjustable DPI.
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 Professional OEM - $190Good OS, best version of Windows yet, has all the features of Ultimate minus BitLocker and the extra language support - however seeing as I only speak English and use PGP for my encryption it made no sense to waste extra money on Ultimate, the upgrade option is there if I need it later on.