Building an awesome gaming PC for around 1K (that's also optimised for Windows 8)

[crimsonnight]

Hey team,

I work in IT so have decent computing knowledge but will need some help building a PC if that's cool?

The main thing I need to know is what processor/graphics card is currently the best for my budget (aiming for a total build cost of around 1K). As well as gaming I also will use the rig for making games/3D editing. I'm intending to use Win 8 so please also bare this in mind. A fast boot time would also be cool

Thanks in advance for your advice

[Edward M. Grant]

On that budget you're probably looking at a high-end i5 and an Nvidia GTX 660 or a similar mid-range ATI card. An SSD for fast boot times is likely to be outside your price range too, unless you buy a small one that just has space for Windows. You might also want to look at a prebuilt system as Windows will make up a large part of the cost of a home-build and OEMs get it for much less.

You should probably also check the requirements of your 3D software and see whether it works best with Nvidia or ATI before deciding on the graphics card, and if you'll be doing lots of 3D rendering, check some benchmarks comparing the i5 to AMD's new CPUs which have more cores. They're worse at single-threaded performance so they tend to drop behind in games, but rendering typically uses as many cores as it can get.

[skidawgz]

On that budget you're probably looking at a high-end i5 and an Nvidia GTX 660 or a similar mid-range ATI card. An SSD for fast boot times is likely to be outside your price range too, unless you buy a small one that just has space for Windows. You might also want to look at a prebuilt system as Windows will make up a large part of the cost of a home-build and OEMs get it for much less.

You should probably also check the requirements of your 3D software and see whether it works best with Nvidia or ATI before deciding on the graphics card, and if you'll be doing lots of 3D rendering, check some benchmarks comparing the i5 to AMD's new CPUs which have more cores. They're worse at single-threaded performance so they tend to drop behind in games, but rendering typically uses as many cores as it can get.

This was great advice, similar to what I would have said but I didnt have time to reply first read.

An SSD will be the biggest factor to fast boot time. Well that and Windows 8.
I'd make this system.
i7+mobo+16GB Ram
find out what card (drivers) nVidia or AMD is best optimized for the 3d rendering you do
120GB+ SSd + 1-2TB secondary
~550W PSU
Case with good quiet airflow.

If you want to get work done, the i7 is worth the breaking the typical gaming mold (where i5 is good enough). An OC'd i5 is all you need for gaming but the extra cache and other features of i7 will serve you well usually for productivity.

All this is sure to put you over budget. There is a PC part picker for the UK. I'd start with an i7-3770 +mini ATX mobo and see if you can make it work in a reasonable budget.

[Zerk]

With 1k budget thats easy with a ssd for the OS and a few games comes down to if your going to overclock the processor and wich brand card runs your software best.

[Edward M. Grant]

With 1k budget thats easy with a ssd for the OS and a few games comes down to if your going to overclock the processor and wich brand card runs your software best.

I wouldn't say easy: when I set out to build an 'awesome' gaming PC I ended up at about $2000 (Canadian, so I'd expect it to be a bit less in US dollars) with tax and shipping. I had to scale back GPU, SSD size, motherboard and RAM to get it down to $1500.

Someone did post a link to a prebuilt system in one of the other threads recently with an i5 and GTX 660 for $800, so that looked like a good deal if the OEM is OK (never heard of them so I've no idea whether they build good hardware).

[Zerk]

That was my link and here is a build. $885 without the operating system. Ready to overclock.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ndg5

The Ibuypower PC is a good company but use cheap ram and PSU also bad about not stress testing the PC.

[Edward M. Grant]

That was my link and here is a build. $885 without the operating system. Ready to overclock.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ndg5

Yeah, that should be pretty good, and just under $1k with Windows included. Does the $885 include tax?

[crimsonnight]

Cheers guys, ah that's site's really cool! Sorry, I should've mentioned I'm based in the UK and I'm guessing that site won't ship over here? But it does mean my budget equals around: $1,500 although if I have to grab the parts over here I don't think they'll translate with the exchange rate exactly.

I also have a ton of HDDs I'll re-use, just gonna buy a tiny SSD for the OS, I should also be able to grab a cheap copy of Windows 8 from work
I'm sort of more inclined to go with Nvidia over Radeon, haven't had a good experience with my Radeon card in my current PC - from what I understand the current offerings for my budget from both manufactures are pretty equal?

[skidawgz]

Hey team,
As well as gaming I also will use the rig for making games/3D editing.

What software do you use for this?

[crimsonnight]

What software do you use for this?

All the usual culprits: UDK, CryEngine, FPS Creator, The Game Maker, the Adobe Suite etc...