Can I beat the $500 gaming machine?

I just saw the $500 gaming rig that Newegg has posted. I cannot say that I was really impressed, for $500 I thought you could get more. This is not to say that THG did a bad job, I am certain some people will build that machine and be impressed themselves. I just cannot say that I think that machine is the best you can do for $500 by any means.

So I set out to try and do better for around the same. I noticed that they went over by roughly $50 on their builds, so while I will try and keep it at $500, I am not going to be to pissed if I go over some.

hink that $20 on the case could've been saved for other things. A $30 case should work well enough if not less.
And so I set out to build a $500 gaming PC of my own, and I think I beat the THG standard by a little bit.

For Memory I went with two sticks of 1 gigabyte Wintec AMPO rated at a CAS of 4 and DDR2-533. DDR2-800 is a waste in this category: a C2D benefits from a 1:1 ratio anyway, so with that in mind why get DDR2-800 if you are just going to underclock it? Even more so is that both a 2160 and any of the Allendale C2Ds use a 200megahertz FSB: you'd have to overclock those just to get them to DDR2-533 at a 1:1 ratio! As to the RAM itself, it can be found for around $70 online.

For a Optical Drive I went with a IDE Interface. Why? Because even though SATA will replace it, the current motherboards all support it, its not going away with Vista or Vienna it seems, and that since current motherboards will support processors for the next few years, there is no reason to assume we will need a new motherboard to replace the processor. The drive therefor becomes a Lite-On 20x drive that can be found for around $27.

I cannot justify even an extra $20 for a 320gig harddrive in a gaming build over a 160 gig. Why? I am using a 160 right now, have BF2142, Civilization 4 and expansions, World of Warcraft, Medieval Total War II, Disciples II, Deus Ex Invisible War, Dawn of War and expansions, Command and Conquer 3, Starcraft, Black and White II, America's Army and Battlefield 2 (had to look to make sure that was there) on this drive, and OODLES of videos (23 gigs worth), and still have 37 gigs of free space available. What would I do if I wanted to install a new game and ran out of space? Uninstall some of the old ones, or delete videos. Really, Hard drive constraints will not expand that badly in the near future. If you need 320 gigs, you really need to delete some porn.

So I went with an Excelsior Jupiter Series 160 gig. It can be found for $46.

The Power Supply is a Rosewill 550watt unit that can be found for $54. I to think people undervalue the worth of a PSU, but to spend $100 on one for a system that is not even going to be heavily gamed seems dumb. This has two 12 volt rails at 18 amps each and will supply the system.

Graphics Card? A POWERCOLOR Radeon 2600 XT for $108. It has a built on fan, which will help keep it cool considering my case will not have that 80 mm fan. And I think this is cheaper than THGs unit too.

The case is from Rosewill as well, a R218-P. It can be found for $21 and comes with a 120 mm fan. Plenty big and I am not to worried about this case's rigidity, as this is not a LAN party build (even so, just handle the case carefully!).

The motherboard made sense as a EVGA 122-CK 650i for $100. Its plenty overclockable if that is your goal, comes with 1 PCI slot, and plenty of features.

And the processor made sense as a E4400 for $125. 2 gigahertz and well overclockable. Add a $20 fan and you can get a 2.66 gigahertz system easy.

Overall this system costs $554 dollars before shipping, roughly what THG would of spent. You could've saved money on the motherboards too: right now TigerDirect and Newegg both have boards that are similar to mine with rebates on them, and after rebates on the parts I used (through Newegg) I can get the total price of the system down to $500 flat.

And what system did I get? Well I lost 160 gigs of harddrive and a flashier case, but gained a faster processor with more L2 cache, a better motherboard and (ever vital for gaming) more RAM at lower timings. You can overclock this processor to 2.66 gigahertz and just make the RAM run at stock speeds, and you still have better latency and capacity. AND you are just then running the motherboard at its lowest rated speed (you can of course make it run slower to match the processors stock FSB).

And you can too get a better power supply: an Antec Truepower Trio that retails at 104.99 on Newegg is that price right now with a $45 rebate. So for $59 you can get a really sweet PSU too.

Toms choice:
Processor Athlon X2 BE-2350 $ 95
Motherboard MSI K9AGM2-FIH $ 69
RAM Patriot PDC21G6400K, 2x 512 MB DDR2-800 $49
Graphics Card Gigabyte Radeon HD 2600 Pro $ 85
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, SATA/300, 320 GB $ 65
Power Supply Silverstone ST50EF-Plus $ 99
Case Coolermaster Centurion 5 CAC-T05 Black/Silver $ 49
Other Samsung SH-S183 DVD-ROM $ 30
Total Cost $ 541


My choice:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Windsor 2.4GHz........ $97
ABIT AN52 AM2 NVIDIA nForce 520 MCP ATX... $69
ADATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800......... $60
HIS Hightech Radeon X1950PRO 256MB.......... $120
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB harddrive... $70 ($10 combo discount)
Antec NeoPower NeoHE 550 ATX12V 550W..... $50
Rosewill R5604-TBK 2x 120mm Fans ATX case..$45
Samsung Black 20X DVD+R SATA.................. $32

total: $543 (after mail-in rebates, some shipping apply)

Update: for $5 more I probably would go with this Case+psu combo

Antec Sonata III Black 0.8mm ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power $100

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811129024