Hey everyone were back at it, and this time we are going to be selecting components for a budget gaming PC ($1600) except this time we are actually going to build it, test it and overclock the hell out of it! Thats right we are going to do a full build in three parts, Selecting the Components, Building the PC, Testing & Overclocking. To document this entire build it will take several days so everyone be patient but today we are going to start selecting components for our new PC

As we all know form out last review we used the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 but at a whopping $999.99 that would be exactly half our budget. This time we are going with a much more modest Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4ghz processor. The E6600 features with its 4MB of L2 cache and 1066FSB in a traditional LGA775 form. This processor from Intel seems to be the sweet spot right now for the Core 2 Duo line due to its low price, ($239.99) and amazing ability to overclock. As you will all see later in the build this processor can easily achieve well above 3.0ghz easily on standard air cooling. Once again AMD is still lacking behind in performance in their mainstream components. While their X2 dual-core processor offer decent performance for their price they still are generation behind Intel offerings with their Core 2 Duo line of processors.

Since this PC build is targeted to moderate PC builders we have decided to opt out of any fancy type of cooling process and gone with the basic but always effective heat sink and fan combo. For our build we have gone with the Cooler Master RR-PCH-S9U1-GP 92mm CPU Cooler. The cooler features a large array of aluminum fins on a copper base along with three heat pipes, for excellent heat dissipation. This cooler is extremely effective and comes in at a very reasonable price of $29.99 My personal experience with this cooler has been that it is nearly effective as the Zalman coolers I have owned in the past that cost almost double the price of the Cooler Master. You will see just how effective this particular cooler is when you see the results of our build

Selecting the proper PSU for a this particular build is a little more difficult than our choice for our Ultimate Computer System. As always its wise to decide on a PSU before a computer case but before that you really must need an idea of the requirements you are going to need for the present and future upgrades within you PC. For this particular build we went with a modest Cool Max CUG-700B ATX 700W Power Supply due to its great price and modular cable management system. 700W will be plenty for our needs and will allows us to add more HDD or disk drives in the future. However at 700W it will be unable to effectively power graphics cards in SLI mode due to rising power requirements for the next generation GPU’s

This part of the build when choosing the appropriate computer case can be extremely subjective. While this is basically a moderate price PC it would not be worth it to purchase a high-end case. However at the price range of $50-$100 you can find a wide array of cases depending on your taste. For this build we went with the Cooler Master Centurion 532 Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case. This case is made entirely out of aluminum and make use of a completely tool-less design. It provides excellent airflow and with one 3.5″ external, four internal 3.5” and five 5.25″ drive bays you will have always have room for expansion in the future. The front of the case also include two USB 2.0 ports, Firewire port, and two audio ports located near the top of the case for easy access. For a price of $59.99 this an excellent deal and offers several features that are usually only available in much higher priced cases.

For this build the motherboard choice was actually fairly difficult, we needed to decide on what features would best suit our needs while keeping within our budget of $2000. Obviously with a budget PC build we wont be using many of the advantages with the 680i chipset but we still will want to overclock it to get every ounce of performance per dollar. Therefore we are going with the highly capable Asus P5W-DH motherboard featuring the Intel 975x chipset. This board offers plenty of features for home users, including a remote and built-it WiFi. The board also features a vast array ports to connect to just about anything, including a valuable eSATA port. The P5W-DH is priced at a reasonable $199.99 and is the perfect choice for our budget PC build.

Next up is the RAM selection, as always you need to make sure your motherboard supports the RAM modules you put into your new build BEFORE you buy them. This is a very simple mistake that many people make and end up costing them a good amount of time and sometimes a decent amount of money. With that said we chose the very capable OCZ Gold 1GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) kit for our build. With 2GB of RAM we should be able to tackle most programs with ease and allows us room to upgrade in the future. Just remember that if you are going to be running Windows Vista effectively you really should have at least 2GB of RAM. The latency is of the this RAM is not the lowest at 5-5-5-12 (2.0v) but performs excellent at that level and has the ability to oveclock with ease. At a price of $139.99 they are very reasonably priced and allow for a cheap upgrade to 4GB in the future.

The Graphics card choice for this build was very simple, the extremely powerful eVGA 8800GTS 640mb will make sure we can run any current games at a high level and ensure an easy transition to the next generation of DX10 games. While gaming is not necessarily our main concern with this build it helps to know our system is prepared for anything released in the near future. At a price of $349.99 it offers comparable performance to ATI’s R600 based cards and even performs well against its big brother the 8800GTX/Ultra at lower resolutions. To many this choice seems like overkill but in reality this card will ensure that we will prepared for future and not have to worry about future product specifications. I am not going to go into too much detail about this particular card as we have a full in-depth look at the coming out in the near future

Next up is our hard drive selection, and we choose the modest Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. As we all know I much prefer Seagate and their 7200.10 series HDD’s due to their excellent warranty and long lifetime but the real factor in this build is size. While larger drives can be found for only a relatively small amount I still feel uncomfortable placing a large amount of data in one place with no way to back it up. With 250GB you can ensure that most current external hard drives will be large enough handle backing up your files which would not be possible with a 500GB drive unless you have an external to match it. At a price of $69.99 it also allows for a future upgrade to a RAID setup for better performance or data security.

The optical storage choice for out build was very simple, we need a fast reliable drive for cheap. Thats why we choose the popular Lite-On 20X DVD burner (SATA). This drive is one of the fastest SATA drives one the market and and is backed by one of the biggest names in the business. In addition to its speed the drive also features light scribe allowing for the ability to burn a image on the top layer of a DVD. At a price of $39.99 its a great deal and will be perfect for our budget PC build

Since this is a budget PC its obviously geared more towards the mainstream market. That why i have decided to include the always useful 3.5” Rosewill RCR-103 USB 2.0 Card Reader. Nothing to special about this particular product beside the fact that it does its job very well and costs an affordable $16.99

Now for a monitor, the basic decision the typical consumer normally needs to make is what size they want, everything else comes fairly easy after that. For this build we choose to go with Dell’s 22” E228WFP with its fast 5ms response time, high contrast ratio (800:1) and 1680×1050 resolution. At 22” it will be large enough to watch movies, view pictures, and browse the web with ease. Any larger (24” and above) and we would jump up significantly in price due to the increase in resolution. At $309 it is reasonably priced and with Dell we know we will have a well built, reliable monitor that will last through this system and off to the next

As you can see i am not including a keyboard, mouse, or speakers in this build and that is because this is a system only build that only includes the basic components. This system is a PC designed to tackle a variety of task, not just gaming. The components selected allow for the user to to able to use the PC for whatever they choose, assuring that in whatever they do the PC will be blazing fast. As i stated in the introduction we will be building this PC in the near future and the whole build will be separated into three parts. The first part, selecting components, you just read and the next post will be a detailed view of this build using the exact components discussed above. The following article will be about software installation, FAQ and the Overclocking results form our system. The next two post will however take several days to complete so i urge everyone to check back periodically to check on our progress.

Posted below is a breakdown of the price of the total build: (MSRP)

1. Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4ghz processor - $239.99
2. Cooler Master RR-PCH-S9U1-GP 92mm CPU Cooler - $29.99
3. Cool Max CUG-700B ATX 700W Power Supply - $139.99
4. Cooler Master Centurion 532 Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $59.99
5. Asus P5W-DH motherboard - $199.99
6. OCZ Gold 1GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) kit - $139.99
7. eVGA 8800GTS 640mb - $349.99
8. Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $69.99
9. Lite-On 20X DVD burner (SATA) - $39.99
10. Rosewill RCR-103 USB 2.0 Card Reader - $16.99
11. Dell’s 22” E228WFP - $309.99

Total Cost - $1596.89

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