$700

Is this the right type of PC for me?

If you’re looking for a PC to play video games, you’re at the right place. If this not what you’re looking for, check out the other Computer Systems instead.

Which Gaming PC should I choose?

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What resolution will you be playing at?
• How high do you want the graphic settings to be?

Higher resolutions and higher graphic settings both require more processing power from a PC. If you have high expectations and can’t stand low-quality, don’t go for a budget model. If you want to play at a high resolution such as 1920×1200 with high settings, go for a higher-end model. On the other side, if you play on a 15″ or 17″ monitor, a lower-end gaming PC is plenty enough for you.
I realize that this is obvious for some of you, but it’s not for everyone.

Keep in mind that the gaming PC will perform more or less well depending on the game played, as each game have different requirements. Also, some games run better on Nvidia or on ATI/AMD hardware.You may be able to crank up the graphics settings on some games or have to lower it a notch on others, compared to what I say below.

The resolution and quality settings that I mention below should only be used as a guideline to give you an idea of the capability of the chosen Gaming PC on recent games. As a rule of thumb, the older the game, the higher you can set your settings and the other way around with newer games.

• How long you intend to keep the system before upgrading?

If you keep the same monitor(resolution) and expect the same graphic quality, a low-end Gaming PC ($700 and less) will need an upgrade within a year or two, a mainstream model($850 to $1500) in 1.5 to 2.5 years and an high-end model($1500+) in 2 to 3 years.

Of course, this will vary depending on the video games that you will buy and their requirements.Also, the higher the resolution/graphic settings that you play at, the earlier you’ll have to upgrade.

By upgrade, I getting a better video card and possibly a better cpu/motherboard/RAM (if necessary). Use your judgment and ask opinions from experts to see what is your best option and if the upgrade is worthwhile.

Gaming PCs lineup:

In order for each design below:

1. Price, Cpu, Motherboard, Video Card, RAM, Hard Drive, Optical Drive, Case, Power Supply, Cooling, Sound and LAN. Parts in Bold indicate an upgrade compared to the part from the previous, less-expensive Gaming PC.
2. Followed by a guideline of how well you can expect the system to perform, resolution/graphic settings wise.
3. Ending with a link to a full article of the gaming PC, which includes a description of the parts, links to buy them, alternatives and at the end of the article, a summary of all the parts, with prices and links to buy them.

• $400 – AMD X2 7850 Kuma BE, ASRock N68PV-GS, Radeon 4850 512MB, 4GB DDR2 800, 320GB HD, 22X DVD±R Burner, Antec 300, Cooler Master 460W, Stock Cooling, 6 Channels Sound and 1000 Mbps LAN.
  For 1680×1050 and lower resolutions with medium/high settings.
  Check out the $400 Gaming PC
• $500 – AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE 3.1GHz, ASUS M4A78 Plus, Radeon 4870 512MB, 4GB RAM DDR2 800, 320GB HD, 22X DVD±R Burner, Antec 300, Cooler Master 460W, Stock Cooling, 8 Channels Sound and 1000 Mbps LAN. For 1920×1200 with medium settings,1680×1050 and lower resolutions high/max.
  Check out the $700 Gaming PC
• $700 – AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE 3.1GHz, GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3, Radeon 4890 1GB, 4GB RAM DDR2 1066, 750GB HD, 22X DVD±R Burner, Antec 300, SeaSonic 550W, Two Scythe 120mm case fans, 8 Channels Sound and 1000 Mbps LAN.
  For 1920×1200 with high/max settings, 1680×1050 and lower resolutions high/max.
  This is the $700 Gaming PC article, read on.
• $850 – AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb, ASUS M4A78 Plus, Radeon 4890, 1GB, 4GB RAM DDR2 1066, 1TB HD, Samsung IDE 22X DVD±R Burner, LIAN LI Lancool PC-K7B, PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W, Stock Cooling, Integrated Sound and LAN.
  For 2560×1600 with low/medium settings, high/maxed out at 1920×1200 and lower resolutions.
  Check out the $850 Gaming PC
• $1000 – AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb, ASUS M4A79 Deluxe, Two Radeon 4850 1GB in Crossfire, 4GB RAM DDR2 1066, 1TB HD, Sony SATA 24X DVD±R Burner, Antec Nine Hundred, Antec 650W 80 PLUS Active PFC, additional 120mm case fan, Integrated Sound and LAN. For 2560×1600 with medium/high settings, high/max at 1920×1200 and lower resolutions.
  Check out the $1000 Gaming PC
• More Gaming PCs coming soon – Check out the Free updates page if you want to learn how you can receive all the latest articles, including new Computer Systems and updates for free, via RSS, e-mail, Twitter and soon, Facebook!

How does this work?

For each part of this system, I will tell you my recommendation, the reason for it and the cost on the last date that this post was updated. I may also suggest some alternatives that I think may prove useful to you. If they do, feel free to go with it instead of my original recommendation, as after all, this is a custom computer. All parts were checked for compatibility, including upgrades.

I invite you to post your suggestions, comments, questions and more at the end of this post.

What’s better compared to the $500 Gaming PC?

Video Card: Upgrading from a Radeon 4870 512MB to a Radeon 4890 1GB.
RAM: Upgrading the speed from 800MHz to 1066MHz.
Hard Drive: Capacity goes up from 320GB to 750GB. Longer warranty as well
Power Supply: Upgrading from an Antec 430W to a SeaSonic 550W. More power, more silent and more reliable.
Cooling: Two additional 120mm case fans to put in the front of the Antec Three Hundred case.

Introduction:

At 700 dollars, things are starting to get really interesting. This feels more like a regular gamer PC system and less of a budget PC with a big video card added to it. I’m less restricted by the budget which I’m sure you can tell with not 4 or 5 but six upgrades in total compared to the lower-end $500 build.

This machine offers serious value at a price tag of $700. Anyway, enough bla bla, let’s move on to the parts.

$700 Gaming PC Computer parts:

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3

A very-well priced mainstream motherboard that comes with Crossfire support and that supports everything in this system. It comes with the following features:

• On the back, you have: Audio(8 Channel ), along with two PS/2 ports, S/PDIF Out via coaxial and optical, two FireWire ports, 8 USB ports and a LAN connection.
• On the board itself, you have: 4 slots for RAM(Max 16GB), two PCI-Express 2.0 16X(One at 16X, the other at 4X), one PCI-Express 2.0 1X, 3 PCI slots, 6 SATA ports with support for RAID 0/1/10, along with others things you would expect (CPU socket, IDE, 2 USB headers, etc.)
• This board comes with the AMD 770 chipset.

Cost: $75

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550

The other contender in the cpu department would have been the Intel E7400, which is running at 2.8GHz. I picked the AMD Phenom II X2 550 over it for the two following reasons:

• The motherboard & cpu is less expensive with the AMD platform. I decided to use the extra money for a better video card.
• The Phenom II X2 550 offers higher performance in video games. E7400 vs X2 550 benchmarks

Cost: $103

Cpu Alternatives:
For a 3-core system, go with the AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition. While it’s 300Mhz slower frequency wise (2.8Ghz), its 3rd core allow it to process the OS and background processes while the two first cores takes care of the game.
For a quad-core system, go with the AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz Black Edition Processor , which is clocked at 3.0Ghz.

Video Card: Radeon 4890 1GB

Featured in the Best Video Card for your money: June 2009 edition, the Radeon 4890 offer outstanding performance for the price asked. It performs at the same level as a Geforce GTX 275, but cost much less.

Cost: $200

Alternatives:

There’s the factory-overclocked Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Toxic edition that will offer outstanding performance and allow you to overclock it even further due to its superior cooling system.

For those who swear by Nvidia, the GeForce GTX 275 896MB is a very solid performer, offering comparable performance to the regular, stock speeds, Radeon 4890.

RAM: G. Skill 4GB(2×2GB) DDR2 1066

Considering the price of RAM these days and the ever-expending memory use of games and programs, 4GB of high-speed DDR2 memory is a no-brainer. I decided to put a bit more budget and go for DDR2 1066MHz here.

Cost: $50

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB SATA 3.0Gb/s

A Western Digital SATA hard drive, that offers 750GB of storage, plenty enough to handle your video/music collection and all your games.

The Caviar Black series is covered by a 5 years warranty.

Cost: $80

Alternative: Get a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB, with a full Terabyte for only $20 more.

Optical Drive: LG IDE 22X DVD±R DVD Burner

This drive is able to read and burn CDs and DVDs. Silent, compatible with all major formats including DVD-RAM and lightscribe. Yes, it’s IDE, so you don’t need to order an extra SATA cable. Don’t worry, there’s no way a DVD Burner will be bottlenecked by the IDE connection.

Cost: $25

Case: Antec Three Hundred

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Antec Nine Hundred, an outstanding case. Here’s its little brother: The Antec Three Hundred.

A sturdy, well designed case, with good ventilation (includes a 120mm fan at the back, with a 140mm on top and space for another 120mm fan in the front). Front panel comes with: 2 USBs and audio ports.

Cost: $55

Power Supply: SeaSonic 550W CrossFire Ready

This is a gaming PC, where reliable and stable power is a must. Power supplies that come included with cases just don’t cut it, as they are made cheaply, from unknown manufacturers. This is why that at any budget point, I recommend a quality power supply. You wouldn’t want to endanger an entire build (Not to mention problems with stability…) by cutting the corners on the power supply just to save a couple of bucks, would you?

This power comes from SeaSonic, which while is not a well known brand in the industry, is certainly highly regarded by experts like me. Featuring high efficiency (Up to 88%) and Active power factor correction(PFC) to protect your system from unstable current. It is also SLI/Crossfire/Core i7 ready.

Cost: $90

Cooling: Stock cooling and Two Scythe SY1225SL12M 120mm case fans

Stock heatsink for CPU and Video Card. Plenty enough to handle each part under normal operation and possibly some overclocking. The case comes with two 120mm case fans and you’ll be buying two extra 120mm case fans for the front of the case, to improve the case airflow.
Cost: $18 (Two at $9 each)

Alternative: If you have any intention of overclocking, I cannot stress enough the importance of a good cooler. At $40, the Sunbeam CR-CCTF 120 mm Core-Contact Freezer offers the best value regarding performance for the price, being one the best heatsink at a great price, it’s really underrated. Best part is that at that price, they even include good thermal grease and a fan controller to adjust the speed. Nice!

Sound Card: 8+2 Channel HD Audio

Integrated with the motherboard, this sound card will handle many different sound setups, including headphones, a microphone and more. While integrated audio on a PC used to be absolutely horrible, it has gotten much better in the last few years, thus why I have no trouble recommending it.
Cost: Free – Integrated

Network: LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps

Integrated with the motherboard, this network adapter will allow you to access your local network and Internet.
Cost: Free – Integrated

Recommended operating systems:

The operating system cost, if there’s one, is not included in the total cost. The two reason for this are that the cost represents only hardware and because you may re-use a previous license, go with an open-source OS such as Linux or use torrents. Nevertheless, here are some recommendations:

Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with coupon for free upgrade to Windows 7

Despite Linux starting to support some games, Windows still is the platform of choice for the best performance at the moment. Considering that you’ll have 4GB of RAM and a 512MB Video Card, you’ll need a 64-bit version.

Vista Home Premium’s low cost definitely helps compared to other versions of Windows, and driver support has vastly improved since the release, with SP1 helping a lot. Not to mention that Direct X 10 is only officially supported by Vista.

This edition comes a coupon for a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it will be released on October 22nd.

Cost: $100

Windows 7 Beta

Now at Release Candidate stage, Windows 7 Beta is a great improvement over Vista, using less resources and is more simple/straight-forward to use overall. Best of all, it’s free to use for many months, up to July 2010. The downside is that you may run into crashes or incompatible material due to its Beta nature. Click here to go download it directly from Microsoft.

Cost: Free – Its a beta.

Linux

A lot of people these days boots more than one OS. Linux is a wonderful choice: powerful, cool, and cheap. Take your pick of distributions and have fun! For Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, and Mandrake, try Distrowatch.com, Cheapbytes.com, LinuxQuestions.org or one of the many others.

What about Word processing, Excel and other Windows-based programs that Iyou need? Linux being an open platform, there are many free alternatives that will answer your needs. For Word/Excel and such, try OpenOffice.

Cost: Free

Let me resume this computer for you, with every part and its price:

Component:	Make and Model:	Price	After Rebate	Newegg Link
Motherboard	GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3	$75	$65	Link
CPU	AMD Phenom II X2 550 BE 3.1GHz	$103		Link
Video Card	Radeon HD 4890 1GB	$200		Link
RAM	G Skill 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 1066	$50		Link
Hard Drive	Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB SATA 3.0Gb/s	$80		Link
Optical Drive	LG IDE 22X DVD±R DVD Burner	$25		Link
Case	Antec Three Hundred	$55		Link
Power Supply	SeaSonic 550W CrossFire Ready	$90	$80	Link
Cooling	Stock Cooling and Two Scythe 120mm case fans	$18		Link
Sound Card	8+2 Channel HD Audio	Free
Network	LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps	Free
Total	Not including shipping, handling nor OS	$696	$656

Conclusion

Did you like this computer build? Would you like to see more computer builds?
Head over to the Computer Systems page right now, for a complete list of all my PC designs.

Do you have any requests for me, to build a computer just for you? Contact me and I will do my best to assist you!
Just make sure to be specific as for what do you want to use your computer for, your price range and any other needs of yours.

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