A Gaming PC For About 1000 Euros

[Karhukonna]

I tried. I really did. I tried to do this on my own. I tried doing this without you guys. I even posted about this on a local board, and all I got were "Your CPU and Motherboard are old" and "Here, follow this template" answers that don't really help me at all.

See, I'm building myself a gaming PC, just focusing on the tower unit for now. I'll grab myself a display and some other appliances later. Anyways, I'd like for you lads and ladies to take a gander at this here get-up I got going, and perhaps tell me how to get more bang for my buck. That is, better parts in the same-ish price range. Heck, I don't mind a slight dip in performance if I can save a lot of money on it. I reckon I might give up on the SSD, seeing as how it's more of a luxury item.

Also, for reference, PCPartPicker gives this set a price total of $1285.44 for all of yous Americans.

Here we go:

 

[SnowyGamester]

I can see a few places you could save some. First off, you could go for the near-identical but somewhat cheaper ASRock Z77 PRO4-M motherboard unless you plan on using SLI or need the extra PCI slots for something. If you're not overclocking you can lose the cooler and go for a 3570 instead of the 3570k. You might also be able to drop the Blu-Ray reader and get a regular DVD-RW drive instead...unless it comes with bundled Blu-Ray playing software (which is expensive to buy separately) it's not going to be useful for anything anyway. And yeah...SSDs are expensive and it wouldn't hurt dropping that too. I won a top-of-the-line Intel one in a comp recently and while the performance increase is noticeable I still wouldn't shell out for one.

 

[Karhukonna]

I can see a few places you could save some. First off, you could go for the near-identical but somewhat cheaper ASRock Z77 PRO4-M motherboard unless you plan on using SLI or need the extra PCI slots for something. If you're not overclocking you can lose the cooler and go for a 3570 instead of the 3570k. You might also be able to drop the Blu-Ray reader and get a regular DVD-RW drive instead...unless it comes with bundled Blu-Ray playing software (which is expensive to buy separately) it's not going to be useful for anything anyway. And yeah...SSDs are expensive and it wouldn't hurt dropping that too. I won a top-of-the-line Intel one in a comp recently and while the performance increase is noticeable I still wouldn't shell out for one.

Damn, that 3570 sounds like good advice. Changing that and losing the cooler will save me a whopping 80 euros. You sure it won't need the extra cooler, though? I honestly have no idea, it's why I'm asking.

And I guess I just went mad with consumerism with that blu-ray phase. Swapping that sucker out for DVD saves me 45 euros.

Swapping that motherboard will save me another 40. Also, that SSD, just no good for my budget. A man can dream, eh. I'll try another draft, see what I can come up with. It might end up costing even more that my original idea... T_T Let's see how blinded I am by these new savings.

EDIT/Continued:

Ah, rats. I went blind with these newfound (though yet to be saved) riches and went ahead to upgrade my setup.

Gonna set me back 1250 euros. Will it be worth it? Also, I'm a little nervous about ditching the CPU cooler, you think that was wise?

 

[SnowyGamester]

The included cooler is more than enough at stock speeds...something better is really only necessary for overclocking. As for whether or not it's worth it that all depends on how much you care about cranking up the graphics. I'm still sitting pretty on my GTX 560 and as tempting as it is to upgrade I still max out or come close with everything I throw at it. Not sure whether or not you should bother with Haswell though...only gets around a 3-6% performance increase over the Ivy Bridge equivalent.

 

[Vegosiux]

The included cooler is more than enough at stock speeds...something better is really only necessary for overclocking.

The stock cooler should even handle some slight OC with no problem.

Not sure whether or not you should bother with Haswell though...only gets around a 3-6% performance increase over the Ivy Bridge equivalent.

As I understand, the main advantage is the new low-intensity state power saving, but in order for that to actually work you need a PSU that's stable at low amperage, too.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Hmmmmmm.... Good build but I would drop that beast of a cooler. Drop the SSD down to a 128gb model as well and then use the savings on a GTX 770.