Ok, here's what I got:
You can get a pretty damn good gaming rig for $900
Code:
$90 - BOX Corsair Carbide 240
$140 - PSU Seasonic SS-750KM3
$120 - MLB MSI Z97M-G43
$240 - CPU Intel i5-4690K
$90 - RAM G.Skill Ares 2x4GB DDR3-1600 CAS 8-8-8-24
$80 - HDD Seagate ST1000DX001 1TB SSHD
$140 - OS Win7/8 x64 OEM
====
$900 - Total
(all prices sourced from Newegg, you might do better if you shop around)
If you want to be able to upgrade it then you wan to go heavy on the motherboard.
Just couldn't fit
the ROG board in there and still leave plenty of headroom (for things like a keyboard/mouse/cables/etc), although if you (i.e.,
@ThatNickGuy ) are comfortable slashing the surplus down to only $10, It
would actually be the better choice. You can get one for
about $210 over at Newegg, though that would add $90 bringing the total up to $990, drastically reducing what you would have available for "extras."
The Rationale:
-The Corsair case has plenty of room and plenty of cooling, and that cooling is provided by 120mm fans, which means it will be reasonably quiet.
-The power supply is 750W, which should be enough for any graphics card you ever cram into that box. It is also one of the higher-end Seasonics, which is a bit like saying "it's one of the premium Bentleys."
-The motherboard uses the Z97 chipset, which is the second-best one Intel has these days, and it is one of the ones which has an M.2 slot onboard, which you can fill with a scorching fast SSD later. The fact that the board has a Z97 chipset means you would then have the choice of using a big SSD as a blazing fast C: drive OR use
Intel's RST to combine a smaller (i.e., cheaper) M.2 and a larger HDD into a single, much faster volume. The MSI looked like the cheapest "quality" board that had the M.2 slot, but the ROG board has a much better network/LAN controller, which I would recommend over the MSI except for the +$90 in cost.
-The CPU is one of Intel's newest "Devil's Canyon" more overclocker-friendly models, which means it should be relatively easy to push the clock speed up an additional 10% without any sort of exotic equipment. Reviewers have found that they're ultimately not as overclockable as Intel originally claimed they would be, but the newer "features" mean yours should at least be more stable/less crashy than the model it replaced.
-The RAM is just quality RAM. Testing has shown that, for gaming, running your ram at blistering 2000+ speeds doesn't net you as much performance as the extra money would imply. Better to get something that runs at a lower frequency BUT has a lower timing (the CAS 8 stuff).
-The HDD is "only" a 1TB, but it has an extra 8GB of flash memory on-board, meaning that the most commonly accessed files (such as boot/system files) will be held in much faster memory, and therefore boost speed.
-The OS. Get Win7 pro or Win8.1 pro according to your preference. Get the Win7 if you have leftover XP applications (NOT games, I mean things like Word and such) that you want to keep running in Win7Pro's included XP virtual machine, otherwise get 8.1 because Microsoft has made it clear that they're going to start ignoring anyone who doesn't have at least 8.x pretty soon.
"But what about the graphics card?" I hear you ask. Ah. Well, due to the budget constraints, you'll either have to repurpose an old one, borrow one from your friend, or just
get by on the built-in Intel graphics (which are about equivalent to midrange Radeon 4xxx/Geforce 5xx series). I know it will mean playing games at lower settings, but the 2 months you spend playing on low settings while you save up for something newer
are going to be 100% completely worth being able to afford getting the rest of the top-shelf hardware under you for the time being. Barring equipment failure or some wild shift in technology, that core system should be able to
easily last you 3-5 years, and the only future upgrades you'd have to do to stay current would be to add the M.2 card, increase the RAM to at least 16GB, and get whatever the newer video card du jour is 3 years from now. Future you will appreciate your thrift.
--Patrick
