Building my first Computer!

Hello there!
I am a hardcore gamer that is being held back by my current computer, an xps 420.

I have been looking into building a new gaming computer for a while now and with my current computer dying I felt now was the right time.


Through long hours of learning about building a computer I have come up with these specs for my first self made rig.

MOBO- GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard. $140

CPU- AMD FX 8-Core Black Edition FX-8350. $170

Graphics Card- Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX460 GDDR5 768MB VGA HDMI PCI-E2.0 $100

RAM- CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 Desktop Memory Model $105

HDD- Western Digital WD Blue WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - OEM $80

PSU- Seasonic 80+ Power Supply M12II 620 Bronze $90

Disk Drive- Samsung Internal SATA 24x DVD CD +/-RW DL Disc Burner Re-Writer Drive - OEM Bulk $24

Sound Card- Rosewill RC-703 7.1 Channel PCIe Sound Card $35

Case- XION Onyx XON-301 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $30

Total- $774

This is what I have picked out and I was wondering if I could get help in possibly lowering the cost but retaining the power, or if I should put more money into one part at the expense of another. Thank you all for the help.

Edit: I will be building this in a few months after my current computer quits working.

Parts are good for a solid performance pc, but i would recommend a different video card, the card you pick out are 2 generation old
Try EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SUPERCLOCKED
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-...e=UTF8&qid=1362964376&sr=8-7&keywords=gtx+670
Also you forgot to include the copy of window in your build, a Window 7 home premium 64bit cost around $90 on the street, you need an OS to make your pc work

^^^ What he said. Also

1. Not worth getting that sound card over the onboard. If you wanted a sound card you want to go with something like Xonar. But in your case onboard will be more than enough.

2. Use the money saved by the sound card to spend a few more dollars on the case

Thank you, I will look into that card, and ya I just decided to only post the hardware of the computer not the os.

Lol thanks cullam3n, I will drop the sound card then, probably won't put it into the case though. If I didn't have pets I wouldn't even get one xD.

Asus rog I was wondering about the card you recommended, it says it is pci express 3.0 but I only see pci express 2.0 on the mobo. Am I mistaken or is this not compatible?


Edit: just looked into it, seems like they are backwards compatible.

C4lchas said:

Asus rog I was wondering about the card you recommended, it says it is pci express 3.0 but I only see pci express 2.0 on the mobo. Am I mistaken or is this not compatible?


Edit: just looked into it, seems like they are backwards compatible.

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Yes, they're comparable, and have fun putting your rig together

If your a heavy gamer I would purchase HD 7950 video card.

I am, just also trying to stay cheaper, so I was maybe looking at the 7850, I am using pass mark benchmarks to compare cards.

Edit: I am also looking at the GeForce GTX 480, which even though it is an older generation is pretty high up on the charts according to pass mark.

Here is some more bench marks to look at.http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/550?vs=518

You don't really need 16GB of RAM, 8GB should be fine.

+1 for all gaming 8GB of ram will be plenty.

C4lchas, welcome to the forum. As you said the pc will be for gaming, will you be looking to overclock it? Do you live near a microcenter and is $800.00 around your budget? I agree with the above posts, about 8g of ram and changing the GPU.

I am not really looking to oc just yet with my first computer so no, and I don't know if I live near a micro center, is there one near Kansas City? If so what would I get done there. And yes $800 is about my budget, I think I will go to 8 gb of ram then and get rid of the sound card, and put the money into a better GPU, Ty for the help everyone.

I don't know if I live near a micro center, is there one near Kansas City?

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http://www.microcenter.com/ look and see. Reason I'm asking is because they have really good walk in combo deals on a Cpu/Motherboard. It's worth the drive if it's not too far away.

Eh the closest micro center is about a 2 hour drive, I'm not sure if I want to drive so far.

No it's probably not worth the savings then I agree.

Does this ram look like a good replacement? G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model

Yup, G Skill RAM is real good, and 1866 might be a little too much generally it starts to increase less and less after 1600. Personally I like Patriot, Corsair, Samsung rams but RAM is RAM is RAM.