$679 i5 Hardcore Gaming Rig - January, 2012

Forget the Phenom CPUs, this gaming rig manages to cram in an i5-2500 (second only to the 2500k), a 6870, 8GB of memory, and an awesome case for only $679. A number of you have asked us to figure out how to pull off a budget i5 gaming PC, and with a bit of combo-swapping, we've done it. At $730 before rebates, the initial investment is very affordable and the performance challenges that of our $558 affordable gaming PC (although that one's still very powerful, for those who can't stretch to $679).

This build list is "the box and everything in it" and will, with relative ease, handle most current games on anywhere from very high, ultra, to max settings (depending largely on the game, of course). If you're spec'ing for BF3 or some of the games slated for 2012, you're in the right place.

There are several upgrade / downgrade options we've included herein, so if you can't quite reach this budget (or have $50 extra), we've given you plenty of options to customize this ultra-modular setup.

Here's the shortlist (NOTE: Some of these items have instant discounts, meaning no rebate is required. The total pre-rebate price is ~$730; post-rebate is even better!):

Optional Add-ons (pick and choose as budget allows)

Video Card:

After looking at the marginal performance differences between the GTX 560 Ti and the 6870, we decided that the 6870 had a better overall value for our budget; however, we've linked to the 560 below if that interests you.

Sapphire is one of the more reliable, more affordable assemblers of AMD cards, and with a free copy of DiRT 3, it's hard to go wrong. After rebate, the 6870 we selected comes down to $145 (or the price of a 6850, surprisingly), and with its 1GB of memory and 256-bit memory interface, it's a great deal for the price. These two numbers are par for the course, though, and it really shines in its additional stream processing units and optimized clock speeds.

The 6870 is perfect for BF3, Skyrim, or other games of that nature. If you're planning on playing SWTOR only (and very little else), it may be time to consider our previously-linked $558 build.

Have an extra $60? The GTX 560 Ti might be worth it -- and it is a great card -- but the small performance gain isn't necessarily worth the money. This is completely dependent on your financial situation. 3D modelers and developers may want to lean the nVidia route for the extended support, though.

Need to save $15? The amount of 'savings' here is almost too small to mention, considering the performance drop from the 6870 to the 6850 is quite noticeable. That in mind, $15 might be a lot of money in some situations, so you'd be able to downgrade to the 6850 if necessary. Just don't drop any lower than the 6850, otherwise you may as well build a different machine due to bottlenecking.

CPU:

We've boasted about the i5-2500k's performance numerous times throughout the site and forums, so it's a nice change to have a large enough budget to actually use a Sandy Bridge CPU. As we've noted in the past, Sandy Bridge architecture makes use of turbo boost technology (in times of need, it will accelerate your CPU), has integrated graphics handlers for better performance on menial tasks, and integrates several other modules to reduce the overall time required to complete requests.

This CPU currently has a $15 off promo code, so don't forget to use that. The code is "EMCNJJN22".

Image Credit: Anandtech.com

Now, you may have noticed that we included the i5 2500, not the "k" version. Aside from the overclock ceiling, you're not losing a lot. If you have an extra $20, absolutely get the i5 2500k. The i5 2500 can be overclocked up to 4.1GHz while the 2500k can be upped to 5.7GHz (requiring an aftermarket heatsink), so if this is something you're worried about, go with the 2500k. Otherwise, the existing 3.3GHz is more than enough, and the 4.1GHz ceiling is still quite high.

Memory:

The infatuation with high amounts of memory for a low price is slowly dying away, but it's still quite impressive how cheap RAM comes these days.

Corsair's Vengeance line has been building in popularity ever since they introduced their peripheral series, and this memory caries on the legacy of decent performance for the price. Running at 1600MHz natively and with a standard CAS latency of 9, there's really not much more to say here. You get 8GB of high-performance RAM for about $50, which is excellent.

Motherboard:

While ASUS, EVGA, and MSI are still some of our go-to brands for reliability, ASRock has continually grown into its products and built up a respectable track record. This ASRock Z68-based motherboard will natively support the 1600MHz memory we've included (and up to 2133MHz OC'd), has a PCI-e 3.0 x16 slot (wow!), and has an otherwise standard array of ports and add-ons. Of course, the PCI-e 3.0 slot is sort of irrelevant since the current cards can't even use the PCI-e 2.X bandwidth entirely, but it's still cool to brag about. I mean, hey, if it doesn't boost the price, why complain? I suppose it's nice to have, useless or not.

The heatpiping is nothing spectacular, but it'll definitely get the job done. The fact that this board supports PCI-e 3.0, which is significantly faster than 2.x, makes it a fun choice for bragging rights. Granted, the interface is much 'wider' than the traffic which will utilize it, so it's not entirely relevant at the moment.

PCI-e 2.x will work in PCI-e 3.0 slots. You can get $11 off of this board instantly by using the following coupon code at checkout: "MBINTEL112118"

Power Supply:

One of our new forum users, Jin, sent me a message with this amazing combo deal when he saw it pop-up. You get a 600W PSU, which is just enough for this build (if you plan on adding anything special, you may want to play it safe with 650W or 700W, ask us in the comments) and an optical drive. The optical drive's price is effectively nullified by the $20 combo discount, making it one of the best deals for a PSU in this budget currently.

600W is plenty for the current system, so don't worry about that. Oh, and the combo also comes with a free $15 Newegg gift card. Not bad.

Hard Drive:

Yeah, prices still suck. It's hard to be annoyed at the price of hard drives considering the damage the flood did to, you know, actual people, but it's annoying nonetheless. The great thing, though, is that we now have reliable drives coming back down to some level of normalcy in pricing. Hitachi has put forth its 500GB, 7200RPM drive (the backbone of hard drives, really) for $80, which isn't too bad in the long-run. This drive is the best value for your gaming, you really shouldn't go cheaper as the cost-per-gig will skyrocket.

Want to wait out the economy? If you have extra money or you have an existing hard drive that you can repurpose, it might be worth looking at SSDs (here's an explanation of why they're great for gaming). We'd recommend this one for a similarly-priced starter: Intel 80GB SSD. Use the promo code "IntelSSD" to get $20 off instantly, you then get a $50 rebate, which takes the price down to ~$70. Not bad at all. If you can use this as a boot / core application drive, it'd be significantly faster than the 7200 RPM drive (use that for storage). You can view our guide here for how to move Steam's game installations between drives.

Optical Drive:

Reads, writes, spins... These otherwise boring devices are, for whatever reason, still a necessary evil for most systems. If you go with a physically-distributed OS, you'll need this to install it. Also, games. Games are good. You probably want to install those, too.

24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM

Case:

We keep recommending this as an "add-on" to our other builds, and now we've finally used it as the primary option! The Z9 Plus comes with four fans (our fan guide explains how many you should have), which is more than enough for this system, some fancy mounting brackets/mechanisms to make installation easier, and decent cable management to keep things clean.

The Z9 Plus is, hands-down, the best case for the price right now. There are lots of other cases out there, of course, so don't feel like this is your only option. I'm more of a fan of boxy cases, personally, so you could consider the style fronted by the HAF 912 (below) if you don't like the Z9's external appearance.

Want to save $15? The HAF 912 has one of the coolest styles of all the cases in this range, granted, it's completely idiosyncratic. We urge you to add an extra 120mm fan if you get this case. Yeah, we know -- after adding the fan, you're really not saving much money. So why get the HAF? It's really only if you don't like how the Z9 Plus looks.

Want to spend more? The recent line of cases announced at CES 2012 should be popping online any time now, so you may have to camp out for a while, but some of them are very cool looking.

That's all! Post in the comments below if you require assistance building or picking parts / changing budgets. If you require a system specific to your needs or want more in-depth help, it'd be best if you post on our forums.