I have been considering putting together a budget "gaming/media" pc while I wait to build my dream machine in a couple months (after the 3770K has some legs under it, the Z77 Maximus V Extreme-Z is out, and the full family of Kepler is available which hopefully includes a 4GB GTX680/GTX685/GTX680Ti; then decide to go with Z77 or X79...).
This has only been a recent idea, but I have been paying attention to the Sale section of TPU forums as well as a few other sites', Newegg, and of course Craigslist... I am currently considering the following:
- AMD Phenom II X4 960T ($60 from friend - 6 cores @ 4.8Ghz 68*C)
- Cooler Master Hyper212+ Evo ($20NIB local)
- ASUS Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard ($90 local)
- 4x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3-1600 ($60)
- 2x EVGA GTX285 SC's ($100 for both) *locally; is that a good price?
- Corsair 500R Case ($80)
- OCZ TZ750 750W Full-Modular PSU ($55)
- 320GB Hitachi 7200rpm/32MB Cache SATA2 HDD (already own)
- 2x 80GB Samsung 7200rpm/16MB Cache E-IDE HDDs (already own)
- 120GB Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm/8MB Cache IDE HDD (already own)
- Lite-On DVD/CD Burner 2MB Cache IDE (already own)
- Samsung DVD Reader/CD Burner 1MB Cache IDE (already own)
- 6x140mm + 2x120mm + 2x80mm + 1x40mm fans (case/cpu/behind-HDDs/chipset)
Seems like a lot of computer for relatively little money, but I don't know anything about the video cards... Not familiar with the generation at all. Any help? Guy is throwing in a second extra-length SLI Bridge alongside the 2way and 3way bridges that come with them.
I have the option to purchase, for $280 total, the 2 cards, plus a fully-adjustable triple monitor mount (holds up to 27" monitors) and 3x Dell 20" monitors (each is 1680x1050, 0.6" side bezels). Seems like a hell of a price for a plug-and-play triple monitor setup! But I do prefer to use 1x27" monitor, or 2x24" at the most, but I imagine gaming could be crazy on that setup (assuming that those cards can support it).
Anyway, I would suggest checking craigslist and watching for a week... I have gotten some good deals on stuff that didn't sell for a week or so, such as a 2TB RAID NAS (4x1TB RAID10 WD RE3 HDDs in the enclosure) that I flipped for a nice profit after formatting the drives.
Just today I came across a NVidia 8800GT 512MB for $10 which would make a great PhysX card I would imagine.
Keep your eyes wide and your patience up