Zues is in the making! SUB $400 Gamer

[hercules71185]

I'm building a new gaming machine. This is supposed to be the best budgeted gaming PC you can build using ebay, rebates, forum sales etc.
I'm going to list what I have so far. How much I paid for it and what I'm doing with it.
Sigma Shark PSU, I know it sounds generic I would have got Corsair just to be safe but, LOOK AT THE REVIEWS!!!! ONE OF THE BEST ON NEWEGG!!!! 90% of people gave it 4-5 eggs. Corsair was 92% and it was over $40 more! $54 shipped
Asus Dark Knight HD 4870 512mb DDR5 I saw 3% performance gain with 1gb and I am going to crossfire anyways. $110 open box newegg.
1 TB hard drive for storage $70
DVD burner 16x Ebay special $11 shipped
Temporarily I will be running this monster with an overclocked E5200 (ebay) $40
Asus Extreme P35 board. Refurbished for $40 shipped
4GB DDR2 8000 by OCZ platinum edition $30 compusa after MIR
Computer case $30 I got it a while ago though. It has 2 alien eyes and it's name is something Area51


Grand Totals
PSU $54
GPU $110
Hard drive $70
DVD $11
E5200 $40
RAM $30
Case $30
MOBO $40
TOTAL $385


I will be benchmarking this Sub $400 beast. I will also be posting pics and updates when I get my other 4870 and upgrade to the q9550 or some overclockable quad that is on sale at the time. :-D

Wednesday I'll have everything except my P35 board. I'll bench it on a cheap board in my closet, then again overclocked on a decent board.

[Skippman]

Sounds like quite a challange! I can't wait to see some pics as it comes together.

[Illuminati]

Given your screen name is Hercules, I assume you mean the gaming machine is Zeus. Good luck with your build!

[Apoptosis]

sub $400 will be tight... Hope you don't have to buy a Windows copy as that will easily put you over the $400 mark!

Like the others said good luck, post pictures and game on.

[hercules71185]

Got RAM and CPU in the mail today. As for Windows I'm taking it off my old case. lol. EVERYONE has windows keys!! haha. Today was the first time I realized how big Legit Reviews is. On the side of my Ram (OCZ Platinum) it has the LR approval seal. Everything else (aside from the Asus extreme mobo) is at the Jacksonville post office and going to be delivered tomorrow morning! I'll have this up and running and be running a lot of benchmarks at stock speeds. And then a lot more at stock voltage max. Once the new mobo is in I'll crank it up :-D

[hercules71185]

Given your screen name is Hercules, I assume you mean the gaming machine is Zeus. Good luck with your build!

lol yea!

[Skippman]

Yep, Nates kinda a big deal these days. Which is good, he's a cool guy. I'm just happy the forums haven't attracted any douches.

[vicaphit]

You seem to be doing pretty well with that $400. Also, you can get Windows 7 RC for free until early 2010 if you really need another license. It has been pretty stable for me.

[hercules71185]

It's down pouring out stilll in Jacksonville, so far the last 3 days it has been. It's slowing down my last packages lol. I WANT IT NOW!! Hopefully within the next few hours the beast will be alive.

[DMB2000uk]

Yep, Nates kinda a big deal these days. Which is good, he's a cool guy. I'm just happy the forums haven't attracted any douches.

We hammer it out of them while their still young and impressionable posters

Looks like quite the machine for the budget herc.

Dan

[hercules71185]

well everything is running and all I need to do is bench it. My limitation to keep this under $400 is to keep my Thermaltake V1 off it since that puts me over. With the stock cooler I can clock to 3.25 and the hottest it gets is 60c. Time for some 3dmarks when I get a little time.

[hercules71185]

Benchmarks in the making. So far I ran a 3dmark06 stock and overclocked on the $400 PC I'm keeping the cooler stock because I want to keep this a sub $400 PC. When I get a cooler and maybe the next series wolfdale will keep it under $500 and see what can be of it at that time.

Stock 2.5



Stock cooler and the CPU heated with OCCT for 10 mins after to rise the temp of it to the max.



More to come. I will now keep testing for the fastest I can get this thing stable without being 70C full load with OCCT, that means it's like 64C any other test.

[hercules71185]

Got it to 3.5 and the hottest it gets is 70C :-D

3dMark06 results on this PC is now 14,451 :-D



I will be posting Benchmarks of Crysis next @3.5

I will also make a free little website just to host a better setup for benchmarking this lil guy. Pics of the rig will be later tonight.

[hercules71185]

I had to switch out Vista and go back to XP because of numerous problems I was having. So now benchmarking Crysis is not the same. Either way I did it on the highest settings possible. Including Forced AF @ 16x and vsync via software seems to work better than having vsync on in games.
Here are my results

Highest settings XP can do for crysis, AND force AF, vsync, adaptive AA and triple buffering. @ 1680x1050

36FPS!
Without AA and vsync I'm at 50FPS!!

[hercules71185]

Now I know it's repetitive, I wanted to see how hot my CPU would get running a game, (crysis for about 10 mins then Grid for about 20 mins) Then running 3dmark06 after it and raising it up to 3.6GHz. here are the results, and the 3dmark score.

[hercules71185]

Inside the case with flash and no lights on.



Here is the inside with the side panel off and lights on and no flash



And here is my put together Zues, so far the only thing left for this guy is the heatsink and fan which will be here tomorrow. And my overclocks should be here for the budget PC. I picked up a decent copper block with a cheap fan and that will do for the benchmarking $400 gamer for tomorrows results.

[hercules71185]

Today marks the day, where Zues has finally came to life. Here is a 3dmark06 with a decent thermaltake box cooler to finish off the $400.
3dmark06 and superpi



Anyone have any competition in the price range?

[hercules71185]

awesome

[hercules71185]

I'll post some screen shots up in a bit. But, crysis modified to DX10 in XP using a zip file by someone named MrGnome. I can still get 32FPS @ 2xAA. Looks perfect and I seem to no longer have that glitchness I was posting about.

[InspectahACE]

very nice job with the money available..i see you're a Digital Blasphemy guy too