Legit Reviews

Hello all.

I am selling my computer and monitor to a friend of mine. I am planning on building another gaming rig for myself. I'm going to buy a 19" LED-LCD Asus monitor (1440 x 900). I am wondering what I would need to build to be able to play these titles on 1440 x 900 with Maximum settings, Full AA/AF, DX10 (if available) at least being 50fps:

*StarCraft II
*Age of Conan - is the big issue, especially on DX 10 I would imagine
*Unreal Tournament III
*World of WarCraft

As I am short on money I was planning on doing an ATI/AMD set up.

Would this work?:

Case/PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811121004

CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103688

MOBO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813138182

RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231253

HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152181

GPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814131354

DVD-RW
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827151216

MONITOR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824236072

Are the system requirements for Starcraft II out? If I were you I'd look at a CPU with more cores. Most RTS games (new ones anyway) play much better with more cores. If you do buy that case please don't use the included power supply. See the post below...
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about27878.html
On top of that this power supply is probably only good for 400W in the real world. If I were you I'd also look for a motherboard with at least 2 16x PCIe slots. If the 5750 starts to fall off you can always buy another one and run them in Crossfire down the road.

what about these changes then?:

CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

MOBO:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Also, are "bottom"-based PSU mounts bad?

PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... max%20530w

Also: StarCraft II system Requirements:

StarCraft II System Requirements

The system requirements for the StarCraft II Beta are as follows:

PC Requirements
PC Minimum System Requirements*:

Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 (Updated with the latest Service Packs) with DirectX® 9.0c
2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD Athlon® processor
128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better
12 GB available HD space
1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users)
DVD-ROM drive
Broadband Internet connection
1024X720 minimum display resolution

PC Recommended System Requirements:

Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
2 GB RAM
512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
*Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.

Mac Requirements
Mac Minimum System Requirements:

Mac® OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2 or newer
Intel® Processor
NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT or ATI Radeon® X1600 or better
12 GB available HD space
2 GB Ram
DVD-ROM drive
Broadband Internet connection
1024X720 minimum display resolution

Mac Recommended System Requirements:

Intel® Core 2 Duo processor
4 GB system RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GT or ATI Radeon® HD 4670 or better

Looks much better. The reason most cases are putting the PSU on the bottom is so you can have two/three exhaust fans near the CPU/socket area. Please don't get a RAIDMAX power supply.

If you don't mind mail in rebates then OCZ has decent power supplies for cheap.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817341016

Cool. Whats wrong with Raidmax?

I would recommend changing the monitor to a $199 23.6 inch. It wont be led backlit, and it will cost $80 more, but the screen size difference and the resolution increase makes for a much better gaming experience.

I agree it would be a better experience. However, there are a couple problems with that. That's $80 more of which I don't really have the money to spend. Plus that would call for a higher video card most likely around a 5770, 5830, 5850 -- $150-$200 range.

What does everyone think about the ATI Radeon 5670 with Age of Conan at Max settings? Based off the research I've done the seems to be around (give or take 5-10FPS) a 9800 GT/X/+/250 in terms of performance with most games and that would save me another $30+.

If you want to save a little money you can get by with 2Gb of ram, i would kind of avoid Gskill ram. My computer with has 2gb Crucial Memory installed and registers 2gb whilst my brother has 2gb Gskill memory but only registers 1.78gb. so thats a little fishy. Also if you are using a 32bit operating system then it won't take advantage of 4gb of memory anyway.

Every little bit helps. And if I need truly need 4GB I can always purchase more later. Thanks!

I would go with this monitor.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824009212
22' Acer - for $150 shipped - $10 more than the 19" once you include the shipping.. For gaming I wouldnt want anything smaller than 22"

Also your 5750 card you picked out will run your games fine. I play dirt 2 1920x1080 high setting fine with a 5750 in my HTPC.

Lt Ohio wrote:If you want to save a little money you can get by with 2Gb of ram, i would kind of avoid Gskill ram. My computer with has 2gb Crucial Memory installed and registers 2gb whilst my brother has 2gb Gskill memory but only registers 1.78gb. so thats a little fishy. Also if you are using a 32bit operating system then it won't take advantage of 4gb of memory anyway.

I'm not sure if this is the case with your brothers' computer but some mobos with integrated video allocate some of your memory to the video controller and deduct it from the total available. I have had mobos that do that (mainly OEMs like compaq, gateway, hp, etc.) especially when there isn't a setting in the bios to variate the amount of video memory used. It especially sucks when you are using a discrete card but it still allocates your memory to the IGP even though your aren't using onboard graphics.

smack323 wrote:I would go with this monitor.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824009212
22' Acer - for $150 shipped - $10 more than the 19" once you include the shipping.. For gaming I wouldnt want anything smaller than 22"

Also your 5750 card you picked out will run your games fine. I play dirt 2 1920x1080 high setting fine with a 5750 in my HTPC.

Interesting. I'll have to keep it in mind. I have a friend that uses 1680 x 1050. I have a 1920x1080 right now that I bought on impulse like a year and a half ago but I feel its unnecessarily big, which is why I'm selling it to my friend.

What about the 5670 using a 19" - 20"?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Kaos Kid wrote:

Lt Ohio wrote:If you want to save a little money you can get by with 2Gb of ram, i would kind of avoid Gskill ram. My computer with has 2gb Crucial Memory installed and registers 2gb whilst my brother has 2gb Gskill memory but only registers 1.78gb. so thats a little fishy. Also if you are using a 32bit operating system then it won't take advantage of 4gb of memory anyway.

I'm not sure if this is the case with your brothers' computer but some mobos with integrated video allocate some of your memory to the video controller and deduct it from the total available. I have had mobos that do that (mainly OEMs like compaq, gateway, hp, etc.) especially when there isn't a setting in the bios to variate the amount of video memory used. It especially sucks when you are using a discrete card but it still allocates your memory to the IGP even though your aren't using onboard graphics.

I agree. I am using Onboard graphics as well - Nvidia 8200 and I can pick anywhere between 64MB of shared RAM to 512MB of shared RAM. So instead of having 4GB, I'll have like 3.7 (256MB shared).

HD 5670 should suffice. Don't plan on cranking up 8X MSAA with extreme settings. If you're at all like me AA doesn't add much to my experience and if I have to lower some details it doesn't bother me either.

at that resolution a 5670 will prolly get ~30fps at max settings(MSAA 8x, ultra, high postprocessing(DX11))

skier wrote:at that resolution a 5670 will prolly get ~30fps at max settings(MSAA 8x, ultra, high postprocessing(DX11))

Major_A wrote:HD 5670 should suffice. Don't plan on cranking up 8X MSAA with extreme settings. If you're at all like me AA doesn't add much to my experience and if I have to lower some details it doesn't bother me either.

Awesome. Thanks guys! I think I can handle just using a 5670.