Legit Reviews

My hot German friend Jule needs a computer by Saturday to give to her son for 8th grade graduation. Being the gentleman that I am I volenteered to build her one. The budget is $1000 or less for hardware and she already has a mouse and keyboard. Her other stipulations are that it must be able to play Call of Duty 3, have a 27 inch monitor, and she doesn't want an all black case. Since I need all of the parts by Friday I will be using Amazon Prime. Here is what I have so far and I am very open to suggestions.

Case: http://www.amazon.com/NZXT-Phantom-Towe ... 07&sr=1-10 = $100
Power Supply: http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-ModXStream-Mo ... 629&sr=1-8 = $80
MOBO: http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-970-EXTREM ... 820&sr=1-3 = $85 or
http://www.amazon.com/Asus-Socket-Cross ... 820&sr=1-1 = $95
Processor: http://www.amazon.com/AMD-FX-8120-8-Cor ... 41&sr=1-13 = $160 or
http://www.amazon.com/AMD-FX-4170-Quad- ... 06&sr=1-17 = $140
CPU Cooling: http://www.amazon.com/Antec-Kuhler-H2O- ... 552&sr=1-1 = $60
RAM: http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengeance ... 700&sr=1-8 = $55
Hard Drive: http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-C ... 991&sr=1-5 = $75
Video Card: http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DVI-I ... 245&sr=1-8 = $230
Monitor: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VE278Q-27-In ... 33&sr=1-19 = $310
Total Low = $1,135
Total High = $1,165

As you can see, I'm a little over budget. Anything that I forgot? Anything I can trim? Stock heat sink instead of the Antec H2O? Power supply overkill? Any suggestions are welcome but remember I need to order these parts ASAP!

I'm guessing you are leaning to AMD over Intel??

I'm a bit shocked as I thought you'd be going Ivy Bridge and Kepler... ;)

You might want to look at pre-built systems too.

Here is one by CyberPower that is a solid deal for ~$530 shipped

AMD FX-Series FX-6100
AMD Radeon HD 6670 Video Card
8GB DRAM
1TB Hard Drive
24x DVD Burner
600W PSU

You can often get a pre-build system for way less than something you got to build. If you buy that and add in your 6950 and monitor you'd be below budget and save a ton of time.

Apoptosis wrote:You can often get a pre-build system for way less than something you got to build.

I have to agree. Though looking for a motherboard with the RAM and CPU then the other bits will also save time and money.

I don't know if they do next day delivery, but you might also want to look at ebuyer as they are quite competitive on prices.

I ended up building the rig myself and stayed within a $1,100 budget. Working with the NZXT case was mostly positive. The hard drive mounting mechanism was a bit awkward, and the grommets were a bit cheap but other than that I liked the way it was put together. I opted for a 4 core 4.2 instead of a 6 or 8 core with a lower clock speed because it was cheaper and most software doesn't use the extra cores anyway. One more rig in the books!

Wow that's quite the gift for graduating middle school!