PC Build Guide – October 2012

Welcome to the October version of our PC build guides. As with before, we have implemented hard price limits ($500, $800, $1300, $1800) on ourselves and have had to make tough decisions with each build. Your personal budget will likely be flexible, but we hope this article will give you a baseline. You can of course spend more or spend less, but you run into a case of diminishing returns at either end. Please keep in mind that pricing information is immediate and may not necessarily reflect real prices by the time you have read this article.

The biggest news this month is that we have lowered our Starter build to a price maximum of $500. While we still think the $800 build is the “sweet spot” (as indicated by its new name), we know a lot of you are looking for a build that has a lower cost up front, but still gives you a lot of upgrade potential. We think the new Starter build fits that bill perfectly: A Z77 motherboard means you can upgrade to an Ivy Bridge chip, three open RAM slots means you can stuff 12 more gigs in there, and a 500W Corsair power supply means you can upgrade to a video card as high as a GTX 660 Ti. Or you can simply stick with the parts we have chosen–a Hyper-Threaded dual-core i3 processor and the surprisingly capable Radeon 7770 aren’t too shabby in their own right, especially at lower resolutions.

Our three higher-end builds stay largely the same this month, as the hardware landscape hasn’t changed much. We did manage to squeeze in another 8GB of RAM into the Enthusiast, and we also decided on MSI GeForce GTX 670 Power Editions for our top two builds. We continue to see price drops on various components, which has led to a fair bit of breathing room with respect to our price maximums on the Enthusiast and Professional builds.

The Starter ($500 maximum)

Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/iK2d

CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 ($107.99 @ Amazon)

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Pro4 ATX LGA1155 ($94.99 @ Amazon)

Memory: Crucial Ballistix 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3-1600 ($18.98 @ NCIX US)

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM ($69.99 @ NCIX US)

Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB ($116.97 @ Newegg)

Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($19.99 @ Newegg)

Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W ATX12V ($39.99 @ Newegg)

Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $483.89

The Sweet Spot ($800 maximum)

Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j3lS

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K ($215.98 @ NCIX US)

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus ($19.99 @ Newegg)

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Pro4 ATX LGA1155 ($94.99 @ Amazon)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600 ($34.99 @ Newegg)

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM ($69.99 @ NCIX US)

Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB ($259.99 @ Amazon)

Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.49 @ SuperBiiz)

Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W ATX12V ($39.99 @ Newegg)

Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $800.40

The Enthusiast ($1300 maximum)

Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j1OW

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K ($286.97 @ TigerDirect)

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus ($19.99 @ Newegg)

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Pro4 ATX LGA1155 ($94.99 @ Amazon)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3-1600 ($79.99 @ Newegg)

Hard Drive: Crucial M4 128GB 2.5″ SSD ($94.99 @ Microcenter)

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM ($69.99 @ NCIX US)

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 670 2GB ($397.86 @ Newegg)

Case: Cooler Master HAF 922 ATX Mid Tower Case ($93.89 @ NCIX US)

Power Supply: Corsair 650W ATX12V / EPS12V ($109.99 @ Newegg)

Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $1263.65

The Professional ($1800 maximum)

Part list permalink: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/iJXl

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz ($286.97 @ TigerDirect)

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus ($19.99 @ Newegg)

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 ($134.99 @ Amazon)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3-1600 ($79.99 @ Newegg)

Hard Drive: Crucial M4 128GB 2.5″ SSD ($94.99 @ Microcenter)

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM ($69.99 @ NCIX US)

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 670 2GB – 2-Way SLI ($397.86 @ Newegg)

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 670 2GB – 2-Way SLI ($397.86 @ Newegg)

Case: NZXT Phantom (White) ATX Full Tower Case ($119.99 @ Newegg)

Power Supply: Corsair 750W ATX12V / EPS12V ($99.99 @ NCIX US)

Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $1717.61

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