Mid Tier Gaming PC [Budget $1400]

[The Game]

This gaming pc is my first build for my classmate in school. It is a mid tier gaming PC build that is more functional than good looking, Thats probably the reason I chose the Corsair 300r to the Corsair 400r saving around forty bucks and putting it in the GPU. I chose the Saffire Radeon 7950 because it was just a bit expensive than the nvidia gtx 660ti in my country, It had the advantage of a more powerful bus compared to the gtx660 ti's narrow 192 bit and since he is more of a eyefinity guy than 3d i needed the extra memory. Thats the primary reason however there were other reasons like aesthetics involved.

This is a full black themed build. Unfortunately I had already built this system and handed it over so I don't have any pictures ready right now. Hope I take some snaps later.

Case Corsair 300r Window

(hated it because it did not have that silicone snapon's on the cutouts but come on its a value thing)

Processor Intel Core i5 3570k

Cooler Corsair H70 Liquid Cooling Kit

( Had to convince him so badly to put it in because he is more of a " Water Damage the computer you stupid!!! " kind of guy. )

( Its in a push pull configuration with some quiet but cheap fans available here in India. I mean as quiet as the Noctua NF-P8 for 4 bucks($),not as ugly)

Motherboard Asrock Z77 Extreme4 (only due to the aesthetics of the board otherwise choose any P8Z77's)

Ram 2 X Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz RAM

Graphics Card Sapphire Radeon 7950 (3gb)

SSD OCZ Vertex 4 128gb (it's nearly as cheap as the corsair force here but 256gb is expensive)

HDD Seagate Barracuda 2 TB

Power Supply Corsair TX 650M Semi Modular PSU ( coloured the yellow sticker black with marker :P )

Sound Card Asus Xonar DG

Optical Drive LG MDISK DVD RW 24X

Additional Accessories Rubber mounts for Fans , Rubber inserts for custom fan cutout , some molex to 3 pin adapters, inline resistors , 2 white led strips.

Fans : Cooler Master BC Series (Discontinued in North America) Fans. Not the best or the worst. They are silent at only 19.1 dbi and had a CFM of 45. (4 of them)

The link to them is attached.

I also used the in-production Cooler Master BC Series White LED Fans for the front intake and the top exhaust.(4 of them)

All the Fan Mounts are populated in the case.

Reasons for choosing this cooling setup

1. According to physics Noise overlaps the existing noise available not doubles the total amplitude(intensity).

2. My friend was not interested in spending over $150 on ugly noctua Fans.

3. He needed Silence at a cheap cost.

4. He already had a stupid old fan controller which could literally control upto 6 fans but there are already 3 X 3pin connectors on the Motherboard itself.

5. This follows the natural airflow of the case

6. I had manually dremeled out a fan mount on the bottom and installed a black fan grill and the one non led fan. (BEWARE : that's a big work guys not advisable )

You have to buy black rubber inserts to put on the sanded steed and that made mounting fans a big hassle. Main Reason for this was to maintain neutral air pressure inside the

case. Anyway He had a pretty good Fan controller that could automatically through preset settings switch off the permanently rpm lowered exhaust fans ( thanks to linus for tipping off with that inline resistor thing which i bought as a pack of 20 for Rs.25 which is around half a dollar!!)

Possible Upgrades ( up to around $700 upgrade options )

1. OCZ Vertex 4 256gb SSD

2. Intel Core i7 3770k (if necessary)

3. Corsair 500r or the 600t (if necessary)

4. Corsair H100i (if necessary)

5. Asus P8Z77-(according to needs) ( blue colored aesthetics )

6. Msi GTX680 Twin Frozer or the Asus one ( blue colored aesthetics )

7. Corsair Dominator Platinum's 16gb (more MHZ more gaming performance RAM) (check if it is compatible with your motherboards) (Most Asrock ones support only1600mhz)

Disadvantages

1. You need a more powerful power supply if you will upgrade your pc to crossfire in the future(he will not).

2. Does not support nvidia tech such as CUDA or Physx.

3. Not optimized for Video Editing.

4. Should have had a more capacity SSD.

The other components he already owns are

Monitor 3 X Some Old Acer tn panel 720p VGA Monitor 60hz

(sucks as hell , but he refused to upgrade to 3 ips panels due to budget constraints at the moment, hopefully he will get three 1080p ips displays from asus in a month)

Keyboard Razer Blackwidow 2012 Tournament Edition ( I literally had to beg him to buy the razer mice and headset )

Mouse Razer Ouroboros ( Me and my friends presented it to him for b'day , besides i own an ouroboros to use with a stupid nvidia gtx8800 graphic card).

Great mouse for weird big hands like mine (for comparison my hand is like the width of a 15 inch screen crazy comparison)

Headset Razer Carcharias (We both have huge ears ; I mean huge and that headset is pretty cheap)

BTW guys we got the Keyboard Headset combo from Flipkart (indian e retailer) for around $110 dollars which is pretty great.

[Dim]

Nice rig! I have some similar specs, like the 7950 and the motherboard. Are you happy with yours?

[The Game]

Yup He was happy about it.

Especially he was playing with nvidia 9400gt earlier.

So he better be happy...lol

[DJ46]

I would never buy that many Razer products. You're better of buying something from Steelseries/Logitech.

[Lolipop]

Tell him to overclock that 7950, if he doesn't let him know he's throwing away free money.

Just putting it out there, 7950 > 660ti.

1600 Mhz RAM is fine. He can overclock it or something like that.