Gaming PC Builds 2012

At this point in time you might already have Diablo III on pre-order, or you might be wondering what type of PC it would take to play the game that we’ve all been waiting 12 years for. Believe it or not, it doesn’t take a lot of money to build a PC that’s Diablo III worthy. Recently I had this question come in through an e-mail: “Hello Brandon, My name is Dave (changed). I have been searching the internet endlessly to find out one simple question. I ran into your “build A Gaming PC” article through Google and figured that … Continue Reading

For our Gaming PC builds below $900 it was easy enough to choose where we wanted to put our money because there was always a lot of improvement needed in performance, which was always put as our priority. Going forward from here you’ll have to decide whether you’re going to continue to focus on performance or move towards improving your other components which aren’t essential towards performance. CPU I’m happy with the FX-8120 and 2500k we used in our $900 build, but with the additional $100 you could consider upgrading to the i7-2600k or the FX-8150. Personally, I’d rather upgrade … Continue Reading

As the budget continues to increase for our custom gaming PC build it’s important to first look at the most glaring deficiencies in our overall build. In the $800 price range our build’s motherboard and GPU were not bad, but were limited in their performance and versatility. CPU The Intel i5-2500k which we chose for our last build should be more than adequate for any level of build. Upgrades beyond this level of CPU have more to do with additional performance you may need outside of gaming as this CPU is very similar in gaming benchmarks to the i7-2600k, i7-2700k, … Continue Reading

In the $700 range, the gaming build really starts to get interesting for me. It’s amazing how much better the specifications on this machine are vs. one that you might purchase online at a major retailer. For $100 more we’re going to focus on upgrading our GPU, PSU, and case. CPU For CPU we’re sticking with the i3-2100 for our Intel build and with the AMD Phenom II X4 960T Processor. In fact, we probably won’t upgrade either of these until we’re in the price range of the Phenom II 1090T and the i5-2500. I feel that at this current … Continue Reading

Now that we’ve completed our build under $500 I wanted to move on to our build for $600 to show you exactly what would be changed if we had just $100 more. While a lot will still remain the same, there are some substantial differences in this build when compared to that of our previous one. CPU AMD PC Build: AMD Phenom II X4 960T Processor, Black Edition, 3.0 4 Socket AM3 – HD96ZTWFGRBOX – 115 Intel Gaming Build: Intel Core i3-2100 Processor 3.1GHz 3 MB Cache Socket LGA1155 – 125 GPU: 6850 PCIE Video Card (100315L) – $135 after … Continue Reading

We’re back and a lot has been updated since we gave our last $500 build review. If you aren’t familiar with our site we take a look at the latest hardware for any given quarter and then list gaming PC builds and the hardware you need to build them. Please note that the budget for our builds does not include software. The Rules Change a little bit when you only have $500: Normally I like to spend just about the same amount on my CPU as my GPU – which is about 25% of my overall budget. In the under … Continue Reading