component reccomendations

[Embalmed]

I apologize for my off topic-ness, the WCG forum tends to feel a bit more like family than the other forums.

Our new guy at work, fried his system a while back and has been using a pretty used and abused laptop. Power supply took out the board, the hard drive, and pretty much everything else useful.

I'd ask in other forums, but I think the concentration of people that appreciate "bang for your buck" (for you non-yankee's that means get the most for your money ) are located here. Hardware wise, does anyone have any good recommendations for putting a powerful box together on a budget? He has no itent to OC, and I think I may donate a few pieces in trade for some crunching contributions.

Generic response would be to say "eh go get a cheap z77 board, a 2600 or 3770, whatever ram and video card you can afford and call it a day"... however, that seems like a bit of a cop out.

[OldChap]

How much do you want to spend (max)??

[yojimbo197]

Another question would be whether your friend or you live near a Microcenter or Fry's. Especially since MC runs Mobo+CPU specials.

[kjeldoran]

If you do not have a fry's or microcenter nearby then go with used parts. You can pick up a used sandy bridge CPU for fairly cheap. RAM is dirt cheap and you could toss in a radeon 7770 for some decent gaming/crunching performance. I suggest getting an SSD since that will be a huge boost in performance for daily tasks.

Besides that, we need a price range for suggestions .

[yojimbo197]

Geeks.com sometimes has pretty good sales on refurbed stuff, even higher end Dell and HP workstations.

[Johnmark]

Tell your buddy to hold off on the video card for now, in a couple months there will be some GREAT deals on some gently used ones

[Embalmed]

Another question would be whether your friend or you live near a Microcenter or Fry's. Especially since MC runs Mobo+CPU specials.

yeah, he practically lives next door to a microcenter.

ah, price... lets start sub 500 dollars. If someone has an idea that pushes over, no biggie. If he has to live with integrated graphics for a few months, no biggie, I will loan (permanently) my 8800 gts so he can play games at crap resolution.

hmm, these amd bundles on microcenter's site doesn't look half bad

[jeanguy2]

Make sure that you research the true value of bundle prices. In quite a few instances I found that the price of bundle deals for CPU/motherboard, CPU/motherboard/RAM or CPU/motherboard/RAM/PSU were not best value. Researching individual items needed and looking around for retail outlets that had them on sale often yielded a lower total price even with extra shipping added. This is specially true if you are willing to wait 2 to 3 weeks to get it all together.

[yojimbo197]

As far as CPU+Mobo deals go, I haven't seen anyone beat MC's deals, though Newegg sometimes has deals on CPU's that are decent.
MC's prices on PSU's and RAM are ok, though Newegg has better prices on PSU's. Buying from Microcenter would avoid the crappy PSU packaging that Newegg uses now though.

[bluestang]

...would avoid the crappy PSU packaging that Newegg uses now though.

or most things from them, they have been terrible for a while now with packing. And if you order a hard drive for them, you definitely gambling on getting one DOA or dead in a very, very short time. Just look at the HDD reviews compared to TigerDirect or Amazon for the same identical drives.

[kjeldoran]

Just something I came up with that is around $500 after tax/shipping. No case, monitor, keyboard/mouse or OS.

Radeon 7770 $119 - Same price as other 7770s, but this one is clocked at 1100mhz. Good performance and has good crunching value. Could look into a used card for better performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202023
SeaSonic SSR-360GP $60 -While expensive, I am partial to seasonic PSUs. I looked on newegg and you might save $10-15 on this if you go with a bronze unit. 360W is more than enough even if he decides to upgrade down the line (minus xfire/sli)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151117
Crucial Ballistix 2x4GB $45 - Cheap ram. You could save a few bucks by going with DDR3-1333 or ordering from newegg.
http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...ory_Modules%29
Samsung 840 120GB $99 -SSD will be a huge boost to performance. Even if it is the non-pro series I think it is worth the price of $79 when combo'd.
http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...rive_%28SSD%29
Asrock Z77-Pro3 $95 - There is a gigabyte matx board for $75 as well, but it is the B75 chipset. You could save there if you want to skip the option of upgrading down the line to a k series CPU.
http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...el_Motherboard
Core i3 3225 $120 - Chose this since it works with the combo. Only other option is selecting the 3570k, but that is $70 more.
http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...oxed_Processor

The CPU, mobo and SSD all have combo discounts based on microcenter's current ad. You get $50 off by comboing the mobo/CPU and another $20 off for comboing the samsung 840 with a CPU or mobo. Samsung SSDs are 10% off at microcenter so even though it shows up at $117 in the cart, it is actually $99 (ad shows this). Total without tax/shipping is $468.