What is a good costume pc build? Whats your build?

Question

I want to build my own computer. I basically am looking for a good home entertainment computer that can burn and watch blue ray dvds but high end gaming ability would be a nice plus as well. I want to get the most bang for my buck but with high end performance. Any suggestions? Whats your set up? Anyone know any good costume build websites? I personality would like to spend anywhere from 400-1000$. Any help understanding configuration/compatibility and the quality of parts would be excellent. Thanks for your responses.

Answer 1

While I'm not sure of many good custom PC building sites (I know they're out there, though), I can recommend a good setup for your listed needs:



Intel Core i5 or Core i7 for decoding Blu-Ray movies in HD (and great gaming performance to boot)



Intel P55 or X58 motherboard (dependant on choice of processor). Brands I recommend: Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI, DFI, Foxconn, and just straight from Intel.



6 GB DDR3 RAM for gaming and watching movies, that amount should be perfect for your needs



Hard drive space doesn't matter as much, but make sure you get at least 500 GB. I have a 750 GB myself and it's just about half full; mostly of large pictures, lots of music, and many many games.



Graphics on the other hand, is very important these days. For the most part, the faster the better. My recommendations are an ATI Radeon HD 5770, 5850, or 5870, as those are great at high-definition Blu-Ray movies and, especially the 5800 series, are superb at playing 95% of games at 1920 x 1080 or 1920 x 1200 with full settings and able to achieve good frame rates (not slow and no picture jerking in the game).



You can get a Blu-Ray player drive for under $100 now, and Blu-Ray burner drives for under $200 (some are even under $150), so keep that in mind, and these drives almost always also function as normal CD and DVD read/write drives too.



And obviously I would recommend Windows 7 64 bit to tie it all together, but I'll let you decide whether you want Home Premium or Ultimate. The ATI HD 5000 series graphics cards are the only ones that FULLY support all of the features of Windows 7 (since nVidia hasn't perfected their Windows 7 cards yet), hence the reason I recommend them.



That is my recommended build setup. If you're curious, here is my build (Granted I only game at 1680 x 1050 and I don't watch Blu-Ray movies on my computer):

AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.5 GHz

8 GB DDR2 800 RAM

750 GB Hard Drive

ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB (soon to be an ATI HD 5850)

Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio (soon to be an X-Fi Titanium)

2 DVD burner drives, one with Labelflash, one with Lightscribe

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit









Here are some deals on Blu-Ray drives, mind you they all were under $150 on Black Friday. As for brands, LG and Lite-On are both good brands with good reputations, so find one in your price range from them and go for it.



Blu-Ray burner drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=600&N=2010100600&SpeTabStoreType=1



Blu-Ray reader drives (were all under $100 on Friday)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=598&N=2010100598&SpeTabStoreType=1





How will your sound system be set up? Because you can get an ATI 4890 or 5800 series card for gaming, and they can output 7.1 channel HD audio over HDMI along with full 1080p picture, and then have no need for an extra sound card (as the sound would be produced within the graphics card itself). With an nVidia card, you need an extra connector to wherever you can hook up a special S/PDIF cable (whether it be from the motherboard sound or a sound card) to be able to output sound through the HDMI.



If you don't plan on using HDMI as a sound output, then go for a sound card that has both analog and digital output connectors like a Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium or Titanium Fatal1ty card.

Answer 2

For your information, i am a Computer Hardware Expert Guy :) Here is my build:(NOTE: This is a desktop PC)

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200@2.33ghz (default clock) FSB 1333mhz 4MB L2 Shared Cache

RAM: G.Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800mhz

Video card: 512MB Nvidia Geforce 9800GT

Motherboard: Gigabyte G31M-ES2L

Sound card: Built-in sound card works very well

Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 2243BW running at 1680x1050 native resolution

HDD (Hard Drive Disk): Hitachi 500GB SATA hard drive.

DVD drive: Samsung SATA DVD drive (no support for blu-ray).

Power Supply Unit: Coolermaster Extreme Power Plus 500W

Case: Thermaltake VF6000BWS MicroATX Case



If you want to build your computer, you can only build a desktop computer and not a laptop because you can not get parts for a laptop except for the RAM, battery and Hard drive. Anyway you should build a desktop. The essential parts you will need are: Motherboard, CPU (Processor), RAM, PSU (power supply unit), Computer Case, Hard drive.'



I will contuine to edit this question later or you can email me and ill email you back giving alot of information if your willing to co operate.

If you can provide more information, or have any more questions, please email me via. my profile.

Thanks

Expert Computer Hardware Tech Guy

Answer 3

I built one, here are the specs



Intel Core i5-6600K Processor 3.5GHz (Overclocked to 4.1)

Windows 10

16GB DDR4-3000 RAM

480GB Solid State Drive

1TB Hard Disk Drive

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5

MSI Z170A PC Mate SystemBoard



Its incredibly powerful, and if your patient, and look for great deals, you could get it for around 1050$

Answer 4

Now a days it is usually cheaper just to purchase one from a named manufacturer. Plus the warranty is worth it also. I have never seen a computer that wears a costume either...