New Computer TimeFollow

Howdy,

My old PC is dying a slow death, so it's time to look for a new one. I'm fairly tech. savy, but I've never built a PC from scratch before so I'm hesitant to go the entire "build your own" route as I don't really want to risk getting a motherboard that doesn't fit the case, not enough fans, nor ***** up installing the processors. I've installed power supplies, slave drives, RAM, & video cards though so I'm not a complete n00b, however I've always found it easier to purchase a decent system then upgrade from there.

I wanna spend less than $1000 & have a good monitor already, so looking around New Egg I found this.

The Good:

Price: $699
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz Quad-Core processor (Sandy Bridge)
8GB DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

The Meh:

1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 7200RPM
600W Power Supply

The Bad:

AMD Radeon HD 6670 1GB PCI-E Graphics Card
PCI Slots: 1x PCI-e x16, 1x PCI-e x1, 2 x PCI

Would this be a decent starting point? Looking around New Egg & not really wanting to go the alienware route, this looks like the best "starting" gaming PC I could find. Any thoughts on upgrades? Thanks for any & all input!

yeah.. the kits are a sweet route if you have some decent conmponents to transfer over (drives, vid card, etc) and the Windows installation disks. A bare-bones kit saves a LOT if you don't mind a little extra work porting parts over. I haven't bought a new system since 1996 myself.

Looking back.. that was a real POS machine too. IDK how I survived on a 486DX.

If you want Im building a PC for Moderate gaming that after rebate Im looking at 500 with shipping I can post all my parts. I left room for upgrading and it should play mostly everything at good rez. Its an i3 Sandy core with Geforce460

I guess the real thing to consider is "what do you want to do with this box in the future?" Do you plan to replace it in X years? or are you looking at upgrading? If SLI is something you might consider, maybe take a look at this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229264 Thats got 3 PCI express 16X slots and a 700 watt PSU, and a very nice, albiet smaller than I usually go, case. You could easily rebuild that with a new motherboard and larger PSU later on in the future. So basically an extra $140 gets you much better rebuild options. 700 watt is fine for 2x SLI on mid range cards. If you are throwing a pair of 580 GTX's in there, you might need an 800, depending on drives and other factors. If you aren't looking to rebuild this or add SLI in, the other box would save you a bit of money.

The other thing I would reccommend, is pick up a pair of 500GB - 1TB hard drives, and install them both in your computer in a "Raid 1" mirrored array. Basically, what that would give you is an instant backup device. You save a file on one of the drives, and it automatically is on the other one, so in theory in 3 years when one of the drives fails, you still have all your data on the other one. Takes a bit of doing to set up, but the instructions are in the motherboard manual. A pair of 500GB western digital drives will run you $35 each right now. Cheap insurance.

Steam is tied to the account not the computer. Other DRM running under steam may limit the computer installs. SECUROM and Ubisoft I am looking at you.

I have moved my steam account to a different computer or new hard drives without any problems.