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[guessingo]

tomshardware.com

every few months they provide builds for gaming pcs. they have a budget pc, middle of the road, and a 'spend alot of money'. for the budget pc they shoot for around $650. id highly recommend using them. for the last few years toms hardware has said that AMD chips are a waste of money for gaming. you are better off buying a lower tier Intel chip (lower tier than the AMD chip) to get better value.

they also have a very good forum for pc builds. make a thread. tell them your budget and people will give you links to Newegg.

for best prices. Newegg. look for combos' they sell 2 parts and give a discount.

i would highly suggest going to tomshardware for this.

[Sensei]

tomshardware.com

every few months they provide builds for gaming pcs. they have a budget pc, middle of the road, and a 'spend alot of money'. for the budget pc they shoot for around $650. id highly recommend using them. for the last few years toms hardware has said that AMD chips are a waste of money for gaming. you are better off buying a lower tier Intel chip (lower tier than the AMD chip) to get better value.

they also have a very good forum for pc builds. make a thread. tell them your budget and people will give you links to Newegg.

for best prices. Newegg. look for combos' they sell 2 parts and give a discount.

i would highly suggest going to tomshardware for this.

Yeah, I basically formed the initial parts list between looking at Tom's Hardware and Newegg. At this rate, it looks like I'll actually get around to building the computer in early December, so I'll be revising my parts list then. I'll probably post again when I'm forming a new list- the main reason I'm asking is to see if I'm particularly missing anything, or if I've somehow chosen incompatible parts and failed to notice, or other unexpected caveats.

Edit: Speaking of Tom's Hardware's example builds, I'm basically shooting for this thing but with a graphics card. Other exceptions being I'd go for a faster intel CPU without as much focus on onboard graphics, I already have a hard drive, and I can't possibly seem to find 8GB of DDR3 RAM for that price any more.

[gimlet]

You can catch memory at a decent price if you keep your eye open - I got 8G of Crucial Sport DDR3 1600 for $55 last week from newegg and that wasn't even the greatest deal I'd seen, but it matched another stick I had and I did need it fairly quick so I couldn't keep waiting.   Keep checking the daily deals and subscribe to their annoying email sales flyer, it does have decent sales codes once in a while.  But memory is tough, you don't want to buy it TOO far in advance of having the rest of the parts because you really want to test it while you're still in the exchange period.

[Sensei]

Updated the first post with some new parts. I actually included the case (might also switch to the PSU) from the Tom's Hardware article above (admittedly I had been looking at their gaming PC stuff and not their entry-level rig, earlier). Would you recommend buying the case ahead of time? It's on sale, but it vexes me that Newegg doesn't say how long it's staying on sale.

Edit: This PSU being the one Tom's Hardware mentioned. Looks good, but like the case, it's on sale and I'm not sure if I should buy ahead, if it will still be on sale later, or if there will be better sales.

[gimlet]

Yeah, I buy cases ahead of time all the time, I caught a couple of awesome deals on sturdy but cheap cases -

I dunno man, $50 for a case when you're trying to save money, to me that's at least $20 too much.  And that 2nd case, ehhhh, you have to pay $9 shipping so you're only saving a bit over $10.  Don't buy a case for the included fans, you can buy a pack of 3 or 4 decent case fans for $10 IF your case even needs the extra cooling.  Til they come in, if it runs too hot take the side panel off and blow a box fan or house fan in there, that's fine for a few days til your additional cooling ships.

And at least look at the cases on sale, http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000007%20100182&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20 they have free shipping and yea some have annoying rebates and that annoying side window, but I've bought those to save money and I stick em under the desk or something so I don't have to look at the window    And make SURE you look at the discount codes, a lot of 'em are another $10 off.

Like this case comes out to $20 with free shipping, after the CLMBSDAY11 code and an annoying $15 rebate.     http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811156277  So far I've gotten every rebate from coolermaster, it does take a couple months usually though   And you can always not plug in the annoying LEDs :p  Reasonable reviews, Coolermaster cases range from not-horrible to pretty good (ahh the old Centurion cases, those were a hell of a value).  Oops this one's a Raidmax brand, I think I used a couple of those for something, they were definitely OK for the price too.

Oh and remember you can access the USB ports on the motherboard in the back of the case too, you're not limited to whatever few they stick on the front.

Edit:  Oh and $40 + shipping for a 400 watt non-80plus certified PSU?   Antec's not a *bad* brand, but it's nothing special.   Ehhhhh, I'd look at what's on sale closer to your date - keep your eye open around Black Friday week, a lot of stuff's gonna be on sale then.   I think you could at least get a better quality one than this for $40 + shipping...

[DNK]

Looks like my earlier post got eaten by the net. [nevermind, it didn't I'm a fool, but maybe some extra info is included here]

Remember to be specific in what you want to use the computer for. Even if it's "gaming", that's not terribly specific. Which games you play will determine the best balance between components for a given budget. The more info, the better.

Odd comments:

• If you're buying a video card, you don't need integrated graphics. Intel has a lot of processors that are cheaper ($10-20 less) only because they don't have integrated graphics enabled. For instance, the i5 3350P is the same as the 3340, but $15 less and without integrated graphics. These are usually the best bang-for-buck choices for gamers. Additionally, because there's no power draw for the iGFX, they're lower wattage also.
• For RAM, divide the MHz speed by the CAS latency to get the total "speed" in a layman's sense. So, a 1333Mhz 9C stick is about the same speed as a 1600 11C. There will be a difference in bandwidth, which is not directly affected by internal (CAS, etc) latencies, but is of course by bus speed. Again, knowing what the RAM will be used for will be helpful in knowing if you can save money by going with a lower-bandwidth option (like 1333/9 above) that will be a bit cheaper.
• Get a solid PSU from a good brand. There are calculators online to determine what wattage you need. Use one after you figure out your components.
• Save on money by saving on wattage of components. Lower-wattage components will help you save a lot on the PSU. A 500W PSU is usually a lot more expensive than a 350W. Also, electricity costs money. Also, additional heating costs money (case fans) and is noisier. A 100W CPU might cost only $10 more than some 70W, but when you figure in total costs, it could be $20+ more.
• For graphics cards, extra RAM and O/C cards are great for long-term (2+ years) use. They cost a bit more, but those little extras can extend their useful life by a lot more than the cost. Realize that lots of things can bottleneck a system, causing performance issues. Not having enough GRAM is definitely one, and if you're using 2-3 year-old amounts of RAM in modern games, it's going to cause extra issues that will make you upgrade the card before the other performance bottlenecks would.
• Generally, you can save money on the motherboard by going with micro-ATX. Figure out what you need for motherboard connections (how many PCI-e slots, HDD connections, RAM slots, etc) first (you can ask us about that), then find the board that has the minimum (with a little wiggle room on PCI slots). Realize that the nicer chipsets also are more expensive, and typically are only useful for overclockers. If you need to ask about this, probably you can go with the cheapest one, which can save a lot. Also, as with the PSU, get a good brand. The PSU and motherboard will likely be the first components to die, and for both you get exactly what you pay for because of the high competition in those markets. $60-70 is a reasonable price for a basic board. If you're going much lower than that you're getting cheap components that will wear out. The "power circuit" is the most important part for longevity, so do some research on that.
• For hard drives, a moderate-speed (7200RPM) large drive from a good manufacturer (Seagate, WD are great) is a solid choice. These can last through multiple computers, and they're one way to save on building your own computer as compared to buying prebuilts. Get high-quality here every time so it makes it through its expected lifetime (6-10 years). Losing a HDD is miserable. If you're doing gaming or anything with lots of reading from disk, you can always invest in one of two solutions: a new SSD (much smaller but much faster for a higher price - mostly for higher end systems still) or more RAM (you can create a RAMDISK, which is an even faster solution than an SSD, and probably cheaper in the long run right now - about 16-32GB of RAM should suffice).
  

[aenri]

http://www.logicalincrements.com/

Look at this page for some nice tips on buying new components.

[Sensei]

I've been thinking and I think it makes sense to switch the GPU to a more expensive HD 7790 and a proportionally cheaper CPU. I don't think I'll even bother to update the OP; I've been poring over computer parts enough to have a pretty good idea what I'm looking for. But that's not really what's important, I came to ask:

How should I best negotiate black friday/cyber monday? Are the parts I'm looking for likely to be on sale? Will I need to be up at midnight to order them?

Is Newegg even doing a cyber monday sale? They have some kind of "black november" thing going on, but right now the only computer parts actually on sale are cooling fans.

Edit: 7790, not 7990.

[gimlet]

Wait, what?  *7990*? Holy cow, what happened to "budget build"?   That card alone will be like double the total cost of the whole system you were considering before...

[Tellemurius]

Wait, what?  *7990*? Holy cow, what happened to "budget build"?   That card alone will be like double the total cost of the whole system you were considering before...

holy crap man baby steps

Best budget for gaming is 280x, 300 bucks right there and you are good for 1080p gaming. They don't even make the 7990 anymore.

[Sensei]

Heh, 7790. That's a typo.

[gimlet]

OK here's my November/December strategy - I haven't really started this year yet, time to get in gear.

Prep:
1) Hang out in the "hot deal" forums on fatwallet and slickdeals, learn to skim and use the filters and start getting a feel for what's a good price *before* the heavy sales hit.  They also have specific "Black Friday" forums,  that's worth a  look too.
2) Keep an eye on the "hot deals" sub-forum on hardforum.com (and lime-technology.com, that's deals on NAS type cases, disk drives etc, stuff I'm looking at but not too useful for OP)
bensbargains used to be good, it sucked since he sold it and I haven't been back but I miss it
3) Subscribe to newegg's deal emails, and microcenter (if you live within driving distance of one).  And various parts places like monoprice.com for cables.

Get up early - the earlier the better, great deals sell out fast.  Check the amazon deals of the day, newegg/microcenter email deals and the postings on fatwallet/slickdeals/hardforum/etc, check out anything promising.   Is it a great price?  Will it get cheaper?  Will amazon match the price or come close (I WAY prefer ordering from amazon than from places like tigerdirect or even newegg lately).   Decisions, decisions...

Rinse and repeat all day, pass out exhausted.  Get up and start again the next day - there's breaking deals all the way up to New Years!   (Heh ok not any more, I did do that 1 year when I was shopping for stuff in a bunch of other categories on top of parts for a bunch of systems, mostly for bitcoin but I wanted a NAS and a new workstation too.  And there was a Woot Off. ) But the deals haven't been that super the last few years, not worth the stress of overdoing it.

I'm interested in other people's strategies too...

[foil]

Whats the budget for this pc?

[Sensei]

$400 or less, ideally, without HDD/Disc drive/user interface/monitor.