A couple of weeks back, we ran a competition that was based around the idea of building your own gaming PC on a budget, but with the stipulation that it had to run Colin McRae: Dirt 2. The competition itself got a raft of entries, and we saw some really interesting builds come out of it.

Nice to be doing a build on a less tight budget

Since then though, we’ve encountered a fair few people who are looking for something with a fair bit more oomph, something that will chew through anything you throw at it without giving you too much trouble. When we asked for a budget, we got a couple of replies to say that they’d like to see what we’d do with a build around the €2000 mark. So, with that in mind, we decided to put together a solid PC build that, while it’s that bit more expensive than the other builds we’ve done,] manages to smoke them in terms of performance. The idea for this build came from people who attended our recent Build Your Own PC Classes, who wanted to build some serious, high performance PCs but weren’t quite sure on how to kit them out.

For those with an interest in building their own PCs, but who haven’t tried it before, you might want to check out our Build Your Own PC classes coming up on April 17th. Anyway, without further ado, we’ll move on to the build itself.

CPU

When it comes to CPU on a build like this, you’re probably going to want to push for something pretty high range, whether you’ll be overclocking or not, the fact is that it’s always nice to have your starting point right up there…

Click through to see our page for Intel's Core i7 920

The CPU for this build is Intel’s Core i7 920, which sits near the very top of Intel’s Core i7 offerings. A quick glance through the customer reviews that people have left across out page for it should give some indication of just what this processor is capable of, with reviews variously labelling it, “The new king,” the “best CPU in its price range” and with one simply headed “i7 Power.” There’s also an awful lot of detail in there about overclocking the processor, for those who might be so inclined.
**Here I’m required to remind you that overclocking it will void your warranty, so proceed with that at your own risk.

If you feel you’d be interested in squeezing a little extra performance out of the i7 920 by overclocking it, you might well be best placed to pick up a decent cooler for it, just to keep the heat situation under control. Ryan recommends the multi-award-winning Cooler Master V8, which will set you back a little under the €50 mark.

Intel’s Core i7 920 will set you back the fairly substantial sum of €239. It’s a little heavy, but it’ll run and run.

Motherboard:

The motherboard we’ve run with for this build is an Asus P6T SE, X58, which will sort you out with some nice, solid CorssFireX support later on (which should give you some impression of just what we’ll be doing with this build as we lurch forward).

Click through to see our page for the Asus motherboard

As well you might expect, it’s socket 1366, boasts 3 PCI-Express ports and fully 12 USB ports, so unless you’re going device crazy you should be well looked after. It also boasts two FireWire ports, if you’re concerned about getting vast amounts of data to and from external devices in a hurry.

Overall, Asus’ P6T X58 is a solid motherboard offering, though there’s never as much to say about a motherboard without getting into in-depth examination. Suffice it to say, we think it’s worth the asking price of €169.50.

RAM:

When you’re going with a big budget build like this, it can be a little tempting to go overboard with RAM.

Click through to see our page for the 6GB Corsair RAM kit

It’s a temptation we’ve not given in to entirely, but Ryan wouldn’t hear of us going under 4GB of RAM, since this build includes an operating system that will handle more than 4GB anyway. So we’ve opted to go with 6GB of Corsair’s XMS3 DDR3 at 1333 MHZ. You could always go with less, but 6GB should see you well looked after.

6GB of Corsair’s XMS3 DDR3 RAM will set you back €155, which isn’t so bad at all, considering the sheer amount of it involved.

GPU:

When it comes to graphics cards in a build like this, it’s always going to be difficult to choose between the various different cards on offer, but MSI’s Radeon HD5770 is a solid offering that’s hard to argue with.

Click through to see our page for MSI's HAWK GPU

Of course, one of the best things about a solid offering that’s hard to argue with is that, by just doubling the spend, you can pick up a second one and make everything a little bit more Frankenstinian (we know it’s not a word, but it should be). The “HAWK” as this card has come to be known, has won an array of awards, including PC Perspectives Gold Award, the Hexus Award for Gaming Innovation, and the OverClocker’s Club Gold Award, to name just a few.

It’s clocked at 875MHz and boasts 1GB of GDDR5 SDRAM and a video output of 2560×1600, which should be more than enough to keep the all but the most high-definition-demanding satisfied.

MSI’s Radeo HD5770 “HAWK” will set you back €163.33, or two of them will set you back €332.66. It’s how Ryan would want you to go…

Case:

The case for a build like this is going to need to be something a little special, not just because, if you’re overclocking, you’ll want solid airflow and a case that’s reasonably easy to keep cool, but because you’re building a serious piece of kit, and you’ll want it to look like a serious piece of kit.

Click through to see our page for the Cooler Master HAF

The case we’ve gone with is the Cooler Master HAF 932 “big tower,” which tells you just about all you need to know about it. It’s a big case, but then, this isn’t a machine you’re just going to tuck out of the way somewhere and hope nobody notices. Again, it’s another product where the customer reviews tell you everything you need to know; they’re all five out of five and have titles like, “Great Box,” “Great Case – Massive,” “… If it is within your price range, get it,” and “Huge case with loads of room and easy to built.” It’s also won a raft of awards.

Positive reviews aside, the Cooler Master HAF 932 is a solid case that you can depend on to do a job and do it well. It’ll set you back more than other cases at €121,

Storage:

Here is where things get really interesting. When we talked to Ryan about this build, we talked for a long time about the various different options available to people putting together a new PC and it quickly became clear that Ryan doesn’t delete anything unless he can avoid it.

Click through to see our page for the Hitachi Deskstar 2TB HDD

Since Ryan wanted to go storage heavy in this build, he opted for the genuinely immense Hitachi Deskstar 2TB. Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K2000 will set you back €154.36 for fully 2TB of storage, which isn’t too bad in its own right, but you have to remember that we’re working with the same logic as with the graphics cards above?

Without going over budget, Ryan managed to add in two of the 2TB Deskstars for €308.72… not bad for 4TB of storage.

Naturally, some may point out that going with multiple high capacity drives is a wonderful approach for anyone looking for a heavy duty storage-centric machine, but not ideal for the performance hungry…

Click through to see our page for the Corsair 64GB SSD

With that in mind, Ryan also managed to fit in, without going over budget, Corsair’s Nova Series 64GB SSD. While that 64GB might not seem like it’ll go too far, the fact is that all you’ll have to do is make sure you don’t clutter it up too badly. Usually, the best approach with these things is to go with the SSD for your OS and those few games you know you’ll play all the time and applications that see continuous use, while everything else gets dumped onto either of the 2TB drives. The performance bump when you move to an SSD is really something else.

Corsair’s Nova Series 64GB SSD is a solid buy at €172, and the things it’ll do to your machine are entirely pleasant.

Power Supply:

When it comes to a machine like this, the fact is that you’re going to be pushing a fair amount of power through it just to keep all of your various kit running. It’s not rocket science, but it is pretty important.

Click through to check out our page for the Cougar 700W PSU

For this build we’ve opted to go with the Cougar CM 700W modular power supply. It should see you fairly well looked after and keep everything ticking along nicely. Aside from being a reliable power supply, it’s got a two year warranty, so you know you’re looked after for that long, at the very least.

The Cougar CM700W will set you back the not entirely unreasonable sum of €119.90.

Monitor:

One of the nice things about a build like this is that there are times when you get to the end of the list, see what you’re looking like on budget and realise that you’ve somehow managed to keep in just enough under budget that you can afford some peripherals.

Click through to see our page for LG's 23'' LED dispaly

In this case, we’ve managed to fit in the father or all peripherals, a nice display. The monitor used in this build is the LG 23” LED E2350V-PN. It’s a solid display, with a gorgeous, glossy body, of the kind that both LG and Samsung seem to be moving more and more towards lately. The display itself has a max resolution of 1920×1080, which puts you well into the world of FullHD, and boasts HDMI, DVI-D and VGA ports.

The LG 23” LED display is a gorgeous monitor and is solidly priced at €218.10

Closing:

There’s a large degree of flexibility to be had with a build like this, unlike some of the budget builds we’d do generally where everything hinges on everything else to come in under budget. Ryan’s own suggestion was that “some people” (and he dropped to a derisive tone here) might not want 4TB of storage.

Those people might well go for a second display, rather than a second 2TB HDD, which would certainly suit a lot of people down to the ground. Similarly, there are people who’d rather not go with two GPUs, though let’s be fair, at that point you’re haemorrhaging performance, which kind of goes against the spirit of the whole build.

Still, Ryan did manage to build the whole thing for €2004.82, which does well… If anyone can do a similarly over the top build (or go one better) and keep it under the €2000 mark, we’d be curious to see it, so feel free to drop any suggestions into the comments and we’ll take a look at them.