Summer 2011 Gaming PC Build

My friend has asked me to build him a PC that will last him close to a year before he is going to be forced to upgrade by his college. I have been looking around and have come up with these parts to be the best and the cheapest I could get for a good gaming computer.

AMD Phenom II: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103887

MSI 785 GT-E63 ATX AMD Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130266

G.SKILL 2GB (2 X 1GB) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231087

WESTERN Digital 750 GB Hard Drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136847

XFX RADEON HD 4670 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150525

Computer Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121010

Now I am trying to keep the budget closer to 300 and below 400 if at all possible.

I need help finding a good cd drive, power supply, and sound card for as cheap as possible and if anyone has any ideas as to what could make this build cheaper but still good enough to run most games, it would be very much appreciated.

Thank You.

Well I figured out the parts myself. Critique on the build would be helpful…

Sound Card - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102003

Power Supply - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817159041

DVD/CD Drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031

A couple of pointers.

  1. Why do you need a separate sound card?
  2. The graphics card requires a PSU with a minimum of 400 W
  3. 2 Gb of RAM is very little these days. You can get 4 Gb for roughly the same price
  4. Is there a reason why you want to use DDR2 RAM instead of DDR3, which is faster and these days it’s even cheaper (you will need a different motherboard though)
  5. You can get an AMD athlon II x4 quad core cpu for just a few dollars more than the Phenom II dual core

Couldn’t have said it better than Morio.

For a little more you can get a 550w power supply or you can get a case with a power supply like here and here. Like Morio said, I think the x4 955 would be a better way to go than dual core.

We also need more information, especially if you are salvaging parts from another computer and what resolution you are playing at. The pc might be in the budget, but what about the operating system, screen, mouse, keyboard. If you are salvaging these you might as well use the case and power supply if possible. The problem with such a low budget build is you risk spending the $400 and finding out that the low fame rates makes the games unplayable even at low resolutions(if you don’t care about how it looks and turn everything down then you might be alright). If that happens it would be a wasted $400 when you could have saved $100 or $200 more to get something a little more useful.