You should be able to build a pc with a 2500k, 560 ti, 4-8gb of ram, and no ssd for under $1000. If skyrim needs more than that to run at high settings I'll be very surprised. SSD is something you can always add later if you don't mind reinstalling windows. Personally I think ~$2/GB is a bit too expensive to buy for the lower load times. Also I don't see any reason to spend more than $30 on a heatsink. The hyper 212+ can cool a 2600k well up to ~4.8ghz.

You can get one for around $1380 with a video card or even cheaper. And can run just about any game out there on max settings.

My build

Asus P67 Sabertooth mobo.
Corsair 750 watt PSU
Corsair Graphit 600 case
Seagate 1t black HD
i7 2600k.
windows 7 pro
8 gigs 1600 ram (cant remember the company)
media reader 12 in 1

$1265.93

The things I allready have even if temporary.
Cooler Master V6GT heatsink
Samsung light scribe DVD/RW
LG DVD/RW
NZXT Sentry2 Fan controler.
Galaxy GTS 250 1gig

Ill be getting a 570 or 580 video card at a later date.

GTX570 $1640.99

GTX580 $1780.99

Word of advice.. Stay away from cyberpowerpc... Bad experience with them... cost me alot of money and im still waiting on a refund.

This. Chipmakers announce new products all the time (whether or not they are a new line or something) but with each new release, previous releases are bumped down a price bracket. If you are looking to build a new computer, wait until shortly before the game's release. The Nvidia GeForce 600 series could even be out by then, making the currently top-line 590 card affordable for more people, which should easily be able to handle anything you can throw at it in Skyrim.

The price can be whatever you want it to be. The rule is generally that the better components you get (and therefore the more money you spend), the greater longevity your computer will have through the future generation of video games. If you want something that will be able to handle the next generation, you might want to look at what it takes to meet current benchmarks (the things that you will be judged by if you fail to meet them ) that use DirectX 11 technology, like the currently popular http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F6zSgtRnkE benchmark, or simply being able to max out current top-line PC games and maintain about 60 frames per second. A card can support DirectX 11, but not all of them can support the graphical standards of games that will actually utilize the technology (like my card cannot). Fortunately for Skyrim, the game will make use of the optimization provided by DirectX 11, but the baseline graphical standards are that of a DirectX 9 or 10 card (which any DirectX 11 card should be able to handle just fine).

I put together a PC for him.

P67 sabertooth (built in fan controlers lot of features 5 year warranty
PNY 560 TI 1 gig overclock lifetime warranty
Corsair 750 watt PSU can run any single card the can throw at it.
500 gig HD he does not really need more. if he does he can add a new one later.
I7 2600k
Windows 7 pro
8 gigs 1600 Corsair Dominater Ram.
Coolermaster V6 GT. it tall enough to get over the sabertooth and is pretty good.Samsung blu ray dvd rw lightscribe player.
$1312.91


now casses I gave him several choices rangin from $99-$160

Coolermaster Haf 922/932
Corsair Graphite 600t
NZXT Phantom

I've been considering building a gaming rig. Is it challenging? Annoying? Easy?

Its chalenging and near impossible for a beginner... I can build one but just dont want to deal with it as its time consuming. im paying a local PC shop to put mine together $70 added onto the price. id say do the same because if they brake a part they have to replace it were as if you did its a oh well tough luck for you.

A GOOD one?

AMD Bulldozer 8150 (8 cores, 3,8 Ghz (4,2 in Turbo Mode)): 320 $

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 Motherboard: 300 $

12 Gb's DDR 1866 Err...don't know exactly now, but no more than 120 $

Graphics card: Geforce GTX 580: 500 $ (not the best price/quality ratio anymore, but still the best single-chip graphics card avaliable at this moment). The future Radeon HD 7xxx series (avaliable this summer) will probably overthrow the GTX 580 in both quality, price and (obviously) the ratio of both, making them the best choice.

Misc. stuff: 150 $

27' monitor: 350 $

Total (Without monitor): 1400 $

That's probably my future Skyrim rig, unless Sandy Bridge-E and Nvidia Kepler (GTX 6xx) are released before Nov. and are superior to Bulldozer / HD7xxx.

Note that this is a GOOD rig, so it's normal it's a bit more expensive.

It's not that hard, but it is annoying. It's mostly just about knowing what goes where, and then taking care of the wiring if it needs it. Managing the power supply has always been the most annoying part in my opinion, because everything else pretty much has a nifty slot to stick it in. You just want to make sure that your hardware all works together, and that your power supply can supply enough power for everything.

Sites like Newegg.com have many lists of pre-assembled rigs that you can simply buy all the parts of. If you already have a good list of hardware that has been proven to work, all you need to do is put it together. The internet is a valuable resource as well, full of people with experience in building computers. If you are ever stuck on anything or need advice, you can ask just about anywhere that has to do with hardware or video games.

Also, if you get a 64-bit OS, which I recommend you do, you should aim for more than 4 gigabytes of RAM or else you're no better off than a 32-bit OS. That's the main difference really. A 64-bit OS is capable of handling more than 4GB of RAM, so you may as well make use of that. 6GB should be enough for most games in my opinion, but 8GB will last a while and help you do a lot more mutitasking of programs and such.

Oh sweet jumpin Jeeeeezuuuuus.........

You can proceed to ignore most of the 4 digit crowd, and anything about the i7 or the Bulldozer. Both are at the bleeding edge (a top end i7 -still- costs right at a thousand dollars itself), and there will be =NOTHING= out there in gaming land that uses that kind of power for the next decade, probably.

My recommendation would go thusly:

1) First stop Pricewatchdotcom. Choose the CPU/mobo combo from the front page (most places offer assembling and testing if you don't want to bother, or are afraid to due to lack of knowledge)
Any quadcore solution will make you bullet proof for that decade. Multi-threading has to be coded into the OS and the application, and outside of the server environment, it is -still- in its infancy. Currently what multi-core does is get the OS bloat out of the way, so that factor doesn't slow the game down. As you can see, you can get a top end AMD Phenom II X6 1100t chip and motherboard starting at right around $260.
At that first vendor, 4 gigs of DDR 3 memory adds $60 to that. And most of the vendors let you mix and match to choose your own configuration. And a little shopping might find better deals.

2) You do -not- need SLI or Crossfire unless you are planning on running tech demo's. Nothing out there, or in the bloody pipeline for next 3 years demands that. A single EVGA 460 GTX covers all the bases (SLI capable....but you have to use an SLI capable motherboard. It's DX-11 capable, so you are future proof for a few years. And a 2 gigabyte video memory version runs about $160. It has a mini HDMI port, so you could connect it to a widescreen TV with no trouble, should you want to.

3) Audio is a 'it depends' kind of thing. If you have a pair of crappy speakers, you can use the onboard audio.....just remember, that this -will- slow things a tiny bit, as the CPU has to handle some of the audio processing. Decent speakers up, get an audio card. That way the work is offloaded to a dedicated solution.

4) A 1 terabyte HDD runs around $100 dollars, and that is a SATA II 6gb drive, the fastest physical drive out there. SSD's are still virgin tech, and their long term durability has yet to be proved, as none of them are old enough to be considered 'long term'. And the price isn't worth it......unless you just want to experiment.

5) Plan on spending on the power supply. Anything above the GeForce 9000 series =needs= a dedicated power tap from the main supply. And you want one that you can hang lots of drives on and not burn it out. I'd say at least and 850 watt supply. And it wouldn't hurt to get one of the modular setups. Those only have the motherboard power connecters attached. Then there are a series of plugs that you add your power connectors to, so you only have the power lines you need, instead of half a dozen dangling lines you aren't using.

6) You want a sixy case, go Lian Li. If you don't care, get a mom and pop special. But avoid all the advertised 'gaming cases'......as they tend to be cheaply made, designed to be lit like a New Orleans cat house, and cost far more than they are worth.

Great GPUs cost. A lot.
So does great CPUs.

We don't know the Skyrim specs yet so we can't say for sure. But in my country, you can build yourself a pretty nice computer for like 1300$.

What do you mean by sixy case? its all opinions some like to look inside their case looking at all the expensive equipment they put into their machine. other like the utilitarien look. other the transformer /cylon look. Me I like the kind like the NZXT and the graphite nice lines plenty of cooling with big fans/alot of fans to move hot air out of the machine. I gave him a machine that will last him a long time. and the machine will tell him if somthing is wrong with it. good parts with good warranties. made by good companies. I will tell everybody to stay away from xtreamegear parts they are just bad parts prone to failing.

I put gave him good parts for a system that is under his limit that moniters itself informs him if somthing is wrong adjusts fans by itsself and tells him if anything is overheating. I gave suggestions for several towers. 2 full 2 mid. Also the system has room for expansion give him a blu ray player. and pretty much made the PC take over the movie player for him. THe system will last him more than a few years. spend alot of money on a good machine and you wont have to replace parts in a couple of years besides a video card. the PSU can be upgraded but I would stay with corsair as their warranties are prettty good same with PNY. THe graphite is a little on the large side for a mid but looks really nice. The full towers are for if he ever decides to expand on the system. NZXT looks alienware to me and seems to be a cheap alternatice without all the pretty lights. its up to him though. telling him to get this and that over intel or AMD blah blah is silly and wrong. I just gave him parts I know work good through personal experience.

exteame gear svck corsair is pretty good. always have a profeshional build it if they screw up its on them they have to replace broken parts for free. And the more power you are not using in the machine means the more in reseve that you know is there if you eveer need it.

When it comes to the best experience, build the PC around and above the recommended tech specs when more information is released. I never had any good experiences buying a pre-made because in the end, about 99% of the time I'll end up doing a clean sweep of the OS to get rid of the imbedded advertisemants that somehow manage to surface. Definitely building a rig for Skyrim only, something dedicated specifically as a power graphics cruncher so I can have it set all max settings.

Been playing with ideas on the parts through Tiger Direct, so far ranging between $700.00 to $1000.00 price range respectively, without the 1080 since that's taken care of already. But getting a new KB and mouse since my current ones are dated and faded. Seriously, for all parts in this range, should be more than enough to take Skyrim to the max with plenty to spare.

Just a guess at least, until more of the official specs come out.

So this one would do? (And yeah, I don't actually know, serious question)

Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Intel® Core™ i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
16GB Ram installed
Nvidia GTX 580

Yeah that would do. But I would spend the extra 50 dollars and get the 2600k. maybe downgrade to 8 gigs of ram and get a better mother board or PSU.

you can save alot of money by getting the less technical parts at goodwill or other similar stores. buddy of mine got the same keyboard i paid $70 for for only $5. aaaarrrggghhh. ive also seen some nice name brand mice like logitcech and microsoft at some flea markets for much less than traditional stores. i wouldnt buy anything like a monitor or any part of the PC itself but for speakers, mice, keyboards, case and other such addons you can find some really good deals.

my current rig i built was $2500 and that included everything like monitors speakers etc from newegg. if i would have shopped around more i probably could have saved a bit more but i was lazy and didnt feel like goofing around with several different websites and running all over town at the time.

i would recommend staying away from SSD at this point since they are still kind of in beta. i personally use a couple of raptor 10000 rpm drives and they load everything (except STALKER... <_< ) very quickly. even my heavily modded oblivion loaded up in a few seconds at most.

Anyone telling you to spend more than $1500 is trying to get you to build an enthusiast rig. Don't do it!

However, $1000 is the current sweet spot for a nice gaming rig. If you spend less, you're mostly skimping on the video card (which is ok). Personally, I opted for a $170 ATI 6850 (Plays everything maxed) and will just buy a second one when I need more power (and the prices are lower).

You don't need the best CPU, newest SSD hard drives, or high-end RAM. Just buy a middle of the line CPU (From AMD or Intel - it doesn't matter!), 8GBs of RAM, Windows 7 64bit(Do NOT go 32bit), and a decent $100 motherboard.

If you spend a lot more than the above, all you get is a machine that gets high benchmark scores! Here is my system:

1 x Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1x Top 140mm Fan, 1x Rear 120mm Fan, option Fans-2x Side 120mm Fan
1 x MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
1 x RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-630SS 630W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Modular LED Power Supply
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX
1 x G.SKILL Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBSR
1 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
1 x Asus VE228H 21.5" Full HD HDMI LED BackLight LCD Monitor w/Speakers
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM
1 x SAPPHIRE 100315L Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

Total: $989 (And it's probably cheaper now!)

I'm helping my brother build a rig for Skyrim, too. i'f you're looking to play max settings with mods, i'm thinking a gtx 460 will just get you there. or a gtx 560 ti is more of a sure thing. the nice thing is they both scale well in sli mode, just in case you want to add another down the road. elder scrolls games have always needed good cpus, and i'd recommend an i5-2500k. it's right in the sweat spot for performance and price. or if you don't plan on overclocking, i5-2500 or i5-2400. 2nd generation cpus require sandy bride compatible mobos, and i'd recommend going msi or asus. you probably won't need more than 4 gb ram, but it's so cheap to upgrade to 8, you'd might as well, just to be safe. as far as case goes, remember to get an appropriately sized case for your mobo (atx or matx), and get something that suites your living conditions and build type. if you do a lot of overclocking, get something with good ventilation. if you have animals roaming around, maybe look for something with mesh coverings. i'm partial to the nzxt phantom myself, but my brother's build will use azza's toledo 301. good luck on your build. :foodndrink:

I firmly believe that one thing that I'll notice the most (in terms of performance improvement) when building my new rig is the jump from a normal HDD (less than 130 mb/s) to at least a OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (550-525 mb/s), and probably an OCZ RevoDrive 3 PCI-Express SSD Card (being showed at Computex'11), but only if they beat the 1 gb/s milestone (and if not then maybe another PCI-Express SSD that beats it). That's 5x to 10x the speed of a normal HDD, which means that the entire game could be loaded into memory in 7-14 seconds. No more micro-stuttering (which is really a pain in the ass, especially in a heavily modded Oblivion) or no more loading screens *ever* also contributes greatly in terms of inmersion.

All of those things are nice, and definitely make the PC experience better. However, none of them are required to play Skyrim at acceptable/good performance. In fact, buying those things will end up costing you an extra $200-300(maybe more) dollars, that could easily be spent on a better video card. Sure, loading times and hitching svck, but these are things that can be dealt with via design. If the design of the technological aspects of the game don't take advantage of the added devices, you won't be seeing much of a difference. For instance, in Oblivion, even with an SSD, you'll get hitching. It might not be as noticeable, but it's still occurring. Then there's the 32bit application issue (which skyrim will no doubt be 32bit) where the program itself cannot utilize more than 2GB of system memory.

My point? All of those extras are nice, but completely unneeded when it comes to this game. You're spending money on enthusiast parts that the game is not being designed around. They will make a difference, but the difference, in my own opinion, does not warrant the huge price difference.

My example was only that...an example. And not to be taken literally (mostly because of that nasty 32-bit limitation, although nobody has discarted a 64-bit version). But the extra bandwitch will *always* be useful, like it or not, even more when loading large textures (which Skyrim will have, if not in Vanilla, then at some time or another). The HDD's have been a system hog for quite some time (that's the very reason why RAM exists), so anything that would remove that bottleneck is important to consider when buying a new rig.



While nice programming would indeed improve loading times, as I said in many cases there's nothing you can do to improve them simply via programming (loading hi-res textures, enormous detailed terrain, etc...all of that takes raw power and bandwitch), so an improvement over the mass storage media is, logically and by definition, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jsHpNkDQn0.

It's for enthusiasts? Devices like RevoDrive maybe are indeed, but SSD's are getting faster, more reliable and cheaper at lightspeed.

Buy an XBOX for 300. Problem solved.

about ￡2000-4000

￡99 :thumbsup:

Usually devs release games with some of the most recent state-of-the-art technology in mind. Unless that trend has changed, to play a game at full graphics settings on release is not going to be cheap. At least it wasn't for Oblivion when it was first released. Then again, Bethesda is release Skyrim on the current generation of consoles, so I could be wrong.

I have to agree with the other poster. Having a really fast drive does not help the frame rate for games very much.

I have dual 160GB Intel X18 G2 SSDs in Raid0. Sequential read speed is 550MB/s - 580MB/s according to crystaldiskmark. Boot time is about 10-12 seconds, shutdown 4-5 seconds.

Huge improvement working with large files in Photoshop, After Effects and video editing apps.

For games, the only improvement is that load times get reduced to almost nothing. I suspect there is a slight improvement in the frame rate for games with high res textures as well, but the main factor for the frame rate seems to be the video card, not the speed of the drive.

I think an SSD does make a bigger difference for a heavily modded version of Oblivion (I'm playing with 150+ mods including Qarl's 2048x2048 textures), for example. It's hard for me to compare because I haven't played the modded version without an SSD, but it certainly slows down the load times and frame rate. I imagine if I did not have an SSD, then the load times would be unbearably long.