Well, I know the specs for the game haven't been released yet, but more then likely they won't be released until right before the game goes gold. But many PC gamers, like myself, need more time to plan than that. We need to start putting something together now. Well, maybe not now…but we need to at least start thinking about the build, and have something put together by November. I've been needing to upgrade for a while now, and Skyrim is the perfect excuse to pull the trigger. Ironically, the game is being released on my birthday. Thank you Bethesda! What a great birthday this is going to be, especially since I'll have the day off! Okay, so who's with me on this? I'll be starting from scratch, a brand new machine. So, use your best educated guess and throw some ideas my why. Keep in mind, I want to to play Skyrim the way it was meant to be played, in full glory! I was hoping to be able to do this for $1,000. So, come on PC builders, help me out here, if you can. Maybe we can at least do some preliminary planning, but the fact remains that I need something put together by November that will handle this game w/o a hiccup.

The new sandy bridge CPUs from intel are quite nice and not all too expensive...if you hit up www.cyberpower.com they have some nice configuration options that will cost you only about $25 more than if you were to part out your system and build it yourself (I'm not really sure how they do it)

In any case, I purchased a pc with the following basic specs:

i7-950
6 gb RAM
Nvidia GTX 570 video card

I started with the "x-58 configuration" Cost me around $1300 because I needed to buy Windows 7

I actually bought it to resume Oblivion (which I never finished b/c my PC was so crappy at the time it made the experience unbearable) but I fully expect it should be able to handle Skyrim very nicely.

Word to the wise, if you're using your PC solely for gaming, the CPU, GPU, and RAM are going to be the 3 components that are going to affect your framerate. Do your research and ask around. No point in getting a top of the line CPU and a low-end video card.

Also a note---if you are using cyberpower or another site that lets your "build your own" machine...do NOT skimp on the auxiliary components. Motherboard, Power Supply, and Hard Drive (brand) may not have a huge affect on framerate but the are incredibly important to the overall stability of your computer.

A little early for this because release is still almost 11 months away. By then there's probaly new hardware available and prices will drop between now and then. I will look into getting a new rig in October or something.

$1000 is cutting it a little close, especially if you're including a monitor in that price. Try to shoot for $1200.

CPU: No less than Sandy Bridge, ideally the i7 2600K. You can cut the K if you don't want to overclock, but with the new CPUs it's a matter of upping the CPU multiplier and that's it. If you do OC, which could be advisable if you plan on adding tons of CPU-intensive mods to the game when they get made, then you should plan ahead and get an aftermarket Heatsink-Fan. I think the 1156-compatible HSFs are compatible with 1155 sockets.

GPU: Nvidia GTX 580 or AMD 5970. I'm not a really devoted fan of either, I was with AMD last generation, and now Nvidia definitely has the edge, since they worked on the noise, heat, and power issues this time around.

Mobo: Match to the CPU (1155 socket), and any minimum specifications you would like (SLI, CrossfireX). Not much else matters, though I prefer ASUS.

RAM: No less than 4GB, DDR3 1600. Don't get OCZ, they're getting out of the DRAM business to focus on SSDs. I like G.Skill and Corsair.

The rest doesn't really matter as much, when it comes to meeting Skyrim specs anyway. It's just too far away to bother configuring an exact build. Prices change.

Overall, I agree with Thor---if you don't need a new PC for anything else---wait it out. PC Hardware depreciates faster than german cars these days.

lol im in the same boat as you sept im trying not to pass $700 but i am giving my self enough room to update later if needed.

i cant say much about intel because their prices have always been more than id like to spend so i recommend AMD... now weather you go with Athlon or Phenom is up to you but the main difference between the 2 is a L3 catch and Phenoms have better over clock abilities. my build im going with a athlon quad core for the fact that with games their doesn't seem to be much difference between the 2 except Phenoms preform slightly better but not by much.

you should go with at least 4gb of ram, and youd wanna go with a 64 bit OS to properly utilize the 4+gb of ram you use.

you wanna get a decent quality Mobo so i recommend one by ASUS or MSI with nice over clocking abilities. you want it to have 4 ram slots and possibly 2 PCI-e slots for crossfire or sli abilities. i personally like ati so i would crossfire. if you choose ati go with at least the radeon hd 5700 series.

get a case with LOTS of air flow because this machine will create heat. i recommend anything from the Coolermaster HAF series of cases. since im doing a budget im getting the smaller HAF 912 which is still plenty of room. you may be more interested in the HAF 922 or the HAF 932.
cooling is also important utilize your cases extra fan bays and possibly look into liquid cooling for at least the processor. im getting the CoolIT systems ECO-R120, this is a compact pre-made liquid cooling system thats hassle free and is ready to fully install out of the box. even if your not going to over clock like i probably will it will keep your CPU cooler than its stock heatsink and fan which means it will run more effectively.

I am going to be bothering to pick up games and stuff for maybe yet another year so I can save up money again. I am not sure which graphics card I will get yet but I will get something that's real good right before release. Then I'll get some more RAM with it if I have enough money.

But just like everyone else said basically just the general stuff you need to have. The more expensive your rig is the more time you'll have until you have to make/buy another.

I have a I-7 860, ATI 5850, 8 gigs DDR3 ram and i have no doubt it will be sufficient.

I got my eye on a 1Gb raden hd 5770 video card but I need to upgrade my power supply too.

I need Dx 11 for some other games I have.

I hope Skyrim supports Dx 11 too.

As far as I know Sandy Bridge isn't that different from i7950's unless overclocked.The Cpu's are somewhat more expensive but the motherboards seem to be cheaper.

Anyone who buys a rig especially for this game now is a bit of a goon. By November the same PC will be available at 70% of the price and the specification can be tailored to the game's requirements. Got pennies in the piggy bank piling up until then

I would imagine the games sweet spot will be a i5 760, GTX 580, and 4GB RAM. With playability along the lines of... let's say, Athlon II 250, GTS 250, 2GB RAM.


My build will be along the lines of:

i5 760 (overclocking, of course)
HD 6990
8GB DDR3 2000

Sandy Bridge comes with AVX which is an x86 extension that should be very beneficial to games. They're on a smaller process (32nm), and the entire architecture is so different that Intel is considering it a new generation (which is what the "2" in the 2xxx model numbers means).

Clock-for-clock the new CPUs are 15-20% faster and have more resilient Turbo modes (auto overclocking).

Plus, they come at much higher clock speeds for cheaper. 3.4GHz (non-turbo), 3.8GHz (turbo) is just crazy for a stock CPU that only costs $299.

Edit: Make that more than 20% in some cases.

Wikipedia says "For comparative purposes, the Core i5 2300 (2.8GHz) has been shown to be 17% faster than a Core i5 760 (2.8GHz) in CineBench R11.5 64-bit."

But Anandtech says that over all its tests the new architecture did 23% better at the same clock speed as the previous gen CPUs.

I'm on the same boat here. I will definitely need a new PC for Skyrim but I'm not big on cash. Not now, not anytime soon. So I need a strategy. My strategy is to buy the components one by one, all this year long. I'll start with the components that don't drop in value so quickly because of moral use: power supply, chassis, hard disk, dvd, sound card, cooling fans. The most important parts (cpu, video card, memory, motherboard) I'll delay till end of summer-fall season, so as to make sure I don't miss too much performance that newer generations may bring. I'm looking forward to the next nVidia video cards with Kepler which will be built on 28nm and more efficient per watt. I don't even aim for a high end video card as they're too expensive at least in their first release months. I'll look for a middle range card with best buy price, but one that can handle Skyrim at fully maxed settings.

Go all out for a new PC. take a loan if you have to.
I spent a lot on my rig and am satisfied with it.
If your looking for a long life PC look at the sr2 mobo, with dual cpu sockets. Yes it's pricey but when you have it you wont regret it.
after all you get what you pay for.

This is usually a bad idea. It messes with: RMA periods, Returns, Warranties, upgrade programs (EVGA Step Up for instance), and so on.

Just save up the money instead. Or if you don't have the willpower for that, get it at 0% interest on a card or something, and keep up with paying on it. (And cut up the card so you can't use it anymore =p)

But yeah, you won't be able to put the computer together and test everything out until you buy the last part. That makes buying things over a long period of time scary. What if you deal with rebates for instance, send in the UPC on the box and then it doesn't work once you build the PC? And so on.

Waiting for next gen video cards is obviously a good idea. Maybe you can even wait long enough to get Ivy Bridge, which is the die shrink to Sandy Bridge (22nm). There's a good example where you don't want to buy the motherboard one month and then have Ivy Bridge processors come out the next...

Edit:

Also, if you buy all at once, and at just the right time, there is a HUGE amount of savings to be had on Newegg with their Combo Deals. I specced a computer for a friend's brother and got him way better stuff for about $100 more just by looking through combo deals. All still very good parts, too.

I'll wait to see the recommended specs. Then I'll decide if a major upgrade would do or I need a replacement. There is only one thing I know for sure: when d-day comes, my Pc must be able to run Skyrim at highest settings. Word.

My Newegg account allows $6400. No interest for 12 months on purchases over $500.

Can you afford $50 a month? $600 upgrade
Can you afford $100 a month? $1200 PC or upgrade
Can you afford $200 a month? $2400 PC

:P

Don't Buy Anything Right Now!!!!!11one

But seriously, new gen parts are coming this summer including AMD's new Bulldozer architecture. It would be nothing less than a mistake to not wait and see how Bulldozer matches up to Intel's Sandy Bridge chips. Besides, as stated above, even if you don't buy the newest tech, everything's prices will be much lower than they are now, especially video card prices.

The build i have will depend on whether or not DDR4 is released this year or how expensive it is at launch (probably unreasonably so).

If everything falls into place nicely and doesn't cost an arm and a leg..

CPU: Something from the Bulldozer family as I prefer AMD, although if Bulldozer doesn't perform, ill probably get a Phenom II x4 955 or higher and keep my current motherboard.

Motherboard: ASUS AM3+ (or AM4 if DDR4 is released early enough and is reasonably priced) with no onboard video and 2 pci-e slots

GPU: AMD Radeon 7xxx Series Card if released, if not then a Radeon 6950 or 6870 depending on price

RAM: hopefully 4-8GB of DDR4 1600-3200 depending on what is available and price/speed (if not released, then ill get another 4gb of DDR3 1600 to add to my current 4GB)

PSU: Depends on system and video card requirements, currently have a 500wat modular one that may be enough, if not ill upgrade

CASE: keeping my Antec 300 :wink_smile:

SSD: a SSD with atleast 64GB if not more, with read/write speeds greater than 500mb/s should be nice and cheap around that time

HDD for storage: keeping my current Western Digital Black 640GB drive

Monitor: AOC 24" LED LCD TV @ 1920x1080 (got nice and cheap on black friday lol




All in all it really depends what is available next fall. I can't wait :celebration:

My build has cost me around $1300, but that's only because I could afford top-of-the-line parts at the time of purchase.

Asus Crosshair IV Formula mobo
8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
AMD Radeon HD6970
AMD Phenom II x4 955 @ 3.2GHz w/ Thermaltake SpinQ heatsync
1TB WD Caviar Black SATAIII HDD
First, a 750w Thermaltake PSU which went bad recently, and was replaced with a 750w Antec.

Kept my optical drive and old 1TB Caviar Black HDD (dual booting with Ubuntu and Win7) and put it into a Cooler Master HAF 932 case. It's actually probably over $1400 now, after I got the extra 4GB of RAM and the new PSU, plus a red LED fan to add to the side.

The mobo was about $230 at the time, and it's still one of the top AMD chipset motherboards out there at the moment.

Hmm I can't imagine that it will require much in the way of a good CPU (In my experience you only really need more than a dual core for RTSs and weirdly optimized games like GTAIV). You should hold off on the video card, non reference cards made a few months after new cards come out usually last a little longer (I mean you wont encounter heat issues like early 4k series cards and you can overclock them more with stock cooling). If you go with Intel you will probably be able to get a more powerful CPU which could last longer by itself but, if you go with AMD you can probably count on a new CPU working with an old motherboard or an old CPU working with a new motherboard because AMD does not seem to physically change there slots anymore (So you can upgrade your CPU a few years apart from upgrading your motherboard). I think AMD/ATI and Nvidia trade blows at certain price ranges so look at some benchmarks for cards in your pricerange. Damn! Ram shot down by $50 since I last checked! I don't think the brands make too much of a difference for ram as long as the specs are the same and they have heat spreaders. Hmmm I think a few of the people on Techspot are somewhat obsessed with power supplies so they would be a safe bet for getting a good one for the build.

That's the best answer on this topic.

By November 2011,Intel will have launched some more powerful Sandy Bridge cpus,AMD will have launched the "Bulldozer" 8core architecture cpus,Ati will be shipping HD 7990 graphics cards,and there will be 1TB ssds from OCZ.

I'm buying a new PC as well since currently I only have my 2 year old laptop...

According to reports Ivy Bridge (follows Sandy Bridge and has 22nm instead of 32nm) and Nvidia Kepler/600 (follows 500 series and has 28nm instead of 40nm) and the AMD equivalent should come out in late 2011...so I'll wait for those, even if they only come out in early 2012 I'd say it will be worth it.

As for RAM, honeslly I'd go with 6GB 1600mhz at least, since I know right now 4GB is what you need but two years ago, 2GB (maybe even 1GB) was all you needed so I do believe that for RAM you should invest in a good kit, from either Kingston or Corsair IMO.

PSUs, HDDs (or SDD if you can afford it) and the Motherboard are not veeery important in gaming but for the overall stability they're all very important so you should invest in good ones.

Last but not least the case is also important but as long as it is fro ma good brand you'll probably have decent airflow.

P.S: things like cooling system are also major if your going to be OCing.

Hey, I have a 9800 GT video card in my current computer and I am looking to build a new computer this fall but I have been torn over buying a new, $200-$300 video card or buying another 9800 GT and hooking em both up. Does anyone who is more knowledgeable than myself care to make a suggestion?

And all of that stuff will cost you an arm and a leg.

And probably your first three children, then your house. And your parents' house.