Building a $1500 gaming PC

We set a target of $1500 for building a quality gaming system. Taking that amount, we further broke the system down into components as a way of balancing out the elements in the PC. Here’s what we came up with:

CPU $250
Monitor $300
Case and power supply $100
Motherboard $100
Memory $100
Optical drive $50
Hard disk $100
Graphics card $250
OS $150
Input devices $50
Headphones $50

So what are the best components you can get for these prices? Read on to find out.

CPU
This one was actually a tough call for us. Intel’s Core 2 Architecture is a little better than AMD’s Athlon right now, and some of the platform elements for Intel (like the chipset and DDR3 support) are also a notch above the available components for AMD. If we were building an extreme cost-is-no-object system, we’d definitely go Core 2.

But then we started looking at prices for CPUs, and quite simply AMD processors work out better on a processing-power-per-dollar basis.

We’d want a quad-core processor, and right now, you can get an AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core (2200MHz) processor for $200-$250. That’s a good deal. The cheapest Intel quad-core processor is the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2400MHz), but that will cost you at least $50 more than the AMD. The DDR3 memory to go with it would also be more expensive.

Winner: AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core, $200-$250

Monitor
For $300, you tend to be looking at 19” or 20” LCD monitors, but we found that with a little searching you can find a 22” monitor that sits right on $300. BenQ’s 22” G2200W or T221W are good bargains right now, and can be had for less than $300. The T221W even comes with (rather poor) built-in speakers.

Winner: BenQ T221W 22”, $280-$350

Case and power supply
Cases tend to be mostly a matter of taste, and can range in price from $60 to $500 (or more), depending on just how fancy you’d like it to be. For this system we’d tend to think that a smaller box-style or cheap mini-tower will do, and for $100 or less you can get decent mini-tower with a pretty hefty power supply unit. Do look for a case with an integrated power supply -- preferably one with at least 450 watts capacity and high efficiency (though realistically the efficiency you get at this price tends to be quite poor).

Winner: Take your pick. Whatever suits your taste, as long as the price is reasonable.

Motherboard
Assuming you’re going with the AMD processor, you’d want a motherboard that supports AM2+. Boards based on the newish AMD 770 chipset tend to be relatively affordable and capable. If you decided to go with an Intel processor, you’d look instead for a motherboard that uses the Intel P35 chipset.

Winner: Asus M3A, $110-$150

Memory
If you bought a newer motherboard (like the Asus M3A above), it’s probable that it supports memory faster than 800MHz. While it would be nice to get DDR2-1066 (a.k.a. PC8500) memory, for example, it would cost you a lot. Instead look for 800MHz PC6400 ram (DDR2 if you went AMD, DDR3 if Intel – check your motherboard specs for which is supported). It’s really cheap. With a bit of bargain shopping, you can get 4GBb of PC6400 memory (in four 1Gb modules) for about $100 right now. You can get 3Gb without even having to shop around. Don’t worry too much about brand and latencies – yes, you could get fancy low-latency Corsair memory, for example, but generally more memory is better than slightly faster memory.

Winner: 3 or 4Gb of PC6400 memory.

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