Impulsively, I got on the Sandy Bridge bandwagon less than 30 days after release. The motherboard reviews were “not good” (and one had been pulled after 10 days on the market). But, after convincing myself that it was going to be OK, I jumped in and built the Tiemens Family Core i5 machine.
This machine is intended as a Windows gaming machine. Once again, DDR3 prices are so low that I switched from 4GB to 8GB for basically the same price. The pieces below were ordered between January 24 and January 28, 2011.
It is fun to compare this to the Core-i7 build posted here.
[Some price notes: $30 off for PSU/OS bundle, taken all off OS – because I bought “pro” for the same price as “premium”. $20 off for CPU/MB bundle, taken all off CPU – because I bought the “2500K” for the same price as the “2500”. I have a $30 rebate on the video card, so its final price will be $170.]
| Item | Product | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz LGA 1155 95W | $210 |
| RAM | G.SKILL Ripjaws 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL [2012-Mar]G.SKILL Ripjaws 8GB (2x4GB) Another 2 sticks. |
$105 $47 |
| Motherboard | ASUS P8P67 Pro LGA 1155 P67 ASUS P8P67 PRO (Rev 3.0) LGA 1155 P67 |
$190 |
| Power Supply | Corsair 650TX ATX 12V V2.2 80 Plus | $90 |
| Video | ASUS ENGTX460 GeForce GTX 460 1GB 256 bit PCIx2.0 x16 HDCP | $200 |
| Case | Antec Three Hundred ATX Mid Tower | $60 |
| SS Drive | Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5″ MLC CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 | $135 |
| HD Drive | Western Digital Black 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 7200RPM 64MB WD1002FAEX | $88 |
| DVD/CD | Sony Optiarc AD-7261S-0B SATA Black DVD burner | $26 |
| OS | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM | $109 |
| Total | – | $1213 |
2015/Feb Update – Video card died. The replacement card was a bit of a splurge:
| Video | ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX DC2OC-4GD5 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCIx3.0 1664 CUDA cores | $344 |
Various upgrades:
| Keyboard | Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard – Red LED – Cherry MX Brown Switches | $130 |
| Mouse | Logitech G5 2-Tone 6 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Laser 2000 dpi Mouse | $46 |