Due to the nature of building a custom computer you may find compatibility
issues with the following parts list. Today I’m here with my next computer
build video, this time at the $1400 price point. At this price you’ll be
getting a solid computer for doing almost anything however do keep in mind
that unlike previous builds I built this computer to my specific needs so
you may want to make some changes depending on what you plan on doing with
the computer. To begin with we have the Intel Core i7-2600k CPU. As one of
the top of the line enthusiast CPUs available right now this makes a fantastic
starting point for our build. It features 4 physical cores with Hyperthreading
clocked at 3.4GHz stock and can be overclocked very easily. My build is at 4GHz
but nothing at all is stopping you from going much higher. This will run you $315.
To help us to get a nice overclock we will be using the Cooler Master Hyper 212+
CPU cooler. With a 120mm fan that comes with it and an optional second fan for
push/pull airflow on the massive heat sink this keeps the CPU nice and cool for
$40. For a motherboard I chose the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P. As one of the new Z68
boards you’ll find some new features including support for SSD caching, dual
BIOS, plenty of SATA 3 and USB 3 connections and Gigabyte’s very solid build
quality. With support for both Crossfire and SLI graphic configurations this
will run you $170. Moving on to the graphics card I chose an Asus Radeon 6850.
While you absolutely could go for something with a bit more punch like a 6950
or 6970 here I found that the 6850 can handle most games available today such
as StarCraft 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Just Cause 2 maxed out at 1080p
without a problem. With full support for DirectX 11, a pair of DVI ports along
with Display and HDMI and a reasonable price of $150 after rebate this is a
solid card. For memory we’ll be using 8GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM. Running in
dual channel this memory is clocked at 1600Mhz which is about the sweet spot for
RAM on the Sandy Bridge platform. The only downside to this memory is that the
heatsinks are rather large, making it very difficult to mount a second fan to
the CPU cooler. Other than that this is solid for $85. Storage is more than taken
care of by an OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD. As one of the best current solid state drives
for enthusiasts you’ll find stellar read and write speeds across the board with this,
letting Windows boot in around 10 seconds and even memory hungry applications such
as Photoshop load extremely quickly. At $270 currently this will do a lot to keep
your computer speedy. Since 120GB really isn’t enough for most people we’ll
be using a Hitachi 2TB hard drive to supplement the SSD. Even though you should
mainly use this for documents, music and videos you’ll find that it’s really quite
fast in it’s own right for $80. While a DVD burner certainly isn’t necessary these
days
on a build like this there’s no reason not to include one. For $21 a LITE-ON drive
will do just fine. For the case I chose the Cooler Master HAF 912. While certainly
not an expensive case by any means it offers a lot of solid features including
plenty of room for installing additional fans, easy access to the dust filters for
cleaning, an expansive interior for lots of hard drives, graphics cards as well as
a cage for installing a pair of 2.5” hard drives on the bottom of the case. If you
have to have LEDs and huge windows by all means pick a different case but if you want
something that still looks good but is quite a bit more understated I highly recommend
the HAF 912 for $50 after rebate. With a higher end build like this you don’t want to
skimp on the power supply so today we’ll be using a Corsair TX750. Corsair typically
makes
very high quality power supplies and with the TX750 you will get 750 watts of power
for a reasonable price, allowing you to overclock, add extra hard drives or even
upgrade or add additional graphics cards without needing to worry about power issues
for $100. Lastly we have a system builder copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. Of course
if you like you could install Linux or a copy of Windows you already have but
otherwise this will run you $90. So how much damage did we do? As of June 15th 2011
on Newegg.com the entire parts list will run you $1,390.88 after all rebates. For the
price you’ll be getting a fantastic computer for gaming, video editing and just about
anything else you need to do. After using this computer for the past few weeks I’ve
got
to say I’m very pleased with just about everything about it but of course feel free
to
customize it to your own liking. If you found this video helpful be sure to click the
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