New gaming-CoX UM desktop

Hello guys, I'm an old I9/I11's player who just came back because this is the only MMORPG that I really loved to play.... Unfortunately, I can only play this game, while on an office PC for something like 1 or 2 hours a day.
Since I was planning to buy a new PC anyway ( I'm currently on my laptop ), I would like to buy/build one that will let me experience CoX at its best.

I'm not an expert at all, and I only have a basic knowledge of the specific language, so I'm gonna fill Hyperstrike's "form" as best as I can.

1) What will you primarily be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc Primarily Gaming- CoX and others top graphic card-requiring games ( Diablo, Skyrim, Mass Effect ) with maxed out graphic settings. Secondarily photo-editing and web browsing ( nothing exceptional )

2) What's your budget? (Real Dollars) Are tax and shipping included? This is important as it allows people trying to help you to suggest things appropriate to your budget. 1.600-1900 Dollars ( converted from Euro ). Tax and shipping included

3) Where do you live? This is important as it affects what vendors you may buy from and how much shipping costs might be. Italy

4) Are you planning to buy or build? I would say build, because I think it has more option, but if something already on the market fits my need, I have no problem with that at all

5) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need. If you're unsure what exactly you need, say so. I'm not really sure about what parts I'll need. I can reuse Mouse/Keyboard/Monitor, but I think anything, even cheap, would be an upgrade over mine

6) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model. See above (5)

7) Will you be overclocking? Don't know pro/cons, but a friend will assemble it, and overclock it, if necessary

8) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have? I have a 17". Buying a new one, would like to have a 23"

9) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? ASAP?

10) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? etc. USB3.0. I don't understand anything else

11) Any specific must-have features? Must be able to max out Ultra-Mode? Must have 6+GB of RAM? Must have an SSD? etc. Max out UM ( best CoX graphic settings? ). Maxed out graphic settings for other big game ( as mentioned above ). Being able to connect it to my 32" TV would also be pretty sweet

12) Are there any vendors/brands you'd specifically prefer to use? No

13) Are there any vendors/brands you'd specifically prefer to avoid? No

14) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit? (Note: If your current OS came with your computer, odds are that it is NOT transferable.) No


Hope everything is clear, not really used to speak/write english Hope this helps you to help me

Thanks in advance for every help!

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This is a good place to start.

Father Xmas Guide
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=124080

I'm not familiar with Italy's computer part market. Having Newegg 10 miles from my house makes me rather spoiled as to how fast I can get parts.

Now the guide might need some updating with Ivy Bridge CPUs just being released, however its close enough to what I would suggest.

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H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD

Make sure to get a rather good CPU for City of heroes because it uses the CPU a lot.

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Okay, going to quote you towards the lower end of your budget spectrum.
This will help cover shipping, currency conversion vagaries, and trying to get product in your "neck of the woods".

Giving you Newegg links so you can at least see the products I'm talking about.

Case
Power Supply
Motherboard
CPU & Cooler
Memory
Graphics Card
Boot/Game Drive
Storage Drive
Optical Drive
OS

This would put you about $1710 before shipping.
With you being in a location I'm not familiar with (for getting parts into), I'm expecting you to pay a premium for at least SOME of them.

Cost-cutting measures:

You could step back to a Sandy Bridge platform with an i5 2500K. This would shave off about $30 from the CPU and another $30 from the motherboard of a similar Z68 version (A V-LE model).

Dropping down to 8GB from 16GB will save you about $55.

You can also go with a cheaper hard drive. Staying with 1GB but going non-WD or at least non-Caviar Black will cut about $30-40 off your costs.

Also, the GTX680 is the most powerful single-GPU card extant right now. It's priced at $500.

Stepping down to a 560 Ti 448 Core would be a fairly hefty step down. But you can still near-max CoH on one and it'll save you about $220.

Stepping down to a GTX 580 would save you about $70-100.

With all of the above-suggested cuts, you could cut off $250 or so.
That'd probably leave you with enough to buy a monitor.

Maybe something like this one.

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It's probably better to check the parts list links than the guide nowadays.

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Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components

Tempus unum hominem manet

Thanks for the help guys! I don't know any good sites, but searching on the web, I was able to find this 3 sites...
http://www.prokoo.com
http://www.eprice.it
http://www.computeruniverse.net

Nothing exceptional, but I think cost-wise they are the best I can find.
I also noticed that every part costs the same in Dollars and in Euro.
ex.
EVGA's Graphic card on Newegg.com: 500 Dollars
The same on any site around here: over 500 Euro

What if I buy it in the US and get it shipped over here? Would it be a bad idea considering parts' costs?
p.s. I also asked an estimated cost for assembling a PC like Hyperstrike's suggestion to a friend. Tomorrow I'll let you know how much is...

Thanks again!!

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A friend won't charge you much for assembling a computer.

A good friend won't charge you anything.

A true friend won't charge you anything and will instead stand there with you and talk you through assembling it yourself so that you know what to do the next time.

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If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.

Black Pebble is my new hero.

Okay, with the extreme markup for Euro I've come up with a new list on the ComputerUniverse site.


Case
Power Supply
Motherboard
CPU & Cooler
Memory
Graphics Card
Boot/Game Drive
Storage Drive
Optical Drive
OS


This comes out to about 1260 Euro ($1660) shipped.
While it's not QUITE as "balls to the wall" as the Newegg system quoted above, it's STILL going to be a complete butt-kicker of a system and falls within your price range.

As to ordering stuff in the US and shipping.
Essentially the shipping costs for any place that WOULD ship it would completely destroy the price difference between buying abroad in dollars or "local" in Euros.

As for a friend who's helping. Offer money. He may turn your cash offer down.
At least deliver pizza and beer/soda/whatever when he's over helping you assemble.

WATCH HIM LIKE A HAWK so he doesn't make off with your spiffy new system (that he'll be turning green with envy over).

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I'm sorry for the bad explanation. The guy who will estimates the cost for me OWNS the local store and will probably apply a good discount.. Today he told that after a first estimation, we can sit down and talk about lowering the price. So, I would need to know about the Newegg.com's config

a) which parts are "must-have"
b) which parts are important just because of their performances/capacities and can be interchanged with others of different brands ( that may come cheaper )
c) which parts are downgradable without downgrading playing performances ( I can close one eye on loading time, if that helps )
d) which brands are good alternates for those interchangable parts ( see point "b" above )
e) which brands are a no-no and must be avoided at all costs

I would like to play on this desktop for years to come. So, if the first config will grant me some more years of above average playing down the road, unlike the second and "cheaper" one, I'm ok with spending a little more now.

Hope I've explained things better. Thanks for the great and invaluable help once again to everybody

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Okay, the i5 3570K and the i5 2500K are pretty much interchangeable (with the 3570K being the slightly more expensive.

The Asus Z77 board can be downgraded to the Asus Z68 board with little to no performance loss.

Honestly, if you're playing just CoH, you don't REALLY need much more than a GTX 560 Ti. The 680 was just a suggestion since it fit your budget.

With memory, 16GB is nice. 8GB should probably be minimum.

As for brands to avoid?
Motherboards: Stick with Asus or Gigabyte. Some people like ASRock too. They don't really impress me though (very hit-or-miss with their products).

GPU: If you're going with medium to high end gaming GPUs for nVidia, they're more or less interchangeable. Currently EVGA is probably the brand to beat.

PSU: Thermaltake, CoolerMaster, Antec, and Silverstone are names *I* trust.

SSDs: Most of the ones on the Sandforce controllers can be hit or miss. But they're also some of the best performers. Corsair's offerings are decent. As are Crucial's. Intel is the stability Gold Standard, though they won't win on performance or price. OCZ makes some "okay" SSDs but they can be flaky sometimes.

HDD: My personal preference are for Western Digital. Specifically the Caviar Black drives. But they're fairly spendy at higher densities. For a file dump drive, the Blues aren't bad. Haven't really touched the Greens much.

Cases are more or less interchangeable.

Memory, you want to pay attention on. You still want the DDR3 1600 stuff. The lower the CAS rating the better. But don't let yourself get tricked into spending more simply because one memory's CAS is a WHOPPING 1 nanosecond faster than the other's.

Win7 Home. You want the 64-bit version so you can take advantage of 4+GB of memory.

Rule #1: Beware ostensibly "identical" parts that are MUCH less expensive than other offerings in the same space. If you see a 700W PSU for $30, and the rest are around $100-150, odds are you REALLY don't want that $30 PSU (unless you LIKE buying PSUs made of concrete, or want to burn your components out).

Unless you're overclocking (more than minor levels), you don't need a spendy aftermarket cooler. The default HSF will work just fine.

Hopefully that will give you a start.

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Thank you once again Hyperstrike. I've been doing some deep research during the previous days. I came up with these two sites. This is where I'll buy components.

http://pcking.de

http://www.prokoo.com

I have some more questions.
a) if I buy i5-3570k over 2550, and/or Asus z77 over z68, how much of an upgrade will I have? Do the performances justify the costs, in your opinion?

b) I still need a case and an optical drive to choose from those sites. Given I don't really care about design ( for the first ) or Blue-Ray burning ( for the latter ), which are the bests, costs/performances wise?

Thank you again

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a) Tough to say since to don't indicate what your cost difference is and what you are planning to do beyond gaming. Here are two reviews of the i5-3570K which include a comparison to the i5-2500K (sorry no 2550s). I linked to the game charts; bit-tech.net - XbitLabs.

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Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components

Tempus unum hominem manet

I think I'll go with the z77 and the 3570k anyway..

CPU
Power supply
Motherboard
Memory
Boot/Game drive
OS

With these components, I'm at 747 Euro. Throw in 510-520 Euro from the Graphic Card, and I'm around 1260 Euro. So I would like to spend no more than 240 Euro on the case, the optical drive and the burner.
As previously stated, I only need my PC for gaming and a little photoshop.

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