Published on July 18th, 2011 | by John

>If I want a high-end gaming rig, how much should I spend? REALLY.

>In this article, I will go over what I feel to be the most power necessary for the next generation of games. (BF3, etc.) Unless you have infinite money, like Alki David (he’s a winner, yeah?) – it’s not worth buying absolutely top of the line. This machine is what I would buy, were I building a machine right now. If you’re looking into PC gaming seriously, and don’t want to sell yourself short in any way, this is the build for you.

Case: Coolermaster HAF 932 (149.99)

Power Supply: Kingwin Lazer 1000W (149.99)

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP–UD5 (269.99)

Processor (CPU): Intel Core i7 2600k (314.99)

CPU cooler: Coolermaster Hyper212 (49.99) – can find this cheaper on Amazon.

Thermal Paste: Arctic Silver 5 (11.98)

Memory (RAM): 8GB Gskill Ripjaws X (69.99)

Video card (GPU): EVGA GTX 580 (479.99)

Optical Drive: Liteon 24x DVD/CDRW (24.99)

Headset: Steelseries Siberia V2 (74.99)

Mouse: Razer Deathadder Black Edition (49.99)

Keyboard: Razer Lycosa (79.99)

Alot of people have different ideas on hard drives. I prefer the WD Caviar Black, but other’s will say samsung spinpoint. You can make that decision yourself, as both are great HDDs.

Z68 motherboards: SSD caching. There would be an SSD included in this build, but new tech just came out so it’s best to give it a few months to see people’s reports before making the dive at a 300$ + hard drive. Still worth purchasing z68 now, and splurging on the SSD at a later date when you’re fully aware of the pros and cons of newer/older tech.

With 40 dollars of mail in rebates, this high end machine, including all peripherals needed for gaming (aside from a monitor. Assuming you already have one of those, because you’re reading this website on it.. I hope.) will run you under 2k.

This is the most you should spend on a machine right now.

Myself, and all of the PC enthusiasts here at KBMOD will tell you the same thing. Bash this into your brains if you need to. Never. Never ever ever. EVER buy 2 weaker cards to SLI rather than buying a better single GPU. Single GPU is better. It’s easier. There are far less issues whilst running a single card. Later down the road, you can SLI/crossfire if you need to. You should never build a machine and go SLI/crossfire from the start, unless it’s 2 of the best cards on the market. (ala 2x 590s.) Buy yourself a PSU powerful enough to SLI/crossfire at a later date. Listen to what I say. Or you’ll pay.