Thinking of building yourself a new PC or upgrading an old one? Then you've come to the right post for component advice. The PC Gamer Rig is our (almost) weekly update about the state of kit costs and best value performance for your PC.
This week that has seen the launch of AMD's new mid-range HD7800 series graphics, so it's a bit depressing to report that there's no major changes to the make-up of the Rig. While the new Radeon cards are impressive, they're not quite convincing enough to unseat the Intel/NVIDIA axis around which this PC has been structured for many months now.
Although if you don't mind spending a bit more, there's a lot of reasons you might consider an AMD HD7870. Apart from the fact it barely sips power from the great electronic electricity fountain at your mains plug, when overclocked it's capable of hitting benchmarks that are within site of NVIDIA's GTX 580.
The real find, however, arrived in my inbox this morning from Scan . A 1TB hard drive from Toshiba for less than £70. While hard drive prices are still high (following last year's Thai floods ), that's almost half the cost gig-for-gig of other drives. Annoyingly, the price had already risen by the time this was posted, so clearly there's a lot of demand.
Even better is the fact that very respectable SSDs are now less than £1 a gigabyte, and the top of the line Corsair Force GT with synchonrous MLC NAND is only a bit more expensive.
Which makes it almost worth thinking about investing in storage again.
What's in the Rig?
CPU
Intel Core i5 2500K
The amount you save buying a 'non-K' version isn't worth it.
Motherboard
ASUS P8Z68-V LX/Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3
Good value Z68 boards both.
RAM
Crucial Ballistix Sport
With the news that Japan's Elpida has gone bust, RAM prices are creeping up. So buy now while you can.
3D Card
GeForce GTX 560Ti
Still the best value graphics board there is. The Radeon HD7850 is in hot pursuit though.
Hard drive
1TB Hitachi 7K1000
Up £7 since the email arrived this morning. That's dynamic pricing systems for you.
DVD drive
Samsung SH-222AB
Remember optical drives? This is what they looked like.
Case
Bitfenix Outlaw
Silly good bargain for a lovely case.
Power supply
OCZ ZS Series 650W
Plenty of power for what you'll need.
Mouse
Logitech G400
Classic Logitech design with a modern 3600dpi sensor.
Keyboard
Steelseries 6G|V2
Looks like it's sold out across the UK, but due in again next week.
Sound card
ASUS Xonar DG
Not essential, but a great extra for £20.
Monitor
AOC i2353Ph
Not a great stand, but astonishing picture quality for the price. As good as any other eIPS screen.
Headset
Creative SoundBlaster Tactic 3D Alpha
I'm not the biggest fan of Creative headsets, but to get better you'll need to spend a lot more.
Total: £902.96/$1275.27
That's £37.76/$107.19 more than last time (but with a bigger drive)
