Build a Gaming/Video Editing PC for $1200 2010

Robert | December 24, 2010 09:07 AM Tags: Gaming , PC , Video Editing ,

My old computer died on me a few months ago and I decided it was time to build a new one. I wanted a PC that would be awesome for gaming, and video editing for OmniTechNews. The challenge for me, was the $1200 budget. Today on OmniTechNews, I’m going to teach you how to build an awesome gaming/video editing PC for only $1200.

The Case

In my opinion, the case is the most important thing when building your first gaming PC. Having a good case will help out when you upgrade you PC in the future. We’re on a budget of a $1200, so we’re going with the Cooler Master 922M which costs $90 on Amazon. This case is spacious enough to accommodate a high end GPU (graphics card) and it also has some nice cable management. The case is quite heavy and doesn’t have many front ports but other than that, this is a nice case for a low price.

The Motherboard

The motherboard is arguably the most important component of a new PC but on our budget, we can’t splash out. Our motherboard, the Gigabyte LGA1366 SATA3 ATI CrossFireX ATX Motherboard (quite a mouthful) does just fine. It has USB 3 and and is very durable. It also supports Intel’s new 32nm CPUs which is useful when you come to upgrading. At $200 on Amazon, it’s quite a purchase but it will be VERY useful to have this when you come to upgrading your PC.

The CPU

The one thing that we are not sacrificing on in terms on performance is the CPU. We are going with a quad core i7 at 3.06gz. There are 4 physical cores but with hyper threading, you get 8 useable cores. This is going to help out considerably during those 1080p edits and intense firefights. The Intel Core i7 950 costs $289 on Amazon.

RAM and PSU

The RAM (Corsair 6GB DDR3) and PSU (Corsair TX750w) are nothing special but do just fine for what we need them for. The PSU will power our graphics cards just fine and the RAM will be enough for some high end video editing. The RAM costs $85 on Amazon while the PSU costs $110 on Amazon.

Hard Drive and Video Card

The hard drive is a simple 1tb Seagate Barracuda drive which if you have the extra $50, I recommend getting another one and putting them in RAID. Since we can’t go with the GTX 470, we’re going with the GTX 460 which will do a great job for gaming, and video editing. The GTX 460 costs $170 on Amazon while the Seagate 1tb Barracuda hard drive costs $57 on Amazon. For our DVD drive we will be using a Lite-On LightScribe 24X drive which costs $26 on Amazon.

Building the PC

So start off by putting in your motherboard into your case. Make sure you have taken both panels off your case. Make sure you align the ports with the case’s chassis and screw all of the screws into the case. Then, screw in the PSU into the bottom of the case. Thread all the power cables through the cable/organizers in the case to make everything tidy.

At this point you can move on to putting the CPU into the motherboard. This step is the most dangerous because if you put the CPU into the case wrong, you will lose $300 worth of CPU. Make sure you follow the manual that comes with your CPU. Start off by placing the CPU into the motherboard slowly and surely. Follow the instructions that come with the CPU to make sure it aligns with the threads in the motherboard. If you are using the fan that comes with your CPU (which you most likely are) then you simply have to place the fan on the CPU an screw it in at the edges.

After the fan and CPU are securely placed into the motherboard, you can put the RAM and GPU (graphics card) into your motherboard. Make sure you have earthed yourself before handling your RAM. Make sure you connect your GPU to the power supply with the leads that come with it. *Some motherboards require you to put you RAM in a certain way so consult your manual to find the exact arrangement that is required*. Place the hard drive into your case and connect it to your motherboard with a SATA cable. Also connect the DVD drive with the cables that come with the drive. Make sure that the hard drive and DVD are getting power from the PSU (power supply).

After all your components are in your case, check that are the necessary cables are connected to your motherboard. After triple checking that all components and cables are secured, you can move onto your first boot. Install Windows 7 and you should be getting some blazing results in terms of gaming and video editing. Well there you have it, how to build a gaming/video editing PC for $1200.