Ultra Battlebox: Building a Battlefield 3 PC For Under $1,600
You can't get the full BF3 experience on a console, but what does it take to get it on a PC?
In an age of sloppy console ports, Battlefield 3 is a huge relief for PC gamers. Not only is the PC a “lead platform” for DICE’s flagship modern shooter, but we’re getting all the good stuff: 64-player maps? You won’t find ‘em on a console. DirectX 11 graphics? Only on a PC, Sparky. Indeed, Battlefield 3’s Frostbite 2 engine brings fully destructible environments, ambient occlusion, MLAA, and full DX11 support—and it reaches its full potential only on the PC. But with great power comes great power requirements: DICE’s minimum recommended GPU is a GeForce GTX 560 or AMD Radeon HD 6950, and performance scales up from there. That means a lot of us are going to have to go get new videocards—or a whole new rig.
Any Neanderthal can slap together a $3,000 box and play Battlefield 3 like a dream, but that’s out of reach for most people. So we decided to build a machine that can play BF3 as nature intended—at 1920x1200 resolution, with all settings at Ultra—and do it for less than $1,600.

[Note: This story was originally written for the Holiday 2011 print magazine, and predated both the retail release of Battlefield 3 and the flooding-related hard drive shortage.] Print deadlines being what they are, we didn’t have access to the final Battlefield 3 code, but we played the open beta and used Battlefield 3-optimized drivers from AMD and Nvidia as they became available.
We’ll start by explaining the parts we chose and why. Some were obvious, and some—like the videocards—changed multiple times. Then we’ll talk about our testing and gameplay experience, and describe some alternate configurations. If you’ve ever needed a good excuse to upgrade or build a new rig, Battlefield 3 just might be it.
CPU - Intel Core i5-2500K

We think the Core i5-2500K is the best midrange processor on the market. It’s a 3.3GHz quad-core chip, and though it lacks Hyper-Threading, it's multiplier-unlocked and overclocks like a dream, thus extending its usable lifespan (though we left ours at stock speeds for this rig). Sandy Bridge is a great platform, and the 2500K hits the price/performance sweet spot for that platform. Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge-E CPUs weren’t available when we built our system, but even if they were, we’d probably still go with the 2500K. It’s that good a value.
Motherboard - Asus P8Z68-V Pro

Asus’s P8Z68-V Pro is the perfect complement to our i5-2500K. Not only does it have Intel’s excellent native 6Gb/s SATA chipset and USB 3.0 support, but it also brings three PCIe x16 slots—although the third is restricted to x4 mode, and the first two, if both used, default to dual x8 speeds. A UEFI BIOS enables use of hard drives bigger than 2.2TB, and Intel’s Smart Response Technology (SRT) is an option if you prefer a large mechanical boot drive with a small SSD for caching—an option we considered before settling on the final storage loadout.
RAM - 8GB Patriot Division 2 DDR3/1600

DICE’s minimum RAM requirement for Battlefield 3 is 2GB, and its recommended specs call for 4GB. 4GB is, frankly, the bare minimum we’d consider putting into a new rig, and it’s not very future-proof. The Z68 chipset is dual-channel, and our motherboard has four DIMM slots. With memory prices so low, it only made sense to go with two 4GB DIMMs. That gives us 8GB of RAM now, and room to double up later.
GPU - XFX Radeon 6970 2GB

This was the trickiest part to pick. Throughout the beta period, Nvidia and AMD kept releasing beta drivers that would put their respective GPUs in the lead. AMD’s second preview drivers, though, kicked the 6970’s average frame rate on Ultra at 1920x1200 up to 45fps on our system—well in the playable range, and for $150 less than Nvidia’s GTX 580. If we had gone with the GTX 560 Ti or Radeon 6950, we would have had to ratchet down the graphical quality or the resolution. With the Radeon 6970 we get a tasty balance of performance and price.