Maximum PC

Hi everyone, my fiance is a huge Diablo fan and is planning on building a new gaming PC prior to release and his budget is 500-700. However I know he's way too busy (full time student/full time employment) to do this before Diablo 3 comes out so I've decided to build him one as an early birthday present. Except for the mouse, keyboard, and monitor he is absolutely not picky at all. I've done some research but most of this is beyond my understanding. I really don't know much about computers =/

Anyways, I've read some great things about the i5 2500k so I wanted to build around that. I found this build but am not sure if there's anything currently out that's better for the same price or if there are cost effective alternatives. Also we don't have a prior computer (both have laptops) to upgrade instead so this will be completely new. Thanks in advance I appreciate everything!


CPU-i5 2500k $180
http://www.microcenter.com/single_produ ... id=0354589

Motherboard-Asrock H61M/U3S3 $70
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 61M%2fU3S3

Ram-PNY Optima DDR3 1333 8gb $41
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 1333%208gb

Video Card-XFX HD-687A-ZHFC Radeon HD 6870 900M Video Card $175
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=7005

Power Supply-Antec 520w ATX $80
http://www.microcenter.com/single_produ ... id=0348766

HD-500gb Hard Drive 7200rpm $80
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=2459

Computer case - $70
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129066

Total cost w/o rebate comes to: $696
I'm sure there's probably better motherboards out there. I'm willing to spend an extra 100-200, but would actually prefer to reduce costs. Thanks again!

Forget that H61, there is a deal at Microcenter get $50 off any Z68 mobo with the 2500k purchase

try this one Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 for $50, and another $15 MIR

I just put mine together, running a bootable linux to do a quick HDD burnin test (pulled from another system) then installing Win7pro64

You can't overclock on the H61 socket so you should definitely get a z68 or p67 board there are also new CPUs being released in a few weeks for around the same price as the current sandy bridge parts.