December High-end Gaming PC Buyer's Guide

Introduction

In each month's edition of our High End Gaming PC Buyer's Guide, we are given $2500 in cash to spend, and go to the limit in search of the ultimate high-end gaming machines. These systems certainly pump out the gaming FPS, but we do not spend this money frivolously, and our tech savvy and eye for a deal play a large role in the choices we make. All of the hardware picks in this guide are done after carefully weighing the price to performance ratio of each component, then seeing how they fit into our $2500 budget. This guide is your median between our Value Buyer's Guide with only a $1000 limit, and our Extreme Buyer's Guide with a massive $4000 budget.

The purpose behind this guide is to give you a general idea of what kind of high-end gaming PC is possible with a budget of $2500. While the individual components are top notch, we take a look at the larger picture, and decide which pieces meld together the best to form the highest-performing, feature-rich gaming PC possible. We recommend configurations for both the Intel and AMD sides of the spectrum, and are not here to promote one platform over the other.

There have been a number of price drops across the board this month, allowing us additional money to upgrade a few key components. Our Intel machine is now sporting a top of the line Pentium 4-3.2GHz chip, fast enough to go toe-to-toe with the Athlon 64 3200+ in our AMD machine. We also had enough money left over to upgrade our video subsystem, and shift around a few other components here and there, making this the top performing, high-end computer systems we have designed yet.

Case: Lian Li PC-65 w/ Antec TruePower 480W PSU

Current Cost: $195
Months on list: 2
Price Change: -$4

We like to list the case and power supply components first in the guide because both should be at the top of your list of items when building a new PC. A case will stay with you longer than most other single internal hardware purchases, and can dictate which upgrades you can, and cannot do, in the future. Be sure to choose a case that fits your size requirements and is both aesthetically pleasing, as well as functional.

There are few case manufacturers that scream quality like Lian Li, Cooler Master and Antec. While you can't go wrong with a case from any of them, we can only pick a single case to be included in this guide each month. For the past few guides we have been using Lian Li cases, and it will not change this month. The Lian Li PC-65 is the same case we used last month, and we love it for its sheer beauty and ergonomic ease of use. The case can be found at various online retailers for about $112.

As our case did not come with a power supply we opted for something that would be able to power each and every component we could throw at it, especially with the inclusion of the Athlon 64 processor into this month's machine. The Antec TruePower 480W power supply fits the bill, as PSU's from Antec are certainly up to the task and offer the high-end specs and reliability we need. It's imperative to choose a power supply from a reputable brand, as bargain units often have ridiculously high output claims that they simply can't measure up to.