Need advice on a BF3/Crysis 2/Skyrim rig?

Guys I need your opinions.

I'm thinking of starting a budget build from scratch, budget is 拢400.

Athlon II X3 450

Biostar A880GU3 mATX mobo

4GB DDR3 (thinking Corsair, Crucial or Kingston here)

Standard 500gb Seagate hard drive or maybe stretch to a 1Tb

Standard LiteOn 24x DVD

Coolermaster Elite 330 or 342, need opinions

BeQuiet 530W Pure Power - 120mm Fan, Dual 12v rails, 5x sata, 2x pci-e

Either a 1Gb GTX 460 or an ATI 6850



All this comes to around 拢420, I've got a copy of W7



Games I'll be playing are: BF3, Metro, Crysis, Civ, Starcraft, Skyrim, Brink, Batman, Deus Ex, Duke, Diablo, etc...



1. Is it worth waiting for AMD's Bulldozer or is an Athlon II x3 enough for BF3?

2. Which case is best, the aforementioned or any others around the 拢30 mark? Ie. What would be best for the components and expansion?

3. Are BeQuiet a good brand for PSU's?

4. Is it worth getting the slightly older (mature drivers) GTX460 or the newer (young drivers) 6850? Which would be more future proof?



Cheers!Need advice on a BF3/Crysis 2/Skyrim rig?
not max settings on these games

go for the ati 6850

make sure your motherboard can unlock the athlon's fourth core.Need advice on a BF3/Crysis 2/Skyrim rig?
First, props to your hardware choices!



I happen to have Crysis 2 here and it only rarely spikes above 50% on a quad core, which generally means it is really only capable of fully using a dual core, so you may be better of with a faster dual core ( phenom II @ 3.0GHz, then try to unlock those extra cores :-) ).



The L3 cache on the phenom II will make a 10-15% difference in games, so that is a serious consideration.



To answer your questions directly:



1. Yes, if you can wait for Bulldozer-based CPUs, then do so.

These CPUs should offer considerably better gaming performance than the phenom II, and possibly even more so than the i7.

This doesn't mean you'll be able to afford one, however, just that it will cause the phenom II line to drop in price as retailers dump their inventory. This effect may not be as pronounced as previous generations, however, due to Bulldozer's incompatibility with AM3, thus requiring new motherboards to utilize.



2. Case: You will likely need to live with your decision for the longest time of all your components, so it is not a good idea to skimp too much here. CoolerMaster cases have RAVE reviews, so your choices seem perfectly fine.



One thing you may want to consider to save money is a mATX case to go with your mATX board. If you don't need the expansion, then you can save some money and some room.



3. Power Supply: I have never used a BeQuiet PSU so I can only refer you to reviews. But this is one area where you should NOT save money. You get what you pay for, every time. If you go with a lesser-known brand, you should go with their middle-higher end products. That said, the reviews for your power supply and their higher models are rather positive. They seem to be inline with the likes of RAIDMax, which is a brand I have come to trust. A power supply should cost about $30 ( U.S. ) or more. Less should be a red flag.



4. AMD HD 6850 all the way. There is even a chance you can upgrade the card to a 6870 for some free performance. I would flip the other way, however, if you were comparing GTX 570 vs 6970... but that is out of the price range entirely.



5. You didn't ask, but the prices for DVDRW drives are nothing. Go with an LG with lightscribe, just make your update the firmware on the drive ( they are bad about shipping drives with outdated firmware ).



Good luck!