Will Game for Food

When my older sister solicited me to build my PC gamer nephew a kick ass budget gaming rig, naturally I was excited to help. PC’s are a favorite hobby of mine and it’s always fun taking on the challenge of finding the sweet spot between price and performance. I set off with a budget of around $650- and off to the egg I clicked….

I knew from the start this rig would be primarily used for gaming as well as the boring stuff that teenagers are faced with, such as writing papers, doing research for high school projects and let’s not forget – keeping that Facebook page updated. With gaming performance being the primary objective, the bulk of the money would be shifted from CPU to GPU. Over the past few months I had been hearing such good things about the AMD x3′s and the ability to unlock the 4th core essentially turning an $70 three core chip into a four core chip costing double that price. I settled on the x3 740 Black Edition, which can be had for around 80 on the egg. As far the the choices for AM3 motherboards out there I started out with an ASUS in mind simply because of my past experience with them and their quality. Some would argue that saving 30% or so and going with a budget board from the likes of Asrock, Foxconn or Biostar is perfectly acceptable – but with ASUS you get excellent quality and a great feature set. In this case the main feature being the ability to easily unlock the 4th core of the x3 as well as a good overclock utility. I ended up using the ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3. It’s a kick ass board and you get onboard usb 3.0, two PCI x16 slots, and the core unlocker utility making the process of turning a x3 > x4 easier than ever. For cooling I went with the praised CoolerMaster 212 plus. The temps on this thing are incredible. After overclocking the x4* from 3.0Ghz to 3.6Ghz I was getting idle temps of 34*C and load temps of 47*C, all this for a cooler that is only 15 bucks after rebate. Nothing short awesomeness.

On to the RAM- We are lucky to be in a time of excess and thus very cheap DDR3 memory, two years ago I would have been shocked to think that now “old” DDR2 would be double the price of spiffy new DDR3. shopping the deals got me 2x2GB sticks of G. Skill Ripjaws series for less than 50 bucks after rebate. Currently running at 1600mhz with a windows memory performance rating of 7.5 and running Memtest86 all day with zero errors.

Graphics- Onto the fun stuff- Now as a big Nvidia fan I was a little biased against running an ATI Radeon 58xx card. After looking at prices and reading so many reviews of the gtx460 cards I stuck to my Nvidia fanboy-ism and ordered the EVGA GTX460 (768 version). Reason number one- the benchmarks don’t lie, you get a whole lotta frames per second with the 460 at resolutions of 1920×1080 and lower which is what my nephew will be gaming at. Reason number 2- EVGA is a great company offering a solid 2year warranty and their famous “Step Up” program which let’s you send the card in for a more expensive card within 90 days only paying the difference between the two. This is something I’ve used in the past after buying a new 8800gt, and stepping up to a 9800gtx+ a couple months later. As a consumer I love how this eliminates the possibility of buyer’s remorse. If a month or two down the road you start to feel like you should have spent a little more for the better card(say a gtx470/480 or even 580 in this case) you still have that option. Reason 3- EVGA Precision GPU overclocking Ultility. This program is easy to use when overclocking your GPU. In my case I took the stock speeds all the way up to 870/1740/1880, and stress testing with no issues but still backed it off a bit before shipping it to my nephew.

Other thoughts-
CASE: Antec 900
PSU: OCZ StealxStream 600watt
HDD: 1TB Seagate 7200rpm
Optical Drive: Samsung SSH-S223L
OS: Windows Home Premium 64bit

Cost Breakdown:
CPU: $68.99
Motherboard: $89.99 (after rebate)
RAM: $49.99
Cooler: $14.99 (after rebate)
Case: $59.99 (after rebate)
Graphics Card: $149.99 (after rebate)
PSU:$29.99 (after rebate)
HDD: $49.99
Optical Drive: $19.99
OS: $84.99

Total Cost: $618.90

For that price I was able to run the Crysis Benchmark at around 40fps, and easily able to play anything else comfortably at 1920×1080 with max settings.

Best run in Futuremark’s Vantage was 16805!
View the official results here.

Alas, the much sought after Astro A40 Audio System. After over a year of admiring I finally splurged a little and ordered a set. I chose the white MLG edition a40 audio system with Mixamp.

I’m going to have a write up on these soon but for now some pics…

The Astro Mixamp

The MLG Speaker Tags

The a40 Headset

The Headstrap

The Case

Okay- if you’re like me your first thought is… do we really need another rhythm game this year? Let’s take a quick recap of the rhythm games that have released in 2009 alone…

• Guitar Hero: Metallica
• Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
• Guitar Hero: 5
• Rock Band: The Beatles
• DJ Hero
• Band Hero
• Lego Rock Band
• Guitar Hero: Van Halen

This doesn’t even include the track packs or the ones released on portable platforms like the DS, PSP or Mobile Apps!

Regardless of the incessant onslaught from developers Neversoft and Harmonix, who wouldn’t want to rock out to some new tunes in a game that we already love and that has taken over living rooms everywhere with piles of plastic instruments?

…onto the game…

THE GOOD ~ Lego Rock Band is obviously aimed at the family market, but the song list is enjoyable by all ages. Don’t let the little colored bricks fool you. There won’t be any Wiggles’ or Barney covers in this game. I began with the story mode and like other games in these series you need to play songs to unlock vehicles and new gigs. At the end of each stop on your tour you have to play a challenge. This brought something a little fresh to the Rock Band line-up. Even though you’re still using the instrument of your choice to play the assigned song you’re fighting a battle of sorts in the background. Whether it’s defending the Lego Castle from attacking trolls or trying to outrun a giant t-rex with your band mates it adds an interesting twist to the story play of the game. Another cool aspect is the ability to customize your Lego band characters much like the popular Lego adventure games. Let’s face it, EVERYONE loves to play with Legos.

THE BAD ~ While the set list was surprisingly good considering the game’s intended market there were just way too few to pick from! After about the 4th venue you start replaying the same songs. With about 40% fewer songs than other releases in this genre it gets a sub-par score on replayability. You do have the option of importing SOME of your Rock Band dlc songs into the game but note: SOME. Considering how far game development has come I have to attribute this to a fear of game publishers losing money on the idea.

THE UGLY ~ Unlike other RB and GH titles there is NO live-enabled multiplayer. I can try to live with the fact that Harmonix simply shipped a game that is barely different from it’s predecessors,  created some cute Lego characters, a new setlist and put a $50 price tag on it but why should it lose it’s online multiplayer features? The easy answer would be the aforementioned target market: FAMILY. FAMILY. FAMILY. Well, I think it’s a lame one. In order to warrant the price of this game it really needs a FULL setlist and FULL live capabilities otherwise it should sell for $40 or less cause you’re not really getting a FULL game.

OTHER THOUGHTS ~ If you’re someone who love these games yet struggles with the difficulty give Lego RB a try. Even on Expert settings this is still the easiest RB game I’ve ever played.

DETAILS ~

• Available Platforms: 360, PS3, Wii, DS
• Launch Date: 11/3/2009
• Players: 1-4
• Online Play: No

Setlist:

1. All American Rejects–”Swing, Swing”
2. The Automatic–”Monster”
3. Blink-182–”Aliens Exist”
4. Blur–”Song 2″
5. Bon Jovi–”You Give Love a Bad Name”
6. Boys like Girls–”Thunder”
7. Bryan Adams–”Summer of 69″
8. Carl Douglas–”Kung Fu Fighting”
9. The Coral–”Dreaming of You”
10. Counting Crows–”Accidentally in Love”
11. David Bowie–”Let’s Dance”
12. Elton John–”Crocodile Rock”
13. Europe–”The Final Countdown”
14. Everlife–”Real Wild Child”
15. Foo Fighters–”Breakout”
16. Good Charlotte–”Girls & Boys”
17. The Hives–”Tick Tick Boom!”
18. Iggy Pop–”The Passenger”
19. Incubus–”Dig”
20. Jackson 5–”I Want You Back”
21. Jimi Hendrix–”Fire”
22. Kaiser Chiefs–”Ruby”
23. Katrina & The Waves–”Walking on Sunshine”
24. The Kooks–”Naïve”
25. Korn–”Word Up!”
26. KT Tunstall–”Suddenly I See”
27. Lostprophets–”Rooftops”
28. Pink–”So What”
29. The Police–”Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”
30. The Primitives–”Crash”
31. Queen–”We Are the Champions”
32. Queen–”We Will Rock You”
33. Rascal Flatts–”Life Is a Highway”
34. Ray Parker Jr.–”Ghostbusters”
35. Razorlight–”Stumble and Fall”
36. Spin Doctors–”Two Princes”
37. Spinal Tap–”Short & Sweet”
38. Steve Harly–”Make Me Smile”
39. Sum 41–”In Too Deep”
40. Supergrass–”Grace”
41. Tom Petty–”Free Fallin’”
42. T-Rex–”Ride a White Swan”
43. Vampire Weekend–”A-Punk”
44. We the Kings–”Check Yes Juliet”
45. The Zutons–”Valerie”