My First Computer Builds: Part 2 - Salvaging Parts

Welcome to part 2 of my computer build journal. Let me talk about the parts that I had retained from my old build. To recap, here's a link to part 1. Here are the parts from the old build:

Processor: Intel Core i3-3220
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77M-Pro
Graphics card: Palit GT630
OS: Windows 8
750GB hard drive 
4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM 
Generic casing
Generic 600W PSU

So to keep it simple: I re-used everything except the casing and the PSU. Not all of the salvaged components will be used together. Here's how they were split up:

Rig 1: The Student's Rig

This will be used by my lovely wife's kids, since their computer recently broke down. It will be used mainly for internet browsing, Open Office and movie viewing in full HD. 

The i3-3220 is still formidable, more than enough for your basic tasks and, if paired with the right video card (the likes of a GTX 760 or R9 270X), could run a decent mid-range gaming setup.

Recycling the hard drive and RAM is a no brainer since they're pretty much compatible with anything these days. 750GB is large enough, probably more than enough, for the average user. 4GB of RAM provides enough room for gaming and multitasking.

The GT 630 is made for entry level gaming. I've tried it with some of the most demanding games today: Metro: Last Light and Crysis 3. Frame rates ran below 30fps on low settings in 720p, comparable to a PlayStation3 or XBox 360. It might not look good on paper, but I still found these games playable. It's enough since we also don't want the kids to be addicted to games. 

Rig 2: The Gaming Rig

The target is to trump whatever the PS4 and XBox One offers. So while the above components are decent, I am gunning for the best GPU and CPU I could afford and build a high-end gaming system around that.

The ASUS motherboard provides a great upgrade path and flexibility. It's possible to run up to 3 video cards in SLi/Crossfire and also provides great overclocking options, though I myself don't have any plans to overclock. It's able to accept Sandy/Ivy bridge processors with up to four cores.

So that's it, I basically came up with two systems, with the one I will use for gaming being an almost completely new build. I actually think it would have been different if I had an i5 to start with, since with that I would only look at getting a true-rated PSU, additional RAM, and a top-tier video card. But given the circumstances, we went with this.

For Part 3 I will detail the new components I got for these two builds.