Question Budget build for casual CS2 player. Need advice

[Q]

Hi all. It's been at LEAST 10 years since I have built a PC. I am very out the game. But I want to play CS2 and I am lost on what will run decently. I'll play pretty casually, I will be fine with medium settings long as I'm not getting bad frame drops or something in intense fights.

I've considered looking locally on Facebook and swapping out anything weak but it's hard to gauge how well the user took care of the PC etc.

So should I just use PC Part Picker already built guide? But once again I don't know the individual parts. My small research has told me CS2 is more CPU reliant vs GPU. Can anyone offer some advice or examples where to start? Even if I get some direction on "use x or y CPU" then I can build off that.

Thanks

 

[Ken g6]

If CS2 is all you're playing, looks like it's no big deal hardware-wise.

The good thing is that hardware requirements are extremely reasonable—one key piece why Counter-Strike has been such a success. Almost every computer in the world is able to run CS. While the hardware requirements have gone up with CS2, they are still extremely modest. I've tested 40 graphics cards and almost all of them are able to reach 60 FPS at 1080p Full HD using maximum settings.

I found a CPU benchmark and again, no big deal unless your monitor and eyes are faster than 120Hz.

If you want general advice on a CPU for gaming, I suggest one that ends with the characters "X3D". The first digit should probably be 7 or 9 unless you're buying used, in which case 5 isn't bad either. The second digit should be no higher than 8 for gaming.

If buying used, Intel is also (just) okay for CS2; an i[something]-12[something] is ideal. The 13 and 14 series decay. AMD's 9 series also has a little exploding socket problem, but it seems to affect fewer people than Intel's problem. I haven't heard anything about hardware failures with Intel's latest series, but it may be too soon to tell.

 

[manly]

What's the budget?

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