Budget Gaming Build

[chevmaro]

What is the difference from the M5A97 R2.0 and M5A97 LE R2.0?

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

For Battlefield 4 multi-player you need a quad core CPU. It is not "blowing half the budget on a CPU". It is making the most from the budget.

Well, if he is playing BF4 -- I'd probably cut down to an FM2 Athlon X4 for $80 - 90 and put more money into a GPU personally. Heck even a cheaper G3258 would be fine for single player BF4. A solid state AND a hard drive seem excessive for a budget build too, imo. I can't see anyone trying to play games on an i5's IGP. He really needs a dedicated video card.

 

[chevmaro]

Pushing my budget a little bit and no SSD but I am about to pull the trigger on this. Let me know if it's good:

Seagate 2TB
GSkill Sniper 2x4GB 1866
ASROCK Z97 Anniversary
i5 4460
$437

 

[Seba]

Do not buy a Z97 motherboard with i5 4460. Choose a H97 motherboard instead.

Also, better buy DDR3-1600 1,5V (should be cheaper). No need for DDR3-1866.

Since you will use a dedicated graphics card, you could buy just one 8GB memory module. It is usually cheaper than 2x4GB and you have just 1 occupied memory slot.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Personally I'd go cheap on the CPU and put the money in the GPU:

SteamOS / Ubuntu for Free
$80 Intel Pentium G3258 CPU / AMD Athlon X4 750K or 760K (whatever your brand preference)
$50 1 TB Hard Drive
$50 Basic MicroATX Motherboard (Socket 1150/Socket FM2+)
$150 Geforce GTX 750 Ti / Radeon R7 265 (I recommend Nvidia if you are actually going with Linux)
$70 DDR3 8GB 2x4GB 1866 Mhz Dual Channel Kit

This rig would play most games pretty well.

 

[NTMBK]

Personally I'd go cheap on the CPU and put the money in the GPU:

SteamOS / Ubuntu for Free
$80 Intel Pentium G3258 CPU / AMD Athlon X4 750K or 760K (whatever your brand preference)
$50 1 TB Hard Drive
$50 Basic MicroATX Motherboard (Socket 1150/Socket FM2+)
$150 Geforce GTX 750 Ti / Radeon R7 265 (I recommend Nvidia if you are actually going with Linux)
$70 DDR3 8GB 2x4GB 1866 Mhz Dual Channel Kit

This rig would play most games pretty well.

He already has a 470, buying a 750ti would be pointless.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

He already has a 470, buying a 750ti would be pointless.

You're right -- I'd personally stretch the budget past $400 for a significantly faster card. I'm concerned that the 470 GTX is around 4 1/2 years old already -- I realize it still has some solid specs, but I'd probably sell it. IMO I'd try to stretch the budget to $460 with an R9 280. Most R9 280 cards can be bought for $199 after rebate -- and they've got a lot of pop.

 

[AtenRa]

If you going for the FX6300, better get the FX6350 that comes with a 125W TDP cooler and you can OC up to 4.4GHz (turbo off, bellow 1.4v) using the default cooler.

 

[SPBHM]

for bf4 the 6300 makes more sense, for the rest mentioned the pentium OC is probably better, I would assume it could be significantly better when it comes to wow raids and some ugly action on SC2, but at the same time the 6300 on BF4 MP64 could also have a significant advantage, I would consider more the 6300 (or i3), but if you can extend the budget for an i5 4460, even if going with an $50 MB, that's better performance for all the games mentioned.

 

[cbn]

Haswell Pentium are OK at BF4 are they not ?

I think OC'd G3258 works great for Battlefield 4 64 player with my R7 250X video card.

(So far the only game I have had trouble with OC G3258 was COD Ghosts. In that game I got some stuttering several times per game on the 16 player maps. However, the game's requirement for RAM was 6GB minimum and 8 GB recommended. I only had 4GB RAM, so I can't yet isolate the problem to CPU yet....until I retest at some point with 8GB RAM)