G3258 / GTX950 / 16GB / SSD gaming build

[VirtualLarry]

This is what I put together tonight:

G3258 GTX950 build

Intel G3258 Pentium Anniv. Edition 3.2Ghz dual-core CPU $72
Copper-core Intel 1150 Heatsink/fan (included with CPU) $0
Biostar H81MHV3 FlexATX mobo $55
Team Group Dark 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600 CAS9 1.5v $50
Rosewill FBM-01 micro-ATX case $25
ThermalTake TR2-430 430W PSU (5-year warranty) $40
VisionTek GoDrive 120GB SATA6G 2.5" SSD $40
SATA cable (2x included with mobo) $0
MSI NVidia GTX950 2GB OC PCI-E 3.0 video card $120

hardware total: $402

Haven't actually tested it with any games yet. I know that 2015-2016 AAA games won't run so well on the G3258. But older stuff should run great at 1080P, in theory.

 

[whm1974]

No HDD? 120GB isn't enough storage for games. You could have put together a Skylake system for a little more instead of building this one.

 

[VirtualLarry]

No HDD? 120GB isn't enough storage for games.

There's plenty of room in a budget for adding a HDD there, given the cheap price of everything else I put together.

You could have put together a Skylake system for a little more instead of building this one.

Yes, you could, but there are no overclockable Skylake Pentiums, well, supposedly "SKY OC" still works on a select group of mobos, but those are all ATX to my knowledge. Anyways, I managed to get this one to 4.2Ghz stable, so the closest non-OCed SKL CPU is the i3-6320 @ 3.9Ghz, which is like $160. So yeah, a SKL rig is a "little" more money.

That's pretty-much splitting hairs, though, as with a GTX950 2GB card, this rig isn't destined for AAA 2016 gaming anyways, more like MOBAs and the like.

See this guide for a similar build:
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/geforce-gtx-950-micro-atx-pc-build-guide
But mine is overclocked, has an SSD, and 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB, and is $48 cheaper. Which works out to be around the cost of a 1TB HDD.

 

[whm1974]

I'm not sure about using ThermalTake PSUs however. I'm prefer SeaSonic myself. I also would have went with a bigger SSD as well as the i3-6100. Still the build is cheap, I'll give you that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Still the build is cheap, I'll give you that.

Yeah, that was basically the point. I already had the mobo, and the GTX950 cards. I had ordered a couple of kits of the 16GB Team Dark DDR3 at the beginning of the month, so I just ordered the G3258 CPUs a few days ago to complete the build, after I found a review of that mobo suggesting that you could flash the original shipping BIOS and OC the G3258 to 4.4Ghz in it.

I'm not saying a Skylake i3-6100 or higher build isn't better - it is. But ... it does cost a bit more, too.

If someone is reading this, and is starting from scratch, that's probably what I would recommend too. For around $700, you could get an i3-6100 and a GTX1060 3GB card, 16GB DDR4-2400, and maybe you could even squeeze a cheap Z170 board into the budget, just to be able to take advantage of the faster DDR4 speeds.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

This is about the cheapest way anybody could build a new gaming box. Well done there penny pincher.

If you had waited until today to build it though you could have gotten a better GPU, bigger SSD, and better case for the same money (factoring in rebates). I know you already had some of the parts on hand so it is what it is.

 

[whm1974]

If someone is reading this, and is starting from scratch, that's probably what I would recommend too. For around $700, you could get an i3-6100 and a GTX1060 3GB card, 16GB DDR4-2400, and maybe you could even squeeze a cheap Z170 board into the budget, just to be able to take advantage of the faster DDR4 speeds.

For a cheap gaming system H170 or even B150 based motherboards are good enough. The money saved can be used on a better CPU.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

For a cheap gaming system H170 or even B150 based motherboards are good enough.

You could drop all the way down to an H110 board, and not notice the difference with regular SATA drives.

In fact the "basic" LGA-1151 H110 has about as many features as the previous generation Z97...

 

[whm1974]

You could drop all the way down to an H110 board, and not notice the difference with regular SATA drives.

In fact the "basic" LGA-1151 H110 has about as many features as the previous generation Z97...

One of my beefs about the H110 is that it only supports two DIMM slots. Which is why I recommend the B150 and H170 chipset.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well done there penny pincher.

If you had waited until today to build it though you could have gotten a better GPU, bigger SSD, and better case for the same money (factoring in rebates). I know you already had some of the parts on hand so it is what it is.

Thanks. I was amazed by your build, the fact that you could fit a 240GB SSD in there for the same total cost.

I didn't think that the Asus Strix was all that better than the MSI GTX950 OC model, performance-wise. Not sure about the warranty. We're still talking about a factory OC GTX950 either way. It's such a weak card, that I don't think 10% extra OC would matter all that much, especially with a G3258 CPU.

I don't really do rebates, though, for a multitude of reasons. What I paid was no-rebate prices on everything.

Edit: Breaking Hot Deal news: GTX950 dual-fan OC version from Galaxy for $99.99!
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/galax-gtx-950-exoc-white-99-99-new.2484761/

 

[whm1974]

Not a bad build for playing older or low resource games.

 

[BeauCharles]

That'll be fine for games from about 2012/2013 on back. I've had a G3258@ 4.5 Ghz and it did fine until it hit Fallout 4. That game pretty much would kill it in areas my i5 4690k rig would just laugh at. But it was perfectly fine for WoW: Warlords of Draenor even though Blizzard states four cores (or was it threads?) as needed for it. As for a GTX 950 - I own one right now and its fine for medium settings on new games. I can play some on high settings like WoW: Legion (but almost never on max). Actually the best $100 I've ever spent on a video card - white metal back plate, white fan LEDs and the fasted factory overclock available.