Need help for building a budget gaming PC

[frozentundra123456]

Personally the terms "budget" and "gaming pc" shouldn't be used in the same sentence.

But if one must build one...

Recommended minimums -
CPU - Intel Core i3 from Microcenter - $99.99
Motherboard - MSI, Asus, ASRock or Gigabyte LGA1155 micro ATX ~$50-75
Video card - gtx 460 off of ebay - ~$100
- or - if you don't like used then go with the 7770 ~$125
Ram - major brand 4Gb DDR3 1333 or 1600 (2 sticks of 2gb each) ~$40
Hard drive - Western Digital Blue or SeaGate Barracuda 7200rpm 500Gb/1Tb ~$60-90
Power supply - major brand 500-550 watt ~$50
Optical drive - major brand DVD/CD burner combo ~$20
Case - major brand costing $50 or less
TOTAL COST - $469.99-549.99 without monitor, speakers, keyboard/mouse or operating system.
Including those items add approximately $200-250.

**If you are willing to spend a little more I'd look at the Core i5-3470 currently $149.99 at Microcenter and the 7850-7870 currently around $200-250.

If you are willing to wait and watch for a sale, you should be able to get a HD7770 for around 100.00. I got mine from microcenter for 89.99 after rebate, and have seen similar if slightly higher prices on NewEgg. It is not a powerhouse by any means, but I am very happy with it considering the price and very low power usage.

 

[2is]

Personally, before pulling the trigger on an i3 which can be limiting in a handful of games and isn't overclockable to overcome any such limitations, I'd start looking in the sell/trade forum here for people offloading their i5's and look for some good video card deals while you're at it. That should be the first stop for anyone looking at a "budget gaming' machine.

 

[bononos]

Personally the terms "budget" and "gaming pc" shouldn't be used in the same sentence.

.......

Not at all. You don't have to play at 1080 with the details maxed out to enjoy pc gaming.
Now if they explicitly state that they only want to play the latest games like Crysis3 at high res then I would agree with you. Otherwise theres tons of titles from 5 years back that are really good for cheap at steam or gog or whereever.

I say if someone wants to spend $500, then let them fix up i3/6300 pc with a 7770.

 

[SPBHM]

Personally, before pulling the trigger on an i3 which can be limiting in a handful of games and isn't overclockable to overcome any such limitations, I'd start looking in the sell/trade forum here for people offloading their i5's and look for some good video card deals while you're at it. That should be the first stop for anyone looking at a "budget gaming' machine.

I agree, you can probably find some used i5 for a close enough price,
and the i5 is clearly superior, it delivers great performance in any game, which is not the case with some of the other options.

 

[Arkaign]

I agree, you can probably find some used i5 for a close enough price,
and the i5 is clearly superior, it delivers great performance in any game, which is not the case with some of the other options.

Throw me into the 'agree' pile, but with some qualifications.

i5-750/i5-760 are great if you're willing to OC (and aren't as concerned about power). They're actual quads, and some people were taken in by the 'fake' i5s, the 6xx series, which as far as I could really tell should have been sold as i3s w/HT.

All of the Sandy i5s (2xxx) are pretty good of course. Though outside of the 'K' chips, they can't OC, so the 750/760 are a good value if you run a good air cooler and shoot for 3.8-4Ghz. Though personally I would much prefer a 2500k at least, I think a 750 @ 3.8 wouldn't bottleneck a $100 video card at all.

 

[Hubb1e]

This guy has 2 posts on here and doesn't sound like he's built many computers. I'd be extremely wary of sending him towards used products on eBay. There's so much different advice on this thread that it's confusing. Maybe this is because the post is in the CPU section and not the general hardware section these normally exist.

My advice is to stick to new gear. Get yourself a fast i3, or FX6300 (i3 if you don't want to overclock or a 6300 if you do) an inexpensive motherboard, a 7770 or 7850, and 8GB of ram. That's the basis of the cheap gaming computer and then build from there. The general hardware section has a lot of similar builds so check out that section for advice on specific hardware.

 

[JWade]

I would disagree with building one. I would get something like the following below and add in a video card. price is $419 before a current 20% off coupon from the delloutlet

Processor: Intel Core 3rd generation i5-3330 Processor (3.0 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.20 GHz)
•Windows 8
•Dell Outlet Inspiron 660 Minitower
•1TB Hard Drive, 3.5 Inch, 7200rpm, SATA
•8GB, DDR3 UDIMM Memory, 1600MHz, Non-ECC (2 DIMMs)
•16X DVD +/- RW Drive
•Intel HD Integrated Graphics

 

[aarontpx]

Yes because I recommend buying a used product I must have no idea what I am talking about. If every dollar is important to you buying a used card from someone is actually a good idea as long as you just don't go out and buy the cheapest deal you can find, use your head. 8gb of ram for a computer of this type will never be utilized.

For me anything less than i5-2500k and a 7950 boost is a waste of your money. If you can't afford that then buy a ps3 or 360.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Yes because I recommend buying a used product I must have no idea what I am talking about. If every dollar is important to you buying a used card from someone is actually a good idea as long as you just don't go out and buy the cheapest deal you can find, use your head. 8gb of ram for a computer of this type will never be utilized. But what do I know I only have 2 posts.

Uh, I think he's talking about the original poster, not you. You actually give pretty good advice, though I'd be willing to setting for an Athlon II 750K quad-core rather than gunning for an i3 (especially if the OS is part of the budget).

 

[aarontpx]

What about a phenom II?

 

[Sleepingforest]

What about a phenom II?

The problem is most Phenom's can't be justified when an overclocked 750K (Europe only) can basically match one and an Athlon X4 645 gets around 70% of the CPU performance for 40% of the cost of a Phenom II X4 965 BE (source).

 

[Hubb1e]

Yes because I recommend buying a used product I must have no idea what I am talking about. If every dollar is important to you buying a used card from someone is actually a good idea as long as you just don't go out and buy the cheapest deal you can find, use your head. 8gb of ram for a computer of this type will never be utilized.

For me anything less than i5-2500k and a 7950 boost is a waste of your money. If you can't afford that then buy a ps3 or 360.

Sending a newbie to "use his head" to find a deal on used gear is just bad advice. Building a computer isn't that hard, but you can often run into problems with components not working and buying used only makes that even more of a risk. If you've got limited PC building experience, and no spare parts to swap in when a build goes bust, then you're up shit creek. What to upgrade your video card? Sure buy used, want to swap a processor, sure, buy used, but used parts on a new build for newbie (I'm making assumptions about the OP's building experience so I could be wrong) going used is just a bad idea. Not only does it make choosing parts very hard, but it's risky.

And yes, 8GB of RAM absolutely will be used on a computer like this. As soon as you load up some applications on your computer, BF3 hits the 4GB limit pretty quickly as I saw when I had 4GB of memory in my machine and time does move on. In 2 years even basic office machines will have more than 4GB of memory.

I'm writing this on a PhII 965 at 3.7ghz 8GB of ram and a 7770 and it makes a very nice gaming PC that was worth the money, so no, an i5 2500k and 7950 boost are absolutely not required to make a nice gaming PC and sending someone to the hell of a game pad is not productive.

 

[aarontpx]

I agree that setup is fine if you are happy with it, but for me I could never justify spending 600 for a rig with that performance. Especially when 200-300 more gets you huge gains. You would be better suited buying one component at a time or half of your complete system. Not being patient or settling because of funds often ends in dissapointment. Luckily for the op he doesn't have to take our advice as gospel.

 

[Hubb1e]

I agree that setup is fine if you are happy with it, but for me I could never justify spending 600 for a rig with that performance. Especially when 200-300 more gets you huge gains. You would be better suited buying one component at a time or half of your complete system. Not being patient or settling because of funds often ends in dissapointment. Luckily for the op he doesn't have to take our advice as gospel.

In all fairness this system started life as an AM2+ 780G sideport board with a 2.7ghz single core sempron that didn't unlock and 2GB of DDR2 running onboard graphics. You have to love how upgradable AMD sockets used to be. It was my parent's computer until my brother came to visit and dropped almost $1000 on an Asus with an i7 3770 and discrete video card so he could play some Civ5 with us. This guy knows computers fairly well and still came home with a $1000 build that he thought would be awesome. It turns out the computer had an Nvidia 520 2GB in it that is arguably slower than the HD4000 in the i7. This thing didn't even have a spare molex connector let alone a 6 pin connetor. After laughing at him for a bit and a trip to frys for a 7750 we were playing Civ5 and enjoying ourselves. This is where I get my opinion about off the shelf PCs. They are specced all wrong and you can't find any budget gaming computers that would make a decent gaming machine. They all have shit graphics cards in them until you get over $1000. That's why I think the A10 is a great option. He could have spent $450 on an A10 machine and had a better experience (ok, maybe slightly longer turn times)

 

[frozentundra123456]

In all fairness this system started life as an AM2+ 780G sideport board with a 2.7ghz single core sempron that didn't unlock and 2GB of DDR2 running onboard graphics. You have to love how upgradable AMD sockets used to be. It was my parent's computer until my brother came to visit and dropped almost $1000 on an Asus with an i7 3770 and discrete video card so he could play some Civ5 with us. This guy knows computers fairly well and still came home with a $1000 build that he thought would be awesome. It turns out the computer had an Nvidia 520 2GB in it that is arguably slower than the HD4000 in the i7. This thing didn't even have a spare molex connector let alone a 6 pin connetor. After laughing at him for a bit and a trip to frys for a 7750 we were playing Civ5 and enjoying ourselves. This is where I get my opinion about off the shelf PCs. They are specced all wrong and you can't find any budget gaming computers that would make a decent gaming machine. They all have shit graphics cards in them until you get over $1000. That's why I think the A10 is a great option. He could have spent $450 on an A10 machine and had a better experience (ok, maybe slightly longer turn times)

Your brother made a bad choice, granted, but that does not mean an off the shelf system is necessarily a bad deal. You can get an i5 in the 400 to 500 dollar range at a big box store or dell outlet. Add a 7750 or (a 7770 or higher and a better power supply) and you are good to go. Personally, I got an XPS with a decent power supply and an i52320 for way less than 1000.00, and added a HD7770. I am very happy with it.

 

[aarontpx]

Upgradeable sockets is a very important selling point for alot of ppl. I personally know of several of my friends who have first generation core processors but have no desire to upgrade to Ivy Bridge for that exact reason. LGA1155 is a dead socket with Haswell and LGA1150 right around the corner.

 

[aarontpx]

Your brother made a bad choice, granted, but that does not mean an off the shelf system is necessarily a bad deal. You can get an i5 in the 400 to 500 dollar range at a big box store or dell outlet. Add a 7750 or (a 7770 or higher and a better power supply) and you are good to go. Personally, I got an XPS with a decent power supply and an i52320 for way less than 1000.00, and added a HD7770. I am very happy with it.

I would tend to agree that an off the shelf system is not necessarily a bad deal.

This thing didn't even have a spare molex connector let alone a 6 pin connetor.

However you don't always know what is inside which can be an issue for sure.

 

[Hubb1e]

Yeah, my brother made a bad choice and he was fairly well educated about it.

Open that case up and you've voided the warrenty. That's not something most users will do.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yeah, my brother made a bad choice and he was fairly well educated about it.

Open that case up and you've voided the warrenty. That's not something most users will do.

Well, 5 minutes of searching on the internet would have told him that a GT520 is not a gaming card by any stretch of the imagination.