Guide - the Budget Gaming PC

david p

Here's something I was messing around with, got the idea from here, dunno how well it would run though.

Solitaire

No reason why it shouldn't...

Three things:

Case is a bit rich for an entry-level gaming rig
Where's the rest of the RAM? :P You'll need 2x2GB for that mobo (only has two slots IIRC)
And IIRC that mobo's sound chipset is questionable (old Via sound chip).

Then again its not like the other budget G31 mobos are great anyway - ECS is crap, MSI don't support OCing on budget (Intel-chipset) models and the Gigabyte G31 there yesterday has vanished :mad:

Dunder Mifflin

Got it up and running first time round. It's sweet

david p

Solitaire wrote: »

Case is a bit rich for an entry-level gaming rig

Any suggestions for a similar sized one? The HD 4850 could be swapped out for something else either,
but would that mean changing the PSU as well?I guess a modular one would probably be better if the case is small.

Solitaire

The Sugo used to cost over €100 so I'm actually quite happy with its €60 incarnation turning up in an mATX build, as there aren't many decent full-height mATX cases under €90. Its just a bit odd seeing it turn up in a sub-€400 entry-level rig

I continue to recommend the Superflower 450W for no other reason than the fact I haven't seen the CX400 in stock for ages. I haven't even seen a delivery date posted yet... There don't seem to be tons of cheap modular PSUs out there.. but there is one.

Lookie here. Reasonably decent Sirtec, but that ain't a complement. The fact that OCZ see Sirtec as an improvement shows us all just how dire FSP has become... In any case it's probably a little better than the Superflower and not too far off the CX400 (in theory it can actually produce just a little more 12V juice than the Corsair). Its a bit more expensive (nearly €50) but its miles cheaper than other modular PSUs. And it is modular - not very, but just enough to hopefully cut down on the number of unused peripheral cables loitering inside the Sugo

witnessmenow

I thought it would be better to post here instead of seeing as it on the same lines as the one solitaire did up a couple of posts back.

If i didn't want to go for a m-Atx board what would you recommend?

Also 5300 worth the extra couple of euro over the 5200?

I presume the PSU would be able for a couple of extra HDs on top of the rest of what is speced?

witnessmenow

I came up this today:



Its a small bit more than I wanted to spend but not too bad. Does anyone have any recomendations on how it can be improved? I basically took a stab whit that mobo, is it any good?

I have a 22" monitor and would be doing a good bit of gaming, wouldn't be too concerned if not everything was maxed

Thanks in advance

mercury127

Apparently, your hard drive runs at 5400 rpm. Which seems a bit off, go for a 7200rpm drive. You might want to look into more powerful power supply as well, 400w is a bit low.

Solitaire

mercury127 wrote:

You might want to look into more powerful power supply as well, 400w is a bit low.

Seeing as that build would have difficulty pulling more than 200W at peak or 250W under torture I think the CX400 is well within margin (we want to draw around ~55% of the PSU's capacity to keep things efficient)

witnessmenow

I actually changed the HD to a TB eco one. I have F1 spin point TB already so I'll just use that as my main drive and use the eco for storage.

I also changed to a E5200
Changed to a HIS 4850
changed the mobo to this as apparently its a decent Oc'er
I added a cooler
upgraded to the VX450 watt PSU
also changed the RAm to this

comes in at about 525 Delivered. I would have went for the antec 900 case but its not in stock so his baby brother will have to do

Solitaire

Err... Ninja's for silent builds, not mad OCing...

witnessmenow

TBH it wasnt all that dear so im not too pushed if its not an amazing cooler, its surely better than the stock cooler anyways. It got a fairly decent review here.

Now if HWV would let me bloody pay for the thing it would be great. The total came to €568.87 but seeing as i will be using it for work (;)) I supplied them my vat number and asked them to update the price. I rang them the next day to ask where my updated price was and to see if i could add another TB hard drive for a friend, and he said I could via email.

So I got an email yesterday

Dear Mr. L,



we confirm the modification about your order the total amount is 568,87 €.



Yours sincerely

E K

So unless the vat to be removed exactly matches the price of the TB hard drive something isnt right. For some reason im unable to ring them anymore, doesnt even ring, get number not in use.

helios12

Solitaire wrote: »

I was going to update the thread but the build below is almost overkill for you Dunder

hey lads, I'm planning to attempt my first build and this set up caught my eye big time! However, being a Linux geek I would rather avoid ATI due to driver issues and such. What would be a nice alternative with Nvidia and this rig? Could it take sli for example or is the psu too weak? Also, I see 4gb of ram, would that be the max for this?

Solitaire

What are you doing with the build? Linux doesn't usually need a good graphics card for obvious reasons... but if you're emulating... what's your monitor's native resolution?

And all the info in that build is outdated now, I'll draw a new one up tomorrow (or should that be "later today"? ) if you give me that info...

marco_polo

helios12 wrote: »

hey lads, I'm planning to attempt my first build and this set up caught my eye big time! However, being a Linux geek I would rather avoid ATI due to driver issues and such. What would be a nice alternative with Nvidia and this rig? Could it take sli for example or is the psu too weak? Also, I see 4gb of ram, would that be the max for this?

Maybe you know more about it than I do but I was under the impression that the general feeling is that ATI drivers have improved tenfold for Linux over the past year or so now that AMD are on board, they are very nearly there still one of two niggly things with Compiz if you turn it on (which I never do so not a problem for me) and Fullscreen video. In any case I have no doubt over the next couple of months they will get there 100%. Still worth considering because the current stock of ATI cards are by and large much better value for money than Nvidia. Apart from the aforementioned, I haven't had any dispaly issues thus far on Jaunty with a HD 4870.

Solitaire

Okay, complete stab in the dark and a slightly odd sub-€400 build; bear with me for a minute...



CPU: Pricier this time as I wanted one that has VT; it might give a boost in certain situations with this build. Maybe. At least you also get a speed boost over E5x00 at stock to make the price justifiable.
Mobo: Just an experiment really. This is the cheapest CrossFire mobo for Intel around at the moment (you'd be paying over €30 more for this part alone shopping with Irish etailers). Now, P43 isn't too far off the performance of P45, unlike P41. But it has G@y CrossFire (second lane locked at x4). But as its a modern P4X board that should be PCIe2, so the bandwidth is effectively same as PCIe1x8 which shouldn't bottleneck many sub-€160 cards.
RAM: E6300 runs on FSB1066, not FSB800. That's not too big an issue if you're OCing (it still has a 10.5 multiplier) and is actually good news if you're not OCing, as you can now run PC8500 DDR2 at stock speed (on FSB800 it gets underclocked to 800MHz). And while you could double the 4GB here it wouldn't make a worthwhile improvement given the extra money you'd spend.
Graphics: Great up to 1650*1080, falters a little past that in 1080p territory, and its cheap as chips. Plus with this setup you could add a second, if you really wanted (and could find a cheap HD4850 at that point in time...)
HDD: Basic as hell but performance isn't hurting, 320GB just ain't that big anymore...
DVD: Bweh. Its SATA. It burns stuff.
Case: Best budget case, period.
PSU: A budget PSU that's almost trustworthy?! Shock horror! It sure beats the usual tripe at its price and it could take a basic system with paired HD4850s without breaking too much of a sweat...

helios12

Hey solitaire, cheers for speedy reply and the build idea! I should probably flesh out what I want to use it for etc. I am only just getting back into proper pc gaming after about a 5 year break plus I have never overclocked anything so this is pretty much new territory. I'm hoping to piece together a rig for somewhere in the region of 6/700 euro that I can add to later ( as much as possible).

Monitor: LG 22 inch, 1080p.

Mobo/gfx card/CPU: Will leave this to yourself but would prefer Sli or Crossfire (If the savings are worth it over Linux driver issues) so I could upgrade on a budget. I'd like to end up using dual monitors too if that is an issue card-wise(HDMI a bonus).


Storage: I have a home server with plenty of storage so costs can be cut here.

Case: Aesthetics take a backseat to cool and quiet really.

Hope i covered most of it there?

marco_polo wrote: »

Maybe you know more about it than I do

Doubtful man, I'm still thrashing installs with the best of 'em;)
But yeah, from experience and this may be old/out of date. The Ati proprietary drivers are still quite a bit away from getting 'there' and the open source ones are maturing very slowly.However it has been a few months since i tinkered with a box using an Ati card and the guys I knw complaining with them could be the issue as much as the drivers

Solitaire

Look here for a bit more insight, but ATi has been working hard over the last 12 months in particular to standardize things as much as possible. That said, I'm not certain as to the stability of multicard setups on either the red team or the green, especially under emulation.

Do you even need CrossFire right now? If you want to play games well at 1080p on your budget then a single strong GPU is a far better option IMHO.

This isn't really a budget machine, but if that budget is for the box alone then we're talking about a comfortably mid-range machine here



Unless you're going to be messing with multiple emulated OS simultaneously I doubt VT will help that much so I've been a bit more aggressive with the CPU and mobo this time. In fact if you just bump up the CPU multiplier a couple of notches you have a 3GHz+ tri-core CPU for peanuts A fast tri-core with an unlocked multiplier and specialist OCing tools is a much more futureproof investment than a middling dualie on the dying LGA775 platform methinks.

Mobo has decent CrossFire if you want to go that way eventually

Memory is now DDR3 thanks to the different platform. A bit more futureproofing here; DDR3 should be around for a bit. DDR2 is very slowly starting to head into the abyss...

Graphics has been bumped up. A lot. Nearly twice the price, but its worth it if you want to game on 1080p comfortably on more demanding titles.

Also bumped up the HDD thanks to the budget. Given the drop in prices (500GB is now less than a fiver more than 320GB!) a good-quality 500GB should do nicely. I assume you don't need a Blu-Ray drive

I could have bumped up the case and PSU. That's up to you. They're not nasty cheapo parts though, and will do for this build assuming low OC and no Crossfire. You will want to put more money into the PSU in particular if you really do intend on CrossFiring a couple of HD4890s down the line - in fact you'd be lucky to get away with paying less than €100 as you're really talking about a good-brand 750W for two HD4890s! If all you want to do is OC the CPU a fair bit then a better case wouldn't go amiss. Your choice.

Also, if you want to OC that CPU over 3.2GHz you'd be well off investing €20-30 on a better CPU cooler.

Solitaire

Pertaining to the topic itself rather than any specific build, here's the current spec for an all-round games machine that can just about manage 1080p gaming while staying under €500 - delivered

helios12

Sweet, nice work! So I might go ahead and spend a little extra on the case and a little further down the line after a psu upgrade I'm good to double the cards if needs be. Would that cpu 'bootleneck' the two gfx cards? I fear I may have asked a very noobish question there:rolleyes:

Solitaire

Depends really, the reason I went with the X3-720BE was because it has an unlocked multiplier and a massively multithreaded app doesn't get bogged down the same way as it would on a fast dual-core. After all, 2*3000 = 6000, but 3*2.8 = 8400 :P Guess who wins in a game of GTA4 In terms of bang-for-your-buck within your budget it has some of the best performance without sacrificing versatility on either side; it deals with most single-, dual- and multi-threaded apps admirably. It ain't an i7 but it won't break the bank.

But if it ever felt lacking you could just bump up the multiplier and, hey presto, faster CPU! Although I wouldn't expect to get much past 3.2GHz before you needed to start increasing the CPU voltage and, by extension, get a half-decent cooler to deal with the jump in heat dissipation.

The thing you have to remember is that a single HD4890 will do well with the vast majority of games anyway at 1920*1080; if the CPU ends up bottlenecking you just add some more AA until the framerate drops below 75+fps Post-processing effects hit the GPU hard and leaves the CPU mostly unscathed: once you go Crossfire any framerate cap imposed by the CPU will rarely drop much further so you can use the second card to help throw on all the visual eye-candy regardless. The only game likely to cause a CPU bottleneck below 40fps is GTA4, which is why I prefer tri-cores to dualies when the budget permits, as the third core can bump up the fps by up to 50% compared to a cheap, fast dualie. So 40fps just went up to 60fps

And a reminder: If you really want CrossFire in the near future, get the right case and PSU now. No point in blowing nearly €40 on a basic PSU then having to dump it and get a new one. You'll be looking at the Corsair TX750W and similar; be wary of cheap imitations! Just do some research now to make sure CrossFire will work properly with your distro!

Solitaire

All right... scrap all those builds. Superflower is usually an alright OEM but after some research I don't trust those PSUs any more. Passive PFC FTL. And if they don't even have APFC then I don't want to think what other corners were cut. Writing off all the basic SFC units as duds, the more expensive ones still seem alright but those are still pointless given Antec and Corsair's superiority.

Really does look like, aside from the CX400, you can't get a PSU worth sh!t under €75 :mad:

mercury127

Aww, that's really a shame. Guess a cheap reliable PSU is always too good to be true

Solitaire

There's still the CX400... but I wouldn't want to be running a Phenom2/HD4890 rig off one of those! :eek:

mercury127

Just a little idea, might go for a more powerful PSU, maybe the VX450. Would there be any benefit going for the slightly more expensive PC8500 RAM? I'm not all too clear on the differences between the two.

Solitaire

PC8500 runs faster with similar latencies to PC6400, but only because its overvolted (2.1V not 1.8V). Even then its not always the most stable stuff *cough*OCZ*cough*Crucial*cough* The difference isn't as massive as you'd think but given the small price difference its still a viable option. Note that some older motherboard do not recognise PC8500 and cannot run it at speeds greater than 667MHz (PC5300) as the JEDEC PC6400 setting is missing (replaced by the EPP PC8500 setting that those mobos don't recognise). Also note that on Intel platforms up to and including LGA775/X48 PC8500 cannot be run at full speed if the bus clock is set under 266MHz (FSB1066); if paired with a FSB800 Intel CPU (200MHz bus) the maximum possible speed for DDR2 is 800MHz.

Anyway, back to the build... I'm not a huge fan of the X2-7850BE; it may be Black Edition but its still a Phenom1 with all the baggage (read: garbage!) that entails. As the P1 microcode isn't well optimised it hangs, on average, 10% behind the performance of the equivalent (i.e. 2.7GHz dualcore) C2D. Oh, and even this is purchased at the cost of massive heat; even at stock clocks its cooking off at a 95W TDP, which is around that of a modern non-energy-saving quad and significantly higher than an equivalent dualcore (either Intel C2D or a newer AM3 AMD dualie). To finish things off the platform limit of P1 was very low - 3.3GHz+ on air and 3.7GHz on water. Even a €55 bargain-basement C2D has a cap around 3.9GHz (for 45nm; more like 3.6GHz for 65nm) on air. So the unlocked multiplier ain't much cop on a 7850.

Oh, and if you restrained yourself nobly and didn't go mad on peripherals or push the graphics card much beyond a HD4850 you could even get away with a cheapie CX400 PSU comfortably with a 65W TDP CPU like the E5X00.

Finally, the CoolerMaster CM330 is usually more than enough for a budget build and its a steal at under €30; I've seen cases nearly three times the price that couldn't come close on actual build quality or ergonomics.

mercury127

Thanks for the feedback, oddly enough the CM330 and the RAM on your build a few posts up seem to have suddenly gone up by a tenner No matter, still works out well within my budget of €460.

I don't plan to overclock and a 4850 is more than adequate for my fig roll sized monitor. Several PSU calculators have pointed me towards ~230W so I should be grand in that department. I could go for 8 gigs of RAM but even with Vistas voracious appetite I doubt I'd notice the difference in any application. I could downgrade the motherboard to the €43 GA-P31-ES3G at the loss of the 2 extra RAM slots. That would give me about €52, I don't see any real places to spend that apart from maybe a bigger HD.

Solitaire

That CM330 variant is more expensive by lieu of the fact it has a side window The original does not, and should be the first non-off-brand case you see if you choose Sort By Price.

Also, there are some nice full-ATX LGA775 mobos on HWVS... MSI have their old premium P35 model (prehistoric CrossFire! ) there for €57.55 and a cheap-and-cheerful P43 (which is probably one of the cheapest mid-range boards that won't need a BIOS update to run an E5X00) for €60.25. The latter doesn't need an EPS12V 8-pin mobo connector either. Both have good OCing options, if you're that way inclined.

Grandmasha_Yoda

Hi guys,

Wonder could someone advise on a build.

Budget is around €500, would be used for net browsing, play the likes of WOW and Warhammer online. Ideally would prefer Intel, not sure if core 2 or quad is better. Would be looking at trying to OC the CPU to get some extra 'oomph' out of it.

Thanks in advance.

Solitaire

WHO is only moderately demanding graphically, but its an utter CPU-mauler. And unlike GTA4 you can't throw spare cores at it to sate its hunger as it only runs two threads. So its a real clock speed monster, with the graphics card only important for keeping it CPU-limited at higher monitor resolutions. What resolution is your monitor anyway?



A tad over €440 delivered. Unless you insist upon maxing out the settings in WHO at 1080p+ this should take everything you throw at it. PSU is arguably overpriced but I don't trust most of the cheap PSUs aside from the CX400, which is out of stock (again!). An even faster CPU might help WHO a bit but sticking with Intel there's a big jump in price past the E6300 that'll take you clean out of budget.

If you did accept AMD parts then a X2-550BE, MSI 770-C45 and a 4GB DDR3 kit (OCZ Platinum 1333MHz CL7 while still on pre-order) would probably be a bit faster while staying well within budget and PSU capacity.