€600 Gaming PC

LFC CONNAUGHTON

1. What is your budget? [€600]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? [Gaming] (Variety of all games)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [Yes]

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? [No]

5. Do you need a monitor? [Yes]

5a. If yes, what size do you need. [26"+ Might be watching TV shows on my PC as well so would like a large monitor. Also must have HDMI and audio out ports as I would want to connect my xbox 360 to it also]

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? [No]

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [Need gaming keyboard, mouse and wireless card]

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? [Maybe]

8. How can you pay? [Any]

9. When are you purchasing? [Just speculating for now]

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? [Building it myself]

LFC CONNAUGHTON

Would like to get a PC where I could start off on low-medium settings but where I could upgrade in a year or so to get to high settings.

preytec

hi, what about a

Sapphire Dual-X Radeon R9 270X OC 2GB GDDR5 - E150

AMD FX6300 Black Edition 6 Core
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Motherboard - E160 for both

Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 Vengeance 8GB - E70

CiT Recon Micro ATX Interior Mesh Case with 500W 12cm PSU - E33

Kingston Technology 2.5 inch 240GB 7mm V+200 SATA 3 Solid State Drive - E146

Redragon® CENTROPHORUS Gaming PC Multimedia Keyboard and Mouse set - E20

that'll get you up and running for under 600, you might get them cheaper but i just looked on amazon coz the postage is mostly free but you may want to use parcelmotel to get the free postage from some of the sellers and it'll only cost 3.50 per item.
however the card will run your games at high setting, it's pcie3 but the board is pcie2, but it won't effect performance. i don't have a windows os in there, but all you need is a cd key. you can get them from old pc's or laptops at the recycling centers. just take a quick picture of the sticker and your golden. the keyboard and mouse arn't good but i added them in just coz.



if you have got the money i'd go for a
WD 2TB 6Gbps SATA III Hard Disk Drive - Green - E73

Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical - Mouse - optical - 5 button(s) - wired - PS/2, USB - E101

the drive for storage and the mouse coz it's the best mouse ever for gaming, imo.

anyway i'm sure i'll get shouted at for this that and the other, but it's a start.

Idunno442

Was planning to build a PC a few months ago but due to a f*** up with a grant had to suspend that plan for the moment.

However, in the mean time I have entertained myself trying to create a cheap future build for myself once I have another bit saved up. Maybe this might be useful to you.

Ok so the first build that I specced for myself is as follows:

Case: Antec Nine Hundred Two v3 - 91.33
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 - 37.92
CPU: Pentium G3258 Anniversary - 55.27
RAM: 8GB Ripjaws-X PC3-12800 CL9 - 73.29
GPU: HIS Radeon R9 280 IceQ x2 3GB - 179.67
SSD: 128GB Crucial MX100 - 57.65
PSU: Corsair RM 650W Modular - 94.90
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB - 12.01

Total: 602.04

I have not a clue about monitors or keyboards/mice - was planning on just using old keyboard and mouse and a 1080 TV. Now to explain these choices a little bit might be useful.

<b>CPU/Motherboard</b>
From what I gather reading here and elsewhere, the MSI H81M-P33 allows for overclocking the Pentium G3258 despite being a non-z board.

If you look at anandtech forums (can't post urls), someone there links to a bios flash which will allow for this board to be used for overclocking if it isn't able to out of the box. According to the MSI website it can do this but just in case.

If this board/CPU combo is indeed viable it provides for among the cheapest possible overclocking combo that you can get. According to tomshardware (can't post urls), this board has been used to successfully overclock the Pentium processor to 4.4Ghz without an aftermarket cooler, making it quite a good performer for the price.

Added advantage of this board is that being a socket 1150 board, if you chose to in the future you could upgrade all the way up the the fastest i7-4xxx and possibly (cant confirm) overclock a 'K' series chip. From what I gather the new core series 'broadwell' chips are going to continue to use socket 1150 as well so could be set for upgrading for a while.

Overclocking the Pentium using the stock cooler is likely to result in a nasty noise, and probably high (although manageable) heat output.
I had in my head to add a noctua NH-U12S cooler at a later date, expensive but quiet and efficient. A Hyper 212 would probably do a great job. Possible advantage of noctua over hyper 212 is I believe the noctua has headroom for any type of ram sticks whereas the 212 may require low profile sticks. Someone else will know better. Neither have been included in the suggested build as it is meant to be a cheap/upgradable build and I gather the Pentium can be overclock pretty well without replacing the stock fan.

<b> RAM </b>
The suggested MSI board only has two DIMM slots, so I thought it might be better for upgradability to throw in a single 8GB memory module which can be joined with a second one late if you require 16GB in the future. From what I have read on boards and elsewhere, there is a small advantage to using dual channel vs single channel memory but it is small, and almost negligible in gaming. See gamersnexus dual channel ram guide for details (can't post url).

This definatly isn't the cheapest 8GB memory module you can get but it is CL9 1600 so it should perform well, from what I gather. You can very easily shave the cost down by switching this memory out for 8GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series DDR3-1600, CL9 @63.60 for a saving of €10. This memory may actually perform slightly better too. The only reason I have selected the single 8GB module is to cut down on upgrade costs.

<b>PSU</b>
Ok so this PSU is probably serious overkill, but I think it is a good choice because it provides a lot of overhead for overclocking and upgrading. It is also (I think) 80+ gold, meaning efficient and good build quality. On top of that the fan on the PSU only spins up if a certain amount of load is put on it so it should provide for a quiet(er) system.

Now for the total build cost this is probably a crazy PSU choice but it should last for a long time, is modular, and has some nice advantages. There are many other options for PSU that would be much cheaper. For example, if the quiet(er) running PSU wasn't an issue, you could take a Corsair CS Series CS650 Modular 80+ Gold @75.61. I can't tell any difference between this PSU and the other suggested one apart from being €20 cheaper and the aforementioned quietness.

To be honest I don't think 650W is at all needed for a system like the suggested one even with a few upgrades. You would be pretty set with Corsair CS Series CS550 Modular 80+ Gold @56.90 for another €20 savings.

Cheaper down the line but probably still fine are Corsair VS Serie V650, Non-Modular, 80+(50.86) and Corsair VS Serie VS550, Non-Modular, 80+ (48.76). These aren't modular, meaning more hassle with cables, but if savings are whats needed then money can be saved here with little to no performace hit.

If online power usage calculators are correct, the system suggested at the start could run on between 400-450Watts, even after overclocking. If this is true then more money could be saved on a smaller PSU than any of those suggested. This would come at the expense of severly reduced upgrading options.

<b> Case </b>

Ok so the case is expensive compared to other models. Advantages include that it looks nice. This is definatly a bonus but really has very little to do with my selection (thanks to boards member who previously suggested this case to me). The main draw is that it includes 3 (?) 120mm case fans and 1 200mm case fan for cooling. If trying to overclock this might come in handy. At the very least it should mean no need to think about adding any fans to the system. From what I gather the acoustics aren't too bad either.

Cheaper options do exist. From whats been suggested before and a little bit of reading, Corsair Carbide 300R @64.34 would be a pretty solid choice with a €30 saving over the build suggested above.

If you want to cut even more costs you could try Corsair Carbide Series 200R + VS550, Non-Modular, 80+ @94.90. This is a combined cost for the 200R case and a VS550 PSU and should be good for an extra saving.

Downside of the carbide cases (might) be that each only contains 2(?) fans so heating may be more of a problem, although it may not.

As the Mobo suggested is mATX, a smaller form factor case may be found for cheaper and may even be desirable.


<b> Graphics Card </b>
So I read reviews of this particular 280 and they seem to suggest that it runs relatively cool and quiet and also that it can be overclocked fairly well if that was of interest/necessity. See guru3d review for more info.

I gather that an R9 280 should be more than sufficient to get medium/high on many games, so if low/medium was your aim you could shave back the costs here again. Advantages of this card include what I said above and the fact it should require less system upgrades, or at least less frequent ones.

Things to consider here are that AMD has announced an R9 285 being launched on September 2nd which might drop the price of the current 280. Maybe not though it could be worth considering. The new model 285 is supposed to be (slightly) less powerful than the 280, but with a lower power draw (and less heat), and also a lower suggested retail price. I believe it is made using a new GPU architecture so this might be beneficial moving forward. Anandtech among others have info on the 285 (cant post urls)

<b> SSD </b>
Price/performance wise MX100 SSDs compare very favourably. This size should be enough for an OS and reasonable amount of other things. I have a 55GB on laptop and have OS, Unity, Visual Studio, Media players, Open Office, and several other applications with 14GB free, so I would think tat size of SSD should work fairly well even without a HDD. You wouldn't be storing much media on it, and may have to do some juggling with installing games. This may be too much hassle, maybe not.

Adding a HDD now or later isn't a huge expense, and if cost is getting too high you could change to a HDD only, which would increase storage considerably while cutting costs and taking slight performace (read: loading times/boot times etc) hit.

On the other hand if theres more room in the budget, a 256GB MX100 SSD comes in @90.90. Double the storage for less than double the cost.

If you have any external HDD's lying around this could always be used for storing media, keeping a smaller SSD free for applications. Also I have recently discovered that if you copy game folders out of the steamapps folder to another location they (obviously) will no longer work in steam. However, if you move the folder back into the steamapps folder and then ask steam to re-download the game, it will take a minute or so to realise that it has all the files already and continue on as normal.

(I haven't been using steam very long, maybe this is common knowledge. I was lead to believe this was not possible. On the other hand this might be an abnormality with my system so look for further confirmation. That seems pretty unlikely though)

<b> Optical Drive </b>
Nothing to ring home about, and you may not even ever use it but I think its probably better sitting there doing nothing than being needed at a later date and not having it.


So if you were to take the cheapest suggested setup from the above you could cut the cost down to 510.71. That's still including R9 280, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD. You could drop the price further if desired by opting for 4GB RAM, R9 270/270x/other and HDD without SSD. I admittedly know nothing about pricing for monitors or keyboards/mice so I don't know how much of your budget you would need to put aside for those. I would think you could get cheap second hand monitor/keyboard/mouse for a small sum and upgrade later as desired.

I'm no expert on any of this, so if anything I said is incorrect then someone please do correct me. I have just been following this board and reading up on reviews etc trying to optimise a cheap/upgradable system for when I finally get around to it (stupid fecking grant). As I have previously asked for help on a build that has not yet materialised I thought that I would try to give something back to the board in the form of what information I have gathered thus far.

Other things to look out for: Suspected GTX8xx series GPU's in September/October could affect GPU prices, or provide cooler, more power efficient systems. (See also R9 285 above). Possible broadwell Core I processors in early 2015 likely to affect prices of 4xxx processors, and provide cooler/more power efficient parts. broadwell (I think) still using 1150 socket so handy for upgradability.

All prices got using geizhals.de and hardwareversand.de. Some prices seem to fluctuate a lot so it may differ.

Idunno442

Wow, that was longer than I thought.

Forgot to add in Windows in the price, I hear people saying Reddit software swap is good for windows for €10-20. I think postage from hardwareversand is €12 also.

I hear tell of promo codes for free postage and €5 off first hardwareversand purchase but know not where such things might be found. Maybe someone else can help there

LFC CONNAUGHTON

Thanks for the responses, I think I will just wait until after Christmas so I have a bit more money and can get better components.