Build for 500

Shaun Plays Games

1. What is your budget? [500/600]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? [General gaming]

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [No]

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

5. Do you need a monitor? [No]

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [no]

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? [sure- dont know too much about it though]

8. How can you pay? [Bank Transfer/Credit Card/Laser]

9. When are you purchasing? [hopefully as soon as possible]

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

Bepolite

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057280502

See Bloodbath's and Terror's builds.

Idunno442

Ok, so if you want to overclock, and ~€600 is the budget, this build could work. All prices hardwareversand using geizhals.de for discounts.

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 €38.05
CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary €55.34
RAM: 8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport 1600 CL9 €63.60
GPU: HIS R9 280 IceQ X2 OC €179.67
Case: Antec Nine Hundred Two v3 €92.75
PSU: Corsair CS550 Modular 550W €56.90
SSD: Crucial MX100 128GB €58.66
HDD: WD Blue 1TB 6Gb's €47.63
Optical Drive Samsung SH-224DB Schwarz €12.01

Total for that setup €604.61, plus a small bit for shipping (€12?).

One possible change that would ease upgradability would be swap the 8GB RAM 2x4GB for a 1x8GB kit, think itl be about a tenner more but means you can just add another 1x8GB stick in the future if 16GB RAM becomes desirable (motherboard only has two RAM slots).

If you are not going to overclock it I don't think that the Pentium g3258 has any real purpose so changes would need to be made. an i3 4xxx would come in at roughly €100, or and i5 4xxx at ~€200.

If savings need to be made, you could drop the SSD altogether to save €56, although this would not really be desirable. You could swap the case for a Corsair Carbide 300r for ~€64 to save ~€30, and swap the PSU for a corsair vs550 for a saving of €8. If more money needed to be saved a corsair carbide 200r + vs550 can be got together for ~€94, which would save almost €70 off the suggested build. Again I'm not sure how desirable these changes would be but if savings were needed then there are some options.

AMD could offer some cpu options for a tight budget if you're not gonna overclock the Pentium and an i5 is out of budget. It would draw more power, although the main disadvantage would be a limited future upgrade path with an AM3 socket.

Bepolite

Idunno442 wrote: »

One possible change that would ease upgradability would be swap the 8GB RAM 2x4GB for a 1x8GB kit, think itl be about a tenner more but means you can just add another 1x8GB stick in the future if 16GB RAM becomes desirable (motherboard only has two RAM slots).

You'd be hobbling RAM performance by doing this as you'd only have single channel.

Idunno442

Bepolite wrote: »

You'd be hobbling RAM performance by doing this as you'd only have single channel.

That's what I thought but then I saw someone else on here (? don't remember who exactly) saying that dual channel vs single channel makes little to no difference in gaming.

I decided I'd see what I could find on the subject and I found an article on gamernexus (wish I could post links, sorry) on the subject. Seeing as I can't post links, the long and the short of that article is that they found that single channel vs dual channel made a small difference but not very much to gaming performance after testing out a 2x4GB RAM setup in dual channel and two single channels. They also said that engineers at MSI only put in single 8GB sticks into gaming laptops because they found it made little difference.

For non-gaming applications they found it made more of a difference all right. Either way, running one single channel 8GB stick vs two dual channel 4GB sticks would make a small difference, the only reason I suggested it at all is that if the build were to be upgraded in the future it seems like a better idea to buy a single 8GB now and a single 8GB (matching) later instead of buying a dual 2x4GB now and swapping it for a dual 2x8GB later.

From concluding section of article:

Despite all that I thought I knew leading up to our MSI meeting last July, dual-channel just isn't necessary for the vast majority of the consumer market. Anyone doing serious simulation (CFD, parametric analysis) will heavily benefit from dual-channel configurations (~17.7% advantage). Users who push a lot of copy tasks through memory will also theoretically see benefits, depending on what software is controlling the tasking. Video editors and professionals will see noteworthy advantages in stream (RAM) previews and will see marginal advantages in render time. It is probably worth having in this instance -- in the very least, I'd always go dual-channel for editing / encoding if only for future advancements.

(Article can be found on <gamersnexus [dot] net> under the title "RAM Performance Benchmark: Single-Channel vs. Dual-Channel - Does It Matter?", Steve Burke 8 March 2014)

If this information is incorrect or the advice poor then I apologise. The last thing I'd want to do is steer someone wrong. I just thought I'd mention it seeing as I had read it anyway.

Idunno442

Of course if no upgrade to 16GB of RAM was ever going to be performed, the Crucial 2x4GB set is actually cheaper than a 1x8GB RAM anyway.

And to avoid the question all together, could just find a board with 4 RAM slots in the first place, suggested a cheap board cuz it seemed all right from what I had read, and allows for shaving some pennies towards R9 280/SSD in a small budget.