Budget Gaming PC <$600?

smellfry on 03/04/2014 - 11:52
Last edited 03/04/2014 - 12:46

Hey guys, I did some research yesterday and came up with this build:

CPU: AMD FX 6300
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 LE R.20 (or alternative)
HDD: 1Tb Western Digital Caviar Blue Hard Drive
RAM: 4GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz RAM (or alternative)
PSU: 430W Corsair CX430 Power Supply
SSD: Samsung evo 840 120Gb (maybe a 64gb?)
GPU: r7 260x (or gtx 650ti or gtx750)
case: anything with usb 3.0

I'm not going to be doing any video editting of sorts, mostly just Word, internet browsing and the occasional game (BF4, L4D2, LOL, FALLOUT, CRYSIS. Not after the best frame rates). Looking at purchasing parts from UMART.
Could I use my crappy existing case so save some money? Please comment on what I could improve on/cut down on to save some money. Thanks

Computing

Comments

  • hellbound on 03/04/2014 - 13:35

    What's your old case and what's in it? Is it possible to reuse the HDD from that build?
    64Gig SSD will be pushing it, unless you're really good at space management I'd stick to a 120GB

    For new budget cases look at the Antec One or CM N300, both decent entry-level gaming cases with USB3.0

  • smellfry on 03/04/2014 - 13:41

    My old case is just one of those store-bought pc's from 5 years ago. The harddrive would also be around 5 years old. I'm not sure if it's compatible with the motherboard, or is that not the case? Thanks

    • humdingaling on 03/04/2014 - 23:24

      should be compatible

      check in your case you can move the stand off (gold pegs holding your m/b up)
      but you probably will not be able to see until you remove your current M/B

  • hellbound on 03/04/2014 - 13:48

    5 years old almost positive it'll be compatible, ide hdds largely stopped coming out in 07/08.
    But you're right, 5 years old it may not have much life left.
    New case will have much better cooling then a generic one, and be much easier to work in, worth the extra $60.
    I'm not up to date on AMD FX range, so I can't help there, RAM you can just drop it to ValueRAM as ram speed doesn't make a lot of difference these days, as long as it's branded.
    I'd suggest dropping the SSD and using that money toward a better graphics card, can always add an SSD further down the track when you've saved a bit more.

  • scrimshaw on 03/04/2014 - 13:53

    http://www.msy.com.au/nswonline/pc-components/11315-asus-2gb…

    MSY is still selling the 7870 — $199. Very reasonable price if you can get it. It's faster than the R9 270, the card that AMD pushed to replace the 7870 with.

    • smellfry on 03/04/2014 - 15:43

      What about the 7850?

  • smellfry on 03/04/2014 - 21:35
    -1

    I'm considering this build now:
    amd FX 6300 - UMART - 139
    Kingston 4gb valueram - MSY - 45
    gtx 750 ti - arc —- 183
    asus m5a78 - arc ——71
    500gb blue caviar—-arc ——56
    120gb sandisk ssd —- msy —- 89
    corsair 450w —- umart—- 54
    Total: ~$650

    • scrimshaw on 03/04/2014 - 21:53

      You're buying from 3 different places? Travelling / shipping will be money and time consuming.

      It'd be much easier to just source everything from MSY (Auburn) and go to PCDIY next door for things they don't have in stock.

      FYI Nvidia 750 Ti is actually weaker than both the 7850 and 7870. From a performance-per-dollar perpective, the 7850 and 7870 will be better — although these 2 cards are kind of hard to source.

      • smellfry on 03/04/2014 - 22:11

        The stores are all relatively nearby to me, so I don't mind the travelling that much. Is there something cheaper than the above cards (<$150) which doesn't compromise too much in performance and can still run the games smoothly? I think I'm going a little overboard with the graphics as I won't be gaming a whole lot anyway.

        • scrimshaw on 04/04/2014 - 00:11

          You could go with something like a HD7770 @ $100 dollars, which is kind of like the bare minimum for the games you have listed.

          This is how well the 7770 performs in BF4, I think it's fairly acceptable for a $100 card.

        • smellfry on 04/04/2014 - 00:16

          how does it compare with the r7 260x which is 30-40$ more?

        • scrimshaw on 04/04/2014 - 00:26

          R7 260x is comparable to 7790. It's a minor improvement.

    • humdingaling on 06/04/2014 - 21:05

      1tb WD Blue =66
      well worth that extra 10 bucks

  • ethereal88 on 04/04/2014 - 07:55

    The FX is rubbish, its spanked by the i3, look at Thief:

    http://www.techspot.com/review/787-thief-benchmarks/page4.ht…

    AM3+ is also a dead socket and you won't be overclocking far on that mobo. I'd get a 4330 + H87.

  • MilkDrinker on 04/04/2014 - 09:50

    You might want to increase the power to 600 w, even though part picker might say that's enough juice, in most cases it isn't especially with the newer graphics cards

  • srhardy on 04/04/2014 - 12:08

    I would save $ on the CPU and go intel G3220 or G3420 & a B85 chipset mb & don't bother over clocking as it makes your system unstable and you will soon tire of the hangs & reboots. As for GFX the R9-270 or even 270X will do 1080p gaming with max detail at 30-90fps & has a very decent shelf life. Next 8gb, if you must go 4 then just do a single 4gb and ass a second later. Next OS, get win7 64 bit or win8 64bit and do a clean install. You can then move your folders to the SSD to the second HD (google how) & i suggest you instal stream games to it too as 120gb isn't a lot of space for games… backup steam folder and you won't have to reinstall all that crap, google will tell you how…

  • ankor on 04/04/2014 - 19:50
    +1

    Second hand video cards are another option to save money, although there is an inherent risk here.

    You can probably find very cheap gtx 660ti,hd7870,hd7970 on eBay. Just try and suss out through the pics and messages how the seller is.

  • mp3police on 05/04/2014 - 13:11
    +1

    i think skip the ssd and get a 1TB hardrive seriously
    if you plan on playing bf4 is around 40GB alone
    windows 7 is approx 16GB
    thats 56GB right there

  • smellfry on 06/04/2014 - 21:58
    +1

    PCPartPicker part list: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/3mUID

    CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($139.00 @ UMART)
    Motherboard: ASRock 980DE3/U3S3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($67.00 @ MSY)
    Memory: Corsair 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($48.00 @ MSY)
    Storage: Sandisk Ultra 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($89.00@MSY)
    Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.00 @ UMART)
    Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($159.00@UMART)
    Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Essential 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.00 @ UMART)

    Total: $630.00

    Without case.

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