I've built my own PCs in the past, but I'm getting old and lazy and am looking for a pre-built gaming PC that will let me play some of the more recently released RPGs (e.g. Witcher 3, Fallout 4).
MSY seems to have a few decent looking models (albeit with additional costs to buy Win 8.1), but can anyone give me some recommendations for something with a sub-$1000 price tag?
I'm actually quite out of date when it comes to PC specs, so I'm not sure which CPUs/GPUs in the Whirlpool list match up with the specs for The Witcher 3.
For example, the $750 Whirlpool model has an Intel Pentium G3258 CPU and 2GB AMD Radeon R9 270 GPU.
The Witcher's specs are an Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz or AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940, and either an Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660 or AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870.
Will that mean the Whirlpool PC is too slow, or in the right playing field to run the game? If you've got a go-to resource to compare all the various CPUs/GPUs/etc that would be awesome.
Radeon 7870 is basically on-par with the GTX 960.
The 7870 later was rebadged and sold as the Radeon R9 270X — same card with a different name, just with a small clock speed improvement. This sells for $230 AUD, but this card is also pretty outdated and has been replaced yet again with the newer R9 370 and R9 380 series.
Next the Core i5 2500k is about 3 generations old. Unfortunately for us Aussies, the prices of processors have steadily increased over the years. The equivalent of a Core i5 2500k is now the Core i5-6500, which provides slightly better performance but at a price point much higher than the 2500k used to be ($225 was how much I bought mine). The i5 6500 has a RRP of $295 AUD.
Sorry I don't know much about parts, you could go to youtube and watch people test cards to see how much fps they get on witcher 3 for different settings and see which appeals to you. GTX 960
seems to be a new one of these threads every other day
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/223438
this OP started @ 1k as well….ended up 1.5k
price creep happens when you see what you actually want and what you can live without
ps you will be hard pressed to play witcher 3 on a "budget" build ($650-$1000) on medium settings @ 1080p without finding some highly discounted parts (and without shipping from overseas…though the exchange rate these days would hurt)
donnot's build comes pretty close to the 1k mark and should be able to handle 1080p @ medium
no OS or HDD/SSD though..
Core i5 6400 - $269
G-Skill 8GB Ram - single: $56
Asus B150M-K-D3 - $106
Lite-on DVD writer - $17
Antec VSK-4000B-U3 case - $49
Corsair VS550 Power supply - $67
Gigabyte G1 Gaming R9 390 - $489
TP-Link TL-WN821N 300N Wireless adapter - $16
Total: $1069
Thanks for the suggestion - I'll look into it and see what sort of a deal I can get for those parts.
Your nearest MSY will be able to sell your a Case with a PSU.
Antec 500W PSU VSK3-500 = $79.00 (saved $37.00)
As far as the DVD drive, if you don't need one, don't get one. (saved $17.00)
With the $54.00 saved from the changes above you could pick up a cheaper HD?
MSY has this pre-built system for $845 (AMD AM3+ x6) or $970 (Intel i5-6400).
Is that worth a look, or is the included hardware inferior to some of the other suggestions?
Terrible builds.. Especially the Intel one using older generation DDR3 just to save a few pennies. That's just going to neuter the memory performance. DDR3 memory can also damage the processor if used for extended periods of time. Skylake processors aren't exactly cheap to replace either.
DDR4 memory is not that much more expensive than DDR3 anyway, and there are motherboards in the $140 range that can take DDR4 memory and even allow overclocking.
And the yum-cha AEROCOOL "600 watt" power supplies. Good lord. I'll bet these PSU's will pop after a year or two.
TLDR — the advice on builds you're given on forums is far better than the builds MSY comes up with. Stick with the WP wiki builds (there is actually a build there that uses DDR3 — ignore that one and choose one that uses DDR4 memory).
HP Envy 15-K039 TX from officeworks: http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/hp-envy-15-… I have this and I can run Battlefield 4 on Ultra settings at 60FPS.
I find that hard to believe, are you sure you don't have a version with a dedicated graphics card?
Nope, I have Intel HD 4600 Graphics.
Asks for Gaming PC
Gets a crap Laptop with not even a graphic card on it.
Nice!
You could choose your own parts and MSY will build it for $70 (may have gone up since then) then buy a $20 windows 7 key and upgrade to windows 10.
Maybe get an idea of parts or builds from here: http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/rmp_sg_whirlpoolpcs_gaming_conf…