$550 AUD Gaming PC Build - Need some help!

[LollyHunter]

Hey! I am planning on building a gaming based computer. My budget is about $600 max.

Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next month.
Budget Range: $500-$600
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Surfing the net, Watching Movies (not so much but I will do it sometimes)
Preferred Websites for Parts: Anything in Australia; Mwave, PCcasegear, etc,.
Location: Australia, Sydney
Parts Preferences: Don't care
Overclocking: Maybe
SLI or Crossfire: No
Your Monitor Resolution: The monitor I plan to get is 1920 x 1080


Ok so I already have a build in mind, this is what i have so far:

http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/2Fvfu

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor $139.00 PCCaseGear

Motherboard: ASRock 980DE3/U3S3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard $69.00 PCCaseGear

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory $62.99 Mwave Australia

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $69.00 CPL Online

Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 1GB Video Card $99.00 CPL Online

Case: Cooler Master K380 ATX Mid Tower Case $54.00 CPL Online

Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Essential 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply $59.00 CPL Online

Total: $551.99


The monitor I plan on getting is the ASUS VS247HR 23.6" 2ms HDMI Full HD LED Monitor.

As for the PSU I may not necessarily get that particular one as i would prefer a more trusted and popular brand instead like the Corsair CX430 or Corsair VS550, if you have any other suggestions for a good budget PSU please let me know.

It's the same case when it comes to the... case. The K380 is not set in stone I may still swap around. I like the look of the Cougar Volant Black and the Aerocool Strike-X Advance Devil Red. And again any other suggestions are greatly appreciated.

So basically what I would like to know is how did I do, it is my first build? And can i make this build cheaper. I am fully aware that this build will never max out any settings or anything but I just want a cheap gaming PC that will get the job done and be able to play games... And yeh so if anyone has any advice or suggestions they would be greatly appreciated!

Also I posted this thread about 2 weeks ago and decided to wait until I had a bigger budget, but it could take me up to 6 months to increase my budget to what would be considered a good quality build i guess. So I have decided to make a decent PC now instead ($600 is my max.), but I do plan on possibly upgrading in the future.


Cheers and Thank You in advance,
LollyHunter

 

[rolandzhang3]

That looks pretty good to me, it's a big shame that RAM pricing is so expensive here, an 8GB kit is almost up to $100 nowadays D:

8GB is ideal and should fit right within your budget, the rest of your choices are excellent

The stock cooler for the FX 6300 is noisy and inefficient, you could consider an aftermarket cooler like the TX3 EVO or T4, even though you won't be overclocking well with that mobo

The AM3+ socket is officially dead, but your 6300 should last well until your next GPU upgrade down the line

 

[Scoregie]

I Only use MSY as 90% of the time there cheaper. (http://msy.com.au/index.jsp)

CPU: AMD FX6300 $139.00
Mobo: Asus M5A78L-M LX V2 $68
RAM Patriot 4GB 1600MHZ $45 (only 1 stick)
HDD: WD Blue 500GB 7200RPM $58
GPU: AMD R7 260X $164
Case: Coolermaster NSE-200A $49 (note it comes with 2 fans front and rear)
PSU: Antec 450P 450Wat
CPU Fan: Deepcool Gammaxx 300 $21 (There is a gammaxx 200 on there for like $15 I think i used it before it's not 2 bad but the 300 is quite good)

Total: $603

I didn't put in a DVD drive or an OS since you didn't state if you needed them or not win7HP 64bit is $109 at msy and there DVD's are around $20

 

[LollyHunter]

That looks pretty good to me, it's a big shame that RAM pricing is so expensive here, an 8GB kit is almost up to $100 nowadays D:

8GB is ideal and should fit right within your budget, the rest of your choices are excellent

The stock cooler for the FX 6300 is noisy and inefficient, you could consider an aftermarket cooler like the TX3 EVO or T4, even though you won't be overclocking well with that mobo

The AM3+ socket is officially dead, but your 6300 should last well until your next GPU upgrade down the line

I know the prices are insanelly expensive compared to most countries! But anyway thanks for your help and I'll have a look around for 8 gb ram and a cpu cooler.
Cheers

 

[rolandzhang3]

And yeah, MSY is the primary store of choice, great prices compared to other stores

 

[LollyHunter]

I Only use MSY as 90% of the time there cheaper. (http://msy.com.au/index.jsp)

CPU: AMD FX6300 $139.00
Mobo: Asus M5A78L-M LX V2 $68
RAM Patriot 4GB 1600MHZ $45 (only 1 stick)
HDD: WD Blue 500GB 7200RPM $58
GPU: AMD R7 260X $164
Case: Coolermaster NSE-200A $49 (note it comes with 2 fans front and rear)
PSU: Antec 450P 450Wat
CPU Fan: Deepcool Gammaxx 300 $21 (There is a gammaxx 200 on there for like $15 I think i used it before it's not 2 bad but the 300 is quite good)

Total: $603

I didn't put in a DVD drive or an OS since you didn't state if you needed them or not win7HP 64bit is $109 at msy and there DVD's are around $20

Thanks for that. And no I wont be using a DVD drive for the time being, I may somewhere along the track and I won't be needing a OS either.
Thanks for your help man.

 

[LollyHunter]

That looks pretty good to me, it's a big shame that RAM pricing is so expensive here, an 8GB kit is almost up to $100 nowadays D:

8GB is ideal and should fit right within your budget, the rest of your choices are excellent

The stock cooler for the FX 6300 is noisy and inefficient, you could consider an aftermarket cooler like the TX3 EVO or T4, even though you won't be overclocking well with that mobo

The AM3+ socket is officially dead, but your 6300 should last well until your next GPU upgrade down the line

What 8gb RAM would you recomend?

 

[rolandzhang3]

Any "cheap" 8GB DDR3 stick or kit should do, you'd be using a dedicated GPU so it wouldn't matter as much unless you were running an APU or something

 

[LollyHunter]

Any "cheap" 8GB DDR3 stick or kit should do, you'd be using a dedicated GPU so it wouldn't matter as much unless you were running an APU or something

Ok also should i worry whether it is 1333 or 1660? Or 1x 8gb or 2x 4gb?

 

[rolandzhang3]

It's not that big a difference for gaming when you're using a discrete card, ideally you'd want a 2x4GB DDR3-1600 kit in dual channel but then again if you can save a fair bit of money with a cheaper single 8 gig stick of DDR3-1333 then go for it, the performance loss is miniscule

The upgrade path for AM3+ is extremely limited and I wouldn't suggest getting an 8320 or 8350 for that 760G mobo (issues with throttling etc.) if you decide to go for a CPU upgrade down the line, meaning that the 6300 is the best you're gonna get with that setup (unless you decide to go for a 970 or 990FX board), something nice to bear in mind

For the same price on the Intel side you'd be looking at the i3 4130, not as good for games which support multiple threads but it gives you the upgrade path to an i5 or i7 down the line, just something you could consider haha

Then again the 6300 should pair well with a decent card down the line which should last you a good few years :lol:

I guess what you could do is get the best CPU/mobo/GPU combination within your budget with a single stick of 4GB, then later on add in an identical stick for a total of 8GB

 

[LollyHunter]

It's not that big a difference for gaming when you're using a discrete card, ideally you'd want a 2x4GB DDR3-1600 kit in dual channel but then again if you can save a fair bit of money with a cheaper single 8 gig stick of DDR3-1333 then go for it, the performance loss is miniscule

The upgrade path for AM3+ is extremely limited and I wouldn't suggest getting an 8320 or 8350 for that 760G mobo (issues with throttling etc.) if you decide to go for a CPU upgrade down the line, meaning that the 6300 is the best you're gonna get with that setup (unless you decide to go for a 970 or 990FX board), something nice to bear in mind

For the same price on the Intel side you'd be looking at the i3 4130, not as good for games which support multiple threads but it gives you the upgrade path to an i5 or i7 down the line, just something you could consider haha

Then again the 6300 should pair well with a decent card down the line which should last you a good few years :lol:

I guess what you could do is get the best CPU/mobo/GPU combination within your budget with a single stick of 4GB, then later on add in an identical stick for a total of 8GB

Ok so would you recommend getting a better motherboard and if so which one? Also I think i will get the 8gb ram. As for the cpu if you were to build a pc with my budget would you go the i3 4130 or the 6300?

Thanks

 

[LollyHunter]

At the moment for the motherboard I am thinking the GIGABYTE GA-F2A75-D3H A75 FM2 4xDDR3 SATA3 USB3 DVI HDMI RAID ATX Motherboard. Anyone know whether that mobo is any good? Or otherwise any other alternatives?

 

[rolandzhang3]

If you're going to bother with a CPU upgrade then you can just stick with the current mobo choice, you're just not going to be overclocking much with it, it's the most hassle free choice I guess (good 970 and 990FX motherboards in AU are also expensive as)

If you do decide to go Intel, you'd need a H81/B85/H87 board for a Haswell chip

 

[Scoregie]

CPU: i3-4130 3.4GHz $137.00
Mobo: MSI B85-G43 $84
RAM Patriot 4GB 1600MHZ $45 (only 1 stick)
HDD: WD Blue 500GB 7200RPM $58
GPU: AMD R7 260X $164
Case: Coolermaster NSE-300A $49 (note it comes with 2 fans front and rear)
PSU: Antec 450P 450Wat $59

Total: $596

So you get a bigger case (same price as the smaller one but the smaller one can only fit matx) and you don't need a cpu cooler. I'd generally say get the intel build since when you put an i5 in there it'll beat the crap outta AMD (well in most things) but the you can't overclock the intel build.

Also with the AMD build if you can live with the noisy stock fan and don't overclock you could get this board http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=8431

 

[rolandzhang3]

I'd suggest a bigger and better PSU, that would allow you plenty of headroom for future upgrades

Not exactly ideal but the VS550 will get the job done also

http://www.msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=9908

It'd be nice if you could stretch your budget a little so you could accommodate the 1tb drive, an additional 500GB for an additional $10 sounds good doesn't it?

 

[Scoregie]

I'd suggest a bigger and better PSU, that would allow you plenty of headroom for future upgrades

Yeah I do agree but this is a budget build and you'd be able to get away with a GPU upgrade with that psu. Also i tend to recommend the Antec VP series for budget builds since they're actually very good for there price I think it was hardware secrets did a review on them and it pretty much said it should be 80 plus certified.

On bigger i would recommend this http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=8639

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Antec-VP450-Power-Supply-Review/1487

 

[Scoregie]

Uh rolandzhang3 just be aware the corsair VS series is using bad CAP's "Some of the secondary side capacitors are made by Aishi, but most are from CapXon – a brand renowned for poor quality capacitors. " From this review of the VS450 http://hardwareinsights.com/wp/corsair-vs450-review/3/

 

[rolandzhang3]

Yeah they do tend to use cheaper capacitors, also in the CX line of units that do not hold well under load (samxon capacitors), but it'd be fine as long as you're not going to be overclocking, a system of that calibre isn't going to be drawing that much power as well

Might as well add another $8 and get that Antec Neo unit aye xD

Then again, that Silverstone unit is pretty decent

 

[Scoregie]

I'll agree on that. But lately Antec for me have been building better quality low end psus. I do like those Neo Ecos

 

[rolandzhang3]

Though to be honest I guess the VP450 is just fine for a single GPU setup, should have an i5 and a 660/270 running with no problem, especially for a non OC rig

 

[Scoregie]

That's what I was thinking. I mean if he does upgrade to an i5 and a GTX 760 that's one hell of a PC. In fact I kinda wanna go out and build myself one of these LOL.

(Just a joke totally should recommend a Shaw PSU)

 

[Scoregie]

OP this is old but still useful how to build a PC http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-pc,2601-10.html

 

[rolandzhang3]

haha those SHAW "gaming units" for $18

Fun video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Js2A1qdB8

 

[Scoregie]

Bloody push pins hate that design sooooo much.

Now that's an interesting video actually enjoyable to watch unlike those cisco ones at Tafe lol.

 

[LollyHunter]

Wow lots of info!! Cheers guys. I'll read through it all and come up with a revised build!
Thanks