Build A Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC On A Budget

[vertexx]

Looks like R9 270 is $130 to me.

http://www.ncix.com/detail/club3d-radeon-r9-270-royalqueen-4a-94204-1069.htm

Wow - $130 plus 2 games

 

[Computer LVR]

I got an r9 270x for 120 and a fx 6300 for 99 dollars the asus m5a97 r2.0 for 55 dollars and the corsair carbide 500r for 99 dollars

 

[afrobacon]

I'd like to see an entire article based on "The quest for the right graphics card."

 

[dstarr3]

I think the biggest takeaway from this is that, almost immediately after release, people can spend console money on a PC instead that will perform better. That should not have happened so fast.

 

[SinxarKnights]

As a bare minimum there is no way I could possibly recommend a $25 PSU. You are just asking for trouble. This is one of the most critical parts of the PC and should not under any circumstances be "skimped out on". It does say this in the article but the baseline build list a $25 one, not good advice.

 

[Evolution2001]

I don't fully understand the purpose of this article when we already have the System Builder Marathons that TH does on a regular basis. If you're looking for 'gaming on a budget', does anyone really has THAT much of an allegiance or dislike of one CPU vendor over another?

 

[Onus]

After the experiment of the Celeron a year or so ago, I am rather curious as to what can be done with the new 25W quad-core Kabini. PcPer built a system with a GTX750Ti that appeared to be viable, but I'd like to see more tests.

 

[Vlad Rose]

As a bare minimum there is no way I could possibly recommend a $25 PSU. You are just asking for trouble. This is one of the most critical parts of the PC and should not under any circumstances be "skimped out on". It does say this in the article but the baseline build list a $25 one, not good advice.

I agree there. Notice when they talk about power supplies that at they only mention the $65 super flower on the higher build and that they state "but this is probably the one place where you want to spend a little more." Nice little way of them trying to 'sneak' the $25 unit in without having to justify the choice.

Now in that regards, at the 350watt range they're using, I noticed that there actually are some decent midrange PSU units listed on NewEgg's site within $20-$30. At $20 there's the Rosewill RV350. At $30, there's a Rosewill, Antec, and Cooler Master model. Those could potentially go on sale every once in a while, which could bring it down to the $25 range. But for highend at that wattage, you're looking at $40+.

 

[eklipz330]

very interesting layout.

the best advice i can give about buying a computer is to keep your options open (no fanboyism), and to buy over the course of 2 months through deals. You'll find that you can easily shave 2-300 off of your build and not have to make compromises.

 

[HKILLER]

you know what could have been good?if AMD A10 7850K would have cost $125-$140 and it could dual graphic with all the R7 graphics family such as 260X.it could have been a great chance to make AMD APUs actually worth considering for gaming...but as it stands it is an incompatible over priced piece of hardware...i don't know for what reason it only dual graphics with R7 250 and 240 and not even the 250X!!when it dual graphics with R7 250 it's still not strong enough for an entry level gaming PC...other than that i would say this is a pretty good build if you have no upgrade in mind but if it's me i would say save up a little while longer and go with Intel platform where you can later upgrade your stuff....

 

[elbert]

Looks like R9 270 is $130 to me.

http://www.ncix.com/detail/club3d-radeon-r9-270-royalqueen-4a-94204-1069.htm

Wow - $130 plus 2 games

This price ended already. Now the 270 is $160.

Special price ends 5/28/2014. {/quote]
http://www.ncix.com/detail/club3d-radeon-r9-270-royalqueen-4a-94204-1016.htm

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

i just made this build 4 months ago (different case (cooler master), CPU cooler (Gammax 300), and different SSD (Seagate 600)) and its perfect for 1080p.
It needs some Tweaking in WoW (in capital cities) and Starcraft 2 4v4 (need to lower CPU settings in game). Thats it

 

[MaxxBot]

The baseline system is a good value but the "red devil" is more for someone who either runs games with low hardware reqs or is a very casual gamer. Most people would prefer to spend that $730 on the significantly faster hardware that extra money would enable rather than going for an SSD, expensive case case, better power supply, etc.

 

[lanceton]

the price difference is $315... which equals to a significant upgrade to both CPU and GPU that could probably double the system's performance.

so what was this article about?
why not change your topic to 'how to spend 175% of the base price to build a PC that's smaller, more stylish and red' or 'how to give all hardware manufacturers an equal business opportunity when you build your PC'? -_-a

 

[lesmore2222]

When I saw the headline of this article, "Build A Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC On A Budget" , I was exited.

An article on a budget AMD system. Complete with an actual build and benchmarks.

WRONG!

It seems that not only did you fail to build and test the system you advertised. But the system you do offer is an overpriced insult to the people who are truly trying to build a budget gaming PC.


Worst build article in a long while Tom's.

 

[vertexx]

the price difference is $315... which equals to a significant upgrade to both CPU and GPU that could probably double the system's performance.

so what was this article about?
why not change your topic to 'how to spend 175% of the base price to build a PC that's smaller, more stylish and red' or 'how to give all hardware manufacturers an equal business opportunity when you build your PC'? -_-a

When I saw the headline of this article, "Build A Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC On A Budget" , I was exited.

An article on a budget AMD system. Complete with an actual build and benchmarks.

WRONG!

It seems that not only did you fail to build and test the system you advertised. But the system you do offer is an overpriced insult to the people who are truly trying to build a budget gaming PC.


Worst build article in a long while Tom's.

C'mon guys, do you really have to be Dicks about it? The article name is "Building a Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC on a Budget", not "Build the cheapest ugliest PC you can". If you want that, there are plenty of "Cheap Bastard" build solutions on other sites.

For those with any intellectual capacity, the author actually provided some details on rarely presented information on CPU/GPU balancing. He also presented a build that can be enjoyable to build and enjoyable to own. There is more to PC enjoyment than simply best numbers at the lowest price. I think he did a great job at building a stunning looking, well performing, and enjoyable PC, on a budget.

Sure, any monkey can go to PCPartpicker and find a cheaper build. And any monkey can Google 750k/r9 270 performance and find articles that throw together a system and provide many pages of performance charts. That's not the point here, but you obviously missed that.

 

[Patrick Tobin]

Should have used the Prodigy-M, still has the same exact size but would have given much more ease of installation and "eye candy display." Not that a build that is in this price range should have something this crazy imho. Core 1000 and call it good.

 

[Patrick Tobin]

Would also have been better off with an i3 or lower end i5 with stock cooling and a better video card than the "bling."

 

[Flunar]

I hate to rain on the parade but having dabbled in this area a bit recently, every time I now see the words budget and itx mobo/case together, I get a nervous twitch and grumpy. Budget and itx are generally not compatible.

Why led lighted ram sticks that won't be that visible with a window due to the vid card? Without a window... its even more ridiculous for a "budget" system. If you want red lights, get a red led case fan. Why choose an itx board at all in the prodigy case? They make a micro atx version now that would work well for a gaming build with 1-2 data drives. The money you save on mobos covers buying a better cpu or vid card or heatsink/fan. I'll stop here as others have done better at pointing out the problems.

The red devil build is more of a budget beauty build or perhaps a flashy build and almost twice the price of the budget one.

 

[lesmore2222]

the price difference is $315... which equals to a significant upgrade to both CPU and GPU that could probably double the system's performance.

so what was this article about?
why not change your topic to 'how to spend 175% of the base price to build a PC that's smaller, more stylish and red' or 'how to give all hardware manufacturers an equal business opportunity when you build your PC'? -_-a

When I saw the headline of this article, "Build A Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC On A Budget" , I was exited.

An article on a budget AMD system. Complete with an actual build and benchmarks.

WRONG!

It seems that not only did you fail to build and test the system you advertised. But the system you do offer is an overpriced insult to the people who are truly trying to build a budget gaming PC.


Worst build article in a long while Tom's.

C'mon guys, do you really have to be Dicks about it? The article name is "Building a Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC on a Budget", not "Build the cheapest ugliest PC you can". If you want that, there are plenty of "Cheap Bastard" build solutions on other sites.

For those with any intellectual capacity, the author actually provided some details on rarely presented information on CPU/GPU balancing. He also presented a build that can be enjoyable to build and enjoyable to own. There is more to PC enjoyment than simply best numbers at the lowest price. I think he did a great job at building a stunning looking, well performing, and enjoyable PC, on a budget.

Sure, any monkey can go to PCPartpicker and find a cheaper build. And any monkey can Google 750k/r9 270 performance and find articles that throw together a system and provide many pages of performance charts. That's not the point here, but you obviously missed that.

While us budget gamers would like our PC's to be presentable to the public. We all know that what is displayed on the screen is what is most important and could care less about the "mess beneath the desk", as long as it is functional.

My main problem with the article was that it failed to build and test the base system it implied in the headline.

Most of the articles on Tom's give us hard data we can trust and rely on. This one didn't even come close to the quality Tom's normally gives us.

I have lots of questions about this budget build but none of them got answered.

a couple of them are...

Can the stock cooler keep this chip cool enough for gaming? Many reviews on newegg say it can't, and if not, the price of a decent cpu cooler makes buying an i3 a much more sensible option.

Is the GTX 750 (non ti) an option? On most of the Tom's graphics charts it beats the 260X and is about the same price.

Please Tom's, don't make us go to lesser sites to get the info you normally give us. Cause we will

 

[damric]

Jeeze, there's so many Debi-downers in this comment section, I wouldn't doubt it if TH never does another review again.

Seriously, if you guys need benchmarks, ask around. Plenty of people are running similar hardware. But don't hate on the article. Sure, it has a few mistakes, like the fact that you can't buy that model PSU in the USA, but overall it was a good read. The author even made two builds, with build number one being very tight, and build number two was like a commercial for a sup'd up rice burner

 

[IndustryStandard]

One important caveat: Budget builds are most budget friendly around Black Friday/Cyber Monday, when you can conceivably build a comparable system for 2/3 the price. For example, I built the below system for my sister (saw some bargains while shopping for parts for my own build) this past November. Including monitor (but less the SSD), this system came out to $692.12. On a side note, I also used the BitFenix Prodigy for this particular build.

http://pcpartpicker.com/b/v2cfrH

 

[NoCaDrummer]

Maybe I'm a bit näive, but at $80 for the CPU + $120 for a card (total $200) a high-end AMD APU such as the A10-7850K (@$170) would cost less. The motherboards would be equivalent price to this system, and the memory, HD, case & power supply would be identical. I don't think I've seen an actual comparison using the AMD APUs.
Any thoughts?

 

[damric]

Maybe I'm a bit näive, but at $80 for the CPU + $120 for a card (total $200) a high-end AMD APU such as the A10-7850K (@$170) would cost less. The motherboards would be equivalent price to this system, and the memory, HD, case & power supply would be identical. I don't think I've seen an actual comparison using the AMD APUs.
Any thoughts?

In theory you would be right.

However in practice, it's not even close. I compared the best overclocked A10-7850K score in the 3dmark database to my score with an Athlon 760K + HD 7850.

(Right Click and open in image in new tab if it's too small).

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/1458979/fs/2187757
4838 to 1926...APU not looking so good.

Even at stock clocks I scored over 3800, about 2x the overclocked A10.
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/1458822

 

[IndustryStandard]

Maybe I'm a bit näive, but at $80 for the CPU + $120 for a card (total $200) a high-end AMD APU such as the A10-7850K (@$170) would cost less. The motherboards would be equivalent price to this system, and the memory, HD, case & power supply would be identical. I don't think I've seen an actual comparison using the AMD APUs.
Any thoughts?

From what I can remember, I think Tom's ran some tests that showed CPU + discrete card combos performed significantly better than APUs at similar price points.