Building A Balanced Intel-Based MicroATX Gaming PC On A Budget

[FormatC]

Today we put a Pentium G3258 in a cheap H97 motherboard, overclocked it to 4.4 GHz, added a GTX 750 Ti, then tossed in tons of new Deepcool gear.

Building A Balanced Intel-Based MicroATX Gaming PC On A Budget : Read more

 

[Amdlova]

What i can say. Ugly. Prefer the bitfenix cage... all that cheap plastic...

 

[Amdlova]

Promoted by DeepCool. and MSI.

 

[bernie456]

Anyone in their right might is not going to spend $100 on the case in a budget build, let alone one as ugly as that one.

 

[Ben Van Deventer]

It's not ugly, it's "steampunk"

 

[TheMentalist]

AIO watercooler, $100 case, $150 SSD in a budget build? Nice joke.

 

[pierrerock]

And this is why i would not buy a G3258 if i have to get a Z97 Board. I know H81 Boards can now overclock this CPU, but there is a lot of chances that this board would not have a bios recent enough for this CPU. and since you buy a G3258, there is little chance you have another LGA 1150 CPU in your sleeve to flash the bios.

I would get a X4 760K with a better GPU instead of a G3258 with a more expensive motherboard...

 

[Ethan Feinhaus]

The only problem I have with this is that you're trying to describe a budget system with a water cooler. When one is building a budget system, there's no reason to have a water cooler when the stock cooler would function well enough.

 

[Nestor Turizo]

Noob question: Isnt a stock, on air i5 for 200 usd aprox. a better option than a cheap processor + fancy cooler for 200+ usd?

 

[pierrerock]

Noob question: Isnt a stock, on air i5 for 200 usd aprox. a better option than a cheap processor + fancy cooler for 200+ usd?

Yeah a I5 would totally be better, but as for gaming, it would not push a 750 TI much more than a G3258 would. But you are right to think that a water cooling is not a good idea budget-wise

 

[lp231]

Why isn't the total mentioned for this budget build? Also the price for the ram, aio cooler, optical drive are missing. I had to add those in by guessing the most acceptable price for those missing parts and total with what was price listed came out to almost $840. At that price, it's not a budget build. Budget build is suppose to be around $500 or less. $600 is consider a huge headroom.
AIO $ 80, ODD $16 , RAM 8GB (2x4GB) $73
Most of these budget build makes no sense when there is no strict budget cap. Next time when there is another budget build and there is something that just got to have it, but cost like $100 more, let's up the price cap and still call it a budget build!

 

[Phillip Wager]

the 750ti is a joke of a graphics card unless you need to add a graphics card to somones dell or acer and they dont want to spend the extra money or hassle for a better power supply. if you are building a pc from the ground up you can get a r7 265 for the same money and it will be nearly twice as fast or even spend a couple more bucks for a 270 or 270x even better. you only need a 500 watt power supply for that which most people buying a new system will have at least that much power. i just find it really odd that toms would pick this graphics card when it only receives "honerable mention" on their graphics card for the money segment.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I'd have to call that build "Nebuchadnezzar" .... reminds me of Morpheus' ship in the Matrix movies

 

[dovah-chan]

Could have said that it was a balanced intel build instead of a budget build. Kinda not very balanced either.... not sure how to feel other than wat.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Would have been better off forgoing the watercooling and ssd in favour of a haswell i3 and a better gpu.

 

[Riemenschneider]

AIO watercooler, $100 case, $150 SSD in a budget build? Nice joke.

exactly my first thoughts. I'd go with a Fractal Design Core 1000, an EKL Alpenfohn Sella, and just get a MX100 256GB instead of the HDD. If you really need more space, you can always get a big HDD later, or just buy an external USB 3.0 one, or use an NAS or cloud. Also a good 300W PSU should be more than enough for this system, even if you overclock to 4.5 GHz.

 

[zero2dash]

I would never buy a computer case that looks like a cheap electric razor. Could just be me though...

 

[Avus]

for a budget build, i won't use a $100USD case...

 

[TheMentalist]

exactly my first thoughts. I'd go with a Fractal Design Core 1000, an EKL Alpenfohn Sella, and just get a MX100 256GB instead of the HDD. If you really need more space, you can always get a big HDD later, or just buy an external USB 3.0 one, or use an NAS or cloud. Also a good 300W PSU should be more than enough for this system, even if you overclock to 4.5 GHz.

Yeah, but in a budget build I would use a HDD only. Games these days are about 20-40gigs. That's a lot. SSD's will only increase the loading times, nothing else, no graphical improvements. I would just go with a WB black and spend the saved money on a better CPU/GPU.

And a 400-500W PSU would be the better way, since good 300W PSU's are hard to find everywhere. Plus if the graphics card gets pumped up, the power will too. The Seasonic S520II is the best budget PSU right now.

 

[Baumy15]

for $801 dollars (aus) I got an
G3258 $79
MSI Z87M GAMING motherboard $179
Kingston hyper x fury black $99
western digital caviar blue $69
2nd hand 500W psu $15
2nd hand GTX 660 $140
3 coolermaster sickleflow x green fans x3 $12 ($36)
1 bitfenix spectre pro 200mm green $27
gigabyte k7 force keyboard $59
razer naga hex green $79
and a generic cd rom $19

this is a nice looking budget build and performs really well

and if you where to buy a new GTX 660 it would be $199
and a new 500 w psu it would be $49 so it would be $895

and the G3250 can be overclocked to 4.5 on the stock cooler for me.

I play watchdogs a lot high textures and ultra graphics setting and I get between 25-50 fps average is around 40fps

this is a high performance budget build and stays really cool

 

[Baumy15]

and this case is also a ripoff of the aerocool ds cube same internals just different panels and different exterior

 

[Omar Rassi]

That's not a budget build. This is a budget build:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($59.99 @ Micro Center)
Motherboard: Asus H81M-D PLUS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile Blue 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($72.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra Plus 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($60.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 280 3GB DirectCU II Video Card ($189.25 @ Newegg)
Case: Silverstone PS09B MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($36.25 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Micro Center)
Total: $494.44 (After rebates)
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-06 06:52 EDT-0400

 

[zodiacfml]

with the motherboard at that orientation and available space, I would have taken the largest possible air cooler I could get for a reasonable price.

 

[jardows]

Looking at this, I was thinking that I liked the internals of the case, but not so sure about the outside. Thanks Baumy15 for pointing out it is the same as the aerocool ds cube. I looked that up - about the same price, but I am not convinced of having the USB ports and other connectors on the top of the case.

 

[Drejeck]

It's not ugly, it's "steampunk"

It's not steampunk, it's an electric shaver.