[SOLVED] Can anybody compose a good gaming PC build at $1,000 or lower?

[SASD GHOST]

I would do it myself but I'm so busy with work that all I have time to do is mostly sleep and eat lol. Even now, I'm doing this at work. If any of you guys would be so kind, I would really appreciate it. I don't need a KB or Mouse, I just need everything else haha. Preferably on pcpartpicker but I'm ultimately indifferent on that front.

Also, please explain, if you don't mind, why you chose the parts you chose. I appreciate it guys! And if nobody responds, I'm okay with that too. Happy Quarantine everybody, ride the wave and WASH.YOUR DAMN.HANDS!

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Quick few questions.
Are you in the US? if not, what country please and is that $1000 in your currency or not? More specific info on this thank you.
Is that budget a hard limit or soft limit?
Hard limit means that not even with taxes can it exceed $1000 (maybe a few bucks but that's it)
Soft limit is anywhere from that budget being for retail price in total not including taxes and shipping costs on anything.
And an even softer limit is that it's a tad flexible up to maybe $1100 if the extra money is spent towards things that are worth it.

Do you need a monitor to be included in that price?
If so, 1080p 60fps or 1440p 60fps?
Or are you comfortable with basically whatever your money can get you? (for a grand you can get 1440p for the most part btw)
Do you want a retail license of Windows 10 to be included in that price?
Do you care about aesthetics or are you fine with pure performance?
(going for pure performance will maximize budget spending getting you the best bang for buck)

Do you happen to have any already existing PC components that you could reuse in the system?
If so, what do you have?
Please answer all of these questions so I can better help you.

 

[SASD GHOST]

Quick few questions.
Are you in the US? if not, what country please and is that $1000 in your currency or not? More specific info on this thank you.
Is that budget a hard limit or soft limit?
Hard limit means that not even with taxes can it exceed $1000 (maybe a few bucks but that's it)
Soft limit is anywhere from that budget being for retail price in total not including taxes and shipping costs on anything.
And an even softer limit is that it's a tad flexible up to maybe $1100 if the extra money is spent towards things that are worth it.

Do you need a monitor to be included in that price?
If so, 1080p 60fps or 1440p 60fps?
Or are you comfortable with basically whatever your money can get you? (for a grand you can get 1440p for the most part btw)
Do you want a retail license of Windows 10 to be included in that price?
Do you care about aesthetics or are you fine with pure performance?
(going for pure performance will maximize budget spending getting you the best bang for buck)

Do you happen to have any already existing PC components that you could reuse in the system?
If so, what do you have?
Please answer all of these questions so I can better help you.

Hey there!

-I am in the U.S. so the $1,000 budget is in terms of American Dollars.

-My budget can go up to a maximum of $1,100 if it's truly justified but that would be the absolute limit, down to the final cent.

-I will absolutely need peripherals included, minus a mouse and keyboard as I already have those. A monitor will be needed though. I don't really mind. If you say 1440p 6fps is attainable then by all means, please, but either one is fine by me.

-Yes I'll need Windows 10 OS license, please.

-I'll be the very first person to choose power and performance over aesthetics. Function over form.

-Lastly, I have no former parts or equipment to use unfortunately, aside from my KB and Mouse. I'll need everything else from the ground up.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thread and help me out, I look forward to your response!

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

So after some more serious deliberation as to choice of components, I've opted to build you three different options.

The first two options only differ in terms of choice for storage.
The third option offers to increase the graphics capabilities.


Build #1 comes in at $1080 after shipping costs two different items but before taxes.
But, the graphics card currently for however long has a promotional discount of $30, with an additional $30 mail in rebate.
If you take advantage of the promo, it'll drop the price from $1080 to $1050, and then the MiR can get you back an additional $30 after the fact.

PCPartPicker Part List

Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($83.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($109.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 5700 8 GB Evoke OC Video Card ($272.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.87 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($69.97 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($106.99 @ Other World Computing)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2458-C-MHD 23.6" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor ($159.99 @ B&H)
Custom: Ryzen 5 1600AF 6-Core 12-Thread ($85.00)
Total: $1010.77
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 23:26 EDT-0400



Build #2 is the same exact thing, except it changes out the storage configuration that gets you more mass storage at a slightly lower cost, but sacrifices SSD storage, meaning you put all your games and junk on the HDD.


PCPartPicker Part List

Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($83.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Kingston A400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 5700 8 GB Evoke OC Video Card ($272.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.87 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($69.97 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($106.99 @ Other World Computing)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2458-C-MHD 23.6" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor ($159.99 @ B&H)
Custom: Ryzen 5 1600AF 6-Core 12-Thread ($85.00)
Total: $995.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 23:28 EDT-0400



This third option is special, because it opts to not purchase an activation for W10 right away.
Windows 10 is free to install and use without any restrictions on the overall functionality of the system.
The only thing activation does for you is three things.

Thing 1: It removes a water mark in the corner telling you the system isn't activated.
Thing 2: It enables the "personalisation" options.
Thing 3: Official Microsoft Windows Tech Support.

That's it. Everything else is useable. And there's even ways to remove the watermark so it doesn't bother you if you want. Just Google it.

Going this route frees up funds to go towards a more powerful graphics card, and you can simply activate Windows at a later date when you scrounge up the cash for it.


PCPartPicker Part List

Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($83.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Kingston A400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB MECH OC Video Card ($369.99 @ B&H)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.87 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($69.97 @ Newegg)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2458-C-MHD 23.6" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor ($159.99 @ B&H)
Custom: Ryzen 5 1600AF 6-Core 12-Thread ($85.00)
Total: $985.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 23:37 EDT-0400



Last thing to note, the PC case I chose comes with two fans.
You can configure them with one at the front and one at the back for some airflow.
I would personally try to allow myself to spend the little bit of extra money to get some more fans to fill the case with but that's just me.

If you decide you want more fans, then you will also need to get some fan splitters since the motherboard I chose doesn't have enough headers for more than the two fans.
Can get a pack of those on Amazon for like $10.

One final thing, the motherboard cannot be anything lesser or cheaper.
There is a slightly cheaper version of the MSI board I chose, but it only has one fan header instead of two and it's quite lacking in a few things and doesn't save much.

Furthermore, despite the CPU I chose being a 1600, it's a refresh version, so it's built on Zen2 and needs a motherboard with out of the box BIOS support for 3rd gen CPUs, and when it comes to B450, the MAX series is guaranteed for that. And the CPU will keep up well enough with even the 5700 XT, and it's only $85 on Amazon (you need to open the PCPP link to see the list, then click on the CPU then copy/paste the Amazon URL link because I had to manually add the part)

 

[SASD GHOST]

So after some more serious deliberation as to choice of components, I've opted to build you three different options.

The first two options only differ in terms of choice for storage.
The third option offers to increase the graphics capabilities.


Build #1 comes in at $1080 after shipping costs two different items but before taxes.
But, the graphics card currently for however long has a promotional discount of $30, with an additional $30 mail in rebate.
If you take advantage of the promo, it'll drop the price from $1080 to $1050, and then the MiR can get you back an additional $30 after the fact.

PCPartPicker Part List

Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($83.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($109.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 5700 8 GB Evoke OC Video Card ($272.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.87 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($69.97 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($106.99 @ Other World Computing)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2458-C-MHD 23.6" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor ($159.99 @ B&H)
Custom: Ryzen 5 1600AF 6-Core 12-Thread ($85.00)
Total: $1010.77
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 23:26 EDT-0400



Build #2 is the same exact thing, except it changes out the storage configuration that gets you more mass storage at a slightly lower cost, but sacrifices SSD storage, meaning you put all your games and junk on the HDD.


PCPartPicker Part List

Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($83.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Kingston A400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 5700 8 GB Evoke OC Video Card ($272.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.87 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($69.97 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($106.99 @ Other World Computing)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2458-C-MHD 23.6" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor ($159.99 @ B&H)
Custom: Ryzen 5 1600AF 6-Core 12-Thread ($85.00)
Total: $995.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 23:28 EDT-0400



This third option is special, because it opts to not purchase an activation for W10 right away.
Windows 10 is free to install and use without any restrictions on the overall functionality of the system.
The only thing activation does for you is three things.

Thing 1: It removes a water mark in the corner telling you the system isn't activated.
Thing 2: It enables the "personalisation" options.
Thing 3: Official Microsoft Windows Tech Support.

That's it. Everything else is useable. And there's even ways to remove the watermark so it doesn't bother you if you want. Just Google it.

Going this route frees up funds to go towards a more powerful graphics card, and you can simply activate Windows at a later date when you scrounge up the cash for it.


PCPartPicker Part List

Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($83.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Kingston A400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB MECH OC Video Card ($369.99 @ B&H)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($56.87 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($69.97 @ Newegg)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2458-C-MHD 23.6" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor ($159.99 @ B&H)
Custom: Ryzen 5 1600AF 6-Core 12-Thread ($85.00)
Total: $985.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 23:37 EDT-0400



Last thing to note, the PC case I chose comes with two fans.
You can configure them with one at the front and one at the back for some airflow.
I would personally try to allow myself to spend the little bit of extra money to get some more fans to fill the case with but that's just me.

If you decide you want more fans, then you will also need to get some fan splitters since the motherboard I chose doesn't have enough headers for more than the two fans.
Can get a pack of those on Amazon for like $10.

One final thing, the motherboard cannot be anything lesser or cheaper.
There is a slightly cheaper version of the MSI board I chose, but it only has one fan header instead of two and it's quite lacking in a few things and doesn't save much.

Furthermore, despite the CPU I chose being a 1600, it's a refresh version, so it's built on Zen2 and needs a motherboard with out of the box BIOS support for 3rd gen CPUs, and when it comes to B450, the MAX series is guaranteed for that. And the CPU will keep up well enough with even the 5700 XT, and it's only $85 on Amazon (you need to open the PCPP link to see the list, then click on the CPU then copy/paste the Amazon URL link because I had to manually add the part)

First of all, thanks so much! You are a life saver, thank you so much for your help. I think I'm going to go with your final build suggestion as it seems to be the best. Just out of curiosity, which build would you choose?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

I would personally opt for as much graphics performance as possible for gaming so that the PC lasts as long as possible before I would have to upgrade anything to maintain quality and performance in games that I want to have, essentially spending only a little bit more now, so that I wait longer before spending more.

For example (and these numbers aren't exact, just made up to express the point in this example)
You buy hardware that surrounds the graphics card, and you buy a graphics card that costs $400 and gets X performance at X quality in current titles.
After 3 years you have to lower the graphics to the point where it seems like you may need to upgrade and let's say you spend another $400 for 3 years.

Or, you can opt for spending $500 and getting more performance at same quality, or same performance at higher quality in current titles compared to previous option, however, you don't need to upgrade for say 5 years, and then you spend another $500 for another 5 years.

Now let's look at the long term:
At $400/3yrs for 9 years you spend $1200 spending money on a GPU 3 different times once every 3 years.
At $500/5yrs for 10 years you spend $1000 spending money on a GPU 2 different times, once every 5 years.
At this rate, you spend an extra $100 every time you upgrade, but you upgrade 1 time less, get an extra year out of the money spent compared to the cheaper option, AND it costs $200 less overall.

Not to mention, that with the increased performance of a slightly more expensive card, you can maintain the bottom line for system requirements as the years go on with newer and newer games that come out requiring more and more powerful hardware at the minimum/medium level for system requirements.

Last thing I want to say about investment into hardware is this.
People like to throw around the term "bottleneck" like some kind of buzzword.
Please don't fall into this trap.
The term "bottleneck" is supposed to be used in it's purest form for it's definition and to simply describe the comparison between components being paired together.

While a lot of people like to think that choosing a CPU and GPU that "pair well" together is a good option, I say it's not.

Another example to explain why is like this:
Let's say you have CPU "A" paired with GPU "A".
GPU is used to render graphics at whatever level it's capable of doing so at maximum without anything else in the system holding it back.
Great.

Now, you decide to pair a CPU with it that can keep up with it, but..... isn't much more powerful or capable than the GPU at present.

Now let's say that you obviously chose a GPU that is in the more mid level range, and after a little bit of time, you got the money together to go ham and get a more beefy GPU.
Great.

Now you have CPU "A" paired with GPU "B"

GPU "B" however, is capable of a lot more than GPU "A" but your problem ends up being the CPU at this point, because in the beginning you chose to get a CPU that "pairs well" with GPU "A" and when paired with GPU "B" it's just not powerful enough to keep the GPU fed quickly enough and what ends up happening is your GPU isn't performing at it's maximum potential and all that extra money you paid for the GPU goes to waste at this point since at this point, it's only performing maybe slightly better than GPU "A" instead of performing A LOT better.

When one component holds back the maximum potential of another component, this is what we call a "bottleneck"

Now, a bottleneck in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing.
What can be bad is when the bottleneck is in regards to something in the system that results in it being a "bad" thing.

So instead, when buying components for a PC, you should always try to make sure that you pair the more powerful CPU "B" with GPU "A" so that the "bottleneck" is in regards to the CPU being more capable than the GPU making sure that the GPU is always performing at it's best, and also, so that when it comes time for you to want to upgrade the graphics, you can, because the CPU has enough overhead to handle the beefier graphics card.

This way, in the long term, you start out paying whatever amount for CPU and GPU, and then only paying for GPU down the road and that's it. And then when it comes time, you upgrade the CPU to be more powerful if you need to and when you can afford it, so that a longer time down the road you upgrade the graphics and only the graphics again.

Whereas when pairing evenly matched CPU and GPU together, if say you want to upgrade graphics, you also have to upgrade CPU along with it, which depending on how long it's been, you may need to upgrade to a different motherboard along with it and possibly even new RAM if the generation of RAM has changed like it did going from DDR3 to DDR4.

And the exponential cost of upgrading everything in the system this way (especially with the CPU) ends up following the same formula I mentioned above with the graphics card.

Spend a little bit more now, so you spend less in the long term.

This is a good general rule to follow and hopefully gives you some good understanding of things.
However, when it comes to a fairly strict and limited budget (like with yours) you make do with what you can, and the 1600 AF CPU I opted for you in order to increase budget for other things, I would say "pairs well" with a 5700 XT (or alternatively in terms of performance an RTX 2070 Super) and would start to struggle to keep up with anything more powerful.

But on the flip side, something like the 5700 XT is definitely closer to being higher end rather than mid level and you won't be needing to upgrade for quite some time to come, and further on the flip side, because the CPU is so cheap, upgrading to something higher end wouldn't be much of an exponential cost like I mentioned above because you didn't spend hardly anything on it to begin with.

As it stands for right now though, with your budget, and the choice of CPU and GPU I gave you for option three, you'll be good to go for quite a long while before you may feel like spending the money to go ham on some higher end stuff.

However, I should note, that if you want to stream, you would be better off going with an Nvidia graphics card.

AMD offers the most graphics horsepower at lower costs, and Nvidia costs more for less performance by comparison, but when it comes to streaming, you should go with Nvidia so you can use the NVENC encoder that's built into the graphics card (and possibly ray tracing if you are into that sort of thing and get an RTX card to do it)

But with your budget, that would result in spending the same amount of money as you would with the 5700 XT but getting graphics performance that's less (not a butt ton less, but a decent amount less)

If you aren't going to stream, then go with AMD.