System Builder Marathon Q1 2015: Budget Gaming PC

[bwcbwc]

I assume that all of the references to "Q1 2014 Gaming PC" in the bar graphs actually refer to Q1 2015...
Derpy charts are derpy.

 

[pauldh]

I assume that all of the references to "Q1 2014 Gaming PC" in the bar graphs actually refer to Q1 2015...
Derpy charts are derpy.

Nope, it refers to Q1 2014.

The Q1 2015 is listed as "Current PC". The 1-year old system was included for comparison sake.

 

[pauldh]

@RedJaron: In the end the PSU decision comes down to whether the builder wants to future-proof or not. Considering that things are getting more power efficient I see it as even if I upgrade compinents it'll still be fine. Such as a 960 or something like that.

Honestly, the attacks on this PSU are a bit ridiculous. Especially for this build, which is low power, low heat, and not even using it as an exhaust. It's not "Turd" as a vocalist claimed. No it's not a quality unit either, it's a budget unit. But I'll side with the JohnyGuru review over any vocal bashing here that it is of acceptable quality. And for this build in particular, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

That's not however a blanket endorsement of it either. Not even close. It's not a unit I'd put in an enthusiast class rig. And where you would especially want to exercise caution with it is concerning heat. Everything must be factored in, the components, case airflow, and whether the PSU a top mounted exhaust, or sucking in cool air on the bottom like in my build. What are the sustained and maximum loads? This is not a unit I'd desire for 24/7 folding in warm climates, or for overclocking an AM3 build.

 

[damric]

that junker should not be paired with an R9 280, that's for sure. I bet you can't run Unigine for a week straight before it either kills itself or the graphics card.

I say these things because I deal with the problems that these HEC/Compucase units cause on a daily basis.

 

[pauldh]

.... because the subsequent 40% loads while gaming on R9 280 are such crazy demands.

 

[damric]

Paul, I am only correcting you because I love you.

 

[TNT27]

.... because the subsequent 40% loads while gaming on R9 280 are such crazy demands.

Why promote this low end psu, when you can get a good quality psu for almost the same price?

 

[ykki]

Paul, I am only correcting you because I love you.

Well that escalated quickly

 

[pauldh]

hehe, gee thanks. I take no offense, and mean none in return.

So you are totally sure OklahomaWolf is dead wrong on this particular PSU? Kinda a bold statement, no?


TNT, That's fair. I guess I can live with that. It's not meant to be a blanket endorsement for it's use in all builds either. But maybe I should consider that interpretation moving forward. And the cost did go up on me $3 after adding it to my cart, which was a bit hard to swallow.

Don't get me wrong. I never have an issue substituting in higher quality power. In fact, I'd fully endorse it. I just don't like a product unnecessarily trashed either. I'm running Capstone, Antec (EA and VP), Silverstone, and Corsair HX in my current home rigs, depending on the use/need, and the price when needed. That said, for such a budget build, at $40 minus a rebate, I think this EVGA is acceptable. You can do better, and at times maybe for less money. But you can certainly do far worse too.

 

[TNT27]

hehe, gee thanks. I take no offense, and mean none in return.

So you are totally sure OklahomaWolf is dead wrong on this particular PSU? Kinda a bold statement, no?


TNT, That's fair. I guess I can live with that. It's not meant to be a blanket endorsement for it's use in all builds either. But maybe I should consider that interpretation moving forward. And the cost did go up on me $3 after adding it to my cart, which was a bit hard to swallow.

Don't get me wrong. I never have an issue substituting in higher quality power. In fact, I'd fully endorse it. I just don't like a product unnecessarily trashed either. I'm running Capstone, Antec (EA and VP), Silverstone, and Corsair HX in my current home rigs, depending on the use/need, and the price when needed. That said, for such a budget build, at $40 minus a rebate, I think this EVGA is acceptable. You can do better, and at times maybe for less money. But you can certainly do far worse too.

Very true, it could have been a lot worse.

 

[ykki]

hehe, gee thanks. I take no offense, and mean none in return.

So you are totally sure OklahomaWolf is dead wrong on this particular PSU? Kinda a bold statement, no?


TNT, That's fair. I guess I can live with that. It's not meant to be a blanket endorsement for it's use in all builds either. But maybe I should consider that interpretation moving forward. And the cost did go up on me $3 after adding it to my cart, which was a bit hard to swallow.

Don't get me wrong. I never have an issue substituting in higher quality power. In fact, I'd fully endorse it. I just don't like a product unnecessarily trashed either. I'm running Capstone, Antec (EA and VP), Silverstone, and Corsair HX in my current home rigs, depending on the use/need, and the price when needed. That said, for such a budget build, at $40 minus a rebate, I think this EVGA is acceptable. You can do better, and at times maybe for less money. But you can certainly do far worse too.

Very true, it could have been a lot worse.

Yeah, like a corsair cx unit AND a 960! Paul no offence!

 

[TNT27]

Yes, r9 280 much better choice than a gtx 960, 40$ cheaper performs the same, and better in higher resolutions and newer games using 3gb vram. It can also OC into same territory as gtx 770.

280x is an even better choice, as its same price as gtx 960, and has much better performance.

 

[palladin9479]

However, the bulk of people never upgrade their rigs, whether purchased or built, and unless we implement a specific theme, then SBMs always build for the current bang for buck value. This was built to play games on a budget, right now, and for that I'll stand behind every part selected here, at the price paid. There were no meaningful (performance) upgrades in reach, besides pumping more funds into the mobo or PSU, reducing the bang for the buck (which I would not argue against, either).

This is something enthusiasts who visit this site often don't understand. From an economical point of view, it's not advantageous to "plan to upgrade" when doing a build, it's always cheaper to just build what you want and replace it in a three to five year period. This is because of the pace of technology changes too fast to accurately plan, anything you build today would likely be either incompatible or no longer viable in three to five years. So people identify something they need with a life expectancy of three to five years, build / purchase it and then fully replace it with newer technology when it's shelf life ends. Some components can be brought over, cases, optical drives, quality PSU's or even HDD's. Some components can't like CPU's, MB's, memory and often dGPU's.

 

[palladin9479]

On a separate side note, in building a PC there are two components that you never, under any circumstance, go cheap on. Those are the mother board and PSU. You can get cheap memory, cheap CPU, cheap graphics, even cheap HDD, but going cheap on either the MB or PSU will result in massive problems. The PSU is responsible for providing clean, regulated and predictable power to the MB and other components, the MB is responsible for distributing that power in a clean, regulated and predictable method while also coordinating the communication between all the components. Poor quality in either will cause extensive issues in the whole system and could even result in permanent damage to the other components. I'm always willing to spend more on a high quality (not necessary high capacity) PSU and well reviewed / rated MB.

 

[damric]

hehe, gee thanks. I take no offense, and mean none in return.

So you are totally sure OklahomaWolf is dead wrong on this particular PSU? Kinda a bold statement, no?


TNT, That's fair. I guess I can live with that. It's not meant to be a blanket endorsement for it's use in all builds either. But maybe I should consider that interpretation moving forward. And the cost did go up on me $3 after adding it to my cart, which was a bit hard to swallow.

Don't get me wrong. I never have an issue substituting in higher quality power. In fact, I'd fully endorse it. I just don't like a product unnecessarily trashed either. I'm running Capstone, Antec (EA and VP), Silverstone, and Corsair HX in my current home rigs, depending on the use/need, and the price when needed. That said, for such a budget build, at $40 minus a rebate, I think this EVGA is acceptable. You can do better, and at times maybe for less money. But you can certainly do far worse too.

I would generally say Oklahoma Wolf is one of the best PSU reviewers on the internet, easily in the top 5 in my book. He pulls random units off the shelf sometimes and does hot box testing. What he and most other reviewers don't do enough of though is longer endurance tests. We're all smart enough that we should be able to figure out a way to estimate the longevity of these things other than having to answer hundreds of problems in the forums after the fact that it is already bought and paired with a high end GPU.

In my observations, the PSUs that use the cheapo caps simply do not hold up when pushing hungry graphics cards. It might be because the dielectrics just can't handle the heat, or whatever, but the bottom line is that they fail where something like a CAPSTONE will do just fine. I know it is tempting to get one of the curiously cheap Corsair CX/EVGA 500B, but really if it was the same Channel Well or HEC platform with a RAIDMAX sticker on top, would you endorse it? It's better just to drop the extra $30 or so and get the Seasonic/Delta/Superflower.

 

[knowom]

Pentium G3258 with a better GPU from the money saved on the i3 I feel would have made much more sense.

 

[milkmoe]

Intel i3? Really. I think intel are great but servilely over priced. When you get an amd am3+ 4130 black edition for next to nothing, plays all the games. Everyone seems to think CPU Intel! How bout spending 200 dollars less and save yourself some money and watch amd provide the next gaming stomping technology?

 

[Onus]

This is something enthusiasts who visit this site often don't understand. From an economical point of view, it's not advantageous to "plan to upgrade" when doing a build, it's always cheaper to just build what you want and replace it in a three to five year period... This is because of the pace of technology changes too fast to accurately plan, anything you build today would likely be either incompatible or no longer viable in three to five years. So people identify something they need with a life expectancy of three to five years, build / purchase it and then fully replace it with newer technology when it's shelf life ends. Some components can be brought over, cases, optical drives, quality PSU's or even HDD's. Some components can't like CPU's, MB's, memory and often dGPU's.

For a very long time, I believed this; it sounds reasonable. Lo and behold, it turns out not to be true in all cases. For years, I thought I was being wise, buying inexpensive (not "cheap") parts that met my needs at the time. Then I'd find myself upgrading within a couple of years, and do it again, and again; and yet again.
A few years ago, I anticipated not being able to upgrade so easily, so I built a rig for longevity, and named it "Omega" specifically because I anticipated it might be the last PC I'd built for myself for a long time. Unfortunately (or not), that turned out to not work out, and I've built other rigs, but "Omega" is still going strong. It's had a few different graphics cards in it, and a planned-before-build CPU upgrade (955BE to FX-8320), but its mobo, case, RAM, and all drives are originals, and its PSU (a SG-650, which might outlive me) is going strong in my primary rig. With the "right" graphics card in it (there's a little GTX650Ti in it now), there is no measure [applicable to me] by which I would be "suffering," and no game it would not be able to play on "excellent" settings.
Not having to rebuild this box every few years, in the long term, has saved me money, and will continue to do so.
All of that said, I think we've made our points about the low-end EVGA PSU. At very low loads, and well-ventilated as it is in this SBM machine, with no planned upgrades, it ought to last for years. No, it will never be an enthusiast's or tweaker's PSU, but in this application, with no planned upgrades it is [perhaps grudgingly] acceptable.

 

[pauldh]

hehe, gee thanks. I take no offense, and mean none in return.

So you are totally sure OklahomaWolf is dead wrong on this particular PSU? Kinda a bold statement, no?

......

I would generally say Oklahoma Wolf is one of the best PSU reviewers on the internet, easily in the top 5 in my book. He pulls random units off the shelf sometimes and does hot box testing. What he and most other reviewers don't do enough of though is longer endurance tests. We're all smart enough that we should be able to figure out a way to estimate the longevity of these things other than having to answer hundreds of problems in the forums after the fact that it is already bought and paired with a high end GPU.

In my observations, the PSUs that use the cheapo caps simply do not hold up when pushing hungry graphics cards. It might be because the dielectrics just can't handle the heat, or whatever, but the bottom line is that they fail where something like a CAPSTONE will do just fine. I know it is tempting to get one of the curiously cheap Corsair CX/EVGA 500B, but really if it was the same Channel Well or HEC platform with a RAIDMAX sticker on top, would you endorse it? It's better just to drop the extra $30 or so and get the Seasonic/Delta/Superflower.

OK, now we are getting somewhere.

What I don't like is a product unnecessarily blacklisted and lumped in as if they are all the same junk. That's far more of a disservice imho, than use of a budget part. And that's the only reason I felt compelled to even discuss the PSU here in the comments. For those such as Onus who said "I'd put more money into the PSU even if it meant lower graphics", I have no issue with that whatsoever. I had a budget increase, and didn't boost the PSU. Yet also, my demands didn't really increase either, so I'll back by purchase.

And same with you, if you personally draw the line with a high-quality whitelist for all builds, then that's fine by me. If you can afford it, it's the safest and best practice. No argument here. And I'd put a Capstone in that class, and have recommended them to my colleagues on numerous occasions. But I'd argue, there are acceptable budget units out there, such as this one. I'd put them on a grey list, fine for many builds, but not for others. In any rig meant to hit high OCs, whether AMD or Intel, I'd shop a higher quality PSU. Same with the over system cost, how much are you investing. There are plenty of $40-50 PSU's to avoid altogether, but this EVGA is not one of them. Is it the best? of course not. But specifically how many of these EVGAs have you seen die, cause instability, or take out hardware? I'm guessing zero, or at least no more than the average death rate of other parts.

Yes, by all means we have to consider long term. Here is where we differ though, in a light-weight, well ventilated, Intel build pulling <50% peak loads, I have little concern with this unit. Pop in a 4.4 GHz FX-6 platform, then I'd select a different PSU. And the same goes for the mobo also.

To answer your question, if it were a Raidmax, it likely would have completely slipped under my radar. For any budget PSU, with any label, I look for detailed review before I'd use it. Raidmax doesn't use HEC for an OEM, afaik, but regardless of the brand, if the unit performance tested, and broke down to the same build quality as this one, then I wouldn't outright bash it.

 

[pauldh]

Intel i3? Really. I think intel are great but servilely over priced. When you get an amd am3+ 4130 black edition for next to nothing, plays all the games. Everyone seems to think CPU Intel! How bout spending 200 dollars less and save yourself some money and watch amd provide the next gaming stomping technology?

Well, i3 is probably the best choice for gamers on a budget who do not overclock. FX-4's are capable, but you will typically need to hit high clocks to match the brute force of i3. And high clocks also means a beefed up cooler, mobo, and PSU expense. Lightly tuned, or on the cheap, I have no issue with FX-4, and numerous other CPU's under i3.

 

[Onus]

Well, i3 is probably the best choice for gamers on a budget who do not overclock. FX-4's are capable, but you will typically need to hit high clocks to match the brute force of i3. And high clocks also means a beefed up cooler, mobo, and PSU expense. Lightly tuned, or on the cheap, I have no issue with FX-4, and numerous other CPU's under i3.

Now this would be an example of a PC built for longevity. It starts with a decent mobo, cooler, and PSU, but the cheapest FX, to be overclocked to the gills. There's little concern over chip life, because the plan is to replace it in a year or so anyway with an 8-core FX. Heck, the plan may even call for a graphics card upgrade, but the core of the build is chosen to last.

 

[DasHotShot]

Well, i3 is probably the best choice for gamers on a budget who do not overclock. FX-4's are capable, but you will typically need to hit high clocks to match the brute force of i3. And high clocks also means a beefed up cooler, mobo, and PSU expense. Lightly tuned, or on the cheap, I have no issue with FX-4, and numerous other CPU's under i3.

Now this would be an example of a PC built for longevity. It starts with a decent mobo, cooler, and PSU, but the cheapest FX, to be overclocked to the gills. There's little concern over chip life, because the plan is to replace it in a year or so anyway with an 8-core FX. Heck, the plan may even call for a graphics card upgrade, but the core of the build is chosen to last.

+1

Real futureproofing

 

[de5_Roy]

+1

Real futureproofing

sadly, futureproofing is a myth.

 

[DasHotShot]

+1

Real futureproofing

sadly, futureproofing is a myth.

Semi-myth

I am of the school of blow it all on the best parts currently available (with semi decent bang for buck...I know my Titan is almost indefensible)

 

[pauldh]

...

I think the OP again chose his components wisely. Perhaps he should've checked out the MSI H81M-E33 but like said the motherboard will work perfectly fine with simple components.
....

(I had to find this comment again and reply.) Keep in mind my past two SBM rigs outfitted that MSI board. And had the $10 made it possible to squeeze in an acceptable SSD like the M550 256GB, I'd have used it a again. But, there was a specific reader request to see other boards used also. And I wanted USB 3.0 up front.

With that, I've exhausted my commenting time. But again, I appreciate the discussions (both for and against) and the varied opinions. Your comments help shape the direction we'd take the next build or theme.