System Builder Marathon Q4 2014: Budget Gaming PC

[Onus]

I think one reason we haven't been seeing the i3 featured in the SBM is because you guys like to tweak, and that's really limited with the i3. For those not interested in CPU overclocking (I suspect the majority), an i3 in a SBM machine would be a useful data point.

 

[Onus]

The upvote is for the cheap mb, and for the i3 vs. 4170 oc; Paul is always on the lower range of the budget though.

 

[degreesofuncertainty]

Agreed. While not as universally competent at i5, i3's two logical threads do solve most of the Pentium's gaming shortcomings. Core-i3 is a good alternative starting CPU, but if upgrading from G3258, I'd jump straight to i5.

for majority of the users looking for a budget gaming build, an i5 would cut into their budget for a gpu.. then 1 thing that i think is missing from testing is what would be the performance when a person has had the pc / windows installation for sometime with various background tasks, internet activity and at minimum an anti-virus program running.. so i m guessing a cpu upgrade is inevitable or / and ram too..