The "Just Enough" gaming box

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Chester Burnett

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Nov 7, 2011
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Hello and thanks in advance for any advice. My son and a couple of his friends want to build themselves gaming computers. We need to keep the cost per box as low as possible while still being able to handle most modern titles decently. It doesn't need everything on ultra, just respectable performance. I'm hoping to get the most bang for the buck by overclocking the CPU and GPU rather than buying top of the line hardware. I'm fine with AMD or Intel I'm just not sure where the budget processors start being viable.


Approximate Purchase Date: Next month or so

Budget Range: How low can you go?

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming > ya know... everything else.

Are you buying a monitor:Yes

Parts to Upgrade: The whole shebang.

Do you need to buy OS: Yes

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Most US websites. No Microcenter in my state 🙁 There's a Compusa not far from me.

Location: City, State/Region, Country - Florida USA

Parts Preferences: Any

Overclocking: Yes

SLI or Crossfire: No

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1200 hopefully

 
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You can cure a lot of issues by playing 1600x900 in some instances. Otherwise, it's all about your video card.

Those Radeon HD 7950s might drop $50 or more in the next month or so when Sea Islands hits the shelves.

I would not go too cheap on your motherboard -- an FX6300 with an Asus M5A97 or Gigabyte 970-UD3 pops up in Egg combos quite often.



 
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This is what I would get if I were looking for a gaming rig on a tight budget...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G46 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($35.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card ($106.97 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT Gamma Classic (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($35.75 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($24.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224BB DVD/CD Writer ($15.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer G236HLBbd 60Hz 23.0" Monitor ($127.59 @ TigerDirect)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $662.23
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-01-05 20:22 EST-0500)

If you wish to lower it further, you could switch out the HDD for the 500gb version. That will save you $10.

I would suggest you lower the GPU, but if you continue to lower it, the whole point of playing BF3 on a gaming rig will begin to diminish. The HD 7770 will be able to handle BF3 very well on high settings. You can turn down some of the eye candy without losing too much visual quality and really boost the FPS.

Also, keep in mind, some of the builds above did not include an OS and a monitor. This will push the price up significantly.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
 
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here's one. prepare for sticker shock. had trouble putting a low end box together. there's hardware that's going to run stuff and hardware that won't. I'll try later to build a 4 year old machine for you.
$975.00.............. too much?

dvd
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151256
case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108236
HD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152244
monitor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009317
graphics
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125443
ps
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207013
ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231645
board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157301
cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116782
opsys
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986
 
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"My son and a couple of his friends want to build themselves gaming computers..."
And I like DeusAres build but I'd get the 3-pack Windows 7 to split the cost with your son's friends.
 
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Thats almost exactly what i did. I wanted to build a PC that would have better performance than a Xbox/PS3. The build i put together is a little different than mine.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Pentium G860 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($67.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock H61M-DGS Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($44.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Smart Tracer 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Toshiba 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($57.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card ($106.97 @ Newegg)
Case: Zalman Z9 ATX Mid Tower Case ($31.98 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($24.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224BB DVD/CD Writer ($15.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $368.88
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-01-06 09:15 EST-0500)

If you want the ABSOLUTE BARE MINIMUM then use a HD 7750 and you will have a very low power gaming PC. Also, if you are new to computer components you might be scared by the name Pentium, but its not what it looks like. Its a sandy bridge Pentium and is awesome for the money. Its an i3 without hyper-threading.
 
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OK Halftime. Thanks again for all the replies. I know most of these threads revolve around a "I've got this much to spend , I want to play X game" format. I realize my question falls outside of that. I'm asking what a reasonable budget should be for generally good performance. I'll say that in the most demanding titles some settings will need to be rolled back. There is no future proofing :)

I like a lot of the suggestions so far and I've been doing some research. I'm thinking it would be a good idea to try to fit in a 7850 if I can. The GPU seems like the best place to shoot for something current and maybe I can get away with a less expensive CPU like the Phenom II x4 965 or the G860. The higher tier cards will probably be out of reach for this build.

The 3 way Windows license sounds perfect. We will be building 3 of these. One for each boy.

I'll toy around with a build on pc parts picker and post it after the Colts beat the Ravens :)
 
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Wow an $18.00 case. Thanks. I'll check that out.
 
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Thanks this looks close to what I'm thinking after spending some more time looking into it. I'll see if we can squeeze in a 7850.
 
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I'd really talk to your son about what he wants for what price, as well as what features are important.

It's hard to give a recommendation without a more specific range, the individual decisions are up to you (eg. Do I want a 400, 600, or 800 dollar desktop? In what ratio do you care about price/performance? ...Somewhere in 700-900 dollars is about the middle, you start to suffer from diminishing returns when you favor one over the other and move in price range.)

Not sure if I explained that very well.
 
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You explained that well, thank you. They each have different amounts of money saved from working. They've been helping me with a number of home projects and I'm making up the difference between what they have saved and what it winds up costing. We're going to build them together. I'm willing to spend whatever is needed to make sure they can play most modern games at decent settings. Not ultra in the most demanding titles. They play most major releases at some point. They're good kids and I want to reward them but since we're building three, I'm trying to keep the costs down. Hence the "just enough" moniker. What the budget should be is what I'm trying to find out. If I need to build an eight or nine hundred dollar machine I will but I'm hoping "just enough" will be less. I think some of the builds that have been suggested so far are a great starting point and I'm using all these ideas to search for reviews and such. It is all helping. I haven't built a computer in years.

 
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I just want to say that this is an awesome thing you are doing
 
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Here is a build with the 7850 2GB card for just a few dollars more. I agree on the 1600x900 resolution would be fine. You are worried about playing games on decent settings, well here you will play games on high-ultra settings. DIdn't check but everything should be in-stock.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($49.98 @ Outlet PC)
Memory: Mushkin Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($35.57 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($179.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Apex SK-393-C ATX Mid Tower Case ($24.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($24.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224BB DVD/CD Writer ($15.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: AOC e2051Sn 60Hz 20.0" Monitor ($99.72 @ B&H)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $666.19
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-01-06 14:57 EST-0500)

And here are some benchmarks for why you should go with the 7850.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/536?vs=549
 
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Go with what cbal11 posted. Because if you aren't going to be upgrading then having 4 cores will be alot better for the future. Yeah you might few a few frames more with a Pentium G860 in games that aren't made for 4 cores. But in the next year or so alot of titles will probably want 4 cores.
 
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after reading this don't even consider and AMD build. you'll be shooting yourself in the foot right away. graphics cards........ get one with 2gigs of vram. will help avoid off loading because the 1gig buffer won't be able to store it all... ( skyrim, etc. )
 
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Go with Cbal's build if you don't plan on upgrading, however, you can probably have the kids pick out their own budget cases and throw in a Cooler Master 212 to overclock.

If you do plan on upgrading down the line, go with this. It'c compatible with higher intel processors. (Cbal's with the G860 and compatible mobo)
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wdRR
The case thing still applies.

Edit:Just use it as a frame, make your concessions where you want.
 
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